they became known, they made friends.
They came to this country well educated,
were liberal of mind, most friendly to
England, amiable, upright, and indefatigably
hard-working men, in character and general
attainment answering to the best class of
English students. They worked steadily
for at least twelve, usually fourteen, fifteen,
sixteen hours a day, as men well might who
had staked so much as they were staking
on success in the required examination. It
was against their coming that they must
break caste, oppose religious prejudices of
their friends, cut themselves off in many
things from their own people, travel four
thousand miles, and maintain themselves
alone in a strange country, for the chance
—which experience declared to be a bad
chance—of beating two or three hundred
Englishmen on their own ground in their
own subjects of study.

Mr. Thakur, who is of a high caste
Brahmin family, came from Bombay, where,
after education at Elphinstone College, he
had taken tho degree of B.A. in his
university. He arrived in England only about
five months before the examination, and
did not connect himself with any English
college. We have heard less of his story
than of the others, and only assume its
general resemblance to that of the three
Hindoos from Calcutta.

All these gentlemen had fulfilled every
requirement of the law. Each had deposited
exact evidence of his age with the commissioners,
passed his examination, received
formal notification of the place obtained
among selected candidates, and seen it
announced in the newspapers, when the
difficulty was first raised which disturbed the
official judgment. Justice was then tied
hand and foot, and lies now in some danger
of being strangled with red tape. One evening
during their period of study in London,
these Hindoos, being in friendly talk with
fellow-countrymen (one of whom, settled
in London as a teacher of his language to
selected candidates, we will call Mr. Blank),
were discussing what chance any of them
had of offering himself for a second
examination if he were rejected at the first.
But, said Mr. Blank to two of them, you
were entered as sixteen when you matriculated
at Calcutta, and by that reckoning you
would already be over twenty-one.

Now the university of Calcutta requires
that a student upon matriculating should
have, "to the best of his belief, attained
the age of sixteen years." The university
of Bombay requires that he shall have
"completed his sixteenth year." The
university of Madras sets no limit of age; and
at the two other universities there is good
evidence to show that there has been much
looseness of practice in registering the age
of students at their entrance. It is the
known and legal custom of a Hindoo to
reckon age by the true year of his life, or
that which he will complete on his next
birthday. This custom is accepted in tho
Indian law courts; it was fully argued and
admitted, years ago, in the case of a
conversion of a Hindoo boy by a missionary;
and the best evidence of its common
acceptance is the rule that a Hindoo is of age
when sixteen: which, in the chief text book
of native law, Macnaghten's Principles, is
rightly laid down as meaning that,
"according to the doctrine of Bengal, the end
of fifteen years is the limit of minority."
This is, indeed, a custom beyond question.
Mr. Chisholm Anstey, who has been a judge
in the Bombay High Court, adds to a statement
of it, that, " according to his judgment
and belief, no native of British India,
upon whom the condition of attaining a
certain age is imposed by law would, unless
the sense thereof were previously explained
to him, understand it to be a condition of
having completed such age." The reader
will observe that we are now coming to the
mistake made by the commissioners. Misled
by a reference to the Indian University
Calendars, they assumed against two of
these Hindoos that their age exceeded
twenty-one on the first of March last. Take
one as an example. Mr. Banerjea duly
deposited with the commissioners, before
his examination, the required evidence of
the exact date of his birth: which was the
tenth of November, eighteen 'forty-eight.
This evidence having been accepted as
sufficient, he was duly admitted to examination,
and in every respect had fulfilled his
part in the conditional contract by which
he was tempted to leave home four thousand
miles behind him. After this, in fact,
the commissioners had nothing to do with
the books of the Calcutta University. But
grant that they had, the source of the
misunderstanding was most clear. That any
question could arise out of it, did not occur
to the young Hindoos until they heard it
first raised by their countryman, Mr. Blank,
who had been for some time in England.
They proposed at once to take steps to
avoid future misunderstanding. But Mr.
Blank, as they afterwards explained to the
commissioners, and had witnesses to prove,
"told us very emphatically that it would be