"Mrs. Buchanan joins me in best regards to you and Mr. Darell, and I am very sincerely

yours,

"To W. P. Elliott, Esq. Malda."

To the same.

"My dear Friend,

"C. BUCHANAN."

"Your letter of the 7th, mentioning your pur pose of coming to college, I have just received. Whether you have done right I shall be able to tell you in about a year hence; not sooner. entirely does it depend on youself.

So

"Before you obtain your qualifying degree in the college at Fort William to serve the Company, you must hold four public disputations in the Persian or Bengalee languages, once as respondent, and thrice as opponent. As respondent, you are to defend a proposition given by yourself on a moral, literary, or historical subject, or concerning oriental manners and customs, against the objections of any three opponents who may be appointed. You are first to pronounce an essay on your subject, and then begin to defend it extempore, in classical Persian, against the meditated objections of your opponents; and this in public, before all Calcutta, and before all the natives of rank and learning, rajahs, pundits, moulvies, and moonshees; -an august tribunal!

"You are also to recite in public, at six different times, six essays or declamations composed by yourself on subjects which shall be given you, in the English language. Every student who takes a degree at Fort William must give proofs of his being a classical English scholar; and a practical

one.

"Ex pede Herculem. Here is a ploughshare or two of your college ordeal. Be not surprised, then, that I did not urge your coming. Here there is room for honour, and also for disgrace..

"As for the number of horses you wish to bring down, consider what hath been said.'

"You and all of your year will have quarters in the Writers' Buildings: two in a house. There is no choice. Mr. Barlow will place you where there is a vacancy on your arrival.

"You will not be called down for a considerable time; and I suppose will see little of cavalry exercise this year.

"Yours very sincerely,

"Calcutta, 17th Nov. 1800."

"C. BUCHANAN.”

In order to complete the specimen which has just been given of the views with which the younger servants of the Company entered the college of Fort William, it may not be improper to add the following extract of a letter from Mr. W. Elliott

to one of his friends, who was then deliberating as to his own determination.

"Malda, Dec. 14, 1800.

"Not to detain you longer from the subject "of your letter, I will state to you the reasons "which induce me to enter the college.

"I must confess to you that I sacrifice consider"able present advantages; but if I may judge "from all that Lord Wellesley has hitherto done, "he is far too generous to allow us to sustain any "loss which he will not make up on our leaving

68

college. I say this on the supposition that he will "continue so long in the government. If he does "not, I shall still have the satisfaction of knowing "myself qualified for any situation whatever.

"As the opportunities of information now of "fered are many, the examination of those who "decline them will be proportionably strict: nor "do I think myself qualified, or that I could qualify myself in this jungle, for any situation other "than that of a commercial resident.

46

"As it is not my present intention to accept any thing less than a good residency, you will not be surprised that I devote two years and a half to improve myself in the languages, and in what"ever else is to be taught in the college; at the "end of which time, I shall not have been more "than five years and a half in the country. Be"sides, I think it a most dangerous experiment to

"decline entering the college. We have nothing "so much to dread as the being set aside, or not thought of when any appointment of trust be"comes vacant; which will in my opinion certainly be the case with those who thus act.

66

“I am, moreover, one of those eccentric beings, "who think that knowlege and information can"not be purchased at too dear a rate; and I do

expect, from the known abilities of my friend “Mr. Buchanan, and some of the other professors, "not only to attain the immediate object which I "have in view, a knowledge of the languages, and "of my duty as a servant of the Company, but "also improvement in those political studies which "no gentleman should be ignorant of. Our edu"cation has not left us wholly uninformed on "these subjects; but the early age at which we left England must have prevented our obtaining that "degree of knowledge requisite for sustaining with eclat the rank in life which we hope to fill on 66 our return home. Mr. Brown, the Provost, "wrote to me, that the advantages of the college "were so palpable, and the danger in declining it "so great, that I could not reasonably hesitate on "the subject."

66

66

The appointment of the superior officers of the college was notified in a Calcutta gazette extraordinary on the 20th of September 1800, though they were not formally admitted to their offices till the 24th of April following. Towards the close of the former year an advertisement was published in dif

ferent parrs of India, announcing the establishment of the college, and inviting men of learning and knowledge, moulvies, pundits, and moonshees, to Calcutta, for the purpose of submitting to an examination with a view to the choice of some as teachers in the college. About fifty natives, and subsequently a larger number, were in consequence attached to it.

Lectures in the Arabic, Hindostanee, and Persian languages, commenced in the month of November 1800; and the first regular term opened on the 6th of February following.