Lord Ellenborough, once Governor-General of India, and formerly President of the Board of Control, records in his political diary how the Duke of Wellington always mentioned in high terms the gallantry of the Indian army and the purity of the Civil Service. We must leave it to others to write of the Indian army. For the present we propose to devote our attention to the Civil Service in its extensive social relations in India. The purity of the Civil Service may well be said to be its distinguishing characteristic; and for this quality it was specially held in honour by the great Duke. The pure light of the Civil Service of India still shines like a guiding star before the faces of the millions of our Oriental subjects and allies. And yet there are many people in England who have much to learn about the Indian Civil Service. They have heard of the Civil Service Supply Association in London, and they know that it is managed by the Civil Servants of the Government public offices in London, who are fully entitled to call themselves the Civil Servants of the Crown. In a single year about 15,000 candidates compete for the Home Civil Service, and about 5,000 are passed. Their name is legion, and they pervade the whole country. But the Indian Civil Service is a much more select and exclusive service. Only about forty new candidates are admitted to it by competitive examination each year. These are the recruits who are sent out annually to replenish the Civil Service throughout the whole of India in the three Presidencies of Bengal, Bombay, and Madras, and their dependencies. There are less than 1,000 members of the Civil Service in the whole of India. In the lower provinces of Bengal, to which this article is chiefly devoted, the Civil Service consisted recently of only 255 members. It is but a little leaven to leaven the whole mass of the native population of Lower Bengal, which numbers more than sixty millions according to the last census. It is no easy task to attempt to describe the duties of the Indian Civil Service. As to the Indian civilian himself, the pen might almost hesitate to describe him. It reminds us of the epitaph on a good wife— She was, but words are wanting to say what. Think what a wife should be, and she was that.