The time came in due course when the college of Fort William was reformed. Writers’ Buildings were closed as a residential college. The young writers on arriving in India were ordered to remain in Calcutta to obtain a certain qualification in the native languages, but they were expected to live with friends who would keep them under greater social restraint; or to find their own habitations, where it is needless to say that there was no social restraint. The result was that three or four young men who had been friends at the college of Haileybury, in England, joined one another in setting up a house or mess in Calcutta. The Government no longer offered its loan of £400 to each young man. The chief evidence of college discipline (the name of the college being still maintained) consisted in the daily appearance of a venerable native gentleman called a Moonshee or a Pundit; and in a monthly examination in the College Hall, before the Principal and two paid examiners. The venerable native gentlemen who came as instructors in the languages were usually ignorant of English, and were therefore unacceptable to their pupils. They had no personal interest in their pupils, as they drew their Government salary without reference to the progress of their pupils. They attended solemnly from day to day, and were as solemnly requested to come again to-morrow. When a young writer really wished to learn the languages, he invoked the help of one of the two private teachers, Raj Chunder and Harry Mohun who were good English scholars, and so made the path of learning a little more pleasant. Each young writer was required to qualify in the languages in either one or two years after his arrival in India, and so the time came at last when he was obliged to call in the private tutors. Somehow or other these private tutors had a great prophetic power of anticipating the particular passages in the text-books, and the particular papers for translation which would be used at any coming examination. Or if it turned out that they had been mistaken when the day of examination came, they were usually in attendance within reach of the examination hall, and mysteriously entered into some electro-biological or theosophical communication with their pupils, if any of these were nervous or doubtful of their own powers. We would beg, however, emphatically to record that most of the men passed their examinations by their own knowledge and ability. There were always a certain number of men who attained honours and pecuniary rewards and medals for their superior proficiency in the languages; but there were sometimes a few whose idleness and negligence compelled them at the last moment to have recourse to electro-biological assistance.