Page:Ramtanu Lahiri, Brahman and Reformer - A History of the Renaissance in Bengal.djvu/111

 with the sums proposed by employing a few gentlemen of talent and learning, educated in Europe, and providing a college furnished with necessary books, instruments, and other apparatus.”

Bishop Heber kindly put the letter into the Governor-General’s hands; and though it failed to gain its object it did some good in another way. Lord Amherst promised to have a house built for the Hindu College, contiguous to that intended for the new Sanskrit College; and the foundations of the two buildings were laid on the 25th of February 1824.

In this very year circumstances soon happened to bring the Government into a closer relation with the Hindu College. An Italian merchant in Calcutta, named Berretta, to whose keeping the college funds had been committed, became a bankrupt, and involved the college in his ruin. Of the sum of 113,179 rupees which had belonged to the college, there remained only 23,000 rupees. The Committee were thunderstruck when this was discovered; and, having no other alternative, applied for Government aid. The Governor-General and his Council promised the help solicited, on condition that the college should be placed under the inspection of an officer appointed by them. The Committee gladly availed themselves of this arrangement; and Mr H. H. Wilson, secretary to the Committee of Public Instruction, was the first inspector, and 900 rupees was the grant for the first month. In 1830 the grant was raised to 1250 rupees.

The reader has already been informed that Ramtanu was admitted into the college in 1828. It was customary then to send to the Hindu College such boys from the Society’s school as had creditably completed their course there. The Society paid the fees of those among them who were poor. Ramtanu was one of these. He and