Page:Ramtanu Lahiri, Brahman and Reformer - A History of the Renaissance in Bengal.djvu/22

 Year’s day in that year the Krishnagar College (of which I was subsequently a Professor, and ultimately Principal) was opened with great ceremony. It was built and endowed partly by Government, partly by private subscriptions — and among the latter, the munificence of the then Maharaja of Nadia, the Maharaja Siris Chandra Rai Bahadur, was conspicuous. The Maharaja was himself an active member of the College Committee, and set the good example of sending his two sons to be educated with the other boys of less distinguished rank and caste. And the strength of the school department attached to this College at its foundation will be appreciated by those who know anything of the early history of education in Bengal, when I mention that the second master was Ramtanu Lahiri, and the head master the famous D.L. Richardson, at one time editor of The Englishman, almost the father of English education in Bengal.

Krishnagar was always Ramtanu’s home — though he held appointments at various times at Burdwan and also at Uttarpara, and he lived also a long time in Calcutta. At all these centres of educational life he was looked upon as “the Arnold of Bengal,” which was the honourable title by which he was commonly known. While at Uttarpara and Calcutta he was the intimate friend of all the most eminent Bengali gentlemen of the time — notably the Pandit Iswara Chandra Vidyasagara, the Maharaja Satis Chandra Rai of Nadia, Radhakanta Deb, K.M. Banerji, Ram Gopal Ghosh, Siva Chandra Deb, Peari Chand Mitra, Tarachand Chakravartti, Devendranath Tagore, Rajendra Datta, Michael Madhusudan Dutt, Kesava Chandra Sen, Bankim Chandra Chatterji, Dinabandhu Mitra, Raja Peary Mohan Mukerji, Manomohan Ghosh, Professor Peary Charan Sarkar, Mahendra Lal Sarkar, and many others whose association with Lahiri Mahashai is commemorated by his biographer. With some of the younger members of this brilliant circle I had the pleasure of being on terms of personal friendship at a somewhat later period. For instance, with Professor Peary Charan Sarkar, who was first introduced to me, I think by Ramtanu Lahiri, I subsequently worked for some years in a sort of literary partnership, in the task of preparing English text-books for young Bengali boys; and I am therefore entitled, by some personal knowledge,