Page:Reports on the State of Education in Bengal (1835 & 1838).djvu/95

Rh required that his father, nearest relative, or guardian should pledge him to become a missionary or school-master in the Society’s service, but by an arrangement authorized in 1829, non-foundation students may now be admitted without the declaration. The non-foundation or general students are required to pay each for diet, room-rent, and tuition sixty-four sicca rupees monthly in advance. The admission of general students was recommended by Bishop, and with that view the Society was induced to enlarge the college-buildings. When the buildings were completed, some mortification was at first experienced in finding that the expectations entertained by Bishop Heber and others were not realized; but after the expiration of a year or two it would appear that several non-foundation students had been admitted for the purposes of general education. The circumstances of the country, however, do not supply a constant succession of such students, although it is believed by the friends of the college that it will be otherwise as colonization advances. A further and more important step in opening the college, one which, though announced in Bishop Middleton’s first letter on the subject as the second object proposed in the foundation, has never yet been taken, is the admission of aboriginal natives of India who are not Christians to literary and scientific instruction in the college under the same rules as other students, with the exception of those respecting hall and chapel. The principal of the college, in a minute recorded in the proceedings of the college-council under date 27th August, 1882, expressed the opinion that the time for taking this step was not far distant. An annual examination In the college hall takes place on the 14th day of December in every year, and an annual commemoration of founders and benefactors in the college-chapel on the 21st day of January. Scholars after having completed the term of their education are employed as catechists at missionary stations, and the catechists of the Incorporated Society on having attained the age of twenty-two years and six months and having forwarded the requisite testimonials are re-admitted into the college under the name of probationers. They remain until ordained deacons, and being so ordained they continue in the college until they are licensed by the bishop, and repair to the stations respectively assigned to them in the character and with the salary of missionaries. European missionaries of the Incorporated Society 4—1326B