Page:Twelve men of Bengal in the nineteenth century (1910).djvu/88

72 modern Bengal. The Calcutta Medical College had been founded in June, 1835, and though the want of it had long been felt, there having previously been no adequate school for the training of Indian students in modern medical science, it met with opposition from a certain section of the community as likely to destroy the caste of students, who would be initiated into all the secrets of the dissecting room. In the same year also an Act conferring full liberty on the Press was passed. This was a great joy to the group of young Bengal students, who, accustomed to express themselves freely in their own private meetings, were now enabled to write and disseminate their opinions with the same freedom in the Press. About the same time the Calcutta Public Library was founded and placed in the Metcalfe Hall on its completion in 1842. It proved a great boon to the rising generation. These events, which are but a few of the most prominent of these years, show how rapid was the progress that was being made, and how many must have been the subjects of absorbing interest available for discussion by Ramtanu and his friends. David Hare, who had proved so good a friend not only teto [sic] Ramtanu but to the many other youths who had passed through his famous schools, died in 1842, and about the same time Ramtanu lost his elder brother Kesava to whom he owed so much. His mother, to whom he had been devotedly attached, died shortly afterwards.