LETTERS FROM A COMPETITION WALLAH. LETTER OF INTRODUCTION. To the Editor of Macmillan's Magazine. DEAR SIR,-Though feeling some hesitation in approaching (metaphorically) the editorial sanctum, there are occasions when diffidence is out of place; and I think that you will allow that this comes under that category. But, without any further preface, I will plunge at once in medias res, and tell you my whole story from the very beginning. The gentleman (and scholar), whom I wish to introduce to your notice, is Mr. Henry Broughton, my earliest and most attached friend. Throughout our school career-which we passed together in the classic groves and along the banks of Radley-to call us Damon and Pylades would have been to "damn with "faint praise." Together we chased the bounding ball; together we cleft the yielding wave; together we studied; together we attended Divine worship; together we should have passed the hours of the night, B 2 Damon and Pylades. had not the regulations of that excellent institution confined us to our separate cubicles. Our characters were admirably fitted to supply what was wanting in the other. My mind was of the class which developes late, and which, while it gives abundant promise to the observant eye, too often fails to be appreciated by those immediately around. His reached its maturity early. I was the more thoughtful and the intellectualler of the two; he the more practical and the quick-sighteder. I ofttimes found myself unable to express the high thoughts that welled inside me, while he carried off all the school-prizes. In the fulness of time we followed each other to college-to the college ennobled by more than one enduring world-wide friendship—to the college of Tennyson and Henry Hallam. In our new phase of life we were still as intimate as ever at heart, though, outwardly speaking, our social spheres diverged. He lived with the men of action; I with the men of thought. He wrote and talked, wielded the oar and passed the wine-cup, debated on the benches of the Union high questions of international morality and ecclesiastical government; I conversed with a few kindred souls about, or pondered out in solitude, the great problems of existence. I examined myself and others on such points as these: Why were we born? Whither do we tend? Have we an instinctive consciousness? So that men would say, when they saw me in the distance, "Why was Simkins born? Is he Why Mr. Broughton went out. 3 tending hither? Has he an instinctive consciousness "that he is a bore?" I gloried in this species of intellectual persecution. I was the Socrates, Broughton the Alcibiades, of the University. His triumphs may be read in the Cambridge Calendar and the club-room of First Trinity; mine are engraven deep in the minds which I influenced and impressed with my own stamp. However, to come to the point, as we were lounging in the cloisters of Neville's Court on an evening in March, 1860, the conversation happened to turn on an Indian career. Broughton spoke of it with his wonted enthusiasm, maintaining that the vital object to be looked for in the choice of a line in life was to select one that would present a succession of high and elevating interests. I, on the contrary, was fired at the idea of being placed with almost unlimited power among a subject-race which would look up to me for instruction and inspiration. What a position for a philosopher! What for a philanthropist! Above all, what for a philosophic philanthropist! We forthwith sent in our names for the approaching competitive examination. For the result of that examination I do not pretend to account. Broughton, who was lamentably ignorant of modern literature; who was utterly unable to "give a "brief summary of the opinions held by, and a sketch "of the principal events in the life of Heraclitus, Dr. "Darwin, Kant, or Giordano Bruno ;"-Broughton, who, when asked for the original source of the quota |