FOREST DEPARTMENT OF INDIA. The Secretary of State for India in Council having resolved to send out eight young men, properly trained and well educated, from this country for service in the forests of India, with a view to their being ultimately promoted to the superior posts in that Department, the following are the conditions required of persons seeking to be nominated to one of those appointments, and the advantages held out to them. Applicants must be British subjects, and must be above 17 and under 25 years of age. Subjects of Examination. I. English writing from dictation, and English Composition. II. Arithmetic in all its branches. III. Algebra, elementary principles, simple and quadratic equations, ratios and proportions, logarithms, arithmetical and geometrical progression. IV. Geometry (1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 6th books of Euclid) and plane trigonometry. V. Freehand and plane drawing. VI. A good colloquial knowledge of either German or French. with the facility of translating from one of these languages. A preference will be given to those candidates who, in addition to the above, obtain a certain proficiency in— I. Surveying and land measuring. II. The elements of any of the following natural sciences:(1) Mechanical and natural philosophy; (2) Chemistry; (3) Botany; (4) Geology. NOTE. It is intended to select annually in future a certain number of candidates (probably four) for this service. The regulations above stated are liable to alteration in future years; but no candidate, in this year, or hereafter, will be chosen who does not come up to the requisite standard of proficiency in each subject. The candidates accepted by Her Majesty's Secretary of State for India, must then agree to undergo a regular course of training of two years and a half in the management of forests and the science of Forestry, in surveying, road making, and the natural sciences. For this purpose those can didates who possess a sufficient knowledge of German will be directed to proceed to Germany; and for those who are acquainted with the French language the course of training will be arranged in France. The salaries of the appointments in the three Presidencies range between £300 and £1,900 a year. Promotion to them will depend upon efficiency, and the occurrence of vacancies. On reaching the place to which he may be appointed, the nominee will become entitled to all the rights and privileges, in respect of pay and promotion, accorded to officers of the Forest Department by the rules and regulations for the time being, and to leave of absence and retiring pensions under the leave and pension rules of the Uncovenanted Service for the time being. No rise of pay or promotion will, however, take place previous to his passing an examination in such one of the native languages as may be prescribed by the Government under which he is serving. The scoring on all the subjects is included in the result; and, as the three optional subjects make up near one-third of the maximum, a candidate should take up at least two of these subjects in order to have fair prospects of success. SPECIMEN EXAMINATION PAPERS. SPELLING. Whether a person intends to present himself for examination or not, he should endeavour to spell correctly. The Commissioners have recourse to two modes of testing the capability of candidates in this subject: first, by Dictation; secondly, by correcting mis-spelled words or Orthographical Exercises," as they call them. In these exercises all proper names, except those with which every person is supposed to be familiar, are spelled correctly. In test examinations and in examinations for the Foreign Office, two dictations are given, and no "Orthographical Exercise." We subjoin two specimens of each DICTATION. In the suceeding six years Oliver sent to the press some things which have survived and many which have perished. He produced articles for reviews, magazines, and newspapers; children's books, which, bound in gilt paper and adorned with hideous woodcuts, appeared in the window of the once far-famed shop at the corner of St. Paul's Churchyard; a superfical and incorrect, but very readable, history of England, in a series of letters purporting to be addressed by a nobleman to his son; and some very lively and amusing sketches of London 'society in a series of letters purporting to be addressed by a Chinese traveller to his friends. All these works were anonymous, but some of them were known to be Goldsmith's, and he gradually rose in the estimation of the booksellers for whom he drudged. He was indeed emphatically a popular writer. For accurate research or grave disquisition he was not well qualified by nature or by education. He knew nothing accurately. His reading had been desultory, nor had he meditated deeply on what he had read. He had seen much of the world, but noticed and retained little more of what he had seen than some grotesque incidents and characters which had happened to strike his fancy. But though his mind was scantily stored with materials, he used what materials he had in such a way as to produce a wonderful effect. There have been many greater writers, but perhaps no writer was ever more uniformly agreeable. His style was always pure and easy, and on proper occasions pointed and energetic. His narratives were always amusing, his descriptions always picturesque, his humour rich and joyous, yet not without an occasional tinge of amiable sadness. About everything that he wrote, serious or sportive, there was a certain natural grace and decorum, hardly to be expected from a man a great part of whose life had been passed among thieves and beggars, in those squalid dens which are the reproach of great capitals. Specimen II. The man who was the originator of these calamities which afflicted his country so much was not a mere visionary or a mere swindler. He was that William Paterson, whose name is honourably associated with the auspicious commencement of a new era in English commerce and in English finance. Just at this time he fell in with Fletcher of Saltoun who happened to be in England. These eccentric men soon became intimate. Each of them had his monomania; and the two monomanias suited each other perfectly. Fletcher's whole soul was possessed of a sore, jealous, punctilious patriotism. His heart was ulcerated by the thought of the poverty, the feebleness, the political insignificance of Scotland, and of the indignation which she had suffered at the hand of her powerful and opulent neighbour; when he talked of her wrongs his dark meagre face took its sternest expression: his habitual frown grew blacker; and his eyes flashed more than their wonted fire. Paterson, on the other hand, firmly believed himself to have discovered the means of making any state which would follow his counsel great and prosperous in a time which, when compared with the life of an individual, could hardly be called long, and which, in the life of a nation, was but as a moment. There is not the least reason to believe that he was dishonest. Indeed, he would have found more difficulty in deceiving others had he not begun by deceiving himself. His faith in his own schemes was strong, even to martyrdom; and the eloquence with which he illustrated and defended them had all the charm of sincerity and of enthusiasm. Very seldom has any blunder committed by fools or any villany devised by imposters, brought on any society miseries so great as the dreams of these two friends, both of them men of integrity and both of them men of parts, were destined to bring on Scotland. ORTHOGRAPHICAL EXERCISE, Specimen I. [Time 45 Minutes.] The doctrin of a certin schoole, that the languidge of any peeple among whom cultur is of old date, is a sacrid dippossitt, the proparty of all ages, and which no one age should considdar itsself impowered to altar, is indeed, as thus exspressed, an extravvegance: but is grownded on a trewth, freequintly overlooked by that class of logicans who think more of having a cleere than of having a comprihensive meening, and who perseave that evry age is adding to the truths which it reseaved from its preedisessors, but fale to see that a counter-prossess of loosing trewths allreddy posessed, is also constently going on, and reequiring the most ceddulous atention to counteract it. Languidge is the deepossittery of the accummulated body of exspereeance to which all former ages have contributed their part, and which is the inherretence of all yet to come. We have no wright to prevent ourselves from transmitting to possterrety a larger portion of this inherratence than we may ourselves have proffated by. We can often improove grately on the conchlusions of our forfathers; but we ought to be carfull not inedvertintly to let any of their premmisses slip through our fingars. Supose, now, that the partezans of the theeory that all vertue consists in a corect calculation of our own intarists, either in this worrld or in another, |