7. The Situation of Assistant to the Surveyors, Office of Works, &c. 8. The Appointment of Attaché in the Diplomatic Service 9. A special certificate in Public Law (Third Secretary, Diplomatic Service) 546 NOTE.-The following examination papers, set during the year 1878, have been published in a separate form, and may be obtained through any bookseller. Papers set to Candidates at : Open Competition for Assistants of Excise held in December 1877. Open Competition for the Home Civil Service (Class I.) held in April 1878. Open Competition for Assistants of Excise held in June 1878. Open Competition for Men Clerkships of the Lower Division held in September 1878. FACTORY INSPECTOR. I-SPECIMENS OF THE PAPERS SET AT EXAMINATIONS FOR DICTATION. (I.) About thirty years before this time, a Mahommedan soldier had begun to distinguish himself in the wars of Southern India. His education had been neglected; his extraction was humble. His father bad been a petty officer of revenue; his grandfather a wandering priest. But though thus meanly descended, though ignorant even of the alphabet, the adventurer had no sooner been placed at the head of a body of troops than he approved himself a man born for conquest and command. Among the crowd of chiefs who were struggling for a share of India, none could compare with him in the qualities of the captain and the statesman. He became a general; he became a sovereign. Out of the fragments of old principalities, which had gone to pieces in the general wreck, he formed for himself a great, compact, and vigorous empire. That empire he ruled with the ability, severity, and vigilance of Louis the Eleventh. Uncontrolled in his pleasures, implacable in his revenge, he had yet enlargement of mind enough to perceive how much the prosperity of subjects adds to the strength of governments. He was an oppressor; but he had at least the merit of protecting his people against all oppression except his own. He was now in extreme old age; but his intellect was as clear, and his spirit as high, as in the prime of manhood. Such was the great founder of the Mahommedan kingdom of Southern India, and the most formidable enemy with whom the English conquerors of India have ever had to contend. Had Hastings been governor of Madras, this Indian chieftain would have been either made a friend, or vigorously encountered as an enemy. Unhappily, the English authorities in the south provoked their powerful neighbour's hostility, without being prepared to repel it. FOR DICTATION. (II.) All around the castle was a seen of busy commotion; for such funeral banquets were times of general and profuse hospitality, of which not only every one who could claim the most distant connection with the deceased, but all passengers whatsoever, were invited to partake. The wealth and consequence of the deceased Saxon nobleman occasioned this custom to be observed in the fullest extent. Numerous parties, therefore, were seen ascending and descending the hill on which the castle was situated; and when the King and his attendants entered the open and unguarded gates of the external barrier, the space within presented a scene not easily reconciled with the cause of the assemblage. In one place cooks were toiling to roast huge oxen and fat sheep; in another, hogsheads of ale were broached to be drained at the freedom of all comers. Groups of every description were to be seen devouring the food and swallowing the liquor thus abandoned to their discretion. |