Hastings had another associate at Westminster of whom we shall have occasion to make frequent mention, Elijah Impey.  We know little about their school days.  But, we think, we may safely venture to guess that, whenever Hastings wished to play any trick more than usually naughty, he hired Impey with a tart or a ball to act as fag in the worst part of the prank.

Warren was distinguished among his comrades as an excellent swimmer, boatman, and scholar.  At fourteen he was first in the examination for the foundation.  His name in gilded letters on the walls of the dormitory still attests his victory over many older competitors.  He stayed two years longer at the school, and was looking forward to a studentship at Christ Church, when an event happened which changed the whole course of his life.  Howard Hastings died, bequeathing his nephew to the care of a friend and distant relation, named Chiswick.  This gentleman, though he did not absolutely refuse the charge, was desirous to rid himself of it as soon as possible.  Dr. Nichols made strong remonstrances against the cruelty of interrupting the studies of a youth who seemed likely to be one of the first scholars of the age.  He even offered to bear the expense of sending his favourite pupil to Oxford.  But Mr. Chiswick was inflexible.  He thought the years which had already been wasted on hexameters and pentameters quite sufficient.  He had it in his power to obtain for the lad a writership in the service of the East India Company.  Whether the young adventurer, when once shipped off, made a fortune, or died of a liver complaint, he equally ceased to be a burden to anybody.  Warren was accordingly removed from Westminster school, and placed for a few months at a commercial academy, to study arithmetic and book-keeping.  In January 1750, a few days after he had completed his seventeenth year, he sailed for Bengal, and arrived at his destination in the October following.

He was immediately placed at a desk in the Secretary’s office at Calcutta, and laboured there during two years.  Fort William was then purely a commercial settlement.  In the south of India the encroaching policy of Dupleix had transformed the servants of the English Company, against their will, into diplomatists and Generals.  The war of the succession was raging in the Carnatic; and the tide had been suddenly turned against the French by the genius of young Robert Clive.  But in Bengal the European settlers, at peace with the natives and with each other, were wholly occupied with ledgers and bills of lading.

After two years passed in keeping accounts at Calcutta, Hastings was sent up the country to Cossimbazar, a town which lies on the Hoogley, about a mile from Moorshedabad, and which then bore to Moorshedabad a relation, if we may compare small things with great, such as the city of London bears to Westminster.  Moorshedabad was the abode of the prince who, by an authority ostensibly derived from the Mogul, but really