V. The Law of Unity. Every statement in the paragraph should be subservient to the principal affirmation contained in the topic sentence. This law forbids digressions and irrelevant matter. VI. The Law of Proportion. A due proportion should be maintained between the principal and subordinate statements. Everything should have space and prominence according to its importance. Other devices for giving prominence may be used—

(a) The employment of numerals.

(b) Difference in type.

(c) Matter of lesser importance may be relegated to footnotes.

CHIEF KINDS OF PARAGRAPH,

1. The Propositional Paragraph, in which the subject is expressed in the form of a definite assertion, and then developed by proof, illustration, or repetition. This is the common type, and it is constructed on the most regular plan; it is a united whole in itself.

2. The Amplifying Paragraph, or one that particularizes or amplifies some statement previously made. The distinctive feature of this kind of paragraph is that the subject is not definitely expressed, but has to be gathered from the general bearing of the whole. 3. The Preliminary Paragraph, or one that gives the general theme of a chapter, or essay; or lays out the plan of succeeding paragraphs.

4. The Transitional Paragraph, or one that is introduced between the principal divisions of a chapter, to mark the end of one line of thought and the beginning of another.

KINDS OF COMPOSITION.

1. DESCRIPTIVE.-The delineation of the characteristics of any object. It should follow the succession of aspects as they appear to the spectator surveying the whole.

2. NARRATIVE, or a series of events or a succession of views. The scene should not be shifted oftener, or to a greater extent, than is necessary, and the introduction or disappearance of an important agent should be fully accounted for. The narrative should follow the order of events, and the details of events should be relieved and assisted by summaries.

This process is called abridging, abstracting, or précis writing.

3. EXPOSITORY.-The mode of handling applicable to knowledge, or to information pertaining to the Sciences. The methods of ex

pounding a general principle or proposition are—

(a) By Iteration, or repeating the statements in different words. This is a means of impressing it.

(b) By Obverse Iteration, or the denial of the contrary.

(c) By Examples or Particular instances.

(d) By Illustration as distinguished from Example.

(e) By Proof of the Principle.

(1) Inductive, or proof from facts.

(2) Deductive, or the application of a more general law to a proof.

(ƒ) Inferences, deductions, corollaries, consequences, may

be drawn from principle to aid the exposition.

4. PERSUASION or ORATORY is the influencing of men's minds, conduct and beliefs, by spoken or written address.

5. POETRY is composition written to produce pleasure by means of elevated or impassioned thought or feeling, conveyed in a special artistic form. It differs from prose

(1) In possessing a greater variety of figurative expressions. (2) In an unusual diction; the following are the chief peculiarities of the language of poetry :—

(a) It is archaic, and non-colloquial.

(b) It prefers images to the mere enumeration of facts. (c) It avoids general terms.

(d) It uses epithets instead of the names of things. (e) It is opposed to lengthiness, and is euphonious. (3) The chief varieties are Epic, Lyric, Dramatic, Didactic and Satiric.

WARREN HASTINGS.*

CHAPTER I.

HASTINGS' ANCESTRY AND SCHOOL LIFE.

We are inclined to think that we shall best meet the wishes of our readers if, instead of minutely examining this book, we attempt to give, in a way necessarily hasty and imperfect, our own view of the life and character of Mr. Hastings. Our feeling towards him is not exactly that of the House of Commons which impeached him in 1787; neither is it that of the House of Commons which uncovered and stood up to receive him in 1813. He had great qualities, and he rendered great services to the State. But to represent him as a man of stainless virtue is to make him ridiculous; and from regard for his memory, if from no other feeling, his friends would have done well to lend no countenance to such adulation. We believe that, if he were now living, he would have sufficient judgment and sufficient greatness of mind to wish to be shown as he was. He must have known that there were dark spots on his fame. He might also have felt with pride that the splendour of his fame would bear many spots. He would have wished posterity to have a likeness of him, though an unfavourable likeness, rather than a daub at once insipid and unnatural, resembling neither him nor anybody else. "Paint me as I am," said Oliver Cromwell while sitting to young Lely. out the scars and wrinkles I will not pay you a shilling." a trifle the great protector shewed both his good-sense and his magnanimity. He did not wish all that was charactertistic in his countenance to be lost, in the vain attempt to give him the regular features and smooth blooming cheeks of the curl-pated minions of James the First. He was content that his face should go forth marked with all the blemishes which had been put on it by time, by war, by sleepless nights, by anxiety, perhaps by remorse; but with valour, policy, authority, and public care written in all its princely lines. If men truly great knew their own interest, it is thus that they would wish their minds to be portrayed.

"If you leave

Even in such

* Memoirs of the Life of Warren Hastings, first Governor-General of Bengal. Com piled from Original Papers, by the Rev. G. R. Gleig, M.A., 3 vols., 8vo. London: 1841.

Warren Hastings sprang from an ancient and illustrious race. It has been affirmed that his pedigree can be traced back to the great Danish sea-king, whose sails were long the terror of both coasts of the British Channel, and who, after many fierce and doubtful struggles, yielded at last to the valour and genius of Alfred. But the undoubted splendour

of the line of Hastings needs no illustration from fable. One branch of that line wore, in the fourteenth century, the coronet of Pembroke. From another branch sprang the renowned Chamberlain, the faithful adherent of the White Rose, whose fate has furnished so striking a theme both to poets and to historians. His family received from the Tudors the earldom of Huntingdon, which after long dispossession, was regained in our time by a series of events scarcely paralleled in romance. The lords of the manor of Daylesford, in Worcestershire, claimed to be considered as the heads of this distinguished family. The main stock, indeed, prospered less than some of the younger shoots. But the Daylesford family, though not ennobled, was wealthy and highly considered, till about two hundred years ago it was overwhelmed by the great ruin of the civil war. The Hastings of that time was a zealous cavalier. He raised money on his lands, sent his plate to the mint at Oxford, joined the royal army, and after spending half his property in the cause of King Charles, was glad to ransom himself by making over most of the remaining half to Speaker Lenthal. The old seat at Daylesford still remained in the family; but it could no longer be kept up, and in the following generation it was sold to a merchant of London.

Before this transfer took place, the last Hastings of Daylesford had presented his secord son to the rectory of the parish in which the ancient residence of the family stood. The living was of little value; and the situation of the poor clergyman, after the sale of the estate, was deplorable. He was constantly engaged in lawsuits about his tithes with the new lord of the manor, and was at length utterly ruined. His eldest son, Howard, a well-conducted young man, obtained a place in the Customs. The second son Pynaston, an idle, worthless boy, married before he was sixteen, lost his wife in two years, and died in the West Indies, leaving to the care of his unfortunate father a little orphan, destined to strange and memorable vicissitudes of fortune.

Warren, the son of Pynaston, was born on the sixth of December, 1732. His mother died a few days later, and he was left dependent on his distressed grandfather. The child was early sent to the village school, where he learned his letters on the same bench with the sons of the peasantry; nor did anything in his garb or fare indicate that his life was to take a widely different course from that of the young rustics