ideas, sentiments, and circumstances that properly belong to it. These facts, ideas, sentiments, and circumstances are the different things, or ingredients, which go to make up your composition.

The pupil, or the class, should be induced to find the Subject of a given composition for themselves by means of question and answer. The composition must be stripped of its accessories, and the bare statement of the problem to be solved, the situation to be worked out, must be discovered and put into the briefest formula. In other words, the pupil may imagine himself to be giving instructions to the author; such instructions to be sufficiently full to enable the author, in following them out, to arrive at the composition in question, yet allowing him a necessary margin for his own choice of detail.

THE CAT AND THE COCK.

Æsop's Fables. Sir Roger L'Estrange. (1616-1704.)

Sirrah

It was the hard fortune once of a Cock, to fall into the
clutches of a Cat. Puss had a month's mind to be upon
the bones of him, but was not willing to pick a quarrel,
however, without some plausible colour for 't.
(says she) what do you keep such a bawling and screaming
a' nights for, that nobody can sleep near you. Alas, says
the Cock, I never wake anybody, but when 'tis time for
people to rise and go about their business. Come, come,
says Puss, without any more ado, 'tis time for me to go to
breakfast, and cats don't live upon dialogues; at which
word she gave him a pinch, and so made an end, both of
the Cock, and of the story.

EXAMPLE 1

SUBJECT

TREATMENT

EXAMPLE 2

EXAMPLE 1 REDUCED TO ITS SUBJECT.

THE CAT AND THE COCK.

A Cat, having seized a Cock, seeks, and finds, an excuse to devour him.

The Treatment consists in the invention of the little dialogue, which is artfully contrived to exhibit the unscrupulous character of the cat; whence the fabulist draws his moral.

LOCHIN VAR.

Sir Walter Scott. (1771-1832.)

O, young Lochinvar is come out of the west,
Through all the wide Border his steed was the best;.
And save his good broadsword he weapons had none,

He rode all unarmed, and he rode all alone.
So faithful in love and so dauntless in war,
There never was knight like the young Lochinvar.

He staid not for brake, and he stopped not for stone,
He swam the Eske river where ford there was none;
But ere he alighted at Netherby gate,

The bride had consented, the gallant came late;
For a laggard in love, and a dastard in war,
Was to wed the fair Ellen of brave Lochinvar.

So boldly he entered the Netherby Hall,

Among bride's-men, and kinsmen, and brothers, and all :
Then spoke the bride's father, his hand on his sword,
For the poor craven bridegroom said never a word,)
'O come ye in peace here, or come ye in war,
Or to dance at our bridal, young Lord Lochinvar ?'

'I long wooed your daughter, my suit you denied ;
Love swells like the Solway, but ebbs like its tide;
And now I am come with this lost love of mine
To lead but one measure, drink one cup of wine.
There are maidens in Scotland more lovely by far
That would gladly be bride to the young Lochinvar.'

The bride kissed the goblet: the knight took it up,
He quaffed off the wine, and he threw down the cup.
She looked down to blush, and she looked up to sigh,
With a smile on her lips and a tear in her eye.
He took her soft hand, ere her mother could bar,
'Now tread we a measure!' said young Lochinvar.

So stately his form, and so lovely her face,
That never a hall such a galliard did grace;

While her mother did fret, and her father did fume,
And the bridegroom stood dangling his bonnet and plume;
And the bride-maidens whispered, ""Twere better by far,
To have matched our fair cousin with young Lochinvar.'

One touch to her hand and one word in her ear, When they reached the hall-door, and the charger stood near;

So light to the croupe the fair lady he swung,

So light to the saddle before her he sprung!

'She is won! we are gone, over bank, bush, and scaur ; They'll have fleet steeds that follow,' quoth young Loehinvar.

There was mounting 'mong Græmes of the Netherby clan;
Forsters, Fenwicks, and Musgraves, they rode and they ran:
There was racing and chasing on Cannobie Lee,

But the lost bride of Netherby ne'er did they see.
So daring in love and so dauntless in war,

Have ye e'er heard of gallant like young Lochinvar ?

SUBJECT

TREATMENT

EXAMPLE 2 REDUCED TO ITS SUBJECT.

LOCHINVAR.

Lochinvar, a gallant young gentleman, having fallen in love with the fair daughter of another clan than his own, is denied his suit by her father, who arranges a marriage for her. But, in the nick of time, Lochinvar finds a way to win the lady.

The subject is Treated in verse instead of prose; setting, as it were, the action of the piece to music. In his treatment, the author arms his hero with broadsword, mounts him on a swift horse, and starts him riding at speed across country. The scene of Lochinvar's exploit is laid in the lawless Border country; he enters the hall of the bride's house on the very day of the wedding, when the house is crowded with kinsfolk. The lady is willing and courageous; the gentleman whom she was about to marry is a futile person who resigns himself to see her carried off before his eyes; and the composition ends, as it began, in a wild race 'overthwart and endlong' (to use the old romancers' phrase), that is won by Lochinvar.

There are twenty different ways of treating the subject. This particular way was that which seemed to Sir Walter Scott the best. It would be hard to find a better.

SOLDIER AND SAILOR.

Thomas Campbell. (1777-1844.)

I LOVE contemplating, apart
From all his homicidal glory,
The traits that soften to our heart
Napoleon's story!

'Twas when his banners at Boulogne
Armed in our island every freeman,
His navy chanced to capture one
Poor British seaman.

They suffered him, I know not how,
Unprisoned on the shore to roam;
And aye was bent his longing brow
On England's home.

His eye, methinks, pursued the flight
Of birds to Britain half-way over
With envy; they could reach the white
Dear cliffs of Dover.

A stormy midnight watch, he thought,
Than this sojourn would have been dearer,
If but the storm his vessel brought

To England nearer.

At last, when care had banished sleep,

He saw one morning-dreaming-doating,

An empty hogshead from the deep

Come shoreward floating;

He hid it in a cave, and wrought
The live-long day laborious; lurking

Until he launched a tiny boat

By mighty working.

EXAMPLE 3