De Banville was for long almost alone among poets in his freedom from _Weltschmerz_, from regret and desire for worlds lost or impossible. In the later and stupider corruption of the Empire, sadness and anger began to vex even his careless muse. She had piped in her time to much wild dancing, but could not sing to a waltz of mushroom speculators and decorated capitalists. "Le Sang de la Coupe" contains a very powerful poem, "The Curse of Venus," pronounced on Paris, the city of pleasure, which has become the city of greed. This verse is appropriate to our own commercial enterprise: "Vends les bois ou dormaient Viviane et Merlin! L'Aigle de mont n'est fait que pour ta gibeciere; La neige vierge est la pour fournir ta glaciere; Le torrent qui bondit sur le roc sybillin, Et vole, diamant, neige, ecume et poussiere, N'est plus bon qu'a tourner tes meules de moulin!" In the burning indignation of this poem, M. De Banville reaches his highest mark of attainment. "Les Exiles" is scarcely less impressive. The outcast gods of Hellas, wandering in a forest of ancient Gaul, remind one at once of the fallen deities of Heine, the decrepit Olympians of Bruno, and the large utterance of Keats's "Hyperion." Among great exiles, Victor Hugo, "le pere la-bas dans l'ile," is not forgotten: "Et toi qui l'accueillis, sol libre et verdoyant, Qui prodigues les fleurs sur tes coteaux fertiles, Et qui sembles sourire a l'ocean bruyant, Sois benie, ile verte, entre toutes les iles." The hoarsest note of M. De Banville's lyre is that discordant one struck in the "Idylles Prussiennes." One would not linger over poetry or prose composed during the siege, in hours of shame and impotent scorn. The poet sings how the sword, the flashing Durendal, is rusted and broken, how victory is to him-- " . . . qui se cela Dans un trou, sous la terre noire." He can spare a tender lyric to the memory of a Prussian officer, a lad of eighteen, shot dead through a volume of Pindar which he carried in his tunic. It is impossible to leave the poet of gaiety and good-humour in the mood of the prisoner in besieged Paris. His "Trente Six Ballades Joyeuses" make a far more pleasant subject for a last word. There is scarcely a more delightful little volume in the French language than this collection of verses in the most difficult of forms, which pour forth, with absolute ease and fluency, notes of mirth, banter, joy in the spring, in letters, art, and good-fellowship. "L'oiselet retourne aux forets; Je suis un poete lyrique,"-- he cries, with a note like a bird's song. Among the thirty-six every one will have his favourites. We venture to translate the "Ballad de Banville": "AUX ENFANTS PERDUS