Even the best of Beranger's songs lack any thing like lift and aspiration. They are conceived in a comparatively low tone. The noblest leaven in them is love of France and of liberty. Beranger hated the Bourbons; they persecuted him, but that only helped him sing them off the throne of France. Beranger's songs did more than any other one individual influence, perhaps they did more than all other individual influences combined, first to overturn the restored Bourbon dynasty after Waterloo, and, second, to bring about the elevation of Louis Napoleon to power. For Beranger was a passionate admirer of the great Napoleon. True, he deprecated the exhaustions visited on France by the wars of glory which Napoleon waged. But that famous piece of his, "The King of Yvetot," in which this deprecation found voice, was a protest so lightly conceived and at bottom so genial, that the jealousy of Napoleon himself could afford to laugh at it. The pieces in which, on the contrary, he celebrated the praises of the emperor were written with an emotion contagiously vivid. Let us now have before us "The King of Yvetot," with an appropriate contrast to it afterward supplied in one of these encomiastic pieces. "Yvetot" is the name of an ancient French town, situated in a seignory the lord of which once enjoyed the nominal rank of king. The effect of Beranger's title to his song is of course humorous. The song-writer's purpose was to draw, in the king whom he describes, a whimsical contrast to the restless Napoleon. Thackeray furnishes us with a happily sympathetic rendering of Beranger's "King of Yvetot," as follows; for brevity's sake we omit one stanza: There was a king of Yvetot, Of whom renown hath little said, Who let all thoughts of glory go, And dawdled half his days a-bed; And every night, as night came round, By Jenny with a night-cap crowned, Slept very sound. Sing, ho, ho, ho! and he, he, he! That's the kind of king for me. And every day it came to pass That four lusty meals made he, And step by step, upon an ass, Rode abroad his realms to see; And wherever he did stir, What think you was his escort, sir? Why, an old cur. Sing, ho, ho, ho! and he, he, he! That's the kind of king for me. If e'er he went into excess, 'Twas from a somewhat lively thirst, But he who would his subjects bless, Odd's fish!--must wet his whistle first, And so from every cask they got, Our king did to himself allot At least a pot. Sing, ho, ho, ho! and he, he, he! That's the kind of king for me. To all the ladies of the land A courteous king, and kind, was he; The reason why you'll understand, They named him _Pater Patriae._ Each year he called his fighting-men, And marched a league from home, and then, Marched back again. Sing, ho, ho, ho! and he, he, he! That's the kind of king for me. * * * * *