very agreeable nor a very poetical sentiment. Moreover, when the love of liberty is to be imaginatively expressed, it requires to an Englishman’s ear a sound bigger and more trumpet-tongued than the voice of Béranger. On a deeper view, however, an attentive student will discover a great deal that is most instructive in the political career of the not very business-like poet. His life has been contemporaneous with the course of a great change; and throughout it the view which he has taken of the current events is that which sensible men took at the time, and which a sensible posterity (and these events will from their size attract attention enough to insure their being viewed sensibly) is likely to take. Béranger was present at the taking of the Bastille, but he was then only nine years old; the accuracy of opinion which we are claiming for him did not commence so early. His mature judgment begins with the career of Napoleon; and no one of the thousands who have written on that subject has viewed it perhaps more justly. He had no love for the despotism of the Empire, was alive to the harshness of its administration, did not care too much for its glory, must have felt more than once the social exhaustion. At the same time, no man was penetrated more profoundly, no literary man half so profoundly, with the popular admiration for the genius of the Empire. His own verse has given the truest and most lasting expression of it: ‘_Les Souvenirs du Peuple._ ‘On parlera de sa gloire Sous le chaume bien longtemps. L’humble toit, dans cinquante ans, Ne connaîtra plus d’autre histoire. Là viendront les villageois, Dire alors à quelque vieille: “Par des récits d’autrefois, Mère, abrégez notre veille. Bien, dit-on, qu’il nous ait nui, Le peuple encor le révère, Oui, le révère. Parlez-nous de lui, grand’mère; Parlez-nous de lui.” (_bis._) ‘“Mes enfants, dans ce village, Suivi de rois, il passa. Voilà bien longtemps de ça: Je venais d’entrer en ménage. A pied grimpant le coteau Où pour voir je m’étais mise, Il avait petit chapeau Avec redingote grise. Près de lui je me troublai; Il me dit: ‘Bonjour, ma chère, Bonjour, ma chère.’” —“Il vous a parlé, grand’mère! Il vous a parlé!” ‘“L’an d’après, moi, pauvre femme, A Paris étant un jour, Je le vis avec sa cour: Il se rendait à Notre-Dame. Tous les cœurs étaient contents; On admirait son cortége. Chacun disait: ‘Quel beau temps! Le ciel toujours le protége.’ Son sourire était bien doux, D’un fils Dieu le rendait père, Le rendait père.” —“Quel beau jour pour vous, grand’mère! Quel beau jour pour vous!”