‘“Mais, quand la pauvre Champagne Fut en proie aux étrangers, Lui, bravant tous les dangers, Semblait seul tenir la campagne. Un soir, tout comme aujourd’hui, J’entends frapper à la porte. J’ouvre. Bon Dieu! c’était lui, Suivi d’une faible escorte. Il s’asseoit où me voilà, S’écriant: ‘Oh! quelle guerre! Oh! quelle guerre!” —“Il s’est assis là, grand’mère! Il s’est assis là!” ‘“‘J’ai faim,’ dit-il; et bien vite Je sers piquette et pain bis; Puis il sèche ses habits, Même à dormir le feu l’invite. Au réveil, voyant mes pleurs, Il me dit: ‘Bonne espérance! Je cours, de tous ses malheurs, Sous Paris, venger la France.’ Il part; et, comme un trésor, J’ai depuis gardé son verre, Gardé son verre.” “Vous l’avez encor, grand’mère! Vous l’avez encor!” ‘“Le voici. Mais à sa perte Le héros fut entraîné. Lui, qu’un pape a couronné, Est mort dans une île déserte. Longtemps aucun ne l’a cru; On disait: ‘Il va paraître; Par mer il est accouru; L’étranger va voir son maître.’ Quand d’erreur on nous tira, Ma douleur fut bien amère! Fut bien amère!” —“Dieu vous bénira, grand’mère; Dieu vous bénira.”’ This is a great exception to the transitoriness of political poetry. Such a character as that of Napoleon displayed on so large a stage, so great a genius amid such scenery of action, insures an immortality. ‘The page of universal history’ which he was always coveting, he has attained; and it is a page which, from its singularity and its errors, its shame and its glory, will distract the attention from other pages. No one who has ever had in his mind the idea of Napoleon’s character can forget it. Nothing too can be more natural than that the French should remember it. His character possessed the primary imagination, the elementary conceiving power, in which they are deficient. So far from being restricted to the poetry of society, he would not have even appreciated it. A certain bareness marks his mind; his style is curt; the imaginative product is left rude; there is the distinct abstraction of the military diagram. The tact of light and passing talk, the detective imagination which is akin to that tact, and discovers the quick essence of social things,—he never had. In speaking of his power over popular fancies, Béranger has called him ‘the greatest poet of modern times.’ No genius can be more unlike his own, and therefore perhaps it is that he admires it so much. During the Hundred Days, Béranger says he was never under the illusion, then not rare, that the Emperor could become a constitutional monarch. The lion, he felt, would not change his skin. After the return of the Bourbons, he says, doubtless with truth, that his ‘_instinct du peuple_’ told him they could never ally themselves with liberal principles, or unite with