Camille Saint-Saëns (born 1835), an admirably solid force in French musical life on the whole, has in his songs added nothing of importance to the literature of his time. It is regrettable that he could not here have shown his acquaintance with the great German masters as he did in chamber and orchestral music. Ten songs or so will suggest the character of his work. We find, in addition to the ‘cold melodic line’ of which we have spoken, a growing use of dissonance in the later songs, for emotional or ‘psychological’ effect. If this tendency had been in any way original to Saint-Saëns and his fellows, or if it had been developed in a distinctive fashion, it would have constituted a real claim to fame, for this is precisely the most marked characteristic of the fine modern French song literature. As it is, in such a song as _Tristesse_ we must regard the use of dissonance as a ‘looking forward’ to modern times, but in scarcely more than an accidental way. Undoubtedly Saint-Saëns used his dissonance deliberately and not accidentally, but the entrance of this feature into French song as a whole was scarcely more than accidental. _Suzette et Suzon_ is an example of what the French are likely to do very well--the imitation of the antique. This song has a marked charm and there are many more like it in the literature of the time. _Le Sommeil des Fleurs_ may stand as an example of the French emphasis on melody (at the time) and the effect which they could derive from it. In _La Cloche_ we see an effort after color and picture painting, though it is but weak and conventional. _Le Pas d’armes du Roi Jeanito_, to Hugo’s words, is a ballad of some spirit and attempted color. All these songs are filled with banalities and carelessness of writing. Much more carefully and creatively written is _Clair de Lune_, which tries an interesting experiment with accents. The accents of the voice part all seem to be misplaced, since they do not coincide with those of the accompaniment. In reality both parts receive equal emphasis in the accents, or rather there are no accents at all. The composer’s way of writing the song merely emphasises one more interesting point in French song which, more than any other, determined the character of its music throughout the century--namely, the liquid quality of its verse. We may also mention among Saint-Saëns’ songs the Barcarolle, the _Désir de l’Orient_, an effective concert piece, and _Au Cimetière_, which is one of the most popular.