[Footnote 1: In the winter of the year which in spring had seen _Les Rayons et les Ombres_ come forth to kindle and refresh the hearts of readers, Victor Hugo published au ode in the same key as those _To the Column_ and _To the Arch of Triumph_, on the return and reinterment of the dead Napoleon. Full of noble feeling and sonorous eloquence, the place of this poem in any collection of its author's works is distinctly and unmistakably marked out by every quality it has and by every quality it wants. In style and in sentiment, in opinion and in rhythm, it is one with the national and political poems which had already been published by the author since the date of his _Orientales_: in other words, it is in every possible point utterly and absolutely unlike the poems long afterwards to be written by the author in exile. Its old place, therefore, in all former editions, at the end of the volume containing the poems previously published in the same year, is obviously the only right one, and rationally the only one possible. By what inexplicable and inconceivable caprice it has been promoted to a place in the so-called _édition définitive_, on the mighty roll of the _Légende des Siècles_, at the head of the fourth volume of that crowning work of modern times, I am hopelessly and helplessly at a loss to conjecture. But, at all risk of impeachment on a charge of unbecoming presumption, I must and do here enter my most earnest and strenuous protest against the claim of an edition to be in any sense final and unalterable, which rejects from among the _Châtiments_ the poem on the death of Saint-Arnaud and admits into the _Légende des Siècles_ the poem on the reinterment of Napoleon.] [Footnote 2: This poem on St-Arnaud is dated from Jersey, and must therefore have been written before the second of November 1855—a date of disgrace for Jersey, if not indeed for England. It appears in the various later editions of the _Châtiments_, but has disappeared from the so-called "édition définitive." All readers have aright to ask why--and a right to be answered when they ask.] _LA LÉGENDE DES SIÈCLES_ 1883 "Chacun a sa manière. Quant à moi, qui parle ici, j'admire tout, comme une brute.--N'espérez donc aucune critique.--Je ne chicane point ces grands bienfaiteurs-là. Ce que vous qualifiez défaut, je le qualifie accent. Je reçois et je remercie.--Ayant eu l'honneur d'être appelé "niais" par plusieurs écrivains et critiques distingués, je cherche à justifier l'épithète." The greatest work of the century is now at length complete. It is upwards of twenty-four years since the first part of it was sent home to France from Guernsey. Eighteen years later we received a second installment of the yet unexhausted treasure. And here, at the age of eighty-one, the sovereign poet of the world has placed the copings-tone on the stateliest of spiritual buildings that ever in modern times has been reared for the wonder and the worship of mankind.