as they enjoyed wit, humour, and conviviality in their hours of leisure, were, above all things, serious and in earnest in the great business of life. And Burns himself was no frivolous youth, but one who from his earliest years had to look at the dark side of life, and to fight a grim fight not only with adversity, but with his own passions. Béranger, on the contrary, had no passions; he was one of a people who, however terrible they had shown themselves in the spasms of their great Revolution, were at heart gay, careless, and volatile, who had no depth of religious conviction, and who, for the most part, as far as the male sex was concerned, were of no religion at all, unless it were the religion of the ancient Greeks. Béranger took the world easily. He allowed no grief to ruffle the even course of his life's current. He loved himself; he loved his ease; he loved calm enjoyment and the dolce far niente. He admired, and fancied he loved, some nameless and unknown beauty, whom he called Lisette, and wrote some of his most graceful poems in her praise—and dispraise; but he had not sufficient love for any of her sex to marry, though he never tired of singing the praises of many real, and perhaps of a greater number of imaginary, beauties. Burns possessed a rich and powerful imagination, but Nature bestowed upon Béranger nothing but a graceful fancy and a delicate ear for the melody and the harmony of verse; and of these admirable gifts he made the most, though it cannot be said that much originality accompanied his use of them. His love-songs might have been written upon the charms of Lais, Phryne, or Aspasia, in the palmy days of Athens, with as much propriety, and with scarcely a change in phraseology, as upon the Lisettes and Suzons of Paris. In like manner his Bacchanalian lyrics betray no trace of the many centuries that have rolled over the world since the days of Anacreon, and would have been as appropriate in the mouth of that ancient poet as in the pages of a modern Sybarite who flourished between 1780 and 1855. Whatever he may have been in his private life, Béranger in his songs was a pagan, and might call Horace and Catullus his poetical brothers, the equal of either, and as little indebted as they were to Christianity for influence on his thought. The songs in which he celebrates the beauties and the frailties of the young Parisian women of the demi-monde who charmed his fancy are choice specimens of the verse, miscalled poetry, that pleases the readers of the Journal pour rire or the Charivari, and the cocottes, gommeux, and petits crevés, who form the clientèle of those publications; but no literature but that of France would tolerate them. The erotic verses of the juvenile Thomas Moore, when he signed himself Thomas Little,' were angelic purity compared with some of the most popular songs of Béranger, in which he did not always attempt to conceal the grossness of his thoughts by the elegance of his language. The law of France, that punished Béranger for disaffection to the ruling powers, had no punishment to inflict for such hideous outrages on common decency as he committed in

La Bacchante, Madame Grégoire, La Bonne Fille, L'Education des Demoiselles, and Ma Grand'mere. It is difficult to say which of these is most offensive to a pure mind; but if the palm of demerit is to be accorded it must certainly be given to the Grandmother, an odious old woman who confides to her granddaughters the story of her youthful amours-how she had deceived her husband before marriage and been false to him afterwards-how much she regretted that she had lost time and opportunity for intrigue in the freshness of her charms, and that she had not been fortunate enough to secure thrice the number of lovers that she had enjoyed and cheated-and, when her granddaughters ask if they should imitate her abominable example, ends the doggerel by a shameless libel:

'Comme vous, maman, faut-il faire ?'

'Et, mes petits enfants, pourquoi, Quand j'ai fait comme ma grand'mère,

Ne feriez-vous comme moi?'

English literature happily offers no parallel to such indecency as this, and the filthiest effusions of Allan Ramsay, written a century previous, were clean and respectable in comparison.

Béranger never sang of marriage, except to ridicule it, and to gloat over the frailties of false wives and the misfortunes of deluded husbands. The only 'love' which he ever celebrated was undeserving of the name-the shameless, marketable lust of the demi-monde and the bagnio. Among the lower Parisians all these songs were highly popular; though it is to be doubted whether the quiet, honest, decent people of the provinces, with whom the family relations are sacred, did not look upon them with the loathing they deserved. In his philosophical songs Béranger took a higher range. There are few finer things in French literature than Les Etoiles qui filent, Treize à Table, Le Grenier, La Sainte Alliance des Peuples, Les Adieux de Marie Stuart, La Vieillesse, Les Petits Coups, L'Habit de Cour, Ma Vocation, Mon Habit, Mon Ame, La Bonne Vieille, and, notwithstanding an illiberal and uncharitable mention of England which ought not to have found a place in it, Le Dieu des Bonnes Gens. But even in this comparatively elevated composition, in which he humbly confides in the mercy and lovingkindness of the great Creator of the universe, the pagan rather than the Christian idea takes possession of his mind, and breaks out into the Anacreontic chorus

Le verre en main, gaiement je me confie

Au Dieu des bonnes gens

as if he could not acknowledge God's goodness without a glass in his hand!

But it is not upon these or his amorous or drinking songs that the fame of Béranger principally rests, nor is it by means of these that he endeared himself to the French people, and made

himself a power in the State. He knew how to touch the strong chord in the people's heart (perhaps it might be called the weakness in the people's brain), the love of conquest and of military glory; and he played upon that string till France responded, and hung entranced upon the melodies that he drew from it-melodies sometimes soft and tender, sometimes bold and defiant, sometimes sublime. And when the representative and the agent of that conquest and glory' fell upon evil days-when the throne of the mighty Napoleon was levelled in the dust-when he consumed his fiery heart with disappointment and vexation on the lonely rock of St. Helena— and when the great nations of Europe leagued themselves together to impose upon conquered France the wretched Bourbons, who had forfeited their illustrious inheritance by their treachery, their cowardice, and their incapacity-all the pride, all the anger, and all the resentment of France settled upon the tongue or the pen of the song-writer. His heart and that of all France beat in unison, and he spoke, as no song-writer ever spoke before or since, with an authority that wielded at will the fierce democracy, and made his utterances the utterances of a nation. No longer idly masquerading as a modern Horace, he became a man of his own time, thought with it, spoke with it, identified himself with it in all its hopes and fears, regrets and exultations. His fondest thoughts clung around the deeds and misfortunes of the great Napoleon. Whether he wept for the Bonapartes or denounced the Bourbons, he found his truest inspiration in his grief or scorn, and became an immeasurably greater poet than he was when he tinkled his lyre, the laureate of the flâneurs and grisettes and all the vicious idlers of the capital. Such songs as Le Vieux Sergent, Les Souvenirs du Peuple, Le Cinq Mai, Le Vieux Drapeau, Les Enfans de la France, and the terrible Esclaves Gaulois, placed him in the very front rank of literature, and atoned for all the poor vanities and inanities of his earlier flights. These belonged to the Parisians only; his patriotic and political songs belonged to all France, and all France honoured him for them.

Burns and Béranger were both great and popular, and both exercised great influence over the minds of their countrymen. Burns found the lyrical literature of Scotland corrupt and licentious, and left it pure. Béranger found the lyrical literature of France both impure and frivolous, and left it impurer and more frivolous still. Both sang of love; but the love that found favour with Burns was natural, genuine, and fresh from the heart; that celebrated by Béranger was meretricious and theatrical, and dependent wholly upon a prurient fancy. It was impossible for Scotland to produce a Béranger; it was equally impossible for France to produce a Burns. Both were patriots, and drew inspiration from the remembrance of the past glories of their country. Burns kept up in the minds of his country

men an intense love of Scotland without hate of any other land; while Béranger, though he inculcated a love of France, inculcated still more strongly a love of military glory, only to be achieved by warfare with other nations. Both were philosophers, but the philosophy of Burns was imbued with a deeply religious and Christian spirit, while that of Béranger was a mild Epicureanism, based upon no higher principle than that of the duty of present enjoyment expressed by the phrase Dum vivimus vivamus,' or 'Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.'

More than three-quarters of a century have elapsed since the death of Burns, and his fame, small at that time and scarcely reaching to England, has gradually increased until it has made the circuit of the globe. Every year, on the 25th of January, the anniversary of his birth is celebrated as if he were the patron saint of Scotland. In every quarter of the earth, in the British Isles, in the United States, in Canada, in South Africa, in India, in Australia, in New Zealand, wherever half a dozen Scotsmen can be gathered together to repeat the song of Auld Lang Syne, and to assert with honest pride the truth which they have proved in their lives that a man's a man for a' that,' a festival is held in his honour, and patriotism shines with redoubled fervour at the mention of his name. It may be said of his renown, as Daniel Webster, the great American orator, said of the power of Great Britain, that it follows the sun in its course, and, keeping pace with the hours, circles the earth with one unbroken strain' of wholesome, invigorating, and patriotic song.

And while scarcely a quarter of a century has elapsed since the death and public funeral of Béranger, his fame, which then overshadowed the land, has been gradually diminishing. In our day it is almost wholly confined to France and to a small section of his countrymen. He has, in fact, been elbowed out of popular favour by Madame Thérèse and the vulgar lyrics of La Fille de Madame Angot and the Grande-Duchesse. Even his patriotic songs, if not quite forgotten, have ceased to be heard. They have had their day and served their purpose, and have become almost as obsolete as those of Clément Marot and Ponsard. The French seem to have room in their hearts but for one truly national song; that song is the Marseillaise, and nothing that Béranger ever wrote approaches it in popularity. Its poetry and music are in perfect accord; and it reigns supreme in the heart of the French people—the more's the pity! because it glorifies aggressive war, which is out of date, and takes no account of the progress of humanity.

CHARLES MACKAY.

1

THE PROPER USE OF THE CITY

CHURCHES.

Ir is reported that to the accomplished and intended destruction of City churches will shortly be added the demolition of Sion College, one of the most interesting buildings in the heart of London.

The City has too few ancient monuments that we should part with one of them without regret, and too few open spaces to give up even so small a one as the quadrangle of Sion College without at least a protest against the ground being covered by warehouses for buttons. and tape. If, indeed, the clergy of Sion College need a larger room in which to meet, it would seem far better that they should occasionally take a public hall for their purpose away from the rest of their building.

The value of such a quiet nook, of so peaceful a library, of the time-worn building, seems far to outweigh any mere utilitarian arguments which may be brought forward on the other side. The interest that attaches to such a spot may perhaps be sentimental, but it is surely much when sentiment can cling round a space in the busy City, which certainly does not suffer from an excess of that quality. It is to be feared that if Sion College goes, so will also go its neighbour, the precious relic of old London Wall, which stands opposite its gateway; and two more links which connect London with its past will be swept away for ever beyond recovery.

No amount of money, even for a deserving charity, no extended room for the irritating volumes of modern theological controversy, no amount of space in which parsons of different schools should exercise their lungs, can weigh for one moment in my mind against the arguments for retaining the building where and as it now is. But the reckless spirit of destruction which sweeps away every old monument because its use is not at the moment apparent, is unlikely to stay its hand at the gateway of Sion College. It, too, will probably have to disappear, as well as many of the churches, the incumbents of which have been ex officio fellows of the College.

Attached to almost every church in the City has been its small churchyard, and with the demolition of the church there comes, only too often, the block of buildings over not only its site, but its neighbouring consecrated enclosure, so that another of the rare, if small, open spaces is lost to the City.