courses, shaded by double rows of magnificent
poplars, almost equalling in size those time-
honoured trees which line the banks of the
sluggish canals of Belgium and the Low Countries
The rocky and volcanic nature of the soil
of Mendoza has forced the inhabitants to adopt
a mode of agriculture widely differing from that
pursued in the other provinces of the republic;
they have been forced to dig canals for the
artificial irrigation of the whole of their pasturages;
and, the natural grasses being very poor,
lucerne is very extensively planted throughout
the province, the different fields being divided
by stone fences to prevent the encroachments
of cattle. All these fences were thrown down
by the earthquake, and the autumn crops
entirely destroyed by straying cattle.

The city is now in process of rebuilding;
inhabitants already pour into it from other parts,
and though earthquakes become of common
occurrence, they will in future be no more
destructive than they are in the wood-built
cities of Chili and Peru.

      SELECT COMMITTEE ON FRENCH
                         SONGS.
     TWO SITTINGS. SITTING THE FIRST.

A PAMPHLET, entitled Bulletin du Comité de la
Langue, de l'Histoire, et des Arts de la France,
contains some curious and suggestive matter. It
was printed (not published) in 1853, and contains
some curious instructions addressed to the
(possible) correspondents of the Ministry of Public
Instruction. They are requested to forward
information on— 1stly, the popular poetry of
France;  2ndly, on philology; 3rdly, history;
and 4thly, on archaeology. The instructions as
to the first, and the grounds on which they
are based, are given with the greatest fulness, and
present the most interest.

These instructions were drawn up by M. Ampère
who is well known to many English, not
merely as a most distinguished member of the
Institut, but as a tried and courteous friend,
ready to help all literary persons with the
resources of his great and varied knowledge, and
also as one of those learned and distinguished
scholars who have fallen under a political ban.
In this case it is probably in consequence of this
ban that M. Ampère has been prevented from
accomplishing a scheme which he had much at heart,
the collection of the popular and traditional
poetry of France, before the generation had
passed away who had learnt much traditional
knowledge in their youth, which had never been
displaced by their comparatively little reading.

M. Ampère begins by paying a compliment,
which is, in fact, no more than rendering justice,
to M. Fauriel, who collected the popular songs
of modern Greece; but he traces back the first
appreciation of popular poetry to Montaigne, a
date anterior to the time of Sir Philip Sydney,
whose great admiration of Chevy Chase is
reported by Addison in the Spectator.

Molière, a century later, says, through the
mouth of one of his characters, that he would
sooner have written the following fragment of a
ballad than all the poetry known in his day. To
be sure, when one remembers the inflated and
unnatural style of prose and poetry in vogue at
the Hôtel Rambouillet, this speech of Alceste's
is no great compliment:

Si le roi m'avait donné               [If the king would give me
Paris sa grand' ville,               his great city of Paris, and
Et qu'il me fallût quitter           that I must renounce the
L'amour de m'amie,                love of my dearie, I would
Je dirais au roi Henri              say to King Henry,  Take
Reprenez votre Paris,            back your Paris, I love better
J'aime mieux m'amie au          my dearie by the ford, I love
      gué,                                  better my dearie.]
J'aime mieux m'amie.

The supposed composer of this song is Anthony
of Navarre, Duc de Vendôme, who led
a joyous life at his manor of Gué-de-Lin, in the
reign of Henry the Second. The early appreciation
of popular poetry thus indicated led the
writer of the Instructions to define what is
really popular poetry. This appellation is to be
earned by success, not given to intention; but
the limits assigned to the poetry claimed by
France are wider than her present geographical
boundary. For instance, what has been handed
down by emigrants in Canada, what is recited by
the Savoyard in his bastard language (in 1853
Savoy was not French territory), is to be
included in the desired collection; nor are the
dialects derived from Latin, from German in the
eastern districts of France, Flemish in the north,
Low Breton in Brittany, Italian in Corsica,
Catalonian and Basque for Roussillon and the
Pyrenees— all fragments or songs in any of these
places, in all these dialects, provided they have
found a place in the heart of the people— to be
omitted.

In Canada, and the vast deserts and wide
forests which stretch out towards the Oregon,
it is probable that many French songs linger in
the memory of the half-bred descendants of the
old French settlers. M. de Tocqueville mentions
that he heard a French Indian singing a
patriotic air to words of which he caught only
the beginning:

               Entre Paris et Saint Denis
                      Il était une fille.

Not long ago an intelligent American gentleman
expressed a wish that the fragments of
political ballads and rhymes dating from the time
of Charles the First and extending downwards
to 1745 (that are still extant in the States, but,
as he believed, unknown and forgotten in England),
might be collected before they faded away,
and were lost for ever, as the grounds for their
significance were forgotten; and, doubtless, the
Creole songs current in the colonies which the
French still hold have something of the same
relation to the history and traditions of the
mother country.

The children in the Basque country are taught
to count in a kind of rhyme, which probably
dates from the days when the arrière-garde of
Charlemagne's army was discomfited by the
Gascons in the valley of Roncesvalles, in the
Pyrenees:

Un cri s'est élevé au milieu des montagnes
       d'Escualdunacs.

             *             *             *             *