the most flagrant and disgraceful—is in the
habit of being signalised by decorations. This
in truth, however, is not by any means, as
has been supposed, remarkable in regard to
Béranger. It is, on the contrary, strictly
in keeping and perfectly characteristic. It
is a circumstance in its way as perfectly
characteristic as the incident embellishing
his whole life—that, namely, of his supporting
existence to the end, exclusively with the
proceeds of a trifling annuity derived from
his publisher, and his warm-hearted friend
and associate, M. Perrotin. Had he not won
a popularity beyond all decorations? He
who has been voted the Poet of France by
national acclamation? He who comes to us,
bearing in one hand the bay-wreath of a Bard
of the People, and in the other the undying
laurel-crown woven by himself, the greenest
and the brightest ever laid in votive offering
upon the imperial tomb of Napoleon? As for
himself, he had long since received the old
anacreontic coronation: crowned with the
song-writer's garland of roses—roses drooping
about his bald head voluptuously—heavy
with their aromatic perfume—the dew upon
them, wine-drops! It is exclusively upon his
transcendant merits as a song-writer that
his fame rests, as upon an indestructible
foundation. Of the absolute reality of this
truth he himself was so entirely satisfied,
that he is known to have spontaneously
committed to the flames, one by one at intervals,
his more ornate and more ambitious
contributions to literature. Conspicuous among
the works thus destroyed by his own hand,
in manuscript, were—his epic on Clovis, his
dithyrambics on the Deluge, his idyll, descriptive
of a Pilgrimage, his comedy of the
Hermaphrodites, his Memoirs of his Own Times,
and a compendious critical and biographical
Dictionary of his Contemporaries. Even
now, his ingenious labours, between eighteen
hundred and five and eighteen hundred and
six, as the compiler of the Annals of the
Museum, are forgotten by the world at large,
almost as entirely as his assiduous application
subsequently in the office of M. de Fontanes,
the Grand Master of the University,
within the jurisdiction of whose department
he occupied for twelve years the position of
sub-secretary, or rather the minor post of
commis-expéditionnaire.

Béranger, we repeat, was fully conscious,
immediately after the occasion of his earlier
successes, that the one fruitful toil of
his life was that adventured upon by him
simply in his character as a Chansonnier.
"My songs," said he, "are myself" (Mes
chansons, c'est moi). And as attestations of
his really national importance as a songwriter,
twice we find him subjected, in that
capacity, to fine and incarceration. First of
all, in eighteen hundred and twenty-one,
when he was mulcted of five hundred francs,
and imprisoned for three months in Saint
Pélagie. Secondly, in eighteen hundred and
twenty-nine, when he was in durance for as
many as nine months at La Force, having
incurred, under the same sentence, a penalty
of no less than ten thousand francs—a sum
which was at once raised (at the suggestion
of his friend, Lafitte, the banker), by national
subscription. "The happiness of mankind
has been the dream of my life," wrote
Béranger, in eighteen hundred and thirty-three.
And strangely enough, it was the destiny of
that philanthropic genius to watch from the
very commencement the momentous struggle
of France towards that day-dream, with a
view to its social and political realisation.
He who remembered, as an incident of
yesterday, following (when himself but a little
nine-year-old gamin of the Quartier des
Halles) the tumultuous mob of Parisians on
the renowned fourteenth of July, seventeen
hundred and eighty-nine, to the Storming
of the Bastille; nearly sixty years later
found himself in his old age returned by
two hundred and four thousand four hundred
and seventy-one votes to a seat in the
National Assembly, as representative of the
Seine, the eighth upon the list of Popular
Favourites, his name coming immediately
after those of the leading members of the
Provisional Government. It was only,
however, at one single sitting of that Republican
Chamber that the reserved and simple-hearted
song-writer took his place among
the chosen legislators of France: namely,
upon Thursday, the fourth of May, eighteen
hundred and forty-eight, the day upon which
the National Assembly was solemnly
inaugurated. Withdrawing into the privacy
most congenial to the noble simplicity of his
character, Béranger there survived, in
uninterrupted calm, very nearly to the patriarchal
age of an octogenarian. He, who by a memorable
accident was almost destroyed in his
childhood at Péronne by a thunderbolt,
breathed his last peacefully, on Thursday, the
fifteenth of July, eighteen hundred and
fifty-seven; expiring from the sheer
exhaustion of nature, but one month short
of his seventy-seventh anniversary. The
national honours subsequently paid to his
memory in France are, at this moment,
freshly in the general remembrance. The
ceremonial of a great public funeral upon
the morrow of his demise, was the first
tribute offered to the fame of the poor
tailor's grandson of the Rue Montorgueil by
the People and the Government. A monument,
provided by the latter, is to be raised
over the grave where his honoured remains
lie, side by side with those of his old friend
Manuel. The street where the national
song-writer expired, is henceforth to be called
(no longer the Rue de Vendôme but) the
Rue de Béranger. His portrait, moreover,
is forthwith to be placed in the gallery
at Versailles, where are already grouped
the effigies of Molière, Corneille, and Lafontaine.
But, sorrowfully again be it said,