n at any public school
of education. He has now for a considerable time been traveling about
the kingdom, that he may know something of his own country before he
goes to others, and be out of the way of adulation.

I am interrupted--adieu! _le reste a l'ordinaire prochain_.

FRAGMENT OF A LETTER TO LORD LANSDOWNE (1790)

It was using me very ill, that it was, to get upon stilts as you did,
and resolve not to be angry with me, after all the pains I had taken to
make you so. You have been angry, let me tell you, with people as little
worth it before now; and your being so niggardly of it in my instance,
may be added to the account of your injustice. I see you go upon the old
Christian principle of heaping coals of fire upon people's heads, which
is the highest refinement upon vengeance. I see, moreover, that
according to your system of cosmogony, the difference is but accidental
between the race of kings and that of the first Baron of Lixmore: that
ex-lawyers come like other men from Adam, and ex-ministers from somebody
who started up out of the ground before him, in some more elevated part
of the country.

To lower these pretensions, it would be serving you right, if I were to
tell you that I was not half so angry as I appeared to be; that,
therefore, according to the countryman's rule, you have not so much the
advantage over me as you may think you have: that the real object of
what anger I really felt was rather the situation in which I found
myself than you or anybody; but that, as none but a madman would go to
quarrel with a nonentity called a situation, it was necessary for me to
look out for somebody who, somehow or other, was connected with it.

JEAN-PIERRE DE BERANGER

(1780-1857)

BY ALCEE FORTIER

Beranger, like Hugo, has commemorated the date of his birth, but their
verses are very different. Hugo's poem is lofty in style, beginning--

"Ce siecle avait deux ans! Rome remplacait Sparte,
Deja Napoleon percait sous Bonaparte,
Et du premier consul deja, par maint endroit,
Le front de l'empereur brisait le masque etroit."

(This century was two years old; Rome displaced Sparta,
Napoleon already was visible in Bonaparte,
And the narrow mask of the First Consul, in many places,
Was already pierced by the forehead of the Emperor.)

Beranger's verses have less force, but are charming in their
simplicity:--

"Dans ce Paris plein d'or et de misere,