of Agen; and a letter from M.
Lamartine, framed, above the chimney-piece, avowed the writer's belief
that the Troubadour of the Garonne was the Homer of the modern world.
M. Jasmin wears the ribbon of the Legion of Honour, and has several
valuable presents which were made to him by the late ex-king and
different members of the Orleans family.

"I have been somewhat minute in giving an account of my interview with
M. Jasmin, because he is really the popular poet--the peasant poet of
the South of France--the Burns of Limousin, Provence, and Languedoc. His
songs are in the mouths of all who sing in the fields and by the cottage
firesides. Their subjects are always rural, naive, and full of rustic
pathos and rustic drollery. To use his words to me, he sings what the
hearts of the people say, and he can no more help it than can the birds
in the trees. Translations into French of his main poems have appeared;
and compositions more full of natural and thoroughly unsophisticated
pathos and humour it would be difficult to find.

"Jasmin writes from a teeming brain and a beaming heart; and there is a
warmth and a glow, and a strong, happy, triumphant march of song about
his poems, which carry you away in the perusal as they carried away the
author in the writing. I speak, of course, from the French translations,
and I can well conceive that they give but a comparatively faint
transcript of the pith and power of the original. The patois in which
these poems are written is the common peasant language of the South-west
of France. It varies in some slight degree in different districts, but
not more than the broad Scotch of Forfarshire differs from that of
Ayrshire. As for the dialect itself, it seems in the main to be a
species of cross between old French and Spanish--holding, however, I am
assured, rather to the latter tongue than to the former, and
constituting a bold, copious, and vigorous speech, very rich in its
colouring, full of quaint words and expressive phrases, and especially
strong in all that relates to the language of the passions and
affections.

"I hardly know how long my interview with Jasmin might have lasted, for
he seemed by no means likely to tire of talking, and his talk was too
good and too curious not to be listened to with interest; but the
sister {or wife} who had left us for a moment, coming back with the
intelligence that there was quite a gathering of customers in the shop,
I hastily took my leave, the