vied with each other in making known his good deeds done in secret,
his gifts,--we will not call them alms,--for when he gave, he did not
wish that it should have the character of alms, but of a generous,
brotherly help. Numbers of his private letters have been printed; and
one of his disciples has published recollections of his conversations,
under the title of _Memoires de Beranger_. The same disciple, once a
simple artisan, a shoemaker, we believe, M. Savinien Lapointe, has
also composed _Le petit Evangile de la Jeunesse de Beranger_. M. de
Lamartine, in one of the numbers of his _Cours familier de Litterature_,
has devoted two hundred pages to an account of Beranger and a commentary
on him, and has recalled curious conversations which he had with him in
the most critical political circumstances of the Revolution of 1848. In
short, there has been a rivalry in developing and amplifying the
memory of the national songster, treating him as Socrates was once
treated,--bringing up all his apophthegms, reproducing the dialogues in
which he figured,--going even farther,--carrying him to the very borders
of legend, and evidently preparing to canonize in him one of the Saints
in the calendar of the future.

What is there solid in all this? How much is legitimate, and how much
excessive? Beranger himself seems to have wished to reduce things to
their right proportions, having left behind him ready for publication
two volumes: one being a collection of his last poems and songs; the
other an extended notice, detailing the decisive circumstances of his
poetic and political life, and entitled "My Biography."

The collection of his last songs, let us say it frankly, has not
answered expectation. In reading them, we feel that the poet has grown
old, that he is weary. He complains continually that he has no longer
any voice,--that the tree is dead,--that even the echo of the woods
answers only in prose,--that the source of song is dried up; and says,
prettily,--

"If Time still make the clock run on,
He makes it strike no longer."

And unhappily he is right. We find here and there pretty designs, short
felicitous passages, smiling bits of nature; but obscurity, stiffness of
expression, and the dragging in of Fancy by the hair continually mar the
reading and take away all its charm. Even the pieces most highly lauded
in advance, and which celebrate some of the most inspiring moments in
the life of Napoleon,--such as his Bapti