Then if we write not by each post, Our tears we'll send a speedier way, The King, with wonder and surprise, Bring floods of grief to Whitehall Stairs, Should foggy Opdam chance to know, The Dutch would scorn so weak a foe, And quit their fort at Goree : For what resistance can they find From men who've left their hearts behind? With a fa la, la la, la la. This is the French song of the eighteenth century. A very pretty little song, "The Pigeon," represents a young female sending a message to her lover; it begins thus: Why tarries my love, Why tarries my love, I'll write to my love, And send him a letter by thee. "God save the King," Thomson's "Rule He Britannia," and Burns's ballad "Scots wha hae wi' Wallace bled," must remain in their native language. The "Two Dogs," and the " Cottier's Saturday Night," by Burns, are particularly admired. wrote several drinking songs; some of them describe village scenes. All these pieces, though full of humour, have not the elegance of the songs of Desaugiers. But if Thibaut, Count of Champagne, surpassed all the English Thibauts of the thirteenth century, Beranger in the nineteenth leaves far behind him all the Berangers of Great Britain. Art detracts nothing from success with the multitude, when it is united with genuine talent. Beranger's songs, composed with as much care as Racine bestowed on his verses, and which are wrought, as it were by a magnifying glass, have descended to the lower classes of society: the common people have learned them by heart, as scholars learn the speech of Theramenes. As La Fontaine rises to the highest style in fable, so does Beranger in song. The popularity attached to pieces written on particular occasions, to witty pasquinades, will pass away, but superior beauties will remain. You perceive in the works of Beranger, beneath a surface of gaiety, a substratum of melancholy, which belongs to whatever is sincere and permanent in the human mind. Stanzas such as these will belong to every future France, and will be repeated in every age. Vous vieillirez, ô ma belle maitresse ; Lorsque les yeux chercheront sous vos rides On vous dira: Savait-il être aimable? Objet chéri, quand mon renom futile On leaving Dieppe, the road leading to Paris ascends rather rapidly; on the right, at the top of the hill, is seen the wall of a cemetery along this wall there is a rope-walk. One evening last summer I was sauntering upon this road: two ropemakers going backward, abreast, and balancing themselves first on one leg, then on the other, were singing together in a low tone. I listened; they were at this stanza of the "Vieux Caporal" :— Qui là-bas sanglote et regarde ? |