and whither we go; words we have repeated for years have a meaning for the first time; texts of old Scripture seem to apply to us.... And-and-Mr. Thackeray would say, You come back into the town, and order dinner at a restaurant, and read Béranger once more. And though this is true-though the author of "Le Dieu des Bonnes Gens" has certainly no claim to be called a profound divine-though we do not find in him any proper expression, scarcely any momentary recognition, of those intuitions which explain in a measure the scheme and idea of things, and form the back thought and inner structure of such minds as ours,his sense and sympathy with the people enable him, perhaps compel him, to delineate those essential conditions which constitute the structure of exterior life, and determine with inevitable certainty the common life of common persons. He has no call to deal with heaven or the universe, but he knows the earth; he is restricted to the boundaries of time, but he understands time. He has extended his delineations beyond what in this country would be considered correct; "Les Cinq Étages" can scarcely be quoted here; but a perhaps higher example of the same kind of art may be so: "Le Vieux Vagabond. "Dans ce fossé cessons de vivre ; Je finis vieux, infirme et las; J'en vois qui détournent la tête ; Vieux vagabond, je puis mourir sans vous. "Oui, je meurs ici de vieillesse, Parce qu'on ne meurt pas de faim. J'espérais voir de ma détresse L'hôpital adoucir la fin ; Mais tout est plein dans chaque hospice, Tant le peuple est infortuné. La rue, hélas! fut ma nourrice : Vieux vagabond, mourons où je suis né. "Aux artisans, dans mon jeune âge, : Travaille,' Riches, qui me disiez "J'aurais pu voler, moi, pauvre homme ; Qui mûrit au bord du chemin. "Le pauvre a-t-il une patrie? Que me font vos vins et vos blés, Dans vos murs ouverts à ses armes "Comme un insecte fait pour nuire, Je vous aurais chéris en frère : Vieux vagabond, je meurs votre ennemi." Pathos in such a song as this enters into poetry. We sympathise with the essential lot of man. Poems of this kind are doubtless rare in Béranger. His commoner style is lighter and more cheerful; but no poet who has painted so well the light effervescence of light society can, when he likes, paint so well the solid, stubborn forms with which it is encompassed. The genial, firm sense of a large mind sees and comprehends all of human life which lies within the sphere of sense. He is an epicurean, as all merely sensible * men by inevitable consequence are; and as an epicurean, he prefers to deal with the superficial and gay forms of life; but he can deal with others when he chooses to be serious. Indeed, there is no melancholy like the melancholy of the epicurean. He is alive to the fixed conditions of earth, but not to that which is above earth. He muses on the temporary, as such; he admits the skeleton, but not the soul. It is wonderful that Béranger is so cheerful as he is. We may conclude as we began. In all his works, in lyrics of levity, of politics, of worldly reflection,-Béranger, if he had not a single object, has attained a uniform result. He has given us an idea of the essential French character, such as we fancy it must be, but can never for ourselves hope to see that it is. We understand the nice tact, the quick intelligence, the gay precision; the essence of the drama we know-the spirit of what we have seen. We know his feeling : He has acted accordingly: he has delineated to us the essential Frenchman. 1 "Le Bon Français." THE WAVERLEY NOVELS.1 (1858.) IT is not commonly on the generation which was contemporary with the production of great works of art that they exercise their most magical influence. Nor is it on the distant people whom we call posterity. Contemporaries bring to new books formed minds and stiffened creeds; posterity, if it regard them at all, looks at them as old subjects, worn-out topics, and hears a disputation on their merits with languid impartiality, like aged judges in a court of appeal. Even standard authors exercise but slender influence on the susceptible minds of a rising generation; they are become "papa's books"; the walls of the library are adorned with their regular volumes; but no hand touches them. Their fame is itself half an obstacle to their popularity; a delicate fancy shrinks from employing so great a celebrity as the companion of an idle hour. The generation which is really most influenced by a work of genius is commonly that which is still young when the first controversy respecting its merits arises; with the eagerness of youth they read and re 1 Library Edition. Illustrated by upwards of Two Hundred Engravings on Steel, after Drawings by Turner, Landseer, Wilkie, Stanfield, Roberts, etc., including Portraits of the Historical Personages described in the Novels. 25 vols. demy 8vo. Abbotsford Edition. With One Hundred and Twenty Engravings on Steel, and nearly Two Thousand on Wood. 2 vols. super-royal 8vo. Author's favourite Edition. 48 vols. post 8vo. Cabinet Edition. 25 vols. foolscap 8vo. Railway Edition. 25 portable volumes, large type. People's Edition. 5 large volumes royal 8vo. read; their vanity is not unwilling to adjudicate: in the process their imagination is formed; the creations of the author range themselves in the memory; they become part of the substance of the very mind. The works of Sir Walter Scott can hardly be said to have gone through this exact process. Their immediate popularity was unbounded. No one—a few most captious critics apart-ever questioned their peculiar power. Still they are subject to a transition, which is in principle the same. At the time of their publication mature contemporaries read them with delight. Superficial the reading of grown men in some sort must be; it is only once in a lifetime that we can know the passionate reading of youth; men soon lose its eager learning power. But from peculiarities in their structure, which we shall try to indicate, the novels of Scott suffered less than almost any book of equal excellence from this inevitable superficiality of perusal. Their plain, and, so to say, cheerful merits suit the occupied man of genial middle life. Their appreciation was to an unusual degree coincident with their popularity. The next generation, hearing the praises of their fathers in their earliest reading time, seized with avidity on the volumes; and there is much in very many of them which is admirably fitted for the delight of boyhood. A third generation has now risen into at least the commencement of literary life, which is quite removed from the unbounded enthusiasm with which the Scotch novels were originally received, and does not always share the still more eager partiality of those who, in the opening of their minds, first received the tradition of their excellence. New books have arisen to compete with these; new interests distract us from them. The time, therefore, is not perhaps unfavourable for a slight criticism of these celebrated fictions; and their continual republication without any criticism for many years, seems almost to demand it. There are two kinds of fiction which, though in common literature they may run very much into one another, are yet in reality distinguishable and separate. One of these, which we may call the ubiquitous, aims at describing the whole of human life in all its spheres, in all its aspects, with all its |