and they held him in esteem for his worst, for the reason that they understood his worst and could not appreciate his best. The two songs which they most highly appreciated, and which for that reason occupy the place of honour, and stand in the forefront of his first volume, were "Les Boeufs" "The Oxen"-and "Le chant des Ouvriers," or the "Song of the Workmen," which were held to be worthy of Beranger himself, though falling far below the not very high level of that author. In the first, a coarse rustic, a cultivator of his own small patrimony, sings not of his "three acres and a cow," but of his possibly ten acres, and his two great white oxen, "deux grands boeufs blancs, marqués de roux," which he loves beyond everything else in the world, for the satisfactory reason that their labour produces in a single week more than the sum which they originally cost him to purchase in the market. So precious are they to him, that every stanza in which their virtues are enumerated ends with a triumphant chorus, in which their proud proprietor asserts that, rather than sell them, he would hang himself; and that although he dearly loves his wife Jeanne, he would rather see her die, than lose his darling cattle. S'il me fallait les vendre, J'aime Jeanne ma femme: eh bien j'aimerais mieux In a note to this much admired song, which better-educated critics than the multitude had found reason to condemn, the author explained that in this chorus he merely gave expression to the rustic feeling, of which he was "but the painter and the translator." The "Chant des Ouvriers" is of a higher order, but attributes far more amiable and ennobling sentiments to the working classes of Paris, Lyons, and other great cities, than they exhibited in 1848 and 1870, when the Commune was temporary master of the destinies of France. Read by the lurid light of these subsequent events, the benevolent chorus of Pierre Dupont's song reads far more like a mockery than a prophecy : Aimons nous! et quand nous pouvons Nous unis pour boire à la ronde Que le canor se taise ou gronde Buvons A L'independance du monde ! Pierre Dupont aspired to be the minstrel of the rustic population of France, rather than that of the cockneys or badauds of Paris, as Beranger had been. He endeavoured to paint the manners and express the thoughts and feelings of the honest, frugal, hard-working, sordid, narrow-minded, pious and uncultivated peasantry. And he succeeded better than he thought, or than his contemporaries knew or acknowledged, except a few choice spirits among his Bohemian comrades of the press. He was an ultra-democrat in politics, of opinions far more radical than his more polished predecessor, Beranger. But less fortunate than Beranger, he found but a small audience. Times, manners, and political circumstances had changed since the three first decades of the century. During those decades the press and the tribune, though nominally, were only partially free, and the opinions that could not find legitimate vent, or publicity, under the restraining hand of a quasi-constitutional despotism, or breathe comfortably under the strait-waistcoat of an oppressive legality, took refuge in songs and epigrams that the law, however greedy of victims and intolerant of freely expressed opinion, was powerless to touch without burning its fingers, or suffering humiliation in the encounter. Pierre Dupont flourished in a time of greater freedom, when the song and the epigram, though still influential, ceased to confer the popularity of bygone days upon the unprinted wit and satire that floated in the cabarets and the cafés chantants of the metropolis. And his printed effusions, though many of them were excellent specimens of the popular muse, were too good for the bas peuple, and not good enough for the cultivated classes, as those of Beranger had been and still continued to be. So Pierre Dupont's renown was but of short duration, and had no effect while it lasted upon the lyric supremacy of Beranger. Beranger himself is now all but forgotten by the French people, who have discovered a new literary idol in Victor Hugo, to remain on the pedestal of popular favour until some new fetish shall displace him, and consign him to the place which he bids fair to occupy as long as French literature shall be cultivated or remembered, side by side with the greatest authors that have ever adorned it. Pierre Dupont will take a place in the literary history of his native country, and rank with the Clement Marots and the Desaugiers who preceded him in the same walk; a star of song, but not of the first magnitude or brilliancy. 87 CHAPTER V. EARL RUSSELL.-VIENNA IN 1855. IN the early spring of 1855, on of 1855, on my way to Constantinople, which, by an involuntary change in my plans, I was never destined to reach, I stayed for a pleasant month in the gay and sparkling city of Vienna. During that time I renewed my acquaintance with Lord John Russell which I had made some years previously, as I have already recorded, at the breakfast-table of Samuel Rogers. His Lordship had been deputed by the British Government to attend the diplomatic congress to be held in that city, to consider the many questions arising out of the Crimean war; and though not a trained diplomatist, was a statesman of the highest rank. I visited Vienna on business connected with the Illustrated London News, and, before leaving London, had written to Vienna to engage an apartment at the Hotel Münsch. I found on arrival that every |