magnificently celebrated, while, but a few months
before, the coffin of another poet, M. Alfred de Musset, had been
followed by a mere handful of mourners; yet M. de Musset was capable of
tones and flights which in inspiration and ardor surpassed the habitual
range of Beranger. Without attempting here to institute a comparison,
there is one thing essential to be remarked: in Beranger there was not
only a poet, but a man, and the man in him was more considerable than
the poet,--the reverse of what is the case with so many others. People
went to see him, after having heard his songs sung, to tell him how much
they had been applauded and enjoyed,--and, after the first compliments,
found that the poet was a man of sense, a good talker on all subjects,
interested in politics, a wonderful reasoner, with great knowledge
of men, and characterizing them delicately with a few fine and happy
touches. They became sincerely attached to him; they came again, and
delighted to draw out in talk that wisdom armed with epigram, that
experience full of agreeable counsels. His passions had been the talent
of the poet; his good sense gave authority to the man. Even by those
least willing to accept popular idols, Beranger will always be ranked as
one of the subtilest wits of the French school, and as something more
than this,--as one of the acutest servants of free human thought.

A TIFFIN OF PARAGRAPHS.

How runs the Hindoo saw? "Are we not to milk when there is a cow?" When
India is giving down generous streams of paragraphy to all the greedy
buckets of the press, shall we not hold our pretty pail under? As our
genial young friend, Ensign Isnob, of the "Sappies and Minors," would
say,--"I believe you, me boy!"

Then come with us to Cossitollah, and we'll have a tiffin of talk; some
cloves of adventure, with a capsicum or two of tragic story, shall stand
for the curry; the customs of the country may represent the familiar
rice; a whiff of freshness and fragrance from the Mofussil will be as
the mangoes and the dorians; in the piquancy and grotesqueness of the
first pure Orientalism that may come to hand we shall recognize the
curious chow-chow of the chutney; and as for the beer,--why, we will be
the beer ourselves.

"Kitmudgar, remove that scorpion from the punka, before it drops into
the Sahib's plate.--Hold, miscreant! who told you to kill it?

"'Take it up tenderly,
Lift it with care,--
Fashioned so slenderly,
You