Of Lord Fitzmaurice I know nothing, but from his bust and letters:  the first bespeaks him a handsome youth, the latter an ingenious one.  He is not sixteen, and already he writes better than his father.  He is under the care of a Mr. Jervis, a dissenting minister, who has had charge of him since he was six years old.  He has never been at any public school of education.  He has now for a considerable time been traveling about the kingdom, that he may know something of his own country before he goes to others, and be out of the way of adulation.

I am interrupted—­adieu! le reste a l’ordinaire prochain.

FRAGMENT OF A LETTER TO LORD LANSDOWNE (1790)

It was using me very ill, that it was, to get upon stilts as you did, and resolve not to be angry with me, after all the pains I had taken to make you so.  You have been angry, let me tell you, with people as little worth it before now; and your being so niggardly of it in my instance, may be added to the account of your injustice.  I see you go upon the old Christian principle of heaping coals of fire upon people’s heads, which is the highest refinement upon vengeance.  I see, moreover, that according to your system of cosmogony, the difference is but accidental between the race of kings and that of the first Baron of Lixmore:  that ex-lawyers come like other men from Adam, and ex-ministers from somebody who started up out of the ground before him, in some more elevated part of the country.

To lower these pretensions, it would be serving you right, if I were to tell you that I was not half so angry as I appeared to be; that, therefore, according to the countryman’s rule, you have not so much the advantage over me as you may think you have:  that the real object of what anger I really felt was rather the situation in which I found myself than you or anybody; but that, as none but a madman would go to quarrel with a nonentity called a situation, it was necessary for me to look out for somebody who, somehow or other, was connected with it.

JEAN-PIERRE DE BERANGER

(1780-1857)

BY ALCEE FORTIER

Beranger, like Hugo, has commemorated the date of his birth, but their verses are very different.  Hugo’s poem is lofty in style, beginning—­

     “Ce siecle avait deux ans!  Rome remplacait Sparte,
     Deja Napoleon percait sous Bonaparte,
     Et du premier consul deja, par maint endroit,
     Le front de l’empereur brisait le masque etroit.”

     (This century was two years old; Rome displaced Sparta,
     Napoleon already was visible in Bonaparte,
     And the narrow mask of the First Consul, in many places,
     Was already pierced by the forehead of the Emperor.)

Beranger’s verses have less force, but are charming in their simplicity:—­