The " Felibres " of Paris, who are associated together
to celebrate the glory of Provence, to revive its language (at least as a language of literature), and to keep fresh the fame of the Provençal poets, Florian, Aubanel, and the rest, celebrated their annual fete at Sceaux last Sunday, when M. Renan, who, though a Breton, and chiefly interested in keeping fresh with similar fidelity tha language and literature of Brittany, was asked to address them, and so to associate the local traditions of Brittany with the local traditions of Provence. M. Renan, in his address, declared that they had filled him with joy by asking him to associate himself with their fete. After meditating much on the Infinite which surrounds us, he was convinced that nothing is clearer than that we shall never know much about it; still, we know this, that the moments given to joy ought to count amongst those in which man corre- sponds most closely to the views of the Eternal. That was Florian's impression, as well as the impression of his "great master, Voltaire" (who, however, has certainly not left on literature the impnession of a joyous life), and this was the reason. why this festivity filled M. Renan's heart with delight. Nothing ministers more to joy than a happy infancy. Hence the language in which the child first lisps his lessons, and the dialect in which the boy hears sung the local ballads of his own part of the country, is closely identified with his store of happy memories. The Breton loves Brittany, where he has been poor, just because he was poor there. The Norman loves Normandy just because it is so rich in all natural gifts ; the Alsatian loves his Alsace because it suffers ; and the Provençal loves the sunny country, antique in its genius yet always youthful in the generosity of its ideas, rich in all kinds of glory, because Provence has always known how to give the grandest thoughts of the Fatherland a sonorous expression recognised by all the world. He ended by assuring his audience that, as he was at a time of life when he ought to be thinking of tilling his imagination with thoughts suitable for eternal meditation, he hoped to include the celebration of the anni- versary of the Paris " Felibres " of 1891 amongst the images ,on which be would meditate throughout eternity,—a curious extravagance which, of course, we must accept as a sly en- deavom on the part of M. Renan to compete with and outstrip religious enthusiasm by the frivolous enthusiasm of the fete.
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