another boy of thirteen, who required the services of a commissionaire to escort him from one platform to another in the same station.

"Is it," as Hecuba plaintively inquired, "that their parents were of different mould, or the manner of their bringing up?"

Or is so-called originality, like imaginative power, really innate? If so, for Boy, both the one and the other, duly sustained by sympathetic outside influence, are invaluable gifts left to run riot, originality may lead to what Percival Keene's schoolmaster called a "blow up," and the same imaginative power, by virtue of which one boy becomes a firstclass verse-writer, may make of another a second Munchausen.

Last of all, Cornelius, it is your bounden duty to see that Boy is neither a habitual loaf

er nor a peripatetic nuisance to his neighbours, but that he goes to school forearmed with some ideas of sensibly occupying his spare time. Let him be a reader, if you will, but if not a reader, then a draughtsman, a net-maker, a modeller, or even a collector. It is commonly reported that in that eminently practical country Germany even princelings are brought up to follow some trade, but it is a rare thing in our upper and middle classes to find a boy who can even drive in a nail properly.

If you have no pity on your fellow creature the schoolmaster, have some, at least, upon that being who is reputed to provide work for idle hands and idle minds, and impress upon Boy in his early days that time unemployed is a snare, a delusion, and a dangerous deceit.

THERE is often a dramatic irony in the coincidences of time, which it might baffle the most ingenious comedian to achieve. Yet the habit of celebrating centenaries has seldom associated in a single month two personages more diverse in character than George Sand and Nathaniel Hawthorne. The verbose and ebullient Frenchwoman was the plain antithesis of the frigid and reserved New Englander, and, did we not remember that in the early years of the nineteenth century France and America were very far apart, it would be difficult to believe that the two were contemporary. But, while the one submitted with a whole heart to the influence of the moment, the other, firmly resisting all impulse save that of his own conscience, kept his solitary way, and for the lover of contrast it is not an unfortunate accident which compels him to consider them at the same time.

George Sand was the frank and free daughter of the Romantic Movement. Though she bowed the knee of allegiance to Jean-Jacques, though she willingly wore the golden fetters of Byronism, as Byronism was understood in France, she eagerly shook off all the restraints which controlled the life and literature of the classic age. Her earliest passion was revolt against sex, against usage, against tradition. She must needs wear the trousers, because the petticoat was the

ordained garb of woman. She must smoke an enormous and obtrusive pipe, because a dainty cigarette would not sufficiently advertise her emancipation. It was not for nothing that she carried in her veins the blood of the illustrious Maréchal de Saxe, for the combat was ever a joy to her, and she went into the battle of the wits, chanting as shrill a war-song as any of them. Her early books were, one and all, trumpet-calls, and in them she led the attack upon all the honoured institutions of France. Marriage, the Church, the law, societyshe tilted at them all with an astounding energy, and with a recklessness which proved how little she understood either their qualities or defects. The prevailing passion for the picturesque urged her to turn bandits into philosophers, and to detect an excellence in whatever was strange or rebellious to custom; and, since it was part of the movement that artists should be preachers, she delivered an ardent sermon as easily as she sketched a romantic landscape. She was a moralist always, although in her youth she confused the familiar terms, and there is truth as well as wit in Baudelaire's denunciation. "La femme Sand," said he, "est le Prudhomme de l'immoralité."

But she had one gift that is essential to the prophet of romanticism,-a ceaseless and unending facility. She wrote as easily and as naturally as simple women darn stockings.

From the moment when a difference with her husband drove her to work for bread, the impulse never waned. For forty years she composed novels, stories, and articles without number, the most of which are long since forgotten. Though her critics disagree in many points, they are unanimous in this-that she was a mistress of the famous style coulant. Baudelaire in contempt calls her bavarde; Jules Lemaitre in an apostrophe, not untouched with irony, exclaims: "Votre parole coule et

s'épanche comme une fontaine publique"; and Flaubert echoes the same thought in a tone of majestic friendship: "Je ne peux mieux vous comparer qu'à un grand fleuve d'Amérique. Enormité et douceur." Thus, while Flaubert tortured himself to find a word, George Sand sat down and saw a novel invent itself. What wonder, then, that the proud De Musset sadly contrasted his method his method with hers! "I work all day," he complained, "and by the evening I have written ten lines, and drunk a bottle of eau de vie; and she, she has drunk two quarts of milk, and written half a volume."

In the end, of course, the difficult method triumphs. Books that are so easily made seldom stand the test of time; and George Sand's romances have another fatal defect besides facility. Not merely did they grow as by a happy accident, they are packed with declamation, which long since lost its excuse. Nothing wears so faint and faded an air as an old sermon, whose lot is too

often that of a worn-out shoe. New ills require new remedies ; the moral surrenders of to-day cannot be stayed by the old exhortations; and George Sand's rhetoric long since lost its meaning. She stood with invincible courage for the impossible ambitions, the fantastic beliefs, the absurd, magnificent sympathies of her period; but her period is not ours, and we can profess little more than an archæological interest in her speculations. And the strange thing is that, when once she deserted her serious imaginings for the plain countryside, which she knew so well, she composed masterpieces whose immortality is assured. None will ever again be interested in the false sentiment of 'Mauprat,' in the shallow argument of 'Spiridion'; but so long as the French language is read, so long will 'La Mare au Diable' win admirers, so long will the character of Germain hold the interest of the world. The truth is, that when George Sand wrote of what she understood, she instantly affected a gracious parsimony of word and thought. The quiet life of labourers, the simple trials of simple folk, are a poor excuse for philosophic harangues; and in recording sincerely what was sincere to herself, George Sand attained that general truth, which too often escaped her. In other words, this fervent romantic did her best work when she strayed for a moment within the fold of the classics, and forgot a while the preacher in the artist.

Nevertheless, life was always more important to her than

literature. Her temperament was far stronger than her talent. The fierce ardour of her mind could be satisfied with nothing less than fierce experience, and it may be that her encounter with Alfred de Musset was the exploit to which she looked back with the greatest, if the most poignant, pride. It is, therefore, not inapposite that her centenary should be marked by the publication of the famous and long - deferred correspondence.1 Of the indiscretion of these letters it is too late to speak. Though they are now published "for the first time," their substance has been familiar for many years. Not one single point in the game has been unnoted and undiscussed. Not even the loves of Shelley, long since the gossip of the market-place, have been revealed with a like extravagance of candour. Of course it is quite clear that the confessions of Alfred de Musset and George Sand should never have been made; it is equally clear that it is now impossible to close one's eyes to the most romantic episode in the history of romanticism. No sooner was the curtain rung down upon the comedy (or tragedy) of Venice, than the two chief actors took the world into their confidence. George Sand, thinking that the friends of Alfred de Musset had reproached her unworthily, told the story at length in

'Elle et Lui,' having already divulged some incidents in the pages of a review. and his friends to reply.

De Musset were forced The literary world of France was ranged on this side or that. A phalanx of Sandistes was opposed by a compact band of Mussetistes, and the war has waged for seventy years. We know not which is the more remarkable, the frank recklessness, which undid the principals, or the patient interest, which world has professed in a loveaffair, not even remotely concerning it. But, as we have said, George Sand always preferred to live a romance than to write one, and having lived it she could not stay her pen; while as for De Musset, he could not conquer his emotions until he had given them a literary expression. So they babbled on either side, until at last they masqueraded in a pantomime - ballet as "les amoureux de Venise!"

And now, to do pompous honour to George Sand, the authentic correspondence sees the light. It is published in accordance with her wish, and as she herself arranged it. Whether the champions of the other side will issue a counterblast we know not, but there seems no reason why this work should not be regarded as a final pronouncement. And, despite its monstrous indiscretion, despite the insolent pride, which takes it for

VOL. CLXXVI.-NO. MLXVI.

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