philosopher--order,
soberness, and regularity of life; for we are apt to distrust the
intellect that we fancy can be swayed by circumstance or passion; and we
know how circumstance and passion WILL sway the intellect: how mortified
vanity will form excuses for itself; and how temper turns angrily upon
conscience, that reproves it. How often have we called our judge our
enemy, because he has given sentence against us!--How often have we
called the right wrong, because the right condemns us! And in the lives
of many of the bitter foes of the Christian doctrine, can we find no
personal reason for their hostility? The men in Athens said it was out
of regard for religion that they murdered Socrates; but we have had
time, since then, to reconsider the verdict; and Socrates' character is
pretty pure now, in spite of the sentence and the jury of those days.

The Parisian philosophers will attempt to explain to you the changes
through which Madame Sand's mind has passed,--the initiatory trials,
labors, and sufferings which she has had to go through,--before she
reached her present happy state of mental illumination. She teaches
her wisdom in parables, that are, mostly, a couple of volumes long; and
began, first, by an eloquent attack on marriage, in the charming novel
of "Indiana." "Pity," cried she, "for the poor woman who, united to a
being whose brute force makes him her superior, should venture to break
the bondage which is imposed on her, and allow her heart to be free."

In support of this claim of pity, she writes two volumes of the most
exquisite prose. What a tender, suffering creature is Indiana; how
little her husband appreciates that gentleness which he is crushing by
his tyranny and brutal scorn; how natural it is that, in the absence
of his sympathy, she, poor clinging confiding creature, should seek
elsewhere for shelter; how cautious should we be, to call criminal--to
visit with too heavy a censure--an act which is one of the natural
impulses of a tender heart, that seeks but for a worthy object of love.
But why attempt to tell the tale of beautiful Indiana? Madame Sand has
written it so well, that not the hardest-hearted husband in Christendom
can fail to be touched by her sorrows, though he may refuse to listen
to her argument. Let us grant, for argument's sake, that the laws of
marriage, especially the French laws of marriage, press very cruelly
upon unfortunate women.

But if one wants to have a question o