ellow of him, and to dress him in the most becoming
costumes possible.

The individual in tight boots and a rolling collar, with the copious
golden locks, and the solemn blue eyes, who had just gazed on Spiridion,
and inspired him with such a feeling of tender awe, is a much more
important personage than the reader might suppose at first sight. This
beautiful, mysterious, dandy ghost, whose costume, with a true woman's
coquetry, Madame Dudevant has so rejoiced to describe--is her religious
type, a mystical representation of Faith struggling up towards Truth,
through superstition, doubt, fear, reason,--in tight inexpressibles,
with "a belt such as is worn by the old German students." You will
pardon me for treating such an awful person as this somewhat lightly;
but there is always, I think, such a dash of the ridiculous in the
French sublime, that the critic should try and do justice to both, or
he may fail in giving a fair account of either. This character of
Hebronius, the type of Mrs. Sand's convictions--if convictions they
may be called--or, at least, the allegory under which her doubts are
represented, is, in parts, very finely drawn; contains many passages of
truth, very deep and touching, by the side of others so entirely absurd
and unreasonable, that the reader's feelings are continually swaying
between admiration and something very like contempt--always in a kind of
wonder at the strange mixture before him. But let us hear Madame Sand:--

"Peter Hebronius," says our author, "was not originally so named. His
real name was Samuel. He was a Jew, and born in a little village in the
neighborhood of Innsprueck. His family, which possessed a considerable
fortune, left him, in his early youth, completely free to his own
pursuits. From infancy he had shown that these were serious. He loved to
be alone and passed his days, and sometimes his nights, wandering among
the mountains and valleys in the neighborhood of his birthplace. He
would often sit by the brink of torrents, listening to the voice of
their waters, and endeavoring to penetrate the meaning which Nature had
hidden in those sounds. As he advanced in years, his inquiries became
more curious and more grave. It was necessary that he should receive
a solid education, and his parents sent him to study in the German
universities. Luther had been dead only a century, and his words and his
memory still lived in the enthusiasm of his disciples. The new faith was
stren