s a protecting love for the wayward, gifted
child of art, the poet whose ingratitude she bore with, whose nerves
she soothed, and whom she cared for and nursed in illness. Kindly time
throws a softening veil over the acutest differences, and the clash of
temperaments, even where they remain inexplicable. But the answer to
Alfred de Musset's reproaches must be looked for not in one book, but
in the whole tenor of her life. Does this show that her maternal
attitude was a "pose." It is often said that women are born wives or
born mothers. George Sand was undeniably a born _mother_. Mrs.
Oliphant resembled her in this respect. They both show the deep
passion of maternity in books and autobiographies and letters. Both
were devoted to their children, there was no company they cared for in
comparison, and they spared neither trouble or time in their
interests. But George Sand cared much, not only for her children but
for the peasants--for the poor and oppressed. Yes, and for the poets,
the painters--the singers and the musicians, with their temperaments
of genius, their loves, jealousies, and their shattered nerves. For
upwards of six years she treated Chopin with a mother's care; she had
the passion of maternity in her towards them all, with whatever
feelings it may have been complicated in her life of manifold
experiences and with her artist temperament. She may have leant
heavily on it at times, it may have served as a weapon of defence when
she was attacked, and used thus it may well have suggested a "pose."
But however used, whatever the purpose--that the maternal instinct was
strong in her there is no denying. To explain definitely her social
and personal moral standards requires a biography that has not yet
been written. Socially she had a hatred of feudalism, of religious and
military despotism. She sympathised with and helped the aspirations
towards a wider, a more humane view of a social system, and fraternal
equality and social liberty were to her holy doctrines. Perhaps fully
to understand George Sand from within may require the genius of a
French mind and one of her own generation; for the French of the
present day neither study her, or appear to care much for her books.
Her letters should aid in giving a discriminating record of her
intense and intricate life as viewed from within, and the ideas on
which that life was lived. What then were the leading principles, and
what was the force in George Sand, which while