he most
delightful. Some people will, no doubt, regret the possibility of the
disappearance of the old name, and as Venus not as Victory will still
worship the stately goddess, but there are others who will be glad to see
in her the image and ideal of that spiritual enthusiasm to which Athens
owed her liberty, and by which alone can liberty be won.

_On the Track of Ulysses_; _together with an Excursion in Quest of the
So-called Venus of Melos_. By W. J. Stillman. (Houghton, Mifflin and
Co., Boston.)

M. CARO ON GEORGE SAND
(_Pall Mall Gazette_, April 14, 1888.)

The biography of a very great man from the pen of a very ladylike
writer--this is the best description we can give of M. Caro's Life of
George Sand. The late Professor of the Sorbonne could chatter charmingly
about culture, and had all the fascinating insincerity of an accomplished
phrase-maker; being an extremely superior person he had a great contempt
for Democracy and its doings, but he was always popular with the
Duchesses of the Faubourg, as there was nothing in history or in
literature that he could not explain away for their edification; having
never done anything remarkable he was naturally elected a member of the
Academy, and he always remained loyal to the traditions of that
thoroughly respectable and thoroughly pretentious institution. In fact,
he was just the sort of man who should never have attempted to write a
Life of George Sand or to interpret George Sand's genius. He was too
feminine to appreciate the grandeur of that large womanly nature, too
much of a _dilettante_ to realize the masculine force of that strong and
ardent mind. He never gets at the secret of George Sand, and never
brings us near to her wonderful personality. He looks on her simply as a
litterateur, as a writer of pretty stories of country life and of
charming, if somewhat exaggerated, romances. But George Sand was much
more than this. Beautiful as are such books as _Consuelo_ and _Mauprat_,
_Francois le Champi_ and _La Mare au Diable_, yet in none of them is she
adequately expressed, by none of them is she adequately revealed. As Mr.
Matthew Arnold said, many years ago, 'We do not know George Sand unless
we feel the spirit which goes through her work as a whole.' With this
spirit, however, M. Caro has no sympathy. Madame Sand's doctrines are
antediluvian, he tells us, her philosophy is quite dead and her ideas of
social regeneration are Utopian, incoher