ures have
almost invariably fallen into the extreme of unreality or that of
caricature, whether for want of information or want of sympathy in those
who have drawn them.

The subject, always attractive for Madame Sand, is one in which she is
always happy. Already in the first year of her literary career her keen
appreciation of the art and its higher influences had prompted her
clever novelette _La Marquise_. Here she illustrates the power of the
stage as a means of expression--of the truly inspired actor, though his
greatness be but momentary, and his heroism a semblance, to strike a
like chord in the heart of the spectator--and, in a corrupt and
artificial age, to keep alive some latent faith in the ideal. Since
then the stage and players had figured repeatedly in her works.
Sometimes she portrays a perfected type, such as Consuelo, or Imperia in
_Pierre qui roule_, but always side by side with more earthly and faulty
representatives such as Corilla and Anzoleto, or Julia and Albany, in
Narcisse, incarnations of the vanity and instability that are the chief
dangers of the profession, drawn with unsparing realism. In _Le Chateau
des Desertes_ we find further many admirable theories and suggestive
ideas on the subject of the regeneration of the theatre. But it fared
with her theatrical as with her political philosophy: she failed in its
application, not because her theories were false, but for want of
practical aptitude for the craft whose principles she understood so
well.

It is impossible here to do more than cast a rapid glance over the
literary work accomplished by George Sand during the first decade of the
empire. It includes more than a dozen novels, of unequal merit, but of
merit for the most part very high. The _Histoire de ma Vie_ was
published in 1855. It is a study of chosen passages out of her life,
rather than a connected autobiography. One out of the four volumes is
devoted to the story of her father's life before her birth; two more to
the story of her childhood and girlhood. The fourth rather indicates
than fully narrates the facts of her existence from the time of her
marriage till the Revolution of 1848. It offers to her admirers
invaluable glimpses into her life and mind, and is a highly interesting
and characteristic composition, if a most irregular chronicle. It has
given rise to two most incompatible-sounding criticisms. Some have been
chiefly struck by its amazing unreserve, and denounced the