has made equality its
rallying cry, is therefore "the nation which loves and is loved," _la
nation qui aime et qu'on aime_. The republic of equality is in her eyes
"an ideal, a philosophy, a religion." She invokes the "holy doctrine of
social liberty and fraternal equality, ever reappearing as a ray of love
and truth amidst the storm." She calls it "the goal of man and the law
of the future." She thinks it the secret of the civilization of France,
the most civilized of nations. Amid the disasters of the late war she
cannot forbear a cry of astonishment at the neutral nations,
_insensibles a l'egorgement d'une civilisation comme la notre_, "looking
on with insensibility while a civilization such as ours has its throat
cut." Germany, with its stupid ideal of corporalism and _Kruppism_, is
contrasted with France, full of social dreams, too civilized for war,
incapable of planning and preparing war for twenty years, she is so
incapable of hatred;--_nous sommes si incapables de hair!_ We seem to be
listening, not to George Sand, but to M. Victor Hugo, half genius, half
charlatan; to M. Victor Hugo, or even to one of those French declaimers
in whom we come down to no genius and all charlatan.

The form of such outbursts as we have quoted will always be distasteful
to an Englishman. It is to be remembered that they came from Madame Sand
under the pressure and anguish of the terrible calamities of 1870. But
what we are most concerned with, and what Englishmen in general regard
too little, is the degree of truth contained in these allegations that
France is the most civilized of nations, and that she is so, above all,
by her "holy doctrine of equality." How comes the idea to be so current;
and to be passionately believed in, as we have seen, by such a woman as
George Sand? It was so passionately believed in by her, that when one
seeks, as I am now seeking, to recall her image, the image is incomplete
if the passionate belief is kept from appearing.

I will not, with my scanty space, now discuss the belief; but I will
seek to indicate how it must have commended itself, I think, to George
Sand. I have somewhere called France "the country of Europe where _the
people_ is most alive."[333] _The people_ is what interested George
Sand. And in France _the people_ is, above all, the peasant. The workman
in Paris or in other great towns of France may afford material for such
pictures as those which M. Zola[334] has lately given us in
_L'