Assommoir_--pictures of a kind long ago labelled by Madame Sand as
"_the literature of mysteries of iniquity_, which men of talent and
imagination try to bring into fashion." But the real _people_ in France,
the foundation of things there, both in George Sand's eyes and in
reality, is the peasant. The peasant was the object of Madame Sand's
fondest predilections in the present, and happiest hopes in the future.
The Revolution and its doctrine of equality had made the French peasant.
What wonder, then, if she saluted the doctrine as a holy and paramount
one?

And the French peasant is really, so far as I can see, the largest and
strongest element of soundness which the body social of any European
nation possesses. To him is due that astonishing recovery which France
has made since her defeat, and which George Sand predicted in the very
hour of ruin. Yes, in 1870 she predicted _ce reveil general qui va
suivre, a la grande surprise des autres nations, l'espece d'agonie ou
elles nous voient tombes_,[335] "the general re-arising which, to the
astonishment of other nations, is about to follow the sort of agony in
which they now see us lying." To the condition, character, and qualities
of the French peasant this recovery is in the main due. His material
well-being is known to all of us. M. de Laveleye,[336] the well-known
economist, a Belgian and a Protestant, says that France, being the
country of Europe where the soil is more divided than anywhere except in
Switzerland and Norway, is at the same time the country where well-being
is most widely spread, where wealth has of late years increased most,
and where population is least outrunning the limits which, for the
comfort and progress of the working classes themselves, seem necessary.
George Sand could see, of course, the well-being of the French peasant,
for we can all see it.

But there is more. George Sand was a woman, with a woman's ideal of
gentleness, of "the charm of good manners," as essential to
civilization. She has somewhere spoken admirably of the variety and
balance of forces which go to make up true civilization; "certain forces
of weakness, docility, attractiveness, suavity, are here just as real
forces as forces of vigor, encroachment, violence, or brutality." Yes,
as real _forces_, although Prince Bismarck cannot see it; because human
nature requires them, and, often as they may be baffled, and slow as may
be the process of their asserting themselves, mankin