self has said admirable things of these friends of hers;
of their want of patience, temper, wisdom; of their "vague and violent
way of talking"; of their interminable flow of "stimulating phrases,
cold as death." Her own place is of course with the party and propaganda
of organic change. But George Sand felt the poetry of the past; she had
no hatreds; the furies, the follies, the self-deceptions of secularist
and revolutionist fanatics filled her with dismay. They are, indeed, the
great danger of France, and it is amongst the educated and articulate
classes of France that they prevail. If the educated and articulate
classes in France were as sound in their way as the inarticulate peasant
is in his, France would present a different spectacle. Not "imagination
and sensibility" are so much required from the educated classes of
France, as simpler, more serious views of life; a knowledge how great a
part _conduct_ (if M. Challemel-Lacour[342] will allow me to say so)
fills in it; a better example. The few who see this, such as Madame Sand
among the dead, and M. Renan[343] among the living, perhaps awaken on
that account, amongst quiet observers at a distance, all the more
sympathy; but in France they are isolated.

All the later work of George Sand, however, all her hope of genuine
social renovation, take the simple and serious ground so necessary. "The
cure for us is far more simple than we will believe. All the better
natures amongst us see it and feel it. It is a good direction given by
ourselves to our hearts and consciences;--_une bonne direction donnee
par nous-memes a nos coeurs et a nos consciences_."[344] These are among
the last words of her _Journal_ of 1870.

* * * * *

Whether or not the number of George Sand's works--always fresh, always
attractive, but poured out too lavishly and rapidly--is likely to prove
a hindrance to her fame, I do not care to consider. Posterity, alarmed
at the way in which its literary baggage grows upon it, always seeks to
leave behind it as much as it can, as much as it dares,--everything but
masterpieces. But the immense vibration of George Sand's voice upon the
ear of Europe will not soon die away. Her passions and her errors have
been abundantly talked of. She left them behind her, and men's memory of
her will leave them behind also. There will remain of her to mankind the
sense of benefit and stimulus from the passage upon earth of that large
and f