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THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY.

A MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS.

VOL. VIII.—NOVEMBER, 1861.—NO. XLIX.

GEORGE SAND.

"Deduci superbo
Non humilis mulier triumpho."

These words are applied by Horace to the great Cleopatra, whose heroic end he celebrates, even while exulting in her overthrow. We apply them to another woman of royal soul, who, capitulating with the world of her contemporaries, does not allow them the ignoble triumph of plundering the secrets of her life. They have long clamored at its gates, long shouted at its windows, in defamation and in glorification. Ready now for their admission, she lets the eager public in; but what they were most intent to find still eludes them. In the "Histoire de ma Vie" are the records of her parentage, birth, education. Here are detailed the subtile influences that aided or hindered Nature in one of her most lavish pieces of work; here are study, religion, marriage, maternity, authorship, friendship, travel, litigation: but the passionate loving woman, and whom she loved, are not here. To the world's triumph they belong not, and we honor the decency and self-respect which consign them to oblivion. Nor shall we endeavor to lift the veil which she has thus thrown over the most intimate portion of her private life. We will not ask any Chronique Scandaleuse, of which there are plenty, to supply any hiatus in the dramatis personae of her life. We shall take her as she gives herself to us, bringing out the full significance of what she says, but not interpolating with it what other people say. For she has been generous in telling us all that it imports us most to know. The itching curiosity of the spiteful or the vicious must seek its gratification at other hands than ours: we will not be its ministers. With all this, we are not obliged to shut our eyes to the true significance of what she tells us, or to assume that in the account she gives us of herself there is necessarily less self-deception than self-judgment generally exhibits. If she mistakes the selfish for the heroic, exalts a gratification into a duty, and preaches to her sex as from the standpoint of a morality superior to theirs, we shall set it down as it seems to us. But, for the sake of manhood as well as of womanhood, we would not that any mean or malignant hand should endeavor to show where she failed, and how.

Was she not to all of us, in our early years, a name of doubt, dread, and enchantment? Did not all of us feel, in our young admiration for her, something of the world's great struggle between conservative discipline and revolutionary inspiration? We knew our parents would not have us read her, if they knew. We knew they were right. Yet we read her at stolen hours, with waning and still entreated light; and as we read, in a dreary wintry room, with the flickering candle warning us of late hours and confiding expectations, the atmosphere grew warm and glorious about us,—a true human company, a living sympathy crept near us,—the very world seemed not the same world after as before. She had given us a real gift; no criticism could take it away. The hands might be sinful, but the box they broke contained an exceeding precious ointment.

At a later day we saw these things rather differently. The electric intoxication over, which book or being gives but once to the same person, its elements were viewed with some distrust. Passing from ideal to real life, as all pass, who live on, we shook our heads over the books, sighed, ceased to read them. Grown mothers ourselves, we quietly removed them as far as possible from the young hands about us, and would rather have deprived them of the noble French language altogether than have allowed it to bring them such lessons as Jacques and Valentine. Yet we retain the old love for her; the world of literature still seems brighter for her footsteps; and should we live to learn her death, tears must follow it, and the sense of void left by the loss of a true friend, noble and loyal-hearted, if mistaken. With this confession of sympathy with the woman, we begin the critical consideration of the memoirs of herself she has given to the world.

These memoirs begin at the earliest possible period, including the lives of her parents and grandparents. The latter were illustrious on one side, obscure on the other. She tells us that by her paternal grandmother she was allied to the kings of France, and by her maternal grandfather to the lowest of the people. The grandmother in question was the natural daughter of the famous Maréchal de Saxe, recognized and educated, but finally left with slender resources, and married to M. Dupin de Francueil, an accomplished person of good family and fortune, greatly her senior. To him she bore one child, a son named Maurice, after the great soldier. As might have been expected, her widowhood was early and long, for her aged partner soon dropped from her side, beloved and regretted. George tells us that her grandmother was wont to insist that an old man can be more agreeable in the marital relation than a young one, and that M. Dupin de Francueil, elegant, accomplished, and devoted to her happiness, had in his life left nothing for her imagination to desire or her heart to regret.

As this lady is one of the heroines of the "Histoire de ma Vie," we cannot do it justice without lingering a little over her portraiture. She is described as tall, fair, and of a Saxon type of beauty. Her manners would seem to have been de haute école, and her culture was on a large and noble scale. Austere in her morals, her faith was the deistic philosophy of the ante-revolutionary period; but, like other people of noble mind, instead of making doubt a pretext for license, she brought up virtue to justify the latitude of her creed, that the solid results of conscience should entitle her to the free interpretation of doctrine. She was chaste, benevolent, and sincere. Her mother had been a singer of merit and celebrity, and she, the daughter, had both inherited her musical talent, and had received one of those thorough musical educations which alone make the possession of the art a pleasure and resource. It must often occur to those who hear our young ladies sing and play, that the accomplishment is little valued by them, save as an outward social adornment.

Hence those ambitious and perfectly uninteresting performances with which we are constantly bored in the fashionable musical world. It is self-love which gives us those flat, empty adagios, those cold, keen runs and embellishments. Love of the art has more modesty in the undertaking, and more warmth in the execution. George says that she has heard all the greatest singers of modern times, but that her grandmother, in her old age, singing fragments of the operas of her own time in a cracked and trembling voice, and accompanying herself on an old harpsichord with three fingers of a palsied hand, always remained to her a type of art above all others.

The first volume of these memoirs gives interesting notice of the friendships which surrounded Madame Dupin during her married life. These embraced various celebrities, historical and literary. Her husband was the congenial friend of the best minds of the day, and was able, among other things, to procure her the difficult pleasure of an interview with Jean Jacques Rousseau, then living near her in great spleen and retirement. We cannot do better than to give the relation of this in her own words, as preserved by her grand-daughter. It is highly characteristic of the parties and of the times.

"Before I had seen Rousseau, I had read the 'Nouvelle Héloïse' in one breath, and at the last pages I found myself so overcome that I wept and sobbed. My husband gently rallied me for this; but that day I could only cry from morning till evening. During this, M. de Francueil, with the address and the grace which he knew how to put into everything, ran to find Jean Jacques. I do not know how he managed it, but he carried him off, he brought him, without having communicated to me his intention.

"I, unconscious of all this, was not hastening my toilet. I was with Madame d'Esparbès de Lussan, my friend, the most amiable woman in the world, and the prettiest, though she squinted a little, and was slightly deformed. M. de Francueil had come several times to see if I was ready. I did not observe any marks of haste in my husband, and did not hurry myself, never suspecting that he was there, the sublime Bear, in my parlor. He had entered, looking partly foolish and partly cross, and had seated himself in a corner, showing no other impatience than that about dinner, in order to get away very soon.

"Finally, my toilet finished, and my eyes still red and swollen, I go to the parlor. I see a little man, ill-dressed and scowling, who rose clumsily, who chewed out some confused words. I look, and I guess who it is,—I try to speak,—I burst into tears. Francueil tries to put us in tune by a pleasantry, and bursts into tears. We could not say anything to each other. Rousseau pressed my hand without addressing me a single word. We tried to dine, to cut short all these sobs. But I could eat nothing. M. de Francueil could not be witty that day, and Rousseau escaped directly on leaving the table, without having said a word,—displeased, perhaps, with having found a new contradiction to his claim of being the most persecuted, the most hated, and the most calumniated of men."

The simplicity of this narration justifies its quotation here, as illustrative of the taste and manners that prevailed a hundred years ago. The lively emotion provoked by the "Nouvelle Héloïse" is scarcely more foreign to our ideas and experience than the triangular fit of weeping in the parlor, and the dinner, silent through excess of feeling, that followed it.

M. Dupin de Francueil lived with great, but generous extravagance, and, as his widow averred, "ruined himself in the most amiable manner in the world." He died, leaving large estates in great confusion, from which his widow and young son were compelled to "accept the poverty" of seventy-five thousand livres of annual income,—a sum which the Revolution, at a later day, greatly reduced. Till its outbreak, Madame Dupin lived in peace and affluence, though not on the grand scale of earlier days,—devoting herself chiefly to the care and education of her son, Maurice, in which latter task she secured the services of a young abbé, who afterwards prudently became the Citizen Deschartres, and who continued in the service of the family during the rest of a tolerably long life. This personage plays too important a part in the memoirs to be passed over without special notice. He continued to be the faithful teacher and companion of Maurice, until the exigencies of military life removed the latter from his control. He was also the man of business of Madame Dupin, and, at a later day, the preceptor of George herself, who, with childish petulance, bestowed on him the sobriquet of grand homme, in consequence, she tells us, of his omnicompétence and his air of importance. "My grandmother," she says, "had no presentiment, that, in confiding to him the education of her son, she was securing the tyrant, the saviour, and the friend of her whole remaining life." We would gladly give here in full George's portrait of her tutor; but if we should stop to sketch all the admirable photography of this work, our review would become a volume. We can only borrow a trait or two, and pass on to the consideration of other matters.

"He had been good-looking; but I am sure that no one, even in his best days, could have looked at him without laughing, so clearly was the word pedant written in all the lines of his face and in every movement of his person. To be complete, he should have been ignorant, gourmand, and cowardly. But, far from this, he was very learned, temperate, and madly courageous. He had all the great qualities of the soul, joined to an insufferable disposition, and a self-satisfaction which amounted almost to delirium. But what devotion, what zeal, what a tender and generous soul!"

In the intervals of his necessary occupations he studied medicine and surgery, in the latter of which he attained considerable skill. In the many subsequent years of his country life, he made these accomplishments very useful to the village folk. No stress of weather or unseasonableness of hours could detain him from attending the sick, when summoned; but being obliged, as George says, to be ridiculous as well as sublime in all things, he was wont to beat his patients when they were bold enough to offer him money for their cure, and even made missile weapons of the poultry and game which they brought him in acknowledgment of his services, assailing them with blows and harder words, till they fled, amused or angry. Maurice, his first pupil, was a delicate and indolent child, and showed little robustness of character till his early manhood, when the necessity of a career forced him into the ranks of the great army.

The first threatenings of the Revolution found in Madame Dupin an unalarmed observer. As a disciple of Voltaire and Rousseau, she could not but detest the abuses of the Court; she shared, too, the general personal alienation of the aristocracy from the German woman, as they called Marie Antoinette. She admired, in turn, the probity of Necker and the genius of Mirabeau; but the current of disorder finally found its way to her, and swept away her household peace among the innumerable wrecks that marked its passage. Implicated as the depository of some papers supposed to be of treasonable character, she was arrested and imprisoned in Paris, her son and Deschartres being officially separated from her and detained at Passy. The imprisonment lasted some months, and its tedium was beguiled by the most fervent love-letters between the boy of sixteen and his mother. The sorrow of this separation, George says, metamorphosed the sickly, spoiled child into a fervent and resolute youth, whose subsequent career was full of courage and self-denial. Of the Revolution she writes:—

"In my eyes, it is one of the phases of evangelical life: a tumultuous, bloody life, terrible at certain moments, full of convulsions, of delirium, and of sobbing. It is the violent contest of the principle of equality preached by Jesus, and passing, now like a radiant light, now like a burning torch, from hand to hand, to our own days, against the old pagan world, which is not destroyed, which will not be for a long time yet, in spite of the mission of Christ, and so many other divine missions, in spite of so many stakes, scaffolds, and martyrs. What is there, then, to astonish us in the vertigo which seized all minds at the period of the inextricable mêlée into which France precipitated herself in '93? When everything went by retaliation, when every one became, by deed or intention, victim and executioner in turn, and when between the oppression endured and the oppression exercised there was no time for reflection or liberty of choice, how could passion have abstracted itself in action, or impartiality have dictated quiet judgments? Passionate souls were judged by others as passionate, and the human race cried out as in the time of the ancient Hussites,—'This is a time of mourning, of zeal, and of fury.'"

The tone of our author concerning this and subsequent revolutions which have come within her own observation is throughout temperate, hopeful, and charitable. The noblest side of womanhood comes out in this; and however her fiery youth might have counselled, in the pages now under consideration she appears as the apologist of humankind, the world's peacemaker.

George loves to linger over the details of her father's early life. They are, indeed, all she possesses of him, as she was still in early childhood when he died. So much and such charming narrations has she to give us of his military life, his musical ability, his courage and disinterestedness, that she herself does not manage to get born until nearly the end of the third volume, and that through a series of concatenations which we must hastily review.

The imprisonment of Madame Dupin was not long; after some months of detention, she was allowed to rejoin her son at Passy, and the whole family-party speedily removed to Nohant, in the heart of Berry, which henceforth figures as the homestead in the pages of these volumes. But Maurice is soon obliged to adopt a profession. His mother's revenues have been considerably diminished by the political troubles. He feels in himself the power, the determination, to carve out a career for himself, and gallantly enters, as a simple soldier, the armies of the Republic,—Napoleon Bonaparte being First Consul. Although he soon saw service, his promotion seems to have been slow and difficult. He was full of military ardor, and laborious in acquiring the science of his profession; but there were already so many candidates for every smallest distinction, and Maurice was no courtier, to help out his deserts with a little fortunate flattery. He complains in his letters that the tide has already turned, and that even in the army diplomacy fares better than real bravery. Still, he soon rose from the ranks, served with honor on the Rhine and in Italy, and became finally attached to the personnel of Murat, during the occupation of the Peninsula. His title of grandson of the Maréchal de Saxe was sometimes helpful, sometimes hurtful. In the eyes of his comrades it won him honor; but Napoleon, on hearing his high descent urged as a claim to consideration, is said to have replied, brusquely,—"I don't want any of those people." In his letters to his mother, he recounts his adventures, military and amorous, with frankness, but without boasting; but his confidences soon become very partial, and before she knows it the poor mother has a dangerous rival. We will let him give his own account of the origin of this new relation.

"You know that I was in love in Milan. You guessed it, because I did not tell you of it. At times I fancied myself beloved in return, and then I saw, or thought I saw, that I was not. I wished to divert my thoughts; I went away, desiring to think no more of it.

"This charming woman is here, and we have hardly spoken to each other. We scarcely exchanged a look. I felt a little vexation, though that is scarcely in my nature. She was proud towards me, although her heart is tender and passionate. This morning, during breakfast, we heard distant cannon. The General ordered me to mount at once, and go to see what it was. I rise, take the staircase in two bounds, and run to the stable. At the very moment of mounting my horse I turned and saw behind me this dear woman, blushing, embarrassed, and casting on me a lingering look, expressive of fear, interest, love."

This fatal look, as the experienced will readily conceive, did the business. The young soldier dreamed only of a love affair like twenty others which had made the pastime of his oft-changing quarters; but this "dear woman," Sophie Victoire Antoinette Delaborde, daughter of an old bird-fancier, was destined to become his wife, and the mother of his daughter, Aurore Dupin, whom the world knows as George Sand. The circumstances of her youth had been untoward. She was at this period already the mother of one child, born out of marriage, and seems to have been making the campaign of Italy under the so-called protection of some rich man, whose name is not given us. This protection she hastened to leave, following thenceforward with devotion the precarious fortunes of the young soldier, and gaining her own subsistence, until their marriage, by the toil of the needle, to which she had been bred. Of course, Maurice's confidences to his mother under this head soon cease. An amour with a person in Victoire's position could be admitted; but a serious, solid affection, leading to marriage, this would break his mother's heart, and indeed not without reason. The reader must remember that this is a chapter out of French society, on which account we suppress all hysterical comment upon a state of things universally received and acknowledged therein. Maurice's trivial, and we should say, unprincipled pursuit of Victoire would be considered perfectly legitimate in the sphere which made the world to him. The sequel, perhaps, would not have been considered differently here and there; for, however we may recognize the sacredness of true affection, a marriage so unequal and with such sinister antecedents would be regarded in all society with little approbation, or hope of good. His mother soon grew alarmed, as various symptoms of an enduring and carefully concealed attachment became evident to her keen observation. In the years that followed, she left no means untried to break off this dangerous connection;—her remonstrances were by turns tender and violent,—her reasonings, no doubt, in great part just; but Maurice defended the woman of his choice from all accusations, from every annoyance, on the ground of her devoted and honorable attachment to him. After four years of continued trouble and irresolution, in which, George tells us, he had again and again made the endeavor to sacrifice Victoire to his mother's happiness, and after the birth of several children, who soon ceased to live, he wedded her by civil rite. The birth of his daughter soon followed. "And thus it was," says George, "that I was born legitimate."

"My mother had on a pretty pink dress that day, and my father was playing some contredanses on his faithful Cremona (I have it yet, that old instrument by the sound of which I first saw the light). My mother left the dance and passed into her own room. As she went out very quietly, the dance continued. At the last chassez all round, my Aunt Lucy went into my mother's room, and immediately cried,—

"Come, come here, Maurice! You have a daughter!"

"She shall be named Aurore, for my poor mother, who is not here to bless her, but who will bless her one day," said my father, receiving me in his arms.

"She was born in music and in pink," said my aunt. "She will be happy."

Not eminent, perhaps, has been the realization of this augury.

The young couple were so poor, at this moment of their marriage, that a slender thread of gold was forced to serve for the nuptial ring; it was not until some days later that they were able to expend six francs in the purchase of that indispensable ornament. The act once consummated, Maurice gave himself up to some hours of bitter suffering, made inevitable by what he considered a grave act of disobedience against the best of mothers. His conscience, however, on the whole, justified him. He had obeyed the Scripture precept, forsaking the old for the inevitable new relation, and surrounding her who was really his wife with the immunities of civil recognition. The marriage was concealed for some months from his mother,—who at a subsequent period left no stone unturned to prove its nullity. The religious ceremony, which Catholicism considers as the indissoluble tie, had not yet been performed, and Mme. Dupin hoped to prove some informality in the civil rite. In this, however, she did not succeed, and after long resistance, and ill-concealed displeasure, she concluded by acknowledging the unwelcome alliance. It was the little Aurore herself whose unconscious hand severed the Gordian knot of the family difficulties. Introduced by a stratagem into her grandmother's presence, and seated in her lap as the child of a stranger, the family traits were suddenly recognized, and the little one (eight months old) effected a change of heart which neither lawyer nor priest could have induced. St. Childhood is fortunately always in the world, working ever these miracles of reconciliation.

George speaks with admirable candor of the inevitable relations between these two women. She does full justice to the legitimacy of the grandmother's objections to the marriage, and her fears for its result, which were founded much more on moral than on social considerations. At the same time she nobly asserts her mother's claim to rehabilitation through a passionate and disinterested attachment, a faithful devotion to the duties of marriage and maternity, and a widowhood whose sorrow ended only with her life. She says,—"The doctrine of redemption is the symbol of the principle of expiation and of rehabilitation"; but she adds,—"Our society recognizes this principle in religious theory, but not in practice; it is too great, too beautiful for us." She says farther,—"There still exists a pretended aristocracy of virtue, which, proud of its privileges, does not admit that the errors of youth are susceptible of atonement. This condemnation is the more absurd, because, for what is called the World, it is hypocritical. It is not only women of really irreproachable life, nor matrons truly respected, who are called upon to decide upon the merits of their misled sisters. It is not the company of the excellent of the earth who make opinion. That is all a dream. The great majority of women of the world is really a majority of lost women." We must understand these remarks as applying to French society, in respect even of which we are not inclined to admit their truth. Yet there is a certain justice in the inference that women are often most severely condemned by those who are no better than themselves; and this insincerity of uncharity is far more to be dreaded than the over-zeal of virtuous hearts, which oftenest helps and heals where it has been obliged to wound.

At the risk of unduly multiplying quotations, we will quote here what George says of her mother in this, the flower of her days. At a later day, the ill-regulated character suffered and made others suffer with its own discords, which education and moral training had done nothing to reconcile. The manly support, too, of the nobler nature was wanting, and the best half of her future and its possibilities was buried in the untimely grave of her husband. Here is what she was when she was at her best:—

"My mother never felt herself either humiliated or honored by the company of people who might have considered themselves her superiors. She ridiculed keenly the pride of fools, the vanity of parvenus, and, feeling herself of the people to her very finger-ends, she thought herself more noble than all the patricians and aristocrats of the earth. She was wont to say that those of her race had redder blood and larger veins than others,—which I incline to believe; for, if moral and physical energy constitute in reality the excellence of races, we cannot deny that this energy is compelled to diminish in those who lose the habit of labor and the courage of endurance. This aphorism is certainly not without exception, and we may add that excess of labor and of endurance enervates the organization as much as the excess of luxury and idleness. But it is certain, in general, that life rises from the bottom of society, and loses itself in measure as it rises to the top, like the sap in plants.

"My mother was not one of those bold intrigantes whose secret passion is to struggle against the prejudices of their time, and who think to make themselves greater by clinging, at the risk of a thousand affronts, to the false greatness of the world. She was far too proud to expose herself even to coldness. Her attitude was so reserved that she passed for a timid person; but if one attempted to encourage her by airs of protection, she became more than reserved, she showed herself cold and taciturn. With people who inspired her with respect, she was amiable and charming; but her real disposition was gay, petulant, active, and, above all, opposed to constraint. Great dinners, long soirées, commonplace visits, balls themselves, were odious to her. She was the woman of the fireside or of the rapid and frolicking walk; but in her interior, as in her goings abroad, intimacy, confidence, relations of entire sincerity, absolute freedom in her habits and the employment of her time, were indispensable to her. She, therefore, always lived in a retired manner, more anxious to avoid unpleasant acquaintances than eager to make advantageous ones. Such, too, was the foundation of my father's character, and in this respect never was couple better assorted. They were never happy out of their little household. And they have bequeathed me this secret sauvagerie, which has always rendered the [fashionable] world insupportable to me, and home indispensable."

In referring back to these volumes, we are led into continual loiterings by the way. The style of our heroine is so magical, that we are constantly tempted to let her tell her own story, and to give to the gems of hers which we insert in these pages the slightest possible setting of our own. But it is not our business to anticipate for any one a reading from which no student of modern literature, or, indeed, of modern mind, will excuse himself. We must give only so much as shall make it sure that others will seek more at the fountain-head; but for this purpose we must turn less to the book, and trust for our narration to a sufficiently recent perusal still vividly remembered.

Aurore could scarcely have passed out of her third year when she accompanied her mother to Madrid, where her father was already in attendance upon Murat. She remembers their quarters in the palace, magnificently furnished, and the half-broken toys of the royal children, whose destruction she was allowed to complete. To please his commander-in-chief, her father caused her to assume a miniature uniform, like those of the Prince's aide-de-camps, whose splendid discomfort she still recalls. This would seem a sort of prophecy of that assuming of male attire in later years which was to constitute a capital circumstance in her life. The return from the Peninsula was weary and painful to the mother and child, and made more so by the disgust with which the Spanish roadside bill-of-fare inspired the more civilized French stomach. They were forced to make a part of the journey in wagons with the common soldiery and camp-retainers, and Aurore in this manner took the itch, to her mother's great mortification. Arrived at Nohant, however, the care of Deschartres, joined to a self-imposed régime of green lemons, which the little girl devoured, skins, seeds, and all, soon healed the ignominious eruption. Here the whole family passed some months of happy repose, too soon interrupted by the tragical death of Maurice. He had brought back from Spain a formidable horse, which he had christened the terrible Leopardo, and which, brave cavalier as he was, he never mounted without a certain indefinable misgiving. He often said, "I ride him badly, because I am afraid of him, and he knows it." Dining with some friends in the neighborhood, one day, he was late in returning. His wife and mother passed the evening together, the first jealous and displeased at his protracted absence, the second occupied in calming the irritation and rebuking the suspicions of her companion. The wife at last yielded, and retired to rest. But the mother's heart, more anxious, watched and watched. Towards midnight, a slight confusion in the house augmented her alarm. She started at once, alone and thinly dressed, to go and meet her son. The night was dark and rainy; the terrible Leopardo had fulfilled the prophetic forebodings of his rider. The poor lady, brought up in habits of extreme inactivity, had taken but two walks in all her life. The first had been to surprise her son at Passy, when released from the Revolutionary prison. The second was to meet and escort back his lifeless body, found senseless by the roadside.

We have done now with Aurore's ancestry, and must occupy our remaining pages with accounts of herself. Much time is given by her to the record of her early childhood, and the explanation of its various phases. She loves children; it is perhaps for this reason that she dwells longest on this period of her life, describing its minutest incidents with all the poetry that is in her. One would think that her childhood seemed to her that actual flower of her life which it is to few in their own consciousness. Despite the loss of her father, and the vexed relations between her mother and grandmother which followed his death, her infancy was joyous and companionable, passed mostly with the country surroundings and out-door influences which act so magically on the young. It soon became evident that she was to be confided chiefly to her grandmother's care; and this, which was at first a fear, soon came to be a sorrow. Still her mother was often with her, and her time was divided between the plays of her village-friends and the dreams of romantic incident which early formed the main feature of her inner life. Already at a very early age her mother used to say to those who laughed at the little romancer,—"Let her alone; it is only when she is making her novels between four chairs that I can work in peace." This habit of mind grew with her growth. Her very dolls played grandiose parts in her child-drama. The paper on the wall became animated to her at night, and in her dreams she witnessed strange adventures between its Satyrs and Bacchantes. Soon she imagined for herself a sort of angel-companion, whose name was Corambé. His presence grew to be more real to her than reality itself, and in her quiet moments she wove out the mythology of his existence, as Bhavadgheetas and Mahabraatus have been dreamed. In process of time, she built, or rather entwisted, for him a little shrine in the woods. All pretty things the child could gather were brought together there, to give him pleasure. But one day the foot of a little playmate profaned this sanctuary, and Aurore sought it no more, while still Corambé was with her everywhere.

Although she seems to have always suffered from her mother's inequalities of temper, yet for many years she clung to her, and to the thought of her, with jealous affection. The great difference of age which separated her from her grandmother inspired fear, and the grand manners and careful breeding of the elder lady increased this effect. When left with her, the child fell into a state of melancholy, with passionate reactions against the chilling, penetrating influence, which yet, having reason on its side, was destined to subdue her. "Her chamber, dark and perfumed, gave me the headache, and fits of spasmodic yawning. When she said to me, 'Amuse yourself quietly,' it seemed to me as if she shut me up in a great box with her." What sympathetic remembrances must this phrase evoke in all who remember the gêne of similar constraints! George draws from this inferences of the wisdom of Nature in confiding the duties of maternity to young creatures, whose pulses have not yet lost the impatient leap of early pleasure and energy, and to whom repose and reflection have not yet become the primal necessities of life. This want of the nearness and sympathy of age she was to experience more, as, by the consent of both parties, her education was to be conducted under the superintendence of her grandmother, from whom the mother derived her pension, and whose estate the child was to inherit. The separation from her mother, gradually effected, was the great sorrow of her childhood. She revolted from it sometimes openly, sometimes in secret; and the project of escaping and joining her mother in Paris, where, with her half-sister Caroline, they would support themselves by needle-work, was soon formed and long cherished. For the expenses of this intended journey, the child carefully gathered and kept her little treasures, a coral comb, a ring with a tiny brilliant, etc., etc. In contemplating these, she consoled many a heartache; as who is there of us who has not often effectually beguiled ennui and privation by dreams of joys that never were to have any other reality? The mother seems to have entered into this plan only for the moment; it soon escaped her remembrance altogether, and the little girl waited and waited to be sent for, till finally the whole vision faded into a dream.

Deschartres, the tutor of Maurice, and of Hippolyte, his illegitimate son, became also the instructor of the little Aurore. With all her passion for out-door life, she felt always, she tells us, an invincible necessity of mental cultivation, and perpetually astonished those who had charge of her by her ardor alike in work and in play. Her grandmother soon found that the child was never ill, so long as sufficient freedom of exercise was permitted; so she was soon allowed to run at will, dividing her time pretty equally between the study and the fields. Thus she grew in mind and body from seven to twelve, promising to be tall and handsome, though not in after-years fulfilling this promise; for of her stature she tells us that it did not exceed that of her mother, whom she calls a petite femme,—and of her appearance she simply says that in her youth "with eyes, hair, and a robust organization," she was neither handsome nor ugly. At the age of twelve, a social necessity compelled her to go through the form of confession and the first communion. Her grandmother was divided between the convictions of her own liberalism, and the desire not to place her cherished charge in direct opposition to the imperious demands of a Catholic community. The laxity of the period allowed the compromise to be managed in a merely formal and superficial manner. The grandmother tried to give the rite a certain significance, at the same time imploring the child "not to suppose that she was about to eat her Creator." The confessor asked none of those questions which our author simply qualifies as infamous, and, with a very mild course of catechism and slight dose of devotion, that Rubicon of maturity was passed. Not far beyond it waited a terrible trial, perhaps as great a sorrow as the whole life was to bring. Aurore's diligence in her studies was marred by the secret intention, long cherished, of escaping to her mother, and adopting with her her former profession of dress-maker. Having one day answered reproof with a petulant assertion of her desire to rejoin her mother at all hazards, the grandmother determined to put an end to such projects by a severe measure. Aurore was banished from her presence during a certain number of days. Neither friend nor servant spoke to her. She describes naturally enough this lonely, uncomforted condition, in which, more than ever, she meditated upon the wished-for return to her mother, and the beginning with her of a new life of industry and privation. Summoned at last to her grandmother's bedside, and kneeling to ask for reconciliation, she is forced to stay there, and to listen to the most cruel and literal account of her mother's life, its early errors, and their inevitable consequences.

"All that she narrated was true in point of fact, and attested by circumstances whose detail admitted of no doubt. But this terrible history might have been unveiled to me without injury to my respect and love for my mother, and, thus told, it would have been much more probable and more true. It would have sufficed to tell all the causes of her misfortunes,—loneliness and poverty from the age of fourteen years, the corruption of the rich, who are there to lie in wait for hunger and to blight the flower of innocence, the pitiless rigorism of opinion, which allows no return and accepts no expiation. They should also have told me how my mother had redeemed the past, how faithfully she had loved my father, how, since his death, she had lived humble, sad, and retired. Finally, my poor grandmother let fall the fatal word. My mother was a lost woman, and I a blind child rushing towards a precipice."

The horror of this disclosure did not work the miracle anticipated. Aurore submitted indeed outwardly, but a spell of hardness and hopelessness was drawn around her young heart, which neither tears nor tenderness could break. The blow struck at the very roots of life and hope in her. Self-respect was wounded in its core. If the mother who bore her was vile, then she was vile also. All object in life seemed gone. She tried to live from day to day without interest, without hope. From her dark thoughts she found refuge only in extravagant gayety, which brought physical weariness, but no repose of mind. She, who had been on the whole a docile, manageable child, became so riotous, unreasonable, and insupportable, that the only alternative of utter waste of character seemed to be the discipline and seclusion of the convent. She was accordingly taken to Paris, and received as a pensionnaire in the Convent des Anglaises, which had been, in the Revolution, her grandmother's prison. To Aurore it was rather a place of refuge than a place of detention. The chords of life had been cruelly jarred in her bosom, and the discords in her character thence resulting agonized her more than they displeased others. As for the extraordinary communication which had led to this disorder of mind, we do not hesitate, under the circumstances, to pronounce it an act of gratuitous cruelty. Of all pangs that can assail a human heart, none transcends that of learning the worthlessness of those we love; and to lay this burden, which has crushed and crazed the strongest natures, upon the tender heart of a child, was little less than murderous. Nor can the motive assigned justify an act so cruel; since modern morality increasingly teaches that the means must justify themselves, as well as the end. In spite of these odious revelations, the child felt that her love for her mother was undiminished, and a pitying comprehension of the natural differences between the two nearest to her on earth slowly arose in her mind, allowing her to do justice to the intentions of both.

Aurore wandered at first about the convent with only a vague feeling of loneliness. The young girls, French and English, who composed its classes, surveyed her in the beginning with distrust. Soon the youngest and wildest set, called Diables, accorded her affiliation, and in their company she managed to increase tolerably the anxieties and troubles of the under-mistresses.

She was early initiated into the great secret, the traditionary legend of the convent. This pointed at the existence, in some subterranean dungeon, of a wretched prisoner, or perhaps of several, cut off from liberty and light; and to deliver the victim became the object of a hundred wild expeditions, by day and by night, through the uninhabited rooms and extensive vaults of the ancient edifice. The little ladies hoarded with care their candle-ends,—they tumbled up and down ruinous staircases, listened for groans and complaints, tried to undermine walls and partitions, fortunately with little success. The victim was never found, but her story was bequeathed from class to class, and her deliverance was always the object and excuse of the Diables.

After much time wasted in these pursuits, attended by a mediocre progress in the ordinary course of study and what the French call leçons d'agrément, and we accomplishments, a critical moment came for Aurore. She was weary of frolic and mischief,—she had tormented the nuns to her heart's content. She knew not what new comedy to invent. She thought of putting ink in the holy water,—it had been done already; of hanging the parrot of the under-mistress,—but they had given her so many frights, there would be nothing new in that. She saw, one evening, the door of the little chapel open;—its quiet, its exquisite cleanliness and simplicity attracted her. She had followed thither to mock at the awkward motions of a little hunch-backed sister at her devotions,—but once within she forgot this object. A veiled nun was kneeling in her stall at prayer,—a single lamp feebly illuminated the white walls,—a star looked in at her through the dim window. The nun slowly rose and departed. Aurore was left alone. A calm, such as she had never known, took possession of her,—a sudden light seemed to envelop her,—she heard the mystical sentence vouchsafed to Saint Augustin: "Toile, lege!" Turning to see who whispered it, she found herself alone.

"I cherished no vain illusion. I did not believe in a miraculous voice. I understood perfectly the sort of hallucination into which I had fallen. I was neither elated nor frightened at it. Only, I felt that Faith was taking possession of me, as I had wished, through the heart. I was so grateful, in such delight, that a torrent of tears inundated my face. 'Yes, yes, the veil is torn!' I said, 'I see the light of heaven! I will go! But, before all, let me render thanks. To whom? how? What is thy name?' said I to the unknown God who called me to him. 'How shall I pray to thee? What language worthy of thee and capable of expressing its love can my soul speak to thee? I know not; but thou readest my heart,—thou seest that I love thee!'"

From this moment, Aurore gave herself up to the passion of devotion, which, in natures like hers, is often the first to unclose. There are all sorts of religious experiences,—some poor and shallow, some rich and deep, with every variety of shade between. But wherever Love is capable of being heroic, Religion will also find room to work its larger miracles. Aurore's devotion was not likely to be a frigid recognition of doctrine, nor to consist in the minute care of an infinitesimal soul, whose salvation could be of small avail to any save its possessor. Her religion could only be a sympathetic and contagious flame, running from soul to soul, as beacon-fires catch at night and illuminate a whole tract of country. From this time she became patient, thorough, and laborious in all the duties of her age and place. A closer sympathy now drew her to the nuns, with several of whom she formed happy and intimate relations. The convent life became for the time her ideal of existence, and she formed the plan, so common among young girls educated in this manner, of taking the veil herself, when such a step should become possible. This hidden purpose she carried with her, when, at the age of sixteen, she quitted the convent with bitter regret, fearing the strange world, fearing a conventional marriage, and looking back to the pleasant restraints of tutelage, whose thorn hedges are always in blossom when we view them from the dusty ways and traffic of real, responsible life.

Aurore exchanged her convent for a life of equal retirement; for her grandmother, fearing lest the pietistic influences to which she had been subjected should awake too dominant a chord in the passionate nature of her pupil, brought her to Nohant at once, where, for a few days, she realized the delight of a greater freedom from rule and surveillance. It was pleasant for once, she says, to sleep into la grasse matinée, to wear a bright gingham instead of her dress of purple serge, and to comb her hair without being reminded that it was indecent for a young girl to uncover her temples. The projects of marriage which had alarmed her were abandoned for the present, and she was left to enjoy, unmolested, the pleasure of finding again the friends and playmates of her youth. It soon appeared, however, that the convent education had left many a lacune, and the grandmother felt that the result of the three years' claustration in nowise corresponded to its expense. Aurore set herself to work to fill up, in secret, the many blanks left by her preceptresses,—wishing, as she says, to conceal, as far as she could, their want of faith or of thoroughness. She sat at her books half the night, being gifted, according to her own account, with a marvellous power of sacrificing sleep to any other necessity. At this time she learned to ride on horseback, her first exploit being to tame a colt of four years, the after-companion of many a wild scramble, who grew old and died in her service. Her grandmother becoming soon after disabled by a paralytic stroke, the alternation of this new exercise enabled Aurore to bear the fatigues of the sick-room without serious inconvenience. Of this period of her life our heroine speaks as follows:—

"Had my destiny caused me to pass immediately from my grandmother's control to that of a husband, or of a convent, it is possible that, subjected always to influences already accepted, I should never have been myself. But it was decided by Fate that at the age of seventeen years I should experience a suspension of external authority, and that I should belong wholly to myself for nearly a year, to become, for good or evil, what I was to be for nearly all the rest of my life."

Passing much of her time at the bedside of the invalid, now incapable of giving any further direction to the young life so dear to her, Aurore plunged into many studies which opened to her new worlds of thought and observation. She read Châteaubriand with delight. The "Genie du Christianisme" proved to her rather an intellectual than a religious stimulant, and under its impulse she proceeded, as she says, to encounter without ceremony the French and other authors most quoted at that time, to wit: Locke, Bacon, Montesquieu, Leibnitz, Pascal, La Bruyère, Pope, Milton, Dante, and others not below these in difficulty. She studied them in a crude and hurried manner; but that wonderful alembic of youth, with its fiery heat of ardor, enabled her to compose these far and hastily gathered ingredients into a certain homogeneity of knowledge. "The brain was young," she says, "the memory always fugitive; but the sentiment was quick, and the will ever tense." From these pursuits, interrupted by the cares of nursing, she broke loose only to mount her favorite Colette, and accompany Deschartres in his hunting expeditions. She attempted also to acquire some knowledge of Natural History, Mineralogy, and so on; but science was always less congenial to her than literature, and of Leibnitz, the "Théodicée" is the only work of which she speaks with any familiarity. For convenience in riding and hunting, she adopted, on occasion, the dress of a boy, a blouse, cap, and trousers, to the great scandal of the neighborhood, already indisposed towards her by reason of her eccentric reputation; since, as one can imagine, a small French province is the last place in the world where a young girl can display the lone-star banner of individuality with impunity.

Aurore had promised her aged relative that she would not read Voltaire before the age of thirty; but her literary wanderings soon brought her across the path of Rousseau.

The French make the reading of the "Nouvelle Héloïse" one of the epochs in the life of woman. According to its motto, "The mother will not allow the daughter to read it," this critical act is by common consent adjourned till after marriage, when, we suppose, it appears something in the light of a Bill of Rights, a coming to the knowledge of what women can do, if they will. But as all Julie's divagations occur before marriage, and as her subsequent life becomes a model of Puritanic duty and piety, one does not understand the applicability of her example to French life, in which this progress is reversed. In this, as in all works of true genius, people of the most opposite ways of thinking take what is congenial to themselves,—the ardent and passionate fling themselves on the swollen stream of Saint Preux's stormy love, the older and colder justify Julie's repentance, and the slow but certain rehabilitation of her character. With all its magnificences, and even with the added zest of a forbidden book, the "Nouvelle Héloïse" would be very slow reading for our youth of today. Its perpetual balloon voyage of sentiment was suited to other times, or finds sympathy to-day with other races. With all this, there is a great depth of truth and eloquence in its pages,—and its moral, which at first sight would seem to be, that the blossom of vice necessarily contains the germ of virtue, proves to be this wiser one, that you can tell the tree only by its fruits, which slowly ripen with length of life. As a novel, it is out of fashion,—for novels have fashion; as a development of the individuality of passion, it has perhaps no equal. Be sure that Aurore saw in it its fullest significance. It was strange reading for the disciple of the convent, but she had laid her bold hand upon the tree of the knowledge of good and of evil. She was not to be saved like a woman, through ignorance, but like a man, through the wisdom which has its heavenly and its earthly side. "Émile," the "Contrat Social," and the rest of the series succeeded each other in her studies; but she does not speak of the "Confessions," a book most cruel to those who love the merits of the author, and to whom the nauseating vulgarity of his personal character is a disgust scarcely to be recovered from. Taken at his best, however, Rousseau was the Saint John of the Revolutionary Gospel, though the bloody complement of its Apocalypse was left for other hands than his to trace. To Aurore, stumbling almost unaided through fragmentary studies of science and philosophy, his glowing, broad, synthetic statement was indeed a revelation. It made an epoch in her life. She compared him to Mozart. "In politics," she says, "I became the ardent disciple of this master, and I followed him long without restriction. As to religion, he seemed to me the most Christian of all the writers of his time. I pardoned his abjuration of Catholicism the more easily because its sacraments and title had been given to him in an irreligious manner, well calculated to disgust him with them." But with Aurore, too, the day of Catholicism was over,—its rites were become "heavy and unhealthy" to her. Her faith in things divine was unshaken; but the confessional was empty, the mass dull, the ceremonial ridiculous to her. She was glad to pray alone, and in her own words. Hers was a nature beyond forms. By a rapid intuition, she saw and appropriated what is intrinsic in all religions,—faith in God and love to man. However wild and volcanic may have been her creed in other matters, she has never lost sight of these two cardinal points, which have been the consolation of her life and its redemption. The year comprising these studies and this new freedom ended sadly with the death of her grandmother.

And now, her real protectress being removed, the discords of life broke in upon her, and asserted themselves. Scarcely was the beloved form cold, when Aurore's mother arrived, to wake the echoes of the chateau with wild abuse of its late mistress. By testamentary disposition, Madame Dupin had made Aurore her heir, and had named two of her own relatives as guardians; but the mother now insisted on her own rights, and, after much acrimonious dispute and comment, carried Aurore from her beloved solitudes to her own quarters in Paris,—a journey of sorrow, and the beginning of sorrows. In her childhood Aurore had often longed for this mother's breast as her natural refuge, and the true home of her childish affections. But it "was one of those characters of self-will and passion which deteriorate in later life, and in which no new moral beauties spring up to replace the impulsive graces of youth. Regarding Aurore now as the work of another's hands, she made her the victim of ceaseless and causeless petulance. Her gross abuse of her mother-in-law gave Aurore many tears to shed in private, while her persecution of poor Deschartres drove her daughter to the expedient of shielding him—with a lie. The poor tutor had administered the affairs of Nohant for some time. He was now called to account for every farthing with the most malignant accuracy, and a sum of money, lost by ill-management, not being satisfactorily accounted for, his new tormentor threatened him with prison and trial. As he muttered to his late pupil that he would not survive this disgrace, she stepped forward and shielded him after the fashion of Consuelo.

"I have received this money," said she.

"You? Impossible! What have you done with it?"

"No matter, I have received it."

Deschartres was saved, and Aurore had only availed herself of the first of a Frenchwoman's privileges. Nor will we reckon with her too harshly for this lie, so benevolent in intention, so merciful in effect. A lie sometimes seems the only refuge of the oppressed; but there is always something better than a lie, if we could only find it out. Here is her account of the scene itself:—

"To have gone through a series of lies and of false explanations would not, perhaps, have been possible for me. But from the moment that it was only necessary to persist in a 'yes' to save Deschartres, I thought that I ought not to hesitate. My mother insisted:—

"'If M. Deschartres has paid you eighteen thousand francs, we can easily find it out. You would not give your word of honor?'

"I felt a shudder, and I saw Deschartres ready to speak out.

"'I would give it!' I cried out

"'Give it, then,' said my aunt.

"'No, Mademoiselle,' said my mother's lawyer, 'don't give it.'

"'She shall give it!' cried my mother, to whom I could scarcely pardon this infliction of torture.

"'I give it,' I replied;' and God is with me against you in this matter.'

"'She has lied! she lies!' cried my mother. 'A bigot, a _philosophailleuse.' She is lying and defrauding herself.'

"'Oh, as to that,' said the lawyer, laughing, 'she has the right to do it, since she robs only herself.'

"'I will take her with her Deschartres before the justice of the peace,' said my mother. 'I will make her take oath by Christ, by the Gospel!'

"'No, Madame,' said the lawyer, 'you will go no further in this matter; and as for you, Mademoiselle, I beg your pardon for the annoyance I have given you. Charged with your interests, I felt obliged to do so.'"

Eternal shame to those who make use of any authority to force the secrets of a generous heart, cutting off from it every alternative but that of a loathed deceit, or still more hateful, and scarcely less guilty, betrayal!

Aurore now found herself in the hands of a woman of the people, ennobled for a time by beauty and a true affection, but sinking, her good inspiration gone, into the bitterest ill-temper and most vulgar uncharity. Detesting her superiors in rank and position, she soon managed to cut off Aurore from all intercourse with her father's family, and thus to frustrate every prospect of her marriage in the sphere for which she had been so carefully educated. She was even forbidden to visit her old friends at the convent, and was eventually placed by her mother with a family nearly unknown to both, whose pity had been excited by her friendless condition and unhappy countenance. Aurore's mother seems to us, du reste, the perfect type of a Parisian lorette, the sort of woman so keenly attractive with the bloom of youth and the eloquence of passion,—but when these have passed their day, the most detestable of mistresses, the most undesirable of companions. Men of all ranks and ages acknowledge their attraction, endure their tyranny, and curse the misery it inflicts. Marriage and competency had protected this one from the deteriorations which almost inevitably await those of her class, but they could not save her from the natural process of an undisciplined mind, an ungoverned temper, and a caprice verging on insanity. This self-torment of caprice could be assuaged only by constant change of circumstance and surroundings; her only resource was to metamorphose things about her as often and as rapidly as possible. She changed her lodgings, her furniture, her clothes, retrimmed her bonnets continually, always finding them worse than before. Finally, she grew weary of her black hair, and wore a blond periwig, which disgusting her in turn, she finished by appearing in a different head of hair every day in the week.

Aurore's new friends proved congenial to her, and the influence of their happy family-life dispersed, she says, her last dreams of the beatitudes of the convent. It was in their company that she first met the man destined to become her husband. Most of us would like to know the impression he made upon her at first sight. We will give it in her own words.

"We were eating ices at Tortoni's, after the theatre, when my mother
Angèle [her new friend] said to her husband,—'See, there is Casimir.'

"A slender young man, rather elegant, with a gay aspect and military bearing, came to shake hands with them. He seated himself by Madame Angèle, and asked her in a low voice who I was.

"'It is my daughter,' she replied.

"'Then,' whispered he, 'she is my wife. You know that you have promised me the hand of your eldest daughter. I thought it would have been Wilfrid; but as this one seems of an age more suitable to mine, I accept her, if you will give her to me.'

"Madame Angèle laughed at this, but the pleasantry proved a prediction."

Aurore had given her new protectors the titles of Mother Angèle and Father James, and they in turn called her their daughter. The period of her residence with them at Plessis appears in her souvenirs as an ideal interval of happiness and repose, a renewal of the freedom and insousiance of childhood, with the added knowledge of their value, a suspension of the terrible demands and interests of life. Would that this ideal period could be prolonged for women!—but the exigencies of the race, or perhaps the fears of society, do not permit it. The two-faced spectre of marriage awaits her, for good or ill. The aphelion of a woman's liberty is soon reached, the dark organic forces bind her to tread the narrow orbit of her sex, and if, at the farthest bound of her individual progress, the attraction could fail, and let her slip from the eternal circle, chaos would be the result.

Uninvited, therefore, but unrepulsed, Hymen approached our heroine in the form of Casimir Dudevant, the illegitimate, but acknowledged son and heir of Colonel Dudevant, an officer of good standing and reasonable fortune. The only feeling he seems to have inspired in the bosom of his future wife was one of mild good-will. His only recommendation was a decent degree of suitableness in outward circumstances. For the true wants of her nature he had neither fitness nor sympathy; but she did not know herself then,—she was not yet George Sand. From the stand-point of her later development, her marriage would seem to us a low one; but we must remember that she started only from the plane, and not the highest plane, of French society, in which a marriage of some sort is the first necessity of a woman's life, and not the crowning point of her experience. To compensate the rigor of such a requisition, a French marriage, though civilly indissoluble, has yet a hundred modifications which remove it far from the Puritan ideal which we of the Protestant faith cherish. Hence the French novel, whose strained sentiment and deeply logical immorality have wakened strange echoes among us of the stricter rule and graver usage.

Without passion, then, or tender affection on either side, but with a tolerable harmony of views for the moment, and after long and causeless opposition on the part of Aurore's mother, this marriage took place. Aurore was but eighteen; her bridegroom was of suitable age. With dreams of a peaceful family existence, and looking forward to maternity as the great joy and office of the coming years, she brought her husband to Nohant, whose inheritance had been settled by contract upon the children of this marriage.

But these dreams were not to be realized. Aurore was not born to be the companion of a dull, narrow man, nor the Lady Bountiful of a little village in the heart of France. Would she not have had it so? She tells us that she would; and as honesty is one of her strong points, we may believe her. She knew not the stormy ocean of life, nor the precious freight she carried, when she committed the vessel of her fortunes to so careless a hand as that of M. Dudevant. She throws no special blame or odium upon him, nor does he probably deserve any.

The recital of the events spoken of above brings us well into the eighth volume of the "Histoire de ma Vie"; and as there are but ten in all, the treatment of the things that follow is pursued with much less detail, and with many a gap, which the malevolent among our author's contemporaries would assure us that they know well how to fill up. Between the extreme reserve of the last two volumes and the wild assertions of so many we would gladly keep the juste milieu, if we could; but we wish only truth, and it is not at the hands of the scandalmongers of any society—is it?—that we seek that commodity. The decree of the court which at a later day gave her the guardianship of her children, and the friendship of many illustrious and of some irreproachable men, must be accepted in favor of her of whom we write,—and the known fanaticism of slander, and the love of the marvellous, which craves, in stories of good or evil, such monstrous forms for its gratification, cause us, on the other side, to deduct a large average from the narrations current against her. But we anticipate.

Aurore, at first, was neither happy nor unhappy in her marriage. Her surroundings were friendly and pleasant, and the birth of a son, a third Maurice, soon brought to her experience the keenest joy of womanhood. Before this child numbered two years, however, she began to feel a certain blank in her household existence, an emptiness, a discouragement as to all things, whose cause she could not understand. In this ennui, she tells us, her husband sympathized, and by common consent they strove to remedy it by frequent changes of abode. They visited Paris, Plessis, returned to Nohant, made a journey in the Pyrenees, a visit to Guillery, the château of Colonel Dudevant. Still the dark guest pursued them. Aurore does not pretend that there was any special cause for her suffering. It was but the void which her passionate nature found in a conventional and limited existence, and for which as yet she knew no remedy. The fervor of Catholic devotion had, as we have seen, long forsaken her; her studies did not satisfy her; her children—she had by this time a daughter—were yet in infancy; her husband was not unkind, but indifferent, and the object of indifference. She occupied herself with the business of her estate, and with the wants of the neighboring poor; but she was unsuccessful in administering her expenses, and her narrow revenue did not allow her to give large satisfaction to her charitable impulses. After some years of seclusion and effort, she began to dream of liberty, of wealth,—in a word, of trying her fortunes in Paris. She felt a power within her for which she had found no adequate task. She speaks vaguely, too, of a Being platonically loved, and loving in like manner, absent for most of the year, and seen only for a few days at long intervals, whose correspondence had added a new influence to her life. This attenuated relation was, however, broken before she made her essay of a new life. Her half-brother, Hippolyte, brought to Nohant a habit of joviality which soon degenerated into chronic intemperance; and though she does not accuse her husband of participation in this vice, or, indeed, of any wrong towards her, she yet makes us understand that an occasional escape from Nohant became to her almost a matter of necessity. She, therefore, made arrangements, with her husband's free consent, to pass alternately three months in Paris and three months at home, for an indefinite period; and leaving Maurice in good hands, and the little Solange, her daughter, for a short time only, she came to Paris in the winter with the intention of writing.

Her hopes and pretensions were at first very modest. It had been agreed that her husband should pay her an annual pension of fifteen hundred francs. She would have been well satisfied to earn a like sum by her literary efforts. She established herself in a small mansarde, a sort of garret, and managed by great economy to furnish it so that Solange could be made comfortable. She washed and ironed her fine linen with her own hands. Not finding literary employment at once, and her slender salary running very low, she adopted male attire for a while, as she says, because she was too poor to dress herself suitably in any other. The fashion of the period was favorable to her design. Men wore long square-skirted overcoats, down to the heels. With one of these, and trousers to match, with a gray hat and large woollen cravat, she might easily pass for a young student.

"I cannot express the pleasure my boots gave me. I would gladly have slept with them on. With these little iron-shod heels, I stood firm on the pavement. I flew from one end of Paris to the other. I could have made the circuit of the world, thus attired. Besides, my clothes did not fear spoiling. I ran about in all weathers, I came back at all hours, I went to the pit of every theatre. No one paid me any attention, or suspected my disguise. Besides that, I wore it with ease; the entire want of coquetry in my costume and physiognomy disarmed all suspicion. I was too ill-dressed, and my manner was too simple, to attract or fix attention. Women know little how to disguise themselves, even upon the stage. They are unwilling to sacrifice the slenderness of their waists, the smallness of their feet, the prettiness of their movements, the brilliancy of their eyes; and it is by all these, nevertheless, it is especially by the look, that they might avoid easy detection. There is a way of gliding in everywhere without causing any one to turn round, and of speaking in a low, unmodulated tone which does not sound like a flute in the ears which may hear you. For the rest, in order not to be remarked as a man, you must already have the habit of not making yourself remarked as a woman."

This travesty, our heroine tells us, was of short duration;—it answered the convenience of some months of poverty and obscurity. Its traditions did not pass away so soon;—ten years later, her son, in his beardless adolescence, was often taken for her, and sometimes amused himself by indulging the error in those who accosted him. But in the greatly changed circumstances in which she soon found herself, the disguise became useless and unavailing. Its economy was no longer needed, and the face of its wearer was soon too well known to be concealed by hat or coat-collar.

We would not be understood as relaxing in any degree the rigor of repudiation which such an act deserved. Yet it is imaginable, even to an undepraved mind, that a woman might sometimes like to be on the other side of the fence, to view the mad bull of publicity in its own pasture, and feel that it cannot gore her. Poor George! running about in the little boots, and wearing a great ugly coat and woollen choker,—it was not through vanity that you did this. Strange sights you must have seen in Paris!—none, perhaps, stranger than yourself! The would-be nun of the English convent walking the streets in male attire, and even, as you tell us, with your hands in your pockets! Yet when little Solange came to live with you, as we understand, you put on your weeds of weakness again;—your little daughter made you once more a woman!

For she was George Sand now. Aurore Dupin was civilly dead, Aurore Dudevant was uncivilly effaced. She had taken half a name from Jules Sandeau,—she had wrought the glory of that name herself. Yes, a glory, say what you will. Elizabeth Browning's hands were not too pure to soothe that forehead, chiding while they soothed; and these hands, not illustrious as hers, shall soil themselves with no mud flung at a sister's crowned head.

Every one knows the story of the name: how she and Jules Sandeau wrote a novel together, and sought a nom de plume which should represent their literary union,—how soon she found that she could do much better alone, and the weak work of Carl Sand was forgotten in the strong personality of George Sand. Of Jules Sandeau she speaks only as of the associate of a literary enterprise;—the world accords him a much nearer relation to her; but upon this point she cannot, naturally, be either explicit or implicit. One thing is certain: she was a hard worker, and did with her might what her hand found to do. She wrote "Indiana," "Lelia," "Valentine," and had fame and money at will. Neither, however, gave her unmixed pleasure. The éclat of her reputation soon destroyed her incognito, while the sums of money she was supposed to receive for her works attracted to her innumerable beggars and adventurers of all sorts. To ascertain the real wants and character of those who in every imaginable way claimed her assistance became one of the added labors of her life. She visited wretched garrets or cellars, and saw miserable families,—discovering often, too late, that both garret and family had been hired for the occasion. It was now that she first saw the real plagues and ulcers of society. Her convent had not shown her these, nor her life amid the peasantry of Berry. Only great cities produce those unhealthy and unnatural human growths whose monstrosities are their stock in trade, whose power of life lies in their depravation. She tells us that these horrors weighed upon her, and caused her to try various solutions of the ills that are, and are permitted to be. She was never tempted to become an atheist, never lost sight of the Divine in life, yet the necessity of a terrible fatalism seemed to envelop her. With her numerous friends, she sought escape from the dilemma through various theories of social development; and they often sat or walked half through the night, discussing the fortunes of the race, and the intentions of God. With her most intimate set, this sometimes led to a jest, and "It is time to settle the social question" became the formula of announcing dinner. These considerations led the way to her adoption of socialistic theories in later years, of which she herself informs us, but hints at the same time at many important reservations in her acceptance of them.

In process of time she visited Italy with Alfred de Musset. The fever seized on her at Genoa, and she saw the wonders of the fair land through half-shut eyes, alternately shivering and burning. In the languor of disease, she allowed the tossing of a coin to decide whether she should visit Rome or Venice. Venice came uppermost ten times, and she chose to consider it an affair of destiny. Her long stay in this city suggested the themes of several of her romances, and the "Lettres d'un Voyageur" might almost be pages from her own journal. Her companion was here seized with a terrible illness. She nursed him day and night through all its length, being so greatly fatigued at the time of his recovery that she saw every object double, through want of sleep. Yet De Musset went forth from his sick-room with a heart changed towards her. Hatred had taken the place of love. Some say that this cruel change was the punishment of as cruel a deception; others call it a mania of the fever, perpetuating itself thenceforth in a brain sound as to all else. The world does not know about this, and she herself tells us nothing. In the "Lettres d'un Voyageur," however, she gives us to understand that constancy is not her forte, and a sigh escapes with this confession, "Prie pour moi, ô Marguerite Le Conte!"

George Sand was now launched,—with brilliant success, in the world of letters, unheeding the conventional restraints of domestic life. The choicest spirits of the day gathered round her. She was the luminous centre of a circle of light. She did not hold a salon, the mimic court of every Frenchwoman of distinction,—nor were the worldly wits of fashion her vain and supercilious satellites. But De Lamennais climbed to her mansarde, and unfolded therein his theories of saintly and visionary philosophy. Liszt and Chopin bound her in the enchantment of their wonderful melodies. De Balzac feasted her in his fantastic lodgings, and lighted her across the square with a silver-gilt flambeau, himself attired in a flounced satin dressing-gown, of which he was extremely proud. Pierre Leroux instructed her in the old and the new religions, and taught her the history of secret societies. Louis Blanc, Cavaignac, and Pauline Garcia were bound to her by ties of intimacy. She knew Lablache, Quinet, Miekiewiez, whom she calls the equal of Lord Byron. Her intimates in her own province were men of high character and intelligence, nor were friends wanting among her own sex. Good-will and sympathy, therefore, not ill-will and antipathy, inspired her best works. Her views of parties were charitable and conciliatory, and her revolutionism more reconstructive than destructive. Yet, with all this array of good company, we cannot accord her a miraculous immunity from the fatalities of her situation. Of the guilt we are not here called upon to judge; of the suffering many pages in this record of her life bear witness. Little as we know, however, of her own power of self-protection against the tyranny of the selfish and the sensual, we yet feel as if the really base could never have held her in other than the briefest thraldom, and as if her nobler nature must have continually asserted and reasserted itself, with a constant tendency towards that higher liberty which she had sought in the abandonment of outward restraints, but which can never be thus attained. Some great moral safeguards she had in her tireless industry, her love of art, her honesty and geniality of nature, and, above all, in her passionate love for her children. Happily, these deep and solid forces of Nature are calculated to outlast the heyday of the blood, and to redeem its errors.

In connection with her domestic life, she gives some explanations which must not be overlooked. She did not at first quit her husband's roof with an intention of permanent absence, but with the intention of a periodical return thither. In time, however, her presence there became unwelcome, and she found those arrangements of which, as she says, she had no right to complain, but which she could not recognize. Friends intervened, advising an effectual reintegration of the broken marriage; but against this, she says, her conscience, no less than her heart, rebelled. There existed, indeed, no virtual bond between herself and her late husband. Whatever may have been the beginning of their estrangement, it seems certain that he acquiesced in her independence with easy satisfaction. He wrote to her,—"I shall not put up at your lodgings when I come to Paris, because I wish as little to be in your way as I wish to have you in mine." At the same time, by visiting her there, and appearing with her in public, he had given a certain recognition to her position. There was, therefore, no room for penitence on the one side, for forgiveness on the other, and, through these, for a renewable moral relation between the two. The law took cognizance of these facts, when, some years later, M. Dudevant brought an action for civil divorce, wishing to recover possession of his children. His complicity in what had taken place, and the amicable nature of the separation, were so fully established, that the court, recognizing in the parties neither husband nor wife, followed the pleadings of Nature, and bestowed the children where, in the present instance, they were likely to find the warmest cherishing. Under this decision, she gave up the estate of Nohant to M. Dudevant, who, becoming weary of its management, returned it to her, by a later compromise, in exchange for other property, and the home of her childhood now shelters her declining years.

For the history draws near its close; more travels, more novels, more successes, more sorrows, much fond talk of her friends, many of whom death has endeared to her, a shadowy sketch of her seven years' intimacy with Chopin, a sob over the untimely grave of her married daughter, and the wonderful book is ended. Surely, it tells its own moral; and we, who have woven into short measure the tissue of its relations, need not appear either as the apologist of a very exceptional woman, or as the vindicator of laws inevitable and universal, the mischief of whose violation no human knowledge can justly fathom. The world knows that the life before us is no example for women to follow; but it also knows, we think, that she who led it was on the whole an earnest and sincere person, of ardent imagination and large heart, loving the good as well as the beautiful, even if often mistaken in both,—and above all, honest in her errors and their acknowledgment. Gross injustice has, no doubt, been done her. The creations of her powerful fancy have been taken for images of herself, and the popular mind, delighting to elevate all things beyond the bounds of Nature, has made her a monster. It is clear, we think, that those who have represented her as plunged headlong in a career of vice and dissipation, the companion of all that is low and trivial, have slandered alike her acts and her intentions. Like the rest of us, she is the child of her antecedents and surroundings. Her education was as exceptional as her character. Her marriage brought no moral influence to bear upon her. Her separation opened before her a new and strange way, never to be trodden by any with impunity. Yet we do not believe, that, in the most undesirable circumstances of her life, she ever long lost sight of its ideal object. We do not doubt that her zeal for human progress, her sympathy for the wrongs of the race, and her distrust of existing institutions were deep and sincere. We do not doubt that she was devoted in friendship, disinterested in love, ardent in philanthropy. She has seen the poverty and insincerity of society; she has quarrelled with what she calls the shams of sacred things, the merely conventional marriage, the God of bigotry and hypocrisy, the government of oppression and fraud; but she ends by recognizing and demanding the marriage of heart, the God of enlightened faith, the government of order and progress. Responding to the dominant chord of the nineteenth century, she strove to exalt individuality above sociality, and passion above decorum and usage. Nor would she allow any World's Congress of morals to settle the delicate limits between these opposing vital forces, between what we owe to ourselves and what we owe to others. If there be a divine of passion for which it is noble to suffer and sacrifice, there is also a deeper divine of duty, far transcending the other both in sacrifice and in reward. To this divine, too often obscured to all of us, her later life increasingly renders homage; and to its gentle redemption, our loving, pitying hearts—the more loving, the more pitying for her story—are glad to leave her.

Ave, thou long laborious! Ave, thou worker of wonders, thou embalmer of things most fleeting, most precious, so sealed in thy amber,

"That Nature yet remembers
What was so fugitive!"

Thou hast wrought many a picture of wild and guilty passion,—yet methinks thou didst always paint the mean as mean, the generous as generous. Nobler stories, too, thou hast told, and thy Consuelo is as pure as holy charity and lofty art could make her. They complain, that, in the world of thy creations, women are sublime and men weak; may not these things, then, be seen and judged for once through woman's eyes? Much harm hast thou done? Nay, that can only God know. They misquote thee, who veil a life of low intrigue with high-flown dicta borrowed from thy works. Thou art not of their sort,—or, if it be indeed thee they seek to imitate,

"Decipit exemplar vitiis imitabile."

Thy faults have attracted them, not the virtues that redeem them. Shake thyself free of such, and with those who have loved much, and to whom much has been forgiven, go in peace! The shades of the Poets will greet thee as they greeted Dante and Virgil, when, thyself a shade, thou goest towards them. The heart that fainted at Francesca's sorrows will not refuse a throb to thine. For there is a gallery of great women, great with and without sin, where thou must sit, between Sappho and Cleopatra, the Magdalen thy neighbor,—nor yet removed wholly out of sight the Mother of the Great Forgiveness of God.

* * * * *

HAIR-CHAINS.

It was really a magnificent ball! The host had determined that his entertainment should minister to all the senses of his guests, and had succeeded so well that there was only room to regret there were but five senses to be gratified. Only five gates in the fortified wall within which the shy soul intrenches itself, where an attack may be made. And even when these are all carried by storm, there are sometimes inner citadels, impregnable to the magic torrent streaming through the Beautiful Gates, where she may survey intruders with calm disdain. In vain floods of delicious intoxication beat against her lofty retreat: she calmly analyzes the sweet poison, (as she thinks it,) separates and retains the solid fact whose solution had enriched the otherwise barren stream, and indifferently suffers the rest to flow by. These are the souls of philosophers and wise men, who never are drowned, never surprised. But the bountiful host had not cared only for these grand super-sensual people, but had striven perfectly to satisfy the eyes, the ears, the noses, the palates of the more numerous throng of weaker folk, whose inner fortifications were not so well defended. Hundreds of wax candles illuminated the far-reaching saloons with soft lustre. The walls were tinted with the most delicate hues, that afforded a pleasant cool background to the blazing rooms, and relieved the rich colors of the pictures. In all the pictures adorning the walls, the eye revelled in the luxurious coloring, careless of the absence of distinctness of form and grand pure outline. Scenes in the dark heart of tropical forests, the dense green foliage here and there startlingly relieved by a bright scarlet flower or the brilliant plumage of a songless bird,—gorgeous sunsets on American prairies, where the rolling purple ground contrasted with the crimson and golden glories of eventide,—vivid sketches along the Mediterranean, the blue sea embracing the twin sky,—vineyards ripening under the mellow Italian sun,—fields of yellow wheat bending to the sickles of English reapers,—and sometimes, half hidden by the folds of a heavy crimson curtain, one was startled to discover the solemn icebergs and everlasting snows of the Arctic regions. The wood-work of all the rooms was of dark oak, so that each appeared with its brilliantly dressed company to be a flashing gem set in a rich casket. A shadow of music wandered through the air, sometimes blended with the sound of the falling fountain in the green-house, sometimes almost absorbed in the fragrance of the flowers.

For two hours the carriages had been steadily streaming under the archway, and pouring their fair occupants, gauzy as summer, into the blazing saloons. The flashing candelabra drew the poor little moths from the outermost corners into the central vortex of light. Dazzled by the hot radiance, they strove to retreat again into the cool conservatories and side-rooms; but at that moment threads of music that had been carelessly winding through the crowd were caught up by an unseen hand and knotted,—and behold! already the moths found themselves imprisoned in a strong net-work of sound, whose intricate meshes entangled the rooms and the company, and the very light itself. The light, however, was too subtile for long confinement; it slipped along the melodious mazes, and melted into the rich odor that exhaled from the roses and jessamines in the conservatory. The light was a welcome visitor to the hyacinths and roses, obliged to hide in torturing silence in the still green-house, pouring out their passionate dumb life in intensity of fragrance. A life just hovering on the borders of the world, and yet forbidden to enter! But, bathed in the glowing effulgence of the light, this invisible fragrance could be born, and enter the visible world as color. For the fragrance is the unborn soul of the flower; color, that soul arrested in its restless wanderings,—embodied fragrance. Then the colors upon the purple hyacinths and white jessamines, and the flashing gems that rested on white bosoms like glittering drops of ice upon a snow-wreath, and the sheen of rustling silks, and the gilded picture-frames, and the florid carpets, and the twinkling feet on the carpets' roses, and the flushing of roses in the dancers' cheeks, and the radiant heads of the white-robed girls, ran into one another, blending into an intensity of color that dimmed itself. And the music still kept spinning and spinning, and finally wove in the color and fragrance and light with its subtile self; and the background of the woof was the hum and murmur of voices, and the continual rustling of feet. No wonder the poor moths were ensnared in such bewilderment!

Do you pity the captives? But it is a delicious imprisonment, and its fullest delights cannot be realized except by prisoners. In the vast halls of Intellect and Reason one may indeed be master, marching (a little chilled perhaps) with firm step and head erect. But on these enchanted grounds there is no medium between a wretched clearness of insight that reduces every curve to a number of straight lines, all clouds to precipitated vapor, all rainbows to an oblique coincidence between a sunbeam and a drop of water, and a total surrender of self to the influences of the flitting moment.

Away with these fellows, who would force their miserable microscopes before the eyes of these happy gauzy moths!—to-night is only the time for spinning cobwebs. Hold your breath, philosopher, lest you sweep them away too rudely! Alas for the airy cobwebs! In that cool anteroom is a philosopher's broom, hard at work, brushing them remorselessly into a perplexing dilemma,—the frightful increase of the human race.

"If," said the philosopher, emphatically, "if there were any prospect of emigrating to the moon, there would be some hope; but in the present state of affairs we shall soon be eating our own heads off, as the proverb says. Europe is almost exhausted, the ultima Thule of arable territory in America has been reached, Asia barely supports her own immense population; nothing is left but Africa, and she presents a merely hopeful prospect for the future. In a hundred years, what will society do for breadstuffs?"

"Live on rice and potatoes," suggested Anthrops.

"Rash boy, and check the advance of civilization! Have you not reflected that the culture of wheat has been an inseparable adjunct to progress and refinement? The difficulties required to be overcome in preparing the ground and sowing the grain promote prudence, foresight, and care."

"It is certainly hard work enough to dig potatoes," quoth Anthrops.

The philosopher passed over the interruption with a dignified wave of the hand, and continued:—

"The watching and waiting, during its progress to maturity, necessarily produce that patience which is so essential to all scientific effort; and the graceful loveliness of the plant in its various stages of growth materially assists in developing that love for the beautiful which is a necessary element in all harmonious individual or social character. Now what aesthetic culture can you evolve from that stubbed, straggling weed you call the potato?"

The discomfited pupil meekly suggested that he had been considering the dietetic, not the aesthetic properties of the despised vegetable.

"Impossible to separate them, Sir!" cried the philosopher. "If, indeed, you could fill the stomach without the intervention of any process of brain or hand, they might be considered apart. But consider the position of the stomach. Like a Persian monarch, it occupies the centre of the system; despotic from its remote situation and the absolute power it exercises, all parts of the external organism are its ministers: the feet must run for its daily food, the hands must prepare that food with cunning devices, the brain must direct the operations of feet and hands. Now, unlearned youth, wilt thou contend that the degree of refinement evinced by attention or indifference to the niceties of cooking, and so forth, has no bearing upon the character of the man and the race? Take as a standard the method of immediately conveying the food to the mouth, as it has progressed from barbarism. First, fingers; then, pieces of bark; then, rough wooden spoons, knives, two-pronged steel forks; and lastly, an epitome of civilization in each one that is used, five-pronged silver forks, evincing both the increased complexity of the nature that devises the extra prongs, and the refinement of taste that insists upon the silver. It is impossible to use wheat in any of its preparations," ("With five-pronged forks," murmured his attentive pupil parenthetically,) "without at least a piece of bark, for mixing and cooking, if not for eating. But in devouring potatoes, we are—I shudder to think of it—each moment upon the brink of being reduced to the absolute savageness of fingers. No, Sir! the moon and wheat both failing us, there is but one method of escaping universal famine,—peremptory reduction of the population."

Anthrops started; in that country murder was a capital offence.

"I do not mean," continued the philosopher, serenely, "by any forcible diminution of the existing populace: unfortunately, the vulgar prejudices in favor of life are so strong, owing to the miserable preponderance of the Egoistic over the Altruistic instincts, that such an expedient would be unadvisable. I refer to the"—

"What splendid hair!" suddenly exclaimed his young companion, starting forward with great animation to gain a nearer glimpse of its beauties. The owner had stopped for a moment in passing the secluded couple, and the rich chestnut head was presented in clear relief against the confused mass of color and light that streamed through the doorway of the saloon. The billows of hair rose from purple depths of shadow into gleaming crests of golden light, and fell away again in long undulations into the whirlpool of the knot.

While Anthrops was feasting his rapt eyes on the lovely picture, some treacherous fastening gave way, and the whole wavy mass overflowed upon the white shoulders. Then there was bustling and officious assistance, then there was flitting of maidens and crowding of men. They did not care that the hair of the Naiads in the waterfall outside of the city floated all day long over the glittering green waters, or that the soughing grass in the marsh stream lazily swayed to and fro always in sleepy ripples, or that the waving tresses of the weeping-willows were even then sweeping dreamily through the colored air: they cared for none of these things; but how eager and anxious were they to gain one glimpse of her,—fairer in her blushing confusion than before in her stately loveliness! She wound up the long tresses in her hand, and was retreating to the dressing-room, when the music, which had paused for a moment, renewed itself in an inspiriting waltz. Anthrops, forgetful of wheat, potatoes, and universal famine, rushed forward to claim her hand for the dance. The lady sighed, the waltz was so lovely, the young man so attractive, but—her hair? She really must arrange that before anything could be determined in any other direction. And she started backwards in her embarrassment to reach the stairs, and slipped into a little anteroom by mistake. There was but one door; so, when Anthrops followed her in, she could not get out, without at least hearing an additional reason for dancing.

"The waltz will be finished," urged Anthrops. "Take this little dagger, and wind your hair around that; it will be a fitting ornament for you."

As he spoke, he drew from his pocket a small dagger, a toy, but richly carved at the hilt, and offered it to the maiden. He had bought it that day for a little nephew, and had happened to leave it in his pocket. Doubtless, had the waltz been less enticing, or the youth less handsome, or the little anteroom less secluded, Haguna would have rejected the odd assistance. But, as it was, she accepted the jewelled toy, and in a few minutes had dexterously hidden the tiny blade with the thick coils of hair, just leaving the curiously carved face on the hilt to emerge from its shadowy nestling-place.

With the readjustment of her tresses, Haguna recovered the marvellously defensive self-possession that had been momentarily disturbed. So subtile and indefinable was the curious atmosphere that surrounded her, that, while it could be almost destroyed by the consciousness of a disordered toilet, yet the keenest eye could not penetrate beneath it, the most confident demeanor could not impress it, once reestablished.

Anthrops did not notice the change that had taken place in her aspect. Was it not enjoyment enough to whirl through the maddening mazes of the dance, into still deeper entanglements in the mysterious web that now had immeshed the saloons, borne irresistibly along the rapid torrent of music, through crowds swept in eddying circles by fresh gusts of sound, like leaves blown about by the west wind,—at first in low, wide, slow rounds, then whirling faster and faster, higher and higher, until the spiral coil suddenly terminated, and the music and motion fell exhausted together?

It was quite another thing to return to his friend the philosopher, who was now in a very bad humor.

"Such fooling!" he cried, when Anthrops came back much exhilarated.
"That woman is the plague of my life! See," he continued, sarcastically,
"I picked up one of the ugly little pins that she fastens her hair with;
perhaps you might like it for a keepsake."

Anthrops snatched eagerly at the little black thing his old friend held contemptuously balanced on his fingers, but dropped it immediately. Such a miserable thing to hold those glorious tresses! His dagger was better. The recollection that it was his dagger that now confined them dispelled the chill which the irate philosopher had thrown over his glowing excitement; he submissively proposed a return to potatoes, piling up famine and wheat over the one little thought that diffused such a delicious warmth through his breast; as charcoal-burners heap dead ashes over their fire, to hide it from the rough intrusion of chilling winds.

The nest day Haguna sent back the dagger, with a little note, thanking the owner in graceful terms.

"Your graceful politeness last evening, Herr Anthrops, saved me much perplexity, and procured me a delightful waltz. One should indeed be well protected by fortune, to find so readily such a courteous little sword," ("She does not know the difference between a sword and a dagger," thought Anthrops, and he was pleased at her ignorance,) "to supply one's awkward deficiencies." (Anthrops slightly winced as he thought of the little black pins.) "The old man on the hilt is really charming. I actually was obliged to kiss him at parting, he looked so kindly and pleasantly at me. Besides, he was my true benefactor; and my grandmother has often told me, that in her day maidens were very properly more expressive in their gratitude than now." (Anthrops fervently longed for a retrogression in the calendar.) "And I really think my old friend must have been alive then, and have been changed into wood, on purpose to preserve his looks till I could see him. It would be a right pleasant destiny, when one begins to grow old and ugly, to be transformed into wood, and carved as one would wish to appear perpetually. And happier fate still, like Philemon and Baucis, to change into living trees, and flourish for hundreds of years in youth and vigor. There are willow-trees growing on the banks of the river that may easily have been girls who wept themselves into trees, because their hair would soon be gray, and they have exchanged it for tresses of green. Near those willow-trees the princely stranger who has lately occupied the castle will next week give a boating fête, to which I am invited; I suppose you also, courteous Sir, will be present, a knight-errant for distressed damsels?

"HAGUNA."

Anthrops kissed the little old man on the dagger's hilt again and again, and made two equally firm, but entirely disconnected resolutions, simultaneously: namely, never to give his nephew the intended present, and by all means to be at the boat-fête the following week.

The day of the fête arrived,—a clear, lovely day in early June. The host had provided for the accommodation of his guests a number of boats of different sizes, holding two, three, or a dozen people, according to the fancy of the voyagers. Anthrops, descending the flight of steps that led to the river, came unexpectedly upon his old friend the philosopher, apparently emerging from the side of the hill.

"I expected you here," said he; "are you going on the river?"

Anthrops replied in the affirmative.

"Haguna is here, and I have come to exact a promise that you will not sail with her. You will repent it, if you do."

"Better than starvation is a feast and repentance," cried the young man, gayly. "What harm is there in the girl? Though, to be sure, I had no particular intention of sailing with her."

"It would be of no use to warn you explicitly," said his friend; "you would not believe me. But you must not go."

"Nay, good father," returned the youth, a little vexed,—"it is altogether too unreasonable to expect me to obey like a child; give me one good reason why I should avoid her as if she had the plague, and I promise to be guided by you."

"All women have some plague-spot," said the philosopher, sententiously.

"Well, then, I may as well be infected by her as by any one," cried Anthrops, lightly, and was rushing down the steps again, when the philosopher caught him by the arm.

"Follow me," he said; "you will not believe, but still you may see."

He led the way down to the river, and, the youth still following, entered one of the gayly trimmed row-boats and pushed from shore. The boat seemed possessed by the will of its master, and, needing no other guide or impetus, floated swiftly into the centre of the channel. Obeying the same invisible helmsman, it there paused and rocked gently backwards and forwards as over an unseen anchor. The philosopher drew from his pocket a small cup and dipped up a little water. He then handed it to the youth, and bade him look at it through a strong magnifying-glass, which he also gave him. Anthrops was surprised to find a white dust in the bottom of the cup.

"Ah!" said his companion, answering his look of inquiry, "it is bone-dust; and now you may see where it comes from."

Anthrops looked through the magnifying-glass, as he was directed, at the river itself, and found he could clearly see the sand at the bottom. He was horrified at seeing the yellow surface strewn with human bones, bleached by long exposure to the running water.

"Alas!" he exclaimed, sorrowfully, "have so many noble youths perished in these treacherous waters? That golden sand might be ruddy with the blood of its numerous victims!"

"Don't be blaming the innocent waters, simple boy!" half sneered the philosopher. "Lay the blame where it is due, upon the artful river-nixes. Since the creation of the world, the stream has flowed tranquilly between these banks; and during that time do you not suppose that these fair alluring sprites have had opportunity to entice such silly boys as you into the cool green water there below?"

Anthrops gazed long into the still, cruel depths of the river, held spell-bound by a horrible fascination; at last he raised his head, and, drawing a long sigh of relief, exclaimed,—

"Thank fortune, Haguna is no water-nix!"

"What!" cried the angry philosopher, "your mind still running upon that silly witch? Can you learn no wisdom from the fate of other generations of fools, but must yourself add another to the catalogue? She is more dangerous than the nixes: the snares which they laid for their victims were cobwebs, compared to the one she is weaving for you. You admire her hair, forsooth! The silk of the Indian corn is a fairer color, spiders' webs are finer, and the back of the earth-mole is softer; yet in your eyes nothing will compare with it."

"The silk of the Indian corn is golden, but coarse and rough; the threads of the spider's web are fine, but dull and gray; the satin hair of the blind mole is lifeless and stiff. Let me go, old man! I care nothing for your fancied dangers. I shall row her to-day; that is pleasure enough." And he attempted to seize the unused oar.

"Once more, pause! Reflect upon what you are leaving: the pleasures of tranquil meditation, the keen excitements of science, the entrancing delights of philosophy. All these you must abandon, if you leave me now."

Anthrops hesitated a moment.

"How so?" he asked.

"He who is devoted to philosophy must share his soul with no other mistress. No restlessness, no longing after an unseen face, no feverish anxiety for the love or approval of an earthly maiden must disturb the balanced calm of his absorbed mind"—

"Herr Anthrops, Herr Anthrops, how you have forgotten your engagement!"

She was in a boat that had pushed up close to them unawares. Some girls and young men occupied the bows. Haguna was leaning over the stern and waving her hand to Anthrops. So suddenly had she appeared, that it was as if she had risen out of the rippling river, and the ripples still seemed to undulate on her sunny hair and laughing dimpled face: so fresh and bright and fair she seemed in that glad June morning. What did it matter whether he reasoned rightly on any subject?

"Let me go!" he exclaimed to his companion. "Farewell, philosophy! farewell, science! I have chosen."

To his surprise, he discovered that he was suddenly quite alone in the boat. The philosopher had disappeared,—whether by waxen wings, or an invisible cap, or any of the other numerous contrivances of many-wiled philosophers, he did not stop to consider, but hastened to join Haguna and her companions.

"You are a welcome addition to our company," said Haguna, graciously reaching out her white hand; "but you choose strange companions. An old gray owl flew out of your boat a moment ago, scared to find himself abroad in such a pleasant sunlight. I confess I don't altogether admire your taste, not being an orni"—

She appealed in pretty perplexity to the student to help her out of the difficulty into which she had fallen by her rash attempt at large words.

—"Thologist," added Anthrops, much wondering at these new tricks of the philosopher,—and then again he so much the more applauded his own wisdom in exchanging for her society the company of an old owl.

So all the day long he stayed by her, all the day long he followed her, rowing or walking or dancing, or sitting by her under the willows on the banks of the river. The soft breeze routed her shining hair from its compact masses; it touched his cheek as he knelt beside her to pull up the tough-rooted columbine that resisted her fingers; her fragrant breath mingled with the odor of the sweet-scented violets that he plucked for her; the trailing tresses of the mournful willow, swaying in the breeze, brushed them both; the murmuring water at their feet heard a new tale as it flowed past her, and babbled it to him, adding delicious nonsense of its own, endless variations upon the same sweet theme. How happy he was that day! It came to an end, of course; but its death scattered the seeds of other days, that sprang up in gracious profusion, yielding dear delights of flower and fruit. All over his garden these bright plants grew, gradually triumphing over and expelling the coarser and ruder vegetables.

Nothing but flowers would he cultivate now,—and cared not even that they should be perennials, if only the present blooming were gay and gladsome.

One June day, Anthrops joined a pleasure-seeking equestrian party, who rode from the town to spend the day in the woods. What a lovely day it was! The pure, fresh air seemed to contain the very essence of the life it inspired, life drained of all impurity and sadness and foulness by the early summer rains, the springing joyous life of the delicate wood-flowers. The strong trees in the leafy woods trembled with happiness in their boughs and tender sprays; the carolling birds poured forth their brimming songs from full hearts. And upon the interlacing greenery of the shrubbery, and the lichens upon the trees, and the soft moss covering with jealous tenderness the bare places in the ground, the slant sunbeams glittered in the early morning dew. As Anthrops rode along silently by the side of Haguna, an inexpressible joyfulness filled his heart; the light, round, white clouds nestling in the deep bosom of the sky, the faint, delicious odor of the woods, the rustling, murmuring presence that forever dwelt there, all made him unspeakably glad and light-hearted. As he rode, he began to sing a little song that he had learned awhile before.

We rushed from the mountain,
The streamlet and I,
Restless, unquiet,
We scarcely knew why,—
Till we met a dear maiden,
Whose beauty divine
Stilled with great quiet
This wild heart of mine;
And awed and astonished
To peacefulness sweet,
The fierce mountain-torrent
Lay still at her feet."

"A right rare power for beauty to possess!" laughed Haguna. "Are you so restless that you need this soothing, fair Sir?"

A deep, sweet smile gushed out from his eyes and illumined his face. He stretched out his arms lovingly into the warm air, as if he thus infolded some rich joy, and answered, musingly,—

"In ordinary action, thought, and feeling,—we are too conscious of ourselves, we are perplexed with the miserable little 'I,' that, by claiming deed and thought for its own work, makes it little and mean. But the wondrous Beautiful comes to us entirely from outside; our very contemplation of it does not belong to us; we are overpowered and conquered by the vast idea that broods over us. And so that contemplation is pure happiness."

Haguna laughed a little, and a little wondered what he meant; then observed, lightly,—

"You must value yourself very modestly, to consider your greatest happiness to consist in losing your self-consciousness,—unless, indeed, like Polycrates, you hope to insure future prosperity by sacrificing your most valuable possession."

"If so, I, like Polycrates, am the gainer by my own precaution; for, in your presence, dear lady, do I first truly find my right consciousness."

She clapped her hands gleefully, wilfully misunderstanding his meaning.

"Most complimentary of monarchs! So I am the haggard old fisherman who replaced the lost bawble in the royal treasury! Pray, Sire, remember the pension with which I should be rewarded!" And she bowed low, in mock courtesy to her companion.

"Nay," rejoined Anthrops, vexed that his earnest compliment should be so mishandled,—"blame your own perversity for such an interpretation. At your side I forget that I live for any other purpose than to look at you, and lavish my whole soul in an intensity of gazing; and then the presumptuous thought, that you like to have me near you, nay, are sometimes even pleased to talk to me, gives my poor self a value in my own eyes, for the kindness you show me."

"I know all that well enough," said Haguna, quietly. "But in the mean while, dear Anthrops, you must remember that it is really impolite to stare so much."

By this time they had ridden deep into the still woods. Following the light current of their talking, they wound in and out among the green trees, under their broad arching boughs,—now following the path, now beating a new track over the short grass mixed with the crisp gray moss. The sunlight glanced shyly through the fluttering leaves, weaving with their delicate shadows a rare tracery on the grass. The pattern was so intricate and yet so suggestive, they were sure that some strange legend was written there in mysterious characters,—something holding a fateful reason for their ride together in the green woods. But just as they had almost deciphered the secret, the broidered shadow disappeared under a bush, leaving them in new perplexity. They looked for the story in the windings of the checkerberry-vine and blue-eyed periwinkle, on the lichens curiously growing on the boles of aged trees; but for all these they had no dictionary. So they strayed on and on, in the endless mazes of the forest, till they became entirely separated from their companions, and lost all clue for recovering the path.

Anthrops looked in some perplexity at Haguna, to see if she were alarmed at this position of affairs. He was rather surprised to find, that, far from being discouraged, she seemed highly to enjoy the dilemma. She leaned forward a little on her horse, her one gloved hand, dropping the reins on his neck, nestled carelessly in his mane, while the forefinger of the other hand rested on her lip, with a comical expression of mock anxiety, as she looked inquiringly at Anthrops.

"I think," finally exclaimed Anthrops, "that we had better push straight through the woods. We cannot go far without discovering some road that will lead us back to the city."

"Nobly resolved, courageous Sir! But first tell me how we shall pass this first barrier that besets our onward march."

And she pointed the end of the riding-whip that hung at her wrist to a mass of brambles which formed an impenetrable wall immediately in their path. Anthrops rubbed his eyes, for he could scarce believe that this thicket had been there before; it seemed to have grown up suddenly while he turned his head. He then tried to retrace his steps, but was thrown into fresh perplexity by discovering that the trees seemed to have closed in around them, so that he could find no opening for a horse.

"It seems evident to me," said Haguna, "that we must dismount, and find our way on foot. If now we could have deciphered the hieroglyphs of the shadows, we might have avoided this misfortune."

As cool water upon the brow of a fevered man, fell the clear tones of her voice upon Anthrops, bewildered and confused by the sudden enchantment. She, indeed, called it a misfortune, but so cheerily and gayly that her voice belied the term; and Anthrops insensibly plucked up heart, and shook off somewhat of that paralyzing astonishment.

He assisted her to dismount, and, leaving the horses to their fate, they together hunted for some opening in the dense thicket. After much search, Anthrops succeeded in discovering a small gap in the brambles, through which he and Haguna crept, but only into fresh perplexity. They gained a path, but with it no prospect of rejoining their companions; for it wound an intricate course between ramparts of vine-covered shrubbery, that shut it in on either side and intercepted all extended view. The way was too narrow to admit of more than one person passing at a time; and as Haguna happened to have emerged first from the thicket, she boldly took the lead, following the path until they emerged into a more open part of the forest, where the undulating ground was entirely free from underbrush, and the eye roamed at pleasure through the wide glades. Haguna followed some unseen waymarks with sure step, still tacitly compelling Anthrops to follow her without inquiry. As she sped lightly over the turf, she began to hum a little song:—

"Nodding flowers, and tender grass,
Bend and let the lady pass!
Lighter than the south-wind straying,
In the spring, o'er leaves decaying,
Seeking for his ardent kisses
One small flower that he misses,
Will I press your snowy bosoms,
Dainty, darling little blossoms!"

Singing thus, she descended a little hill, and, gliding round its base, disappeared under a thick grape-vine that swung across it from two lofty elms on either side. A spider in conscious security had woven his web across the archway formed by the drooping festoons of the vine; the untrodden path was overgrown with moss. Haguna lifted up the vine and passed under, beckoning Anthrops to follow. He heard her still singing,—

"Quick unclasp your tendrils clinging,
Stealthily the trees enringing!
I have learnt your wily secret:
I will use it, I shall keep it!
Cunning spider, cease your spinning!
My web boasts the best beginning.
Yours is wan and pale and ashen:
After no such lifeless fashion
Mine is woven. Golden sunbeams
Prisoned in its meshes, light gleams
From its shadowest recesses.
Tell me, spider, made you ever
Web so strong no knife could sever
Woven of a maiden's tresses?"

On the other side of the viny curtain, Anthrops discovered the entrance to a large cavern hollowed out in a rock. The cavern was carpeted with the softest moss of the most variegated shades, ranging from faintest green to a rich golden brown. The rocky walls were of considerable height, and curved gracefully around the ample space,—a woodland apartment. But the most remarkable feature in the grotto was a rose-colored cloud, that seemed to have been imprisoned in the farther end, and, in its futile efforts to escape, shifted perpetually into strange, fantastic figures. Now, the massive form of the Israelitish giant appeared lying at the feet of the Philistine damsel; anon, the kingly shoulders of the swift-footed Achilles towered helplessly above the heads of the island girls. The noble head of Marcus Antoninus bowed in disgraceful homage before his wife; the gaunt figure of the stern Florentine trembled at the footsteps of the light Beatrice; the sister of Honorius, from the throne of half the world, saluted the sister of Theodosius, grasping the sceptre of the other half in her slender fingers. Every instance of weak compliance with the whims, of devoted subjection to the power, of destructive attention to the caprices of women by men, since Eve ruined her lord with the fatal apple, was whimsically represented by the rapid configurations of this strange vapor.

Anthrops presently discovered Haguna half reclining on a raised moss-seat, and dreamily running her white fingers through her hair, which now fell unchecked to her feet. He had lost sight of her but a few minutes, yet in that short time a strange change had come over her. Perhaps it was because her rippling hair, which, slightly stirred by the faint air of the cavern, rose and fell around her in long undulations, made her appear as if floating in a golden brown haze. Perhaps it was the familiarity with which she had taken possession of the grotto, as if it had been a palace that she had expected, prepared for her reception. But for some reason she appeared a great way off,—no longer a simple maiden, involved with him in a woodland adventure, but a subtle enchantress, who, through all the seeming accidents of the day, had been pursuing a deep-laid plot, and now was awaiting its triumphant consummation. She did not at first notice Anthrops as he stood in curious astonishment in the doorway; but presently, looking up, she motioned him to another place beside herself.

"This is a pleasant place to rest in for a while before we rejoin our companions," she said; "we are fortunate in finding so pretty a spot."

The natural tone of her frank, girlish voice somewhat dissipated Anthrops's vague bewilderment, and he accepted the proffered seat at her side. He for the first time looked attentively at Haguna, as he had until now been gazing at the shifting diorama behind her. He noticed, to his surprise, a number of bright shining points, somewhat like stars, glistening in her hair, and with some hesitation inquired their nature. Haguna laughed, a low musical laugh, yet with an indescribable impersonality in it,—as if a spring brook had just then leaped over a little hill, and were laughing mockingly to itself at its exploit.

"They are souls," she said.

"Dear me!" exclaimed Anthrops; "are souls no bigger than that?"

"How do you know how large they are?" laughed Haguna, beginning to weave her hair into a curiously intricate braid. "These are but the vital germs of souls; but I hold them bound as surely by imprisoning these."

"But surely every soul is not so weak; all cannot be so cruelly imprisoned."

Again she laughed, that strange laugh.

"Strong and weak are merely relative terms. There is nothing you know of so strong that it may not yield to a stronger, and anything can be captured that is once well laid hold of. I will sing you a song by which you may learn some of the ways in which other things beside souls are caught."

Still continuing her busy weaving, Haguna began to sing. Except the song she had hummed in the woods that afternoon, he had never heard her voice but in speaking, and was astonished at its richness and power; yet it was a simple chant she sang, that seemed to follow the gliding motion of her fingers.

"Running waters swiftly flowing,
On the banks fair lilies growing
Watch the dancing sunbeams quiver,
Watch their faces in the river.
Round their long roots, in and out,
The supple river winds about,—
Wily, oily, deep designing,
Their foundations undermining.
Fall the lilies in the river,
Smoothly glides the stream forever."

The subtle song crept into Anthrops's brain, and seemed to spin a web over it, which, though of lightest gossamer, confined him helplessly in its meshes. Again she sang:—

"From the swamp the mist is creeping;
Fly the startled sunbeams weeping,
Up the mountain feebly flying,
Paling, waning, fainting, dying.
All their cheerful work undoing,
Crawls the cruel mist pursuing.
Shrouded in a purple dimness,
Quenched the sunlight is in shadow;
Over hill and wood and meadow
Broads the mist in sullen grimness."

She had already woven a great deal of her shining hair into a curious braid, so broad and intricate as to be almost a golden web. A strange fascination held Anthrops spell-bound; it was as if her song were weaving her web, and her fingers chanting her song, and as if both song and web were made of the wavering cloud that still shifted into endless dioramas. Once more she sang:—

"Drop by drop the charmed ear tingling,
Rills of music intermingling,
Murmuring in their mazy winding,
All the steeped senses blinding,
Their intricate courses wending,
Closer still the streams are blending.
Down the rapid channel rushing,
Floods of melody are gushing;
Flush the tender rills with gladness,
Drown the listener in sweet madness.
Onward sweeps the eddying singing,
Ever new enchantment bringing.
Break the bubbles on the river,
Faints the wearied sound in darkness;
But, as one that always hearkens,
Floats the charmed soul forever."

As she finished the song, she arose, and threw over the youth the web of her fatal hair. The charmed song had so incorporated itself with the odorous air of the cavern, that every breath he drew seemed to be laden with the subtle music. It oppressed, stifled him; he strove in vain to escape its influence; and as he felt the soft hair brush his cheek, he swooned upon the ground.

The philosopher's study was a very different place from the green wood,—perched up, as it was, on the summit of a bare, bleak mountain. The room was fitted up with the frugality demanded by philosophic indifference to luxury, and the abundance necessitated by a wide range of study. The walls were hung with a number of pictures, in whose subjects an observer might detect a remarkable similarity. A satirical pencil had been engaged in depicting some of the most striking instances of successful manly resistance to female tyranny, of manly contempt for feminine weakness, of manly endurance of woman-inflicted injury. The unfortunate Longinus turned with contemptuous pity from the trembling Zenobia; the valiant Thomas Aquinas hurled his protesting firebrand against the too charming interruption of his scholastic pursuits; the redoubtable Conqueror beat his rebellious sweetheart into matrimony. The flickering light of a wood fire served not merely to illuminate the actual portraits, but almost to discover the sarcastic face of the anonymous artist, smiling in triumph from the background. On the hearth in front of the fire stood the philosopher in earnest conversation with a venerable friend.

"I am provoked beyond measure," exclaimed our friend, in an exceedingly vexed tone. "So much as I had hoped from the boy,—that he, too, could not keep from the silly snare! It is shameful, abominable;—she is always in my way, upsetting all my plans, interfering with everything I undertake. Would you believe it? at the death of one of her sisters, the fools were not content with giving her a funeral good enough for a man, but they must place her hair in the sky for a constellation!"

"That was indeed an insult to Orion," said his sympathizing friend, soothingly.

"My hands are absolutely tied," continued the irate philosopher. "I bestow upon the boys the most careful education, enlarge their minds by the study of the history and destiny of man, of the world, of the stellar system, till I may hope that in the contemplation of the vast universe they have lost their little prejudices and personal preferences. I strengthen their judgment, assiduously exercise their powers of ratiocination, fortify their minds with philosophy, train them to habits of accuracy, patience, and perseverance by long scientific research; and at the moment when I ought to find them useful as philosophers, as seekers after eternal Truth, as lovers of imperishable Wisdom, they degenerate into seekers after eyes and hair and cheeks, and I know not what nonsense, lovers of frail, perishable women, who appear to preserve an astonishing longevity on purpose to plague and thwart rational people."

His friend pondered deeply upon the vexatious problem.

"You say," he remarked, "that this unfortunate attraction exists in spite of philosophical training,—that it is exerted towards the antipodes of their previous associations; that, as they have been trained to yield only to well-grounded syllogisms, it is the illogical mode of assault that vanquishes them unguarded; that their reasonable minds have nothing to say to such, perfectly unreasonable fascinations; that, in short, the enemy succeeds by supplying a vacuum, as the walls of Visibis gave way under the pressure of the dammed-up river?"

"Alas, friend, your observations are too true!"

"Then my way becomes clearer. It surely cannot be unknown to you, sagest of students, that in physical science we oppose a plenum to a vacuum, in medicine we supply a deficiency of saline secretions by the common expedient of salt. Wherefore not apply our knowledge painfully gleaned from lower science to the study of these more complicated phenomena? The coward who would flee the fire of the enemy may be kept at his post by the equal dread of death from his commander. Open a double fire upon these wayward youths. Make the Barbarians enlist in the Roman legions. In short, teach Haguna and the others philosophy. There will then no longer be an opposing force of entirely different nature, but merely an influence of the same kind as he has been accustomed to, though vastly inferior in power."

The philosopher started,—the idea was so new to him.

"But, my friend," he urged, doubtfully, "do you not remember, that, after the Romans had painfully learnt ship-building from the Carthaginians, they vanquished them with their own weapons? Might not some such danger be apprehended in this case?"

His companion reddened with indignation, then spoke in a tone of mildly severe rebuke.

"Are the girls Romans? Do you suppose that in ship-building the silly little things would ever advance beyond scows? We shall have the double advantage of the plenum, by their minds being turned in the same direction as those of our students,—and of the defeat and shipwreck, through fighting in unseaworthy vessels."

"I have another idea also," observed the philosopher. "Even supposing, as I must confess there seems to me a possibility, that in a philosophical tournament, or trial of wits, they should occasionally come off victorious," (his friend shook his head angrily,) "the effect of separation that we desire would still be obtained. Haguna would no longer be able to entangle silly boys in her treacherous hair. Your suggestion is good; I will act upon it."

After some deliberation, they agreed upon the method of procedure, which the philosopher immediately began to put into practice.

Shortly after this conversation, invitations were sent to a select number of the inhabitants of the city to a new kind of entertainment to be given by the recluse philosopher of the mountain. The entertainment was to consist of astronomical and chemical exhibitions; the infinitely great and infinitesimally little were to be conjoined to form an evening's amusement. Such was the programme; and the eager curiosity of the select few who were invited brought them punctually to the philosopher's eyry. Haguna of course was there,—as unconsciously lovely as if the disappearance of the unfortunate Anthrops were as much a mystery to her as to the rest of the wondering citizens. The philosopher, laying aside the brusqueness acquired in his solitude, devoted himself with the utmost courtesy to the amusement of his guests, —opened for them dusty cases of butterflies, shells, and rare stones, which he had collected in his pursuit of the various sciences that made them a specialty,—placed ponderous tomes open at some curious or amusing story of otherwise forgotten ages, to arrest the fancy of elegant literati,—exhibited rare and grotesque curiosities, the glittering mica that he had picked up in his long researches, as toys for these idlers of taste.

The flashing gems and gay dresses of the brilliant assemblage illuminated the dusky old study; the rustling of silks, and the merry laughter, only a trifle subdued by the novelty of the circumstances, the eager chattering, the tripping sound of girlish feet darting in and out of every quaint nook and corner, the varied flow of sprightly conversation, scared the solemn quiet of the library. Looming down grimly from the shelves that lined the walls, stood ponderous volumes, monuments over the graves in which their authors were buried. Oh, the life's blood that had been wrung into those forgotten pages! Oh, the eager hope and sickening disappointment, the vehement aspirations, the intense longings, the bitter hatred, the scorn, the greater than angelic, the human love and benevolence, the fortitude, the courage, the whole strange life of hundreds of dead men, that burned between those thick covers! Often books do not reveal their authors until many years after their death. They are read at first for the mite of fuel that they bring to some blazing controversy; the man is entirely forgotten in his work. But when years, centuries, have passed away, and the fire that threatened to consume the world has died out as quietly as any common bonfire, then the "spirits of the mighty dead" come back calmly to their world-work,—now doubtless seeing its little worth as clearly as their modern critics, but also hallowing their mighty labors with regal authority, as the living garment of a human soul. The marble tombs in graveyards hold empty dust; the real men lie buried alive in quiet libraries.

The philosopher entertained his guests well. But underneath all the polite suavity of his manner could be detected a curious satisfaction at the contrast between the deep sea of still thought usually embosoming his library, and this sparkling, shallow little stream now flowing into it. The prominent popular tricks of science he played off for their amusement, exhibited the standard stars, enlarged upon the most wonder-striking and easily understood facts in the sublime science, and bewildered them with a pleasant enthusiasm of acquisition, by a series of brilliant chemical experiments. The labors of a lifetime were concentrated on a few dazzling results: the long tedium of the means, the painful training, the hard mathematical preparation, the brain-sickness and heart-sickness of these years of solitude were quietly ignored.

But it was round Haguna that he plied the most subtle enchantments,—to her he exhibited the most glittering decoys of Knowledge. She was completely fascinated. Her cheeks grew pale, her large dark eyes deeper and darker, with intense interest. She hung upon every word that fell from the philosopher's lips, pored over the elegant trifles the scholar had collected for the wondering ignorant, and stood abashed before the studied unconsciousness of power,—the power of vast learning, that she felt for the first time. When the guests were departing, she was still reluctant to go,—she timidly followed the watchful philosopher to the mighty telescope that had brought down stars for their playthings that evening.

"My ignorance and weakness overwhelm me," she exclaimed; "would that I could spend my life in this awful library!"

The philosopher repressed his exultation at this confession, and replied,—

"Nothing is easier, Madam, than the gratification of your laudable desire. I am in the habit of receiving pupils, and should be most happy to admit you to my class."

An eager light leaped into her lovely face as she earnestly thanked him for his condescension, and engaged to begin the lessons on the very next day. So, when the guests had all gone, and the scared quiet ventured to brood again over its ancient nestling-place, the wily philosopher threw himself back into his great chair, and laughed a long while with solitary enjoyment.

The next day Haguna wended her lonely way to the bleak hill. It was so stony and bare and treeless,—jutting out against the gray cold sky like a giant sentinel stripped naked, yet still with dogged obstinacy clinging to his post. The hard path pushed up over jagged stones that cut her tender feet, and they left bleeding waymarks on the difficult ascent. Woe, woe to poor trembling Haguna! Uncouth birds whizzed in circles round her head, clanging and clamoring with their shrill voices, striving to beat her back with their flapping wings. The faint sweet fragrance of brier-roses clustering at the foot of the mountain wafted reproachfully upon the chill air an entreaty to return. Once, turning at a sudden bend in the road, she spied a merry party of girls and children crowning each other with quickly fading wreaths of clover-blossoms. A rosy-cheeked child in the centre of the group, enjoying the glory of his first coronation, accidentally pointed his fat fore-finger at her, as if in derision of her undertaking. It was strange, that, although she presently pressed forward eagerly again, she felt glad that none of those laughing girls would leave the sunny valley to follow her example. She had flung her whole soul into the scheme, as is the fashion with girls, and could not recover it again now. It seemed absolutely necessary that somewhere some woman like herself should be compelled to scale this ascent, and she—one of those girls in the valley, for instance, might not be nearly so well able as herself to face this bleakness. Thus she might preserve those sportive triflers in their everlasting childhood by the warning of her sad devotion. Faint shadows of gigantic tasks to be conquered when the hill was surmounted swam through her mind. And somewhat whimsically associated with these, a portrait of the learned Hooker occurred vividly to her imagination,—his face disfigured through his devotion to sedentary pursuits. Involuntarily she smoothed her soft cheek with her little hand. It was still round and velvet as an August peach. Nevertheless she threw this possibility into the burden she was going to assume for humanity, and felt happier as the burden waxed heavier. The innate hunger for sacrifice was gratified, with only the definite prospect of suffering from loss of complexion; a concrete living shape was given to the vague longing that possessed her; and she cheerfully marched on, strong in the hope of the love and reverence she was sure her devotion would gain. Ah, sweet Haguna, Haguna! Sweating enough and toil enough already! Go back, dear child, from a work thou canst not understand, and imprison sunbeams for the panting world in flowery valleys!

By this time she had reached the philosophic hermitage. Her future master met her at the door, and, saluting her with grave courtesy, led the way to a small unfurnished apartment, from whose windows nothing could be seen but the distant sea and sky,—always a solemn monotone of sea and sky.

"And so," he said, with mild irony, "even the maidens must dim their bright eyes with philosophy! Can they leave their dolls so long?"

The hot blood rushed into Haguna's face, as she exclaimed, with intense eagerness,—

"Is it my fault that I am a girl? I come to you to learn, to satisfy the insatiable thirst for knowledge which you have awakened,—and you reproach me with my ignorance! I have just discovered that the one thing I have secretly needed always was to learn to exercise my mind cramped with inaction, to share with you labor and toil."

"Poor child," sighed the philosopher, excited to sudden pity by her ardor, "you know little of the sweat of brain-toil! Do you know that it takes years of painful study to arrive at a single valuable result? that for a distant, doubtful advantage, all your bright, unfettered life must be sacrificed? Each enjoyment must be stinted and weighed,—each day valued only as another step to be climbed in the endless ladder,—all simple, sweet enjoyment of earth and air and sky, the careless, golden halo of each free day, must be given up. Everything must be squared according to an inexorable plan; self must be despised, passions restrained and clarified, till the life becomes thin and attenuated through careful discipline,—all hopes and fears laid aside till the soul becomes accustomed to its chilly atmosphere. Then body and mind must be trained to endure a fearful weariness, to pass the days under such a stern pressure of toil that all loving, graceful interests shall be rooted out of the stony soil. You must be prepared to lose precious truths in a gulf of delusion,—to leave all your old beacon-lights and wander forth in an eternal dark. The troubles that beset weak souls may be dissipated, but new strength brings dreadful trials. Tremendous conflicts, undreamt-of in your innocence, will agitate your adventurous Intellect, penetrating into vast regions of Doubt, where the mind made for belief often reels into madness, goaded by harassing anxiety. Often the lonely night-hours must be spent in sore battle with fearful spectres revived by the roaming soul from their frequent graves. All this and more must he dare who aspires to the lofty service of philosophy."

"All this and more would I gladly suffer," cried Haguna. "There is a fire now in my brain; you have kindled it, and it must be fed. And, moreover, I wish to endure this trial for its own sake; for it is not fitting that men should suffer more than women. Perhaps, too,—am I presumptuous in thinking so?—two workers may so lessen the toil of one that this lonely trial maybe greatly helped by even my assistance."

And her bosom heaved, and glorious tears welled up into her deep blue eyes. The repentant philosopher placed his hand on her lovely head, and lifted a tress of her soft hair.

"Ah, child, child, you know little about it! What! will you sacrifice these glorious tresses to a hard and joyless course of study? For none can study Euclid with me with hair like this."

"Willingly! willingly!" cried Haguna, impetuously, and pulled a pair of scissors from her pocket to immediately make the beautiful offering.

The reluctant philosopher arrested her hand.

"Rash girl! consider yet a moment. You are exchanging a treasure whose value you know for—you know not what. You will bitterly repent."

But Haguna, would not consider. She impatiently tore away her hand, and in a few minutes had closely shorn her head, and the neglected hair lay in rich profusion on the floor. As it lay there, the warm golden brown color faded and faded, and some glittering things entangled in its abundant masses beamed forth for a moment like tiny stars, and then disappeared. And had Haguna stepped into a cloud, that so great a change had come over her? The fine contour of head and forehead, the soft outline of face, the delicate moulding of the chin were the same still,—the dark eyes glowed with even new lustre; but the graceful throat and white arm were hidden in a dark muffling cloak, the delicious blush had faded from the cheek, whose color was now firm and tranquil, the well-cut lips had settled into almost too harsh lines, an air of indescribably voluptuous grace had forever fled. Ah, hapless Haguna!

The philosopher made no further remonstrance, but led her immediately to the library, and, seating her at the table, opened a worn copy of Euclid, and began at "Two straight lines," and so forth.

A few moments after, Anthrops, released from his imprisonment, opened the door of the upper room, walked quietly down-stairs, and returned to the city, much to the joy of his friends and relations, who had long mourned him as lost.

About a year after this, Anthrops strolled into the philosopher's study, to inquire the solution of a certain problem.

"I will refer you," said his old instructor, "to my accomplished pupil"; then raising his voice,—"Haguna!"

Anthrops, startled at hearing her name in such a connection, awaited her entrance with anxious curiosity. She speedily came in obedience to the summons, bowed with an air of grave abstraction to Anthrops, and, seating herself, composedly awaited the commands of her master. Her former captive asked himself, wondering, if this could be the airy, laughing, winsome maiden with whom in days past he had ridden into the green forest. The billows of hair had ebbed away; the short, ungraceful, and somewhat thin remnant was meant for use in covering the head, not for luxurious beauty. All falling laces, all fluttering ribbons, all sparkling jewels were discarded from the severe simplicity of the scholastic gown; and with them had disappeared the glancing ripple that before had sunnily flowed around her, like wavy undulations through a field of corn. Very clear and still were the violet eyes, but their dewy lustre had long ago dried up. Like a flowering tree whose blossoms have been prematurely swept off by a cold wind was the maiden, as she sat there, abstractedly drawing geometrical diagrams with her pencil.

"Now, Sir," said the philosopher, "if you will state your difficulty, I have no doubt my pupil can afford you assistance."

So saying, he withdrew into a corner, that the discussion might have free scope.

Haguna now looking inquiringly at Anthrops. He cleared his throat with a somewhat dictatorial "hem!" and began.

"These circumstances, Madam, are really so unusual, that you must excuse me, if I"—

"Proceed, Sir, to the point."

"When, avoiding the barbarous edict of Justinian, which condemned to a perpetual silence the philosophic loquacity of the Athenian schools, the second heptacle of wise men undertook a perilous journey to implore the protection of Persia, they undoubtedly must at some stages of their travels have passed the night on the road. In this case, the method of so passing the time becomes an interesting object of research. Did the last of the Greeks provide themselves with tents,—effeminately impede their progress with luggage? Did they, skirting the north of the Arabian desert, repose under the scattered palm-trees,—or rather, wandering among the mountains of Assyria, find surer and colder shade? The importance of this inquiry becomes evident upon reflecting that the characters of the great are revealed by their behavior in the incidental events of their lives."

"It is evident to my mind," returned Haguna, thoughtfully, "that the seven sages, joyfully escaping from the frivolous necessities of society, would return to the privileges of the children of eternal Nature, and sleep confidingly under the blue welkin."

"Rheumatism," suggested Anthrops.

"Rheumatism!" echoed Haguna, disdainfully. "What is rheumatism? What are any mere pains of the flesh, to the glorious content of the unshackled spirit revelling in the freedom of its own nature? Thus the cultivated Reason returns, with a touching appreciation of the Beautiful and the Fit, to the simple couch of childish spontaneity. Mankind, after long confinement in marble palaces, sepulchres of their inner being, retrograde to the golden age. The wisdom of the world lies down to sleep under the open sky. Such a beautiful comparison! It must be true."

"Really, Madam, your conclusions, although attained with great rapidity of reasoning, are hardly deducible from the premises. Let me remark"—

"Reduce Camenes to Celarent, and the argument is plainly irrefragable. It requires a mind deeply toned to sympathy with the inner significance of all things to"—

"Contemporary testimony is absolutely necessary, if not suspiciously sullied by credulity or deceit,—in which case, the nearest trustworthy historian, if not more than a hundred years from the specified time, is incomparably preferable. But"—

Haguna again interrupted, her voice a little raised with excitement. The dispute waxed warm, on either side authorities were quoted and rejected, and how it terminated has never been recorded. But the philosopher in the corner rubbed his hands with satisfaction, exclaiming,—

"Thank fortune, we may now have a little peace!"

THE FLOWER OF LIBERTY.

What flower is this that greets the morn,
Its hues from heaven so freshly born?
With burning star and flaming band
It kindles all the sunset land;—
O, tell us what its name may be!
Is this the Flower of Liberty?
It is the banner of the free,
The starry Flower of Liberty!

In savage Nature's far abode
Its tender seed our fathers sowed;
The storm-winds rocked its swelling bud,
Its opening leaves were streaked with blood,
Till, lo! earth's tyrants shook to see
The full-blown Flower of Liberty!
Then hail the banner of the free,
The starry Flower of Liberty!

Behold its streaming rays unite
One mingling flood of braided light,—
The red that fires the Southern rose,
With spotless white from Northern snows,
And, spangled o'er its azure, see
The sister Stars of Liberty!
Then hail the banner of the free,
The starry Flower of Liberty!

The blades of heroes fence it round;
Where'er it springs is holy ground;
From tower and dome its glories spread;
It waves where lonely sentries tread;
It makes the land as ocean free,
And plants an empire on the sea!
Then hail the banner of the free,
The starry Flower of Liberty!

Thy sacred leaves, fair Freedom's flower,
Shall ever float on dome and tower,
To all their heavenly colors true,
In blackening frost or crimson dew,—
And GOD love us as we love thee,
Thrice holy Flower of Liberty!
Then hail the banner of the free,
The starry FLOWER OF LIBERTY!

ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE.

The memory of Alexis de Tocqueville belongs scarcely less to America than to France. His book on "Democracy in America" was the foundation of his fame. As a successful investigation by a foreigner of the nature and working of institutions dissimilar from those of his own country, and in many essential respects different from any which were elsewhere established, it stands quite alone in political literature. It is still further remarkable as the work of a very young man. Its merits were at once acknowledged; and though twenty-six years have passed since it appeared, it has been superseded by no later work. The book has a double character, which has given to it an equal authority on both sides of the Atlantic. For while it is a profound and sagacious analysis of the spirit and methods of the American social and political system, it is intended at the same time—more, however, by implied than open comparison—to exhibit the relations of the principles established here to the development of modern society and government in France and elsewhere in Europe. It is a manual alike for the political theorist and the practical statesman; and whatever changes our institutions may undergo, its value will remain undiminished.

The volumes of Tocqueville's Inedited Works and Correspondence, with a Memoir by his friend M. Gustave de Beaumont, which have lately appeared in Paris, have, therefore, a special claim to the attention of American readers. Their intrinsic interest is great as illustrating the life and character not only of one of the most original and independent thinkers of this generation, but also of a man not less distinguished by the elevation and integrity of his character than by the power of his intellect. The race of such men has seemed of late years to be dying out in France. In the long list of her public characters during the past thirty years, there are few names which can share the honor with Tocqueville's of being those neither of apostates nor of schemers. Men who hold to their principles in the midst of revolutions, who for the sake of honor resist the temptations of power, who have faith in liberty and in progress even when their hopes are overthrown, are rare at all times and in all lands. "France no longer produces such men," said the Duke de Broglie, when he heard of Tocqueville's death.

No book has been published of more importance than this in its exhibition of the condition of thought and of society in France during recent years. None has given more convincing evidence of the suppression of intellectual liberty under the new Imperial rule. The reserves and the omissions to which M. de Beaumont has been forced in the performance of his work as editor display the oppressive nature of the censorship to which the writings of the most honest and superior men are liable, and the burdensome restraints by which such men are controlled and disheartened. M. de Beaumont's notice of the life of Tocqueville, and Tocqueville's own later correspondence, appear to a thoughtful reader as accusations against Imperial despotism, as protests against the wrongs from which freedom is now suffering in France. There is in them a pervading tone of sadness, and, here and there, an expression of bitterness of feeling, all the more effective for being conveyed in restrained and unimpassioned words. There is no place for such men as these in a system like that by which Louis Napoleon governs France. The men of strong character, of incorruptible integrity, of thoughtful moderation, and of fixed principles are more dangerous to the permanence of despotic rule than the Victor Hugos, the Ledru Rollins, or the Orsinis. It is the men with whom the love of liberty is founded upon intellectual and moral convictions, not those with whom it is a hot and reckless passion, that are the most to be feared by a ruler whose power is based on the ignorance, the fears, the selfish ambitions, and the material interests of the people whom he flatters and corrupts.

Tocqueville was born a thinker. His physical organization was delicate, but he had an energy of spirit which led him often to overtask his bodily forces in long-continued mental exertions. Without brilliancy of imagination and with little liveliness of fancy, he possessed the faculty of acute and discriminating observation, and early acquired the rare power of deep and continuous reflection. His mind was large and calm. The candor of his intellect was never stained by passion. He had not the faculties of an original discoverer in the domain of abstract truth, but, as an investigator of the causes of political and social conditions, of the relation between particular facts and general theories, of the influence of systems and institutions upon the life of communities, he has rarely been surpassed. His book on "Democracy in America," and still more his later work on "The Old Régime and the Revolution," display in a remarkable degree the union of philosophic insight and practical good sense, of clearness of thought and condensation of statement.

But, however great the value of his writings may be, a still greater value attaches to the character of the man himself, as it is displayed in these volumes. M. de Beaumont's brief and affectionate memoir of his friend, and Tocqueville's own letters, are not so much narratives of events as evidences of character. His life was, indeed, not marked with extraordinary incidents. It was the life of a man whose career was limited both by his own temperament and by the public circumstances of his times; of one who set more value upon ideas than upon events; who sought intellectual satisfactions and distinctions rather than personal advancement; who affected his contemporaries by his thought and his integrity of principle more than by power of commanding position or energy of resolute will. Although for many years in public life, he made little mark on public affairs. But his influence, though indirect, was perhaps not the less strong or permanent. The course of political affairs is in the long run greatly modified, if not completely guided, by the thinkers of a nation. Tocqueville's convictions kept him for the most part in opposition to the successive governments of France during the period of his public life. But his reputation and the weight of his authority are continually increasing, and of the Frenchmen of the last generation few have done so much as he to extend by his writings the knowledge, and to strengthen by his example the love of those principles by which liberty is maintained and secured, and upon which the real advancement of society depends. The leading facts of his life may be briefly told.

Born in 1805, at Paris, of an old and honorable family, his early years were passed at home. As a youth, he was for some time at the college of Metz; but his education was irregular, and he was not distinguished for scholarship. In 1826 and 1827 he travelled with one of his brothers in Italy and Sicily, and on his return to France was attached to the Court of Justice at Versailles, where his father, the Count de Tocqueville, was then Prefect, in the quality of Juge-Auditeur, an office to which there is none correspondent in our courts. It was at this time that his friendship with M. Gustave de Beaumont began.

For more than two years he performed the duties of this place with marked fidelity and ability. But at the same time he pursued studies less narrow and technical than the law, investigating with ardor the general questions of politics, and laying the foundation of those principles and opinions which he afterward developed in his writings and his public life. He witnessed the Revolution of 1830 with regret, not because he was personally attached to the elder branch of the Bourbons, but because he dreaded the effect of a sudden and violent change of dynasty upon the stability of those constitutional institutions which were of too recent establishment to be firmly rooted in France, but to which he looked as the safeguard of liberty. He gave his adhesion to the new government without hesitation, but without enthusiasm; and having little hope of advancement in his career as magistrate, he applied to the Ministry of the Interior early in 1831 for an official mission to America to examine the system of our prisons, which at that time was exciting attention in France. But the real motive which led him to desire to visit America was his wish to study the democratic institutions of the United States with reference to their bearing upon the political and social questions which underlay the violent changes and revolutions of government in France, and of which a correct appreciation was of continually increasing importance. It was plain that the dominating principle in the modern development of society was that of democratic equality; and this being the case, the question of prime importance presenting itself for solution was, How is liberty to be reconciled with equality and saved from the inevitable dangers to which it is exposed? or in other words, Can equality, which, by dividing men and reducing the mass to a common level, smooths the way for the establishment of a despotism, either of an individual or of the mob, be made to promote and secure liberty? For the study of this question, and of others naturally connected with it, the United States afforded opportunities nowhere else to be found.

Accompanied by M. de Beaumont, Tocqueville passed a year in this country, and the chief results of his visit appeared in the first two volumes of his "Democracy in America," which were published in January, 1835. The success of the book was instant and extraordinary. His publisher, who had undertaken it with reluctance, had ventured on a first edition of but five hundred copies; and in one of his letters, shortly after its publication, Tocqueville tells pleasantly of the bookseller's ingenuous surprise at the interest which the work had excited. "I went yesterday morning to Gosselin's [the publisher]; he received me with the most beaming face in the world, saying to me, 'Well, now, so it seems you have made a chef-d'oeuvre.' Does not that expression paint the complete man of business? I sat down, and we talked of our second edition."

From this time Tocqueville was famous. In the autumn of the same year, 1835, he married an English lady, Miss Mottley, who had long resided in France, and the happiness of his private life was secured at the very moment when he was entering upon the cares and anxieties of a public career. In 1836 the French Academy decreed for his book an extraordinary prize; in 1838 he was elected a member of the Institute; and in 1841, a year after the publication of the last volumes of his work, he was chosen member of the Academy. From 1839 to 1848, Tocqueville, elected and reëlected from Valognes, sat without interruption in the Chamber of Deputies, where he constantly voted with the constitutional opposition. His nature was too sensitive and his health too delicate to enable him to hold a foremost place as orator in the debates of this period. His habits of mind were, moreover, those of a writer rather than of a public speaker. But the firmness and moderation of his principles and the clearness and justice of his opinions secured for him a general respect, and gave weight and influence to his counsels. "In 1839, having been named reporter on the proposition relative to the abolition of slavery in the colonies, he succeeded," says his biographer, "not only in tracing with an able and sure hand the great principles of justice and of humanity which should lead on the triumph of this holy cause, but also, by words full of respect for existing interests and acquired rights, in preparing the government and the public mind for a concession, and the colonists for a compromise." He was frequently intrusted with the duty of reporting on other projects of the first importance; but special labors of this sort did not prevent him from taking broad and large views of the political and moral tendencies of the time, and of forecasting with clear insight the results of the measures of the government and of the influences at work upon the people. On the 27th of January, 1848, he announced the Revolution, which he saw to be at hand. A passage from his speech on this occasion is given by M. de Beaumont. It is striking, when read by the light of subsequent events, for the truth of its inferences, the force of its statements, and its prophetic warnings. After speaking of the opinions and ideas prevalent among the working classes, he said, "When such opinions take root, when they spread themselves so widely, when they strike down deeply into the masses, they must bring about, sooner or later, I do not know when, I do not know how, but they must bring about, sooner or later, the most formidable revolutions…. I believe that at this moment we are asleep upon a volcano. (Dissent.) I am profoundly convinced of it."

Tocqueville, thus anticipating the Revolution, was more afflicted and disappointed than surprised, when it overthrew the monarchy in February. He had comprehended beforehand that its character was to be rather social than simply political. He had determined to accept it as a necessary evil. He measured from the first the risk to which the principles to the maintenance of which he was devoted were exposed, the peril which, threatened liberty itself. Believing that the Republic now afforded the only and perhaps the last chance of liberty in France, and that its downfall would result in throwing power into the hands of an individual ruler, he determined to give all his support to the new government, and to endeavor to work out the good of his country by means which gave little encouragement or hope of success. He took part in the Constituent Assembly, was one of the committee to form the Constitution, and in the autumn of 1848 represented France as plenipotentiary at the Conference held at Brussels, which had for its object the mediation of France and England between Austria and Sardinia. The next year, having just been elected a member of the Legislative Assembly, he was invited by the President of the Republic to take the portfolio of Foreign Affairs in the ministry of M. Barrot. He did not hold office long. The ministry was too honest and too firm to suit the designs of the President, and on the 31st of October Louis Napoleon announced, in a message which took the Assembly by surprise, that it had been dismissed, and a new set of ministers appointed. The President endeavored to retain Tocqueville, and to win him over to his party; but Tocqueville already presaged the fall of the Republic, and witnessed with anxiety and discouragement the approach of the Empire. He remained a member of the Assembly to the last. He was one of the deputies arrested on the 2d of December, 1851, and was confined for a time at Vincennes. "Here ended his political life. It ended with liberty in France."

The remaining years of Tocqueville's life were spent in a retirement which might have been happy, had he not felt too deeply for happiness the despotism which weighed upon France. He engaged in the studies that resulted in his masterly work on "The Old Régime and the Revolution"; but these studies, instead of diverting him from the contemplation of what France had lost, gave poignancy to the sorrow excited by her present condition. All his hopes for the prevalence of the principles which he had sought during life to confirm and establish, all his personal ambitions as a public man, were completely broken down. But, though thus defeated in hope and in desire, he was not overcome in spirit. And the record of the closing years of his life shows, more than that of any other portion of it, the firmness, the strength, and the sweetness of his character.

His health, which had never been vigorous, became from year to year more and more uncertain, and the labor which he gave to the historical work to which he now devoted himself was frequently followed by exhaustion. He passed some time in England, where be had many warm friends, in examining the collections in the British Museum concerning the French Revolution; and in 1855 he made a visit of considerable length to Germany for the purpose of studying the social institutions of the country, so far as they might illustrate the condition of France under the old regime. At the beginning of 1856 the first part of his great work was published. The impression produced by it was extraordinary. It was, as it were, a key that opened to men the secrets of a history with the events of which they were so familiar that it had seemed to them nothing more was to be learned concerning it. The book is one which, though unfinished, is, so far as it advances, complete. It will retain its place as an historical essay of the highest value; for it is a study of the past, undertaken not merely with the intention of elucidating the facts of a particular period of history, but also with the design of investigating and establishing the general principles in politics and government of which facts and events are but the external indications. Tocqueville was too honest to write according to any predetermined theory; but he also penetrated too deeply into the causes of things not to arrive, at length, at definite conclusions as to the meaning and teachings of history.

Tocqueville had now reached the summit of fame as an author. He enjoyed the harvest of success, and his ambition was urged by it to new exertion. But in the summer of 1858 he had an alarming attack of bleeding at the lungs, accompanied with a general prostration of strength. In the autumn, his physicians ordered him to the South, and early in November he arrived at Cannes, where he was to spend the winter. But neither change of climate nor tender nursing was sufficient to prevent his disease from progressing. He suffered much, but he still hoped. He became worse as the spring came on, and on the 16th of April, 1859, he died. He was fifty-four years old, but he had lived a long life, if life be measured by thought and moral progress.

In his domestic life Tocqueville had been most happy, and it was in his own home that his character appeared in its most delightful aspect. In society he was a converser of extraordinary brilliancy. Few men were his rivals in this art, so well practised in Paris. His flow of ideas was not more remarkable than the choiceness and vigor of his expression. But he was not a tyrant in talk, and he was as ready to listen as to seek for listeners. His social powers were at the service of his friends. He was not of a gay temper, but he had a peculiar thoughtfulness for others which gave a charm to his manners far superior to that of careless vivacity. M. de Beaumont speaks of him in his relations to his friends in words full of feeling:—

"I have said that he had many friends; but he experienced a still greater happiness, that of never losing one of them. He had also another happiness: it was the knowing how to love them all so well, that none ever complained of the share he received, even while seeing that of the others. He was as ingenious as he was sincere in his attachments; and never, perhaps, did example prove better than his how many charms good-wit adds to good-will (combien l'esprit ajoute de charmes à la bonté).

"Good as he was," continues M. de Beaumont, "he aspired without ceasing to become better; and it is certain that each day he drew nearer to that moral perfection which seemed to him the only end worthy of man…. Each day he brought into all his sentiments and all his actions something of deeper piety, and stronger gratitude to God…. He was more patient, more laborious, more watchful to lose nothing of that life which he loved so well, and which he had the right to find beautiful, he who made of it so noble a use! Finally, it may be said to his honor, that at an epoch in which each man tends to concentrate his regard upon himself, he had no other aim than that of seeking for truths useful to his fellows, no other passion than that of increasing their well-being and their dignity."—Vol. I. p. 124.

The correspondence of a man about whom such—words may be said without exaggeration has more than a merely literary interest. This book is one of which the literary critic is not the final judge. Tocqueville's letters, like every genuine series of letters written without thought of publication, have the charm and more than the simplicity of autobiography. Their merit lies not so much in grace of style, picturesqueness of description, or familiar freedom of composition, as in their exhibition of power of thought combined with delicacy and refinement of feeling, and in the frequent expression of ardent patriotism and strong personal sympathies with public or with private interests. They are the letters of a man who took a grave view of life, regarding it "as an affair with which we are charged, which must be carried through and ended with honor to ourselves." They are the letters also of a man of strong and faithful affections; and the long series of them addressed during twenty-five years to the Count Louis de Kergorlay has, in addition to its interest from its variety of topics, a special moral value as the record of a close and confidential friendship maintained in spite of the widest divergence of political opinion during a period of unusual political excitement. Few men have the temper or the sentiment requisite for the support of intimate relations under such conditions. But his friendships occupied a very large place in Tocqueville's life. In them he found happiness and repose. To one of his friends he writes in 1844, "The remembrance of you is the more precious to me because it calms in me all those troubles of the soul that politics engender." And thus in the most trying passages of his life, and especially in the discouragement of his later years, the thought of his friends seems to have been constantly with him, and his correspondence with them became almost a necessity for his spirit. His letters, or rather that portion of them which M. de Beaumont has published, and which must some day be succeeded by a fuller collection, have thus a double character: they contain the judgments of a wide and profound thinker on the subjects which interested him, while they show him in the most amiable and attractive light as a generous and constant friend. They are not to be compared in wit or elaborate finish with the brilliant letters of Courier; they have not the striking originality and terse vigor of those of De Maistre, but they have the grace of simple and pure feeling, and the worth of clear, manly, high-toned thought. No one capable of appreciating them can read them without learning to feel toward their author not merely respect, but also a strong personal regard. The two following extracts have a special appropriateness to the present condition of our own country, while at the same time they display the qualities most characteristic of Tocqueville's intellect. They are both from letters addressed to one of the most distinguished correspondents of his later years, Madame de Swetchine.

"There are, it seems to me, two distinct divisions in morals, one as important as the other in the eyes of God, but in which in our days his ministers instruct us with very unequal ardor. One belongs to private life: it embraces the relative duties of mankind as fathers, as sons, as wives, as husbands. The other regards public life: the duties of every citizen toward his country, and toward that human society of which he forms a special part. Am I deceived in believing that the clergy of our time are very much occupied with the first portion of morals, and very little with the second? This appears to me especially observable in the manner in which women think and feel. I see a great number of them who have a thousand private virtues in which the direct and beneficent action of religion manifests itself,—who, thanks to it, are most faithful wives and excellent mothers, who show themselves just and indulgent toward their domestics, charitable to the poor. But as to that portion of duties which is connected with public life, they do not seem to have even the idea of it. Not only they do not practise them themselves, which is natural enough, but they do not seem even to have the thought of inculcating them on those over whom they have influence. It is a side of education that is, as it were, invisible to them. It was not so under that old regime which, in the midst of many vices, developed proud and manly virtues. I have often heard it told, that my grandmother, who was a very religious (très sainte) woman, after impressing upon her young son the exercise of all the duties of private life, failed not to add,—'And then, my child, never forget that a man owes himself above all to his country; that there is no sacrifice that he ought not to make for her; that he cannot remain indifferent to her fate; that God requires of him that he be always ready to consecrate, if need be, his time, his fortune, even his life, to the service of the State and of the king."—Vol. II. p. 341.

"I do not ask of the priests to require of the men whose education is committed to them, or over whom they exercise influence, I do not ask of them to require of these men, as a duty of conscience, to support the republic or the monarchy; but I avow that I desire that they should oftener tell them, that, as they are Christians, so they belong to one of those great human associations which God has established, without doubt in order to render more visible and more sensible the bonds which ought to unite individuals to each other,—associations which are named the people, and whose territory is called the country. I desire that they should cause the fact to penetrate more deeply into the souls of men, that each man owes himself to this collective existence before belonging to himself; that in regard to this existence no man is allowed to be indifferent, still less to make of indifference a sort of feeble virtue which enervates many of the most noble instincts that have been given to us; that all are responsible for what happens to it, and that all, according to their light, are bound to labor constantly for its prosperity, to take care that it be submitted only to beneficent, respectable, and lawful authorities…. This is what I wish should be inculcated on men, and especially on women. Nothing has more struck me, in an experience now of considerable length in public affairs, than the influence that women always exercise in this matter,—influence so much the greater as it is indirect. I do not doubt that it is they above all who give to every nation a certain moral temperament, which shows itself afterwards in politics."—Vol. II. p. 348. Tocqueville's services to France, to liberty, did not end with his life. The example, no less than the writings of such a man, bears fruit in later times. It belongs to no one land. Wherever men are striving in thought or in action to support the cause of freedom and of law, to strengthen institutions founded on principles of equal justice, to secure established liberties by defending the government in which they are embodied, his teachings will be prized, and his memory be honored.

AGNES OF SORRENTO.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE MONK'S STRUGGLE.

The golden sunshine of the spring morning was deadened to a sombre tone in the shadowy courts of the Capuchin convent. The reddish brown of the walls was flecked with gold and orange spots of lichen; and here and there, in crevices, tufts of grass, or even a little bunch of gold-blooming flowers, looked hardily forth into the shadowy air. A covered walk, with stone arches, inclosed a square filled with dusky shrubbery. There were tall funereal cypresses, whose immense height and scraggy profusion of decaying branches showed their extreme old age. There were gaunt, gnarled olives, with trunks twisted in immense serpent folds, and boughs wreathed and knotted into wild, unnatural contractions, as if their growth had been a series of spasmodic convulsions, instead of a calm and gentle development of Nature. There were overgrown clumps of aloes, with the bare skeletons of former flower-stalks standing erect among their dusky horns or lying rotting on the ground beside them. The place had evidently been intended for the culture of shrubbery and flowers, but the growth of the trees had long since so intercepted the sunlight and fresh air that not even grass could find root beneath their branches. The ground was covered with a damp green mould, strewn here and there with dead boughs, or patched with tufts of fern and lycopodium, throwing out their green hairy roots into the moist soil. A few half-dead roses and jasmines, remnants of former days of flowers, still maintained a struggling existence, but looked wan and discouraged in the effort, and seemed to stretch and pine vaguely for a freer air. In fact, the whole garden might be looked upon as a sort of symbol of the life by which it was surrounded,—a life stagnant, unnatural, and unhealthy, cut off from all those thousand stimulants to wholesome development which are afforded by the open plain of human existence, where strong natures grow distorted in unnatural efforts, though weaker ones find in its lowly shadows a congenial refuge.

We have given the brighter side of conventual life in the days we are describing: we have shown it as often a needed shelter of woman's helplessness during ages of political uncertainty and revolution; we have shown it as the congenial retreat where the artist, the poet, the student, and the man devoted to ideas found leisure undisturbed to develop themselves under the consecrating protection of religion. The picture would be unjust to truth, did we not recognize, what, from our knowledge of human nature, we must expect, a conventual life of far less elevated and refined order. We should expect that institutions which guarantied to each individual a livelihood, without the necessity of physical labor or the responsibility of supporting a family, might in time come to be incumbered with many votaries in whom indolence and improvidence were the only impelling motives. In all ages of the world the unspiritual are the majority,—the spiritual the exceptions. It was to the multitude that Jesus said, "Ye seek me, not because ye saw the miracles, but because ye did eat and were filled,"—and the multitude has been much of the same mind from that day to this.

The convent of which we speak had been for some years under the lenient rule of the jolly Brother Girolamo,—an easy, wide-spread, loosely organized body, whose views of the purpose of human existence were decidedly Anacreontic. Fasts he abominated; night-prayers he found unfavorable to his constitution; but he was a judge of olives and good wine, and often threw out valuable hints in his pastoral visits on the cooking of maccaroni, for which he had himself elaborated a savory recipe; and the cellar and larder of the convent, during his pastorate, presented so many urgent solicitations to conventual repose, as to threaten an inconvenient increase in the number of brothers. The monks in his time lounged in all the sunny places of the convent like so many loose sacks of meal, enjoying to the full the dolce far niente which seems to be the universal rule of Southern climates. They ate and drank and slept and snored; they made pastoral visits through the surrounding community which were far from edifying; they gambled, and tippled, and sang most unspiritual songs; and keeping all the while their own private pass-key to Paradise tucked under their girdles, were about as jolly a set of sailors to Eternity as the world had to show. In fact, the climate of Southern Italy and its gorgeous scenery are more favorable to voluptuous ecstasy than to the severe and grave warfare of the true Christian soldier. The sunny plains of Capua demoralized the soldiers of Hannibal, and it was not without a reason that ancient poets made those lovely regions the abode of Sirens whose song maddened by its sweetness, and of a Circe who made men drunk with her sensual fascinations, till they became sunk to the form of brutes. Here, if anywhere, is the lotos-eater's paradise,—the purple skies, the enchanted shores, the soothing gales, the dreamy mists, which all conspire to melt the energy of the will, and to make existence either a half-doze of dreamy apathy or an awaking of mad delirium.

It was not from dreamy, voluptuous Southern Italy that the religious progress of the Italian race received any vigorous impulses. These came from more northern and more mountainous regions, from the severe, clear heights of Florence, Perugia, and Assisi, where the intellectual and the moral both had somewhat of the old Etruscan earnestness and gloom.

One may easily imagine the stupid alarm and helpless confusion of these easy-going monks, when their new Superior came down among them hissing with a white heat from the very hottest furnace-fires of a new religious experience, burning and quivering with the terrors of the world to come,—pale, thin, eager, tremulous, and yet with all the martial vigor of the former warrior, and all the habits of command of a former princely station. His reforms gave no quarter to right or left; sleepy monks were dragged out to midnight-prayers, and their devotions enlivened with vivid pictures of hell-fire and ingenuities of eternal torment enough to stir the blood of the most torpid. There was to be no more gormandizing, no more wine-bibbing; the choice old wines were placed under lock and key for the use of the sick and poor in the vicinity; and every fast of the Church, and every obsolete rule of the order, were revived with unsparing rigor. It is true, they hated their new Superior with all the energy which laziness and good living had left them, but they every soul of them shook in their sandals before him; for there is a true and established order of mastery among human beings, and when a man of enkindled energy and intense will comes among a flock of irresolute commonplace individuals, he subjects them to himself by a sort of moral paralysis similar to what a great, vigorous gymnotus distributes among a fry of inferior fishes. The bolder ones, who made motions of rebellion, were so energetically swooped upon, and consigned to the discipline of dungeon and bread-and-water, that less courageous natures made a merit of siding with the more powerful party, mentally resolving to carry by fraud the points which they despaired of accomplishing by force.

On the morning we speak of, two monks might have been seen lounging on a stone bench by one of the arches, looking listlessly into the sombre garden-patch we have described. The first of these, Father Anselmo, was a corpulent fellow, with an easy swing of gait, heavy animal features, and an eye of shrewd and stealthy cunning: the whole air of the man expressed the cautious, careful voluptuary. The other, Father Johannes, was thin, wiry, and elastic, with hands like birds' claws, and an eye that reminded one of the crafty cunning of a serpent. His smile was a curious blending of shrewdness and malignity. He regarded his companion from time to time obliquely from the corners of his eyes, to see what impression his words were making, and had a habit of jerking himself up in the middle of a sentence and looking warily round to see if any one were listening, which indicated habitual distrust.

"Our holy Superior is out a good while this morning," he said, at length.

The observation was made in the smoothest and most silken tones, but they carried with them such a singular suggestion of doubt and inquiry that they seemed like an accusation.

"Ah?" replied the other, perceiving evidently some intended undertone of suspicion lurking in the words, but apparently resolved not to commit himself to his companion.

"Yes," said the first; "the zeal of the house of the Lord consumes him, the blessed man!"

"Blessed man!" echoed the second, rolling up his eyes, and giving a deep sigh, which shook his portly proportions so that they quivered like jelly.

"If he goes on in this way much longer," continued Father Johannes, "there will soon be very little mortal left of him; the saints will claim him."

Father Anselmo gave something resembling a pious groan, but darted meanwhile a shrewd observant glance at the speaker.

"What would become of the convent, were he gone?" said Father Johannes. "All these blessed reforms which he has brought about would fall back; for our nature is fearfully corrupt, and ever tends to wallow in the mire of sin and pollution. What changes hath he wrought in us all! To be sure, the means were sometimes severe. I remember, brother, when he had you under ground for more than ten days. My heart was pained for you; but I suppose you know that it was necessary, in order to bring you to that eminent state of sanctity where you now stand."