And the gap in the theoretical fabric is
the same as with them. I read with unutterable interest the
despair of Alexis in his Eclectic course, his return to the
teachings of external nature, his new birth, and consequent
appreciation of poetry and music. But the question of Free
Will,--how to reconcile its workings with necessity and
compensation,--how to reconcile the life of the heart with
that of the intellect,--how to listen to the whispering breeze
of Spirit, while breasting, as a man should, the surges of the
world,--these enigmas Sand and her friends seem to have solved
no better than M.F. and her friends.

'The practical optimism is much the same as ours, except that
there is more hope for the masses--soon.

'This work is written with great vigor, scarce any faltering
on the wing. The horrors are disgusting, as are those of every
writer except Dante. Even genius should content itself in
dipping the pencil in cloud and mist. The apparitions of
Spiridion are managed with great beauty. As in Helene, as in
Novalis, I recognized, with delight, the eye that gazed, the
ear that listened, till the spectres came, as they do to the
Highlander on his rocky couch, to the German peasant on his
mountain. How different from the vulgar eye which looks, but
never sees! Here the beautiful apparition advances from the
solar ray, or returns to the fountain of light and truth, as
it should, when eagle eyes are gazing.

'I am astonished at her insight into the life of thought. She
must know it through some man. Women, under any circumstances,
can scarce do more than dip the foot in this broad and deep
river; they have not strength to contend with the current.
Brave, if they do not delicately shrink from the cold water.
No Sibyls have existed like those of Michel Angelo; those
of Raphael are the true brides of a God, but not themselves
divine. It is easy for women to be heroic in action, but when
it comes to interrogating God, the universe, the soul, and,
above all, trying to live above their own hearts, they dart
down to their nests like so many larks, and, if they cannot
find them, fret like the French Corinne. Goethe's Makaria
was born of the stars. Mr. Flint's Platonic old lady a _lusus
naturae_, and the Dudevant has loved a philosopher.

'I suppose the view of the prese