very fine page on the peasant soul.

She did not succeed in her first attempt. In several of her novels, ever
since _Valentine_, she had given us peasants among her characters. She
had tried labourers, mole-catchers, fortune-tellers and beggars, but all
these were episodic characters. _Jeanne_ is the first novel in which the
heroine is a peasant. Everything connected with Jeanne herself in the
novel is exquisite. We have all seen peasant women of this kind, women
with serious faces and clearly-cut features, with a dreamy look in their
eyes that makes us think of the maid of Lorraine. It is one of these
exceptional creatures that George Sand has depicted. She has made an
ecstatic being of her, who welcomes all that is supernatural, utterly
regardless of dates or epochs. To her all wonderful beings appeal,
the Virgin Mary and fairies, Druidesses, Joan of Arc and Napoleon. But
Jeanne, the Virgin of Ep Nell, the Velleda of the Jomatres stones, the
mystical sister of the Great Shepherdess, was very poorly supported.
This remark does not refer to her cousin Claudie, although this
individual's conduct was not blameless. Jeanne had gone into service at
Boussac, and she was surrounded by a group of middle-class people, among
whom was Sir Arthur----, a wealthy Englishman, who wanted to marry her.
This mixture of peasants and _bourgeois_ is not a happy one. Neither is
the mixture of _patois_ with a more Christian way of talking, or rather
with a written style. The author was experimenting and feeling her way.

When she wrote _La Mare au Diable_ she had found it, for in this work
we have unity of tone, harmony of the characters with their setting,
of sentiment with the various adventures, and, above all, absolute
simplicity.

In _Francois le Champi_ there is much that is graceful, and there is
real feeling mingled with a touch of sentimentality. Madeleine Blanchet
is rather old for Champi, whom she had brought up like her own child. In
the country, though, where difference of age is soon less apparent, the
disproportion does not seem as objectionable as it would in city life.
The novel is not a study of maternal affection in love, as it is not
Madeleine's feelings that are analyzed, but those of Francois. For a
long time he had been in love without knowing it, and he is only aware
of it when this love, instead of being a sort of agreeable dream and
melancholy pleasure, is transformed into suffering.

The subject of _La Petite Fa