ared for; apparently, such a difficulty
never troubled her, since almost all of the children of her books die
of some disease, while to one--Jacques--she gives the advice to take
his own life, so that his wife may be free to love elsewhere.

Her social theories are marked by an exaltation of sentiment, a
weakness, an incoherency in conception, caused by her ardent love for
theories and ideas, but which, in her passionate sentiment and her
loyal enthusiasm, she always confounds and confuses. From early youth
she manifested an immense goodness, a profound tenderness, and a deep
compassion for human misery. She rarely became angry, even though she
suffered cruelly. Her own law of life and her message to the world
was--be good. The only strong element within her, she said, was the
need of loving, which manifested itself under the form of tenderness
and emotion, devotion and religious ecstasy; and when this faith was
shaken, doubt and social disturbances overwhelmed her.

Throughout life her consolation was Nature. "It was half of her genius
and the surest of her inspirations." No other French novelist has
been able to "express in words the lights and shades, harmonies and
contrasts, the magic of sounds, the symphonies of color, the depth
and distances of the woods, the infinite movement of the sea and the
sky--the interior soul of Nature, that vibrates in everything and
everybody." With Lamartine and Michelet, she has best reflected and
expressed the dreams and hopes and loves of the first half of the
nineteenth century.

George Sand saw Nature, lived in her, sympathized with her, and loved
her as did few other French writers; therefore, she showed more memory
than pure imagination in her work, for she always found Nature more
beautiful in actuality than she could picture her mentally, while
other great writers, like Lamartine, saw her less beautiful in reality
than in their imagination; hence, they were disappointed in Nature,
while for George Sand she was the truest friend. The world will always
be interested in her descriptions of Nature, because with Nature she
always associated something of human life--a thought or a sentiment;
her landscapes belonged to her characters--there is always a soul
living in them, for, to George Sand, man and Nature were inseparable.

Thus, every novel of this authoress consists of a situation and a
landscape, the poetic union of which nothing can mar. "Man associated
with Nature and Nat