ure with man is a great law of art; no painter has
practised it with instinct more delicate or sure." Because Nature,
in her early youth, was her inspiration, guide, even her God, she
returned to her later in life. M. Jules Lemaitre wrote that her works
will remain eternally beautiful, because they teach us how to love
Nature as divine and good, and to find in that love peace and solace.
There are many parts of her work which show as detailed, accurate, and
realistic descriptions as those by Balzac. She constantly employed two
elements--the fanciful and the realistic.

George Sand never studied or knew how to compose a work, how to
preserve the unity of the subject or the unity in tone in characters;
hence, there was nothing calculated or premeditated--everything was
spontaneous. No preparation of plan did she ever think of--a mode of
procedure which naturally resulted in a negligent style and caused
the composition to drag. Her inspiration seemed to go so far, then
she resorted to her imagination, to the chimerical, forcing events
and characters. "There are many defects in the style--such as
the sentimental part, the romanesque in the violent expression of
sentiments or invention of situations, the exaggerated improbabilities
of events, the excessive declamation; but how many compensating
qualities are there to offset these defects!"

Her method of writing was very simple. It was the love of writing
that impelled her, almost without premeditation, to put into words
her dreams, meditations, and chimeras under concrete and living forms.
Yet, by the largeness of her sympathy and the ardor of her passions,
by the abundant inventions of stories, and by the harmonious
word-flow, she deserves to be ranked among the greatest writers
of France. Her career, taken as a whole, is one of prodigious
fecundity--a literary life that has "enchanted by its fictions or
troubled by its dreams" four or five generations. Never diminishing in
quality or inspiration, there are surprises in every new work.

No doubt George Sand has, for a generation or more, been somewhat
forgotten, but what great writer has not shared the same fate? When
the materialistic age has passed away, many famous writers of the
past will be resurrected, and with them George Sand; for her novels,
although written to please and entertain, discuss questions of
religion, philosophy, morality, problems of the heart, conscience, and
education,--and this is done in such a