dramatic way that one feels all
to be true. More than that, her characters are all capable of carrying
out, to the end, a common moral and general theme with eloquence
seldom found in novels.

An interesting comparison might be made between Mme. de Stael and
George Sand, the two greatest women writers of France. Both wrote
from their experience of life, and fought passionately against the
prejudices and restrictions of social conventions; both were ideal
natures and were severely tried in the school of life, profiting
by their experiences; both possessed highly sensitive natures, and
suffered much; both were keenly enthusiastic and sympathetic, with
pardonable weaknesses; both lived through tragic wars; both evinced
a dislike for the commonplace and strove for greater freedom, but for
different publics, after unhappy marriages, both rose up as accusers
against the prevalent system of marrying young girls. But Mme. de
Stael was a virtuoso in conversation, a salon queen, and her happiness
was to be found in society alone; while George Sand found her
happiness in communion with Nature. This explains the two natures,
their sufferings, their joys, their writings.

The greatest punishment ever inflicted upon Mme. de Stael was her
exile, for it deprived her of her social life, a fact of which the
emperor was well aware. Her entire literary effort was directed to
describing her social life and the relation of society to life. "She
belongs to the moralists and to the writers who wrote of society and
man--social psychologists." Not poetic or artistic by nature, but
with an exceptional power of observation, she shows on every side the
influence of a pedagogical, literary, and social training; she was the
product of an artificial culture.

George Sand, on the contrary, was a product of Nature, reared in free
intercourse and unrestrained relation with her genius and Nature. A
powerful passion and a mighty fantasy made of her a poetess and an
artist. These two qualities were manifested in her intense and deep
feeling for the beauty of Nature, in her power of invention, in a
harmonious equilibrium between idealism and realism. Her fantasy
overbalanced her reason, impeding its development and thus relegating
it to a secondary role. "She is possibly the only French writer
who possessed no _esprit_ (in the sense that it is used in French
society)--that playful, epigrammatic, querulous wit of conversation."

She never enjoyed commun