es, and
would keep to them, and drop their absurd philosophical jargon! Not all
the big words in the world can make Mrs. Sand talk like a philosopher:
when will she go back to her old trade, of which she was the very ablest
practitioner in France?

I should have been glad to give some extracts from the dramatic and
descriptive parts of the novel, that cannot, in point of style and
beauty, be praised too highly. One must suffice,--it is the descent of
Alexis to seek that unlucky manuscript, Spiridion.

"It seemed to me," he begins, "that the descent was eternal; and that I
was burying myself in the depths of Erebus: at last, I reached a level
place,--and I heard a mournful voice deliver these words, as it were,
to the secret centre of the earth--'He will mount that ascent no
more!'--Immediately I heard arise towards me, from the depth of
invisible abysses, a myriad of formidable voices united in a strange
chant--'Let us destroy him! Let him be destroyed! What does he here
among the dead? Let him be delivered back to torture! Let him be given
again to life!'

"Then a feeble light began to pierce the darkness, and I perceived
that I stood on the lowest step of a staircase, vast as the foot of a
mountain. Behind me were thousands of steps of lurid iron; before me,
nothing but a void--an abyss, and ether; the blue gloom of midnight
beneath my feet, as above my head. I became delirious, and quitting
that staircase, which methought it was impossible for me to reascend, I
sprung forth into the void with an execration. But, immediately, when
I had uttered the curse, the void began to be filled with forms and
colors, and I presently perceived that I was in a vast gallery, along
which I advanced, trembling. There was still darkness round me; but
the hollows of the vaults gleamed with a red light, and showed me the
strange and hideous forms of their building..... I did not distinguish
the nearest objects; but those towards which I advanced assumed an
appearance more and more ominous, and my terror increased with every
step I took. The enormous pillars which supported the vault, and the
tracery thereof itself, were figures of men, of supernatural stature,
delivered to tortures without a name. Some hung by their feet, and,
locked in the coils of monstrous serpents, clenched their teeth in the
marble of the pavement; others, fastened by their waists, were dragged
upwards, these by their feet, those by their heads, towards capitals,