, and
which I forgot the next morning, that I might occupy myself only with
the flowers and the butterflies. I could tell you exactly every
expedition we made, each amusement we had, but I can not tell you why
my spirit went that evening to Venice. I could easily find a good
reason, but it will be more sincere to confess that I do not remember
it."

The mind of George Sand, instead of being engaged with a problem, was
like an AEolian harp breathed upon "by every azure breath,

"That under heaven is blown
To harmonies and hues beneath,
As tender as its own."

So responsive was she that she gave back in wealth of sentiment and
idea, the beauty wafted to her by the forest winds. So instinct with
emotion, so alive and receptive and creative that a passing impulse
resulted in a work of art of the touching beauty of "La Derniere
Aldini." So unanalytic of self, that she could not remember the
driving impulse that caused her to write the novel. Impulses like
clouds come and go, and the artist soul is the sure recipient of them.
It sees and "follows the gleam"--it feels the mystic influences. This
is the foundation of that inexplicable thing inspiration, genius. This
receptive-creative faculty is the gift George Sand received, and this
preface is the keynote to it.

It is this gift, which is power, and in George Sand it is a liberating
power; it freed her own soul, and it freed the souls of others. She
herself felt--and she made readers feel, as in "Lelia," that outward
limitations and hindering circumstances were as nothing compared to
the great fact of freedom within, freedom of heart and soul and mind
from "the enthralment of the actual." We are _free_;--it is a great
thing to be as sure and as proud of it as St. Paul was of having been
"Free born." Some of us achieve freedom with sorrow and with bitter
tears and with great effort--sometimes with spasmodic effort, and
George Sand obtained inward freedom in that way.

But however obtained, the first time a mind feels conscious of it, it
is a revelation, and it may come as an influence from an artist soul.
George Sand had "l'esprit _libre_ et varie." George Eliot "l'esprit
fort et pesant." George Sand was widely, wisely, and eminently human.
She felt deep down in her heart all the social troubles and problems
of her day--and created some herself! But she was true to the artist
soul in her--to the belief in an ideal. Art was dormant when she wrote
disquisitions, an