criptions are
true as those of Rousseau in his Reveries, and those of Bernardin
St. Pierre in his Studies. Her free style is stained by none of the
current faults of the day. Lelia, a book painful to read, and offering
only here and there one of the delicious scenes which may be found in
Indiana and Valentine, is nevertheless a master-work of its kind. Of
the nature of a debauch, it is yet without passion, though it produces
the disturbance of passion. The soul is wanting, but still it weighs
upon the heart. Depravity of maxims, insult to rectitude of life,
could not go farther; but over the abyss descends the talent of the
author. In the valley of Gomorrah the dew falls nightly upon the Dead
Sea.

The works of Madame Sand, those romances, the poetry of matter, are
born of the epoch. Notwithstanding her superiority, it is to be feared
that the author has narrowed the circle of her readers by the very
character of her writings. George Sand will never be a favorite with
persons of all ages. Of two men equal in genius, one of whom preaches
order and the other disorder, the first will attract the greater
number of hearers. The human race never give unanimous applause to
what wounds morality, on which repose the feeble and the just. We do
not willingly associate with all the recollections of our life those
books which caused us the first blush, and whose pages were not
those we learned by heart as we left the cradle: books which we have
read only in secret, which have never been our avowed and cherished
companions, and which were never mingled with either the candor of our
sentiments or the integrity of our innocence. Providence has confined
to very straight limits all success which has not its source in
goodness, and has given universal glory as an encouragement for
virtue.

I am aware that I reason here like a man whose narrow view does not
embrace the vast _humanitary_ horizon, like a retrograde attached to
a ridiculous system of morality, a morality already passing to decay,
and at the best good only for minds without intelligence, in the
infancy of society. There is close at hand the birth of a new gospel,
far above the common-places of this conventional wisdom, which hinders
the progress of the human race, and the restoration to dignity and
honor of this poor body, so calumniated by the soul. When women all
resort to the street--when to perform the marriage ceremony it will
be enough to open the window and call on G