ose from her own joy in
writing: much as she valued proportion, she liked expressing her mind
better, not out of conceit or self-importance, but as the birds, whom
she loved so well, sing.

Good nature is what we need above all in reading George Sand. It is
there--infectious enough in her own pages, and with it the courage which
can come only from a heart at peace with itself. This is why neither
fashion nor new nor old criticism can affect the title of George Sand
among the greatest influences of the last century and the present one.
Much that she has said still seems untried and unexpected. Writers so
opposite as Ibsen and Anatole France have expanded her themes. She is
quoted unconsciously to-day by hundreds who are ignorant of their real
source of inspiration. No woman ever wrote with such force before, and
no woman since has even approached her supreme accomplishments.

PEARL MARY-TERESA CRAIGIE.

LIFE OF GEORGE SAND

George Sand, in whose life nothing was commonplace, was born in Paris,
"in the midst of roses, to the sound of music," at a dance which her
mother had somewhat rashly attended, on the 5th of July, 1804. Her
maiden name was Armentine Lucile Aurore Dupin, and her ancestry was of
a romantic character. She was, in fact, of royal blood, being the
great-grand-daughter of the Marshal Maurice du Saxe and a Mlle.
Verriere; her grandfather was M. Dupin de Francueil, the charming friend
of Rousseau and Mme. d'Epinay; her father, Maurice Dupin, was a gay and
brilliant soldier, who married the pretty daughter of a bird-fancier,
and died early. She was a child of the people on her mother's side, an
aristocrat on her father's. In 1807 she was taken by her father, who was
on Murat's staff, into Spain, from which she returned to the house of
her grandmother, at Nohant in Berry. This old lady adopted Aurore at the
death of her father, in 1808. Of her childhood George Sand has given a
most picturesque account in her "Histoire de ma Vie." In 1817 the girl
was sent to the Convent of the English Augustinians in Paris, where she
passed through a state of religious mysticism. She returned to Nohant
in 1820, and soon threw off her pietism in the outdoor exercises of a
wholesome country life. Within a few months, Mme. Dupin de Francueil
died at a great age, and Aurore was tempted to return to Paris. Her
relatives, however, were anxious that she should not do this, and
they introduced to her the natural son of a retir