not gain an influence over everyone, he at least succeeded in
forming around him a considerable circle of the most intelligent and
the best; nevertheless, in the midst of these apostolic labours strange
longings for death would overcome him; he seemed to recall heaven and
want to return to it; he called these temptations "homesickness for the
soul's country."

His favourite authors were Lessing, Schiller, Herder, and Goethe; after
re-reading the two last for the twentieth time, this is what he wrote:

"Good and evil touch each other; the woes of the young Werther and
Weisslingen's seduction, are almost the same story; no matter, we must
not judge between what is good and what is evil in others; for that is
what God will do. I have just been spending much time over this thought,
and have become convinced that in no circumstances ought we to allow
ourselves to seek for the devil in others, and that we have no right to
judge; the only creature over wham we have received the power to
judge and condemn is ourself, and that gives us enough constant care,
business, and trouble.

"I have again to-day felt a profound desire to quit this world and enter
a higher world; but this desire is rather dejection than strength, a
lassitude than an upsoaring."

The year 1816 was spent by Sand in these pious attempts upon his young
comrades, in this ceaseless self-examination, and in the perpetual
battle which he waged with the desire for death that pursued him; every
day he had deeper doubts of himself; and on the 1st of January, 1817, he
wrote this prayer in his diary:--

"Grant to me, O Lord, to me whom Thou halt endowed, in sending me on
earth, with free will, the grace that in this year which we are now
beginning I may never relax this constant attention, and not shamefully
give up the examination of my conscience which I have hitherto made.
Give me strength to increase the attention which I turn upon my own
life, and to diminish that which I turn upon the life of others;
strengthen my will that it may become powerful to command the desires
of the body and the waverings of the soul; give me a pious conscience
entirely devoted to Thy celestial kingdom, that I may always belong to
Thee, or after failing, may be able to return to Thee."

Sand was right in praying to God for the year 1817, and his fears were
a presentiment: the skies of Germany, lightened by Leipzig and Waterloo,
were once more darkened; to the colossal and universa