remains with a privileged few, who go their own ways; and
the discussions of the "schools" will pass away like old fashions.

On the generation of writers that George Sand saw growing up, any
opinion pronounced must be premature. But with regard to herself, it
should now be possible to regard her work in a true perspective. As with
Byron, Dickens, and other popular celebrities, a phase of infinite
enthusiasm for her writings was duly succeeded by a phase of determined
depreciation. The public opinion that survives when blind friendship and
blind enmity have done their worst is likely to be the judgment of
posterity.

CHAPTER XI.

ARTIST AND MORALIST.

On what, in the future, will the fame of George Sand mainly rest?
According to some critics, on her gifts of fertile invention and fluent
narration alone, which make her novels attractive in spite of the
chimerical theories, social, political and religious, everywhere
interwoven. According to other judges again, her fictions transcend and
are likely to outlive other fictions by virtue of certain eternal
philosophic verities which they persistently set forth, and which give
them a serious interest the changes in novel-fashions cannot effect.

The conclusion seems inevitable that whilst the artistic strength of
George Sand's writings is sufficient to command readers among those most
out of harmony with her views, to minds in sympathy with her own these
romances, because they express and enforce with earnestness, sincerity
and fire, the sentiments of a poetic soul, a generous heart, and an
immense intelligence, on subjects of consequence to humanity, have a
higher value than can attach to skillful development of plot and
intrigue, mere display of literary cleverness, or of the storings of
minute observation.

Her opinions themselves have been widely misapprehended, perhaps because
her personality--or rather that imaginary personage, the George Sand of
the myths--has caused a confusion in people's minds between her ideal
standard and her individual success in keeping up to it. We would not
ignore the importance of personal example in one so famous as herself.
We may pass by eccentricities not inviting to imitation; for if any of
her sex ever thought to raise themselves any nearer to the level of
George Sand by smoking or wearing men's clothes, such puerility does not
call for notice. Still, the influence she strenuously exerted for good
as a writer for the