in she moves her figures, or who cannot respire at this intellectual elevation, should, from modesty no less than equity, be silent where they do not comprehend. It is no less prejudicial to the advancement of sound morality, than it is an outrage upon justice and reason, to submit (as is the general practice) the great laws that regulate not only particular communities, but the whole race, the moral universe, to the test of the petty conventionalities of village morals. Yet such is the criterion, such the comparison upon which the cry of "immorality" has been raised against G. Sand, and the few other writers, to whom we are indebted for having sought, under the attractive form of the novel, to introduce, to the general intelligence, the philosophical principles (ie. true morality) of society and of man. The critic may reply that the practical rules must be the proper test of doctrinal truth in morals, as facts are the proper verifiers of principles in physics. In short, that he is only applying the inductive system. But this is fallacious, in several points of view. Not that morality is not as susceptible of science as natural philoso phy; both, no doubt, equally rest upon laws which are universal and immutable. But these laws are not ascertainable with equal certainty or facility, in both. Hence a difference, almost a reversion, in the method of investigation. Moreover, facts are, even in physical subjects, far from being infallible tests of scientific truth, especially in the hands of your "practical men." In any science, a single fact will establish a principle; of the operation of which the fact is, of course, an instance. But to know what principle, the fact must be correctly observed. This is generally practicable in the natural sciences; never, perhaps, in the moral. In the latter all we can gain is approximation to the crucial appreciation of particulars; and this, not by interrogating or torturing (to borrow the quaintly forcible figure of Bacon) individual facts, but by contemplating facts in large aggregates, and taking the average results. The wider the basis, the closer, of course, to truth will probably be the approximation. In the science of morality, then, principles are alone to be relied on as the test of truth; the synthetic, the proper or the predominant method of investigation. We have thus seen, from the nature of the case, the unreasonableness of denouncing specula

tive writers because their comprehensive views may seem to clash with some miserable local prejudice or superstitious usage. Experience, also, teaches the danger of erecting this arbitrary morality into the paramount and controlling standard. The mischief of dwelling upon particular facts and cases, to the disregard and occasionally the denial, of the great principles that alone characterize, and give them significance, may be witnessed in the mazy and many-sided systems of the Jesuits, and the other moral and theological casuists. This is what a great man (Mirabeau) meant, when he remarked, with equal truth and energy, la petite morale tue la grande.

LELIA, then, (in whom the reader has doubtless already recognized our heroine) Lelia symbolizes the Soul, the Intellectthose attributes of our spiritual nature which yearn for, and pursue, the ideal and the unknown; and this, through the several stages of our civilization, progressively. The character, though naturally the most elaborated of the book, does not seem, as before intimated, very distinctly demarcated, or consistently composed and conducted. To convey the author's conception of it, however, we cannot do better than transcribe the most complete description to be found in her own words, and which seems to embrace what are commonly classed as qualities of the heart, as well as the faculties of the intellect-all, in short, that distinguishes and dignifies human nature. It may be well to observe, that the speaker, Stenio, is a poet, and in love with Lelia, and that the portrait, therefore, is probably meant to represent that psychological stage of humanity, which is sometimes called the "heroic" or " the golden" age.

"Behold Lelia, that majestic Grecian figure, robed in the devout and passionexciting attire of Italy-that antique cast of beauty, of which the statuary has lost the mould, with its deep, dreamy expression of the philosophic ages-those outlines and features so roundly formed, so richly tinted-that voluptuousness of physical organization, of which a Homeric sun could alone have formed the now forgotten types. This mere physical beauty would by itself be irresistible; but the Creator has been studious to embellish it with all the intellectual accomplishments of the epoch. . . . Can imagination conceive anything more complete than Lelia, thus robed, reclined and musing? She is the spotless statue of

Galatea, with the celestial gaze of Tasso, and the pensive smile of Alighieri. Such was the graceful and chivalrous attitude of the youthful heroes of ShakspeareRomeo, the poetic lover; Hamlet, the pale and ascetic visionary; Juliet, Juliet half-expiring and hiding in her bosom the poison and the memory of her blighted love. The loftiest names of history, of the drama, of poetry, might be inscribed upon that face, whose expression is, indeed, an epitome of them all, because it is of all the concentration. This rapt contemplativeness is that in which the youthful Raphael must have plunged, when Heaven unveiled to him his pure and ravishing visions. The despairing Corinne must have been buried in that pensive meditation, when listening to her last verses, chanted by a young maiden, on the capitol. In such an isolation, disdainful of the crowd, was wrapped the mute and mysterious page of Lara. Yes, Lelia unites in herself all these idealities, for she combines the genius of all poets, the grandeur of all characters. You might give to Lelia the names of all of these, the most honorable and the most acceptable to God, would still be Lelia-Lelia, whose pure and radiant brow, whose ample and expansive breast is the abode of every great thought, of every generous sentiment: Religion, Enthusiasm, Stoicism, Compassion, Perseverance, Grief, Charity, Clemency, Candor, Courage, Contempt of life, Intelligence, Energy, Hope, Patience; all, in fine, down to those innocent frivolities, those sublime levities of woman, that frolic thoughtlessness which constitute perhaps her most cherished privilege and most bewitching attraction."-Vol. I. p. 90.

STENIO is a young man in the bloom of adolescence. He is the type of the enthusiasm, the impetuosity, the hope, the poetry and the passions of that deliciously-tumultuous epoch. He becomes enamoured of Lelia, of whom we have just given his lover-like description. The interviews between this pair are the most frequent and close of any in the book, and their conversations no less remarkable for suggestive instruction than passionate eloquence. The mythus of the relation between them, we conceive

to be the influence exercised by the intellect and the heart-by the reason and the passions, mutually upon each other. In support of this view, we shall quote a remonstrance of Lelia against the urgency of her ardent and inexperienced lover. It is long; but, let the inexorable moralist say what he will, it is full of beautiful wisdom. It contains a description of "first love"— of those vague desires, those unutterable thoughts, those ceaseless aspirations, those aimless inquiries through the universe within us as through that without, for something, we know not what, to fix the feverish restlessness of the imagination, to fill the insatiable avidity of the soul-a description which we are sure there is none of our readers, with a memory or a heart, who will read without rapture. The passage, in its suggestions respecting the proper use and the abuse of this passion, will also serve to show us what sort of love it is of which George Sand is the expounder, or, if you will, the advocate-"a love," in her own eloquent language," which is grand, noble, beautiful, voluntary, eternal; a love which is the marriage-union such as Jesus has instituted it, such as St. Paul has explained it, such, if you will, as the Civil Code, chap. VI., Title V., has expressed its reciprocal duties"*—and that it is not the promiscuous and brutal appetite, of which many, whose calumnies have not even the excuse of wilful ignorance, have dared to denounce her as the deliberate apostle! This is another motive to us for giving so long a passage in full.

Lelia addresses Stenio : "Thou hast promised to love me tenderly, and that we would thus be happy. Seek not, Stenio, to anticipate time; be not in haste to sound the mysteries of life. Await its arrival to take and carry thee whither we are all going. Thou fearest me, thou sayest. It is thyself thou hast to fear, it is thou who hast need of restraint; for at thine age imagination spoils the most savory fruits, impairs, by its avidity, every enjoyment. At thy years, we are bad economists of happiness; we would know all, posess all, exhaust all; and then we are astonished that the goods of this life are so inconsiderable, whereas

the true subject of astonishment is the heart of man, and its insatiable wants. Come, take my advice, proceed softly, luxuriate, one by one, upon the ineffable blisses of a word, a look, a thought-all those immense and important nothings of nascent love. Were we not happy yesterday, under those trees, when, seated side by side, we felt our garments touch, and our glances divine, each other, in the shade? The night was quite dark, and yet I could see you, Stenio; you appeared beautiful as life, and I fancied you the sylph of those woods, the spirit of that breeze, the angel of the mysterious and tender hour. Have you remarked, Stenio, that there are moments when we are forced to love, times when the soul is innundated with poetry, when the heart beats more quickly, when the spirit launches beyond us and bursts the bonds of the will, to flee in quest of a counterpart wherein to pour itself? How often, in the evening twilight, at the rising of the moon, at the earliest day-dawn, how often, in the stillness of midnight, and in that other repose of noon so oppressive, so disquieting, so devouring, have 1 felt my heart precipitate itself towards some unknown object; towards a happiness without shape, without name, without end, which is in heaven, in the atmosphere, everywhere, like an invisible magnet-like love! And yet, Stenio, this is not love; you think so you who know nothing and hope everything. I, who know all, know that there are deeper than love, desires, wants, hopes inextinguishable; else what would the life of man be, so few are the days allowed him to love upon the earth! But in those hours, our feelings are so vivid, so uncontrollable, that they overflow upon every object around us. At these moments, when the Deity possesses and fills us, we shed upon all his works the splendor of the flame that

"Love, Stenio, is not what you deem it; it is not that violent aspiration of every faculty for a created being; it is the holy aspiration of the part the most etherial of the soul, for the unknown. Limited beings, we are ever endeavoring to illude those insatiable desires that consume us. We provide them an object within our reach, and poor prodigals that we are, we deck the perishable idol with all the ideal charms observed in our visions. The emotions of sense are insufficient for us. Nature has nothing

delicate enough, in the treasury of her simple enjoyments, to assuage the thirst of happiness which burns within uswe want heaven, and cannot have it!

"This is the reason why we seek heaven in a creature like ourselves, and expend upon it all that lofty energy which had been given us for a nobler purpose. We refuse to God the sentiment of our adoration-a sentiment implanted in us to be given to God alone. We transfer it to a weak and imperfect being, who becomes the god of our idolatrous worship. In the youth of the world, before man had sophisticated his nature and misapprehended his own heart, the love of the sexes, such as we now understand it. had no existence. Pleasure was the only bond; of the moral passion, with its obstacles, its anxieties, its painful intensity, those happy generations were blissfully ignorant. It is, that then there were gods to worship, and that now there are none! In the present day, with persons of poetic temperament, the feeling of adoration enters into physical love. Strange error, truly, of a generation at once avid and impotent! Accordingly, when the veil of divinity drops off, and the creature appears in its imperfect and contemptible reality, behind those clouds of incense, that halo of love, we stand aghast at our hallucination, we blush for it, we tear down the idol and trample it in the dust.

"And then, again, we seek another! for we must have something to love, and we go on deceiving ourselves over and over, until at length disabused, enlightened, purified, we are taught to abandon all hope of a durable affection upon earth, and to elevate towards God that pure and enthusiastic homage which we never should have offered but to Him alone."-Vol. 1. p. 107-9.

We ask the candid reader, Are these the sentiments, the precepts of a teacher of licentiousness and irreligion? The idea suggested in the last paragraph is that which is developed in the character of TRENMOR, who is made to pass from and through profligacy to purity, from the most abandoned vice to the most stoical virtue. In our author, as usual, this theory is decried as unnatural and grossly immoral. Indeed, she has herself elsewhere, conceded the inconsistency of Trenmor. Yet the history of Christianity has, we believe, presented several similar examples; a fact which, no doubt, will pass for proof that the phenomenon is, at least, not incom

patible with the constitution of human

nature.

The preceding paragraphs contain the outline of George Sand's theory, or rather the principle of her doubts, respecting the marriage institution. There is not, it will be observed, a word against marriage. She only seeks to show the true cause of the disappointments and distresses which are sometimes charged upon this relation-but charged wrongly, since (as she has attested elsewhere) they are no less incident to unlegalized, and even to illicit, love. Yet, this is what some of her critics call her "attacks upon marriage," and her "advocacy of licentiousness!" The separation which she makes of love from appetite, and the identification of the former with the sentiment of worship is, on the contrary, we venture to affirm, in the very highest strain of moral and religious purity and philosophy. The last passage of the extract, which we have put in italics, might, however, carry a great way, had we the space or the disposition to unfold its contents. If not also more truth, we do not hesitate to say that it involves more thought, than any half dozen novels that have been published within the last year. For the rest, it is, in this respect, but a fair sample of this pregnant book.

PULCHERIE, the only other female character of any consequence, presents the contrast of Lelia, being the representative of the sensual passions. She is introduced then in quality of a courtezan, and with the licentious principles, combines the worldly sense and frolic cynicism, of her unhappy class. The dialogues, or colloquies, between her and Lelia (which constitute a large and perhaps the most important part of the book) may be regarded as exhibiting the systems, and certainly are not unworthy of the ability, of Aristippus and Plato. We must make room for a long extract or two respecting the marriage-unionthe subject, and probably the identical passages, whereby George Sand has, in this article, become obnoxious. Lelia relates to Pulcherie the happiness she had expected, and the disappointment she has experienced, from connubial love. Pulcherie replies:

"That you have lost your labor, Lelia, does not surprise me. You would make love what God has not permitted it should be, here below. If I understand your case, you have loved with the whole energy of your being, and your

love has not been requited. What a misapprehension! Knew you not that man is brutal and woman is mutable? These two beings, at once so like and so dissimilar, are constituted in such sort that there is ever between them, even in the transports of love, an ineradicable germ of hatred. The first sentiment that succeeds their embrace is one of aversion and dejection. It is a law of heaven against which it is idle to strive. If the design of Providence, the union of man and woman is evidently temporary. Every consideration opposes the perpetuity of their association, and change is a necessity of their nature."

That this law of nature" has been infringed, Pulcherie imputes to the arbitrary and vicious constitution of society in this particular. Lelia (who, be it observed, speaks the sentiments of Sand) inclines to attribute it rather to the Author of our being, who has permitted, or suffered, man to establish this unequal and oppressive dominion. Our author, therefore, admits the marriage relation, however unequal and oppressive, to be in the order of things. Lelia then proceeds to vindicate woman's right of equality, in a strain of indignant eloquence and of novel and forcible illustration.

66

Which of the wrongs we (women) suffer under are we fairly blamable for ourselves? How admit-unless, indeed, on the supposition of our being cast upon this earth, there to lave in the waters of affliction, before admitting us to the banquet of eternal felicity-how believe the intervention of a Providence in our destinies? What paternal eye, tell me, watched over the human race the day it conceived the design of severing itself in twain, and subjugating one sex to the arbitrary dominion of the other? Is it not rather savage appetite which has made woman the slave and the property of man? What instincts of elevated love, what notions of sacred fidelity, could have survived that deadly blow? What tie other than force could thenceforth subsist between him who has the right to demand everything, and her who has not the right to refuse anything? What toils or thoughts could be theirs in common, or at least with an equal degree of sympathy? What interchange of sentiments, what communion of ideas possible between the master and the slave? In the mildest exercise of his legal rights, man still stands towards his companion in the relation of the guard