When the revolution of 1848 broke out, M. Thiers ran away from Paris, but afterward returned, and has since lived a very quiet life.
GEORGE SAND
GEORGE SAND.
One of the most distinguished of the living writers of France is Madam Dudevant, or GEORGE SAND, which is her nom de plume. She is by no means a woman either after my ideal or the American ideal, but is a woman of great genius. Her masculinity, and, indeed, her licentious style, are great faults: but in sketching some of the most brilliant of French writers, it would not do to omit her name.
The maiden name of George Sand was Amantine Aurore Dupin, and she is descended from Augustus the Second, king of Poland. Her ancestors were of king's blood, and the more immediate of them were distinguished for their valor and high birth. She was born in the year 1804. She was brought up by her grandmother, at the chateau Nahant, situated in one of the most beautiful valleys of France. The old countess of Horn, her grandmother, was a woman of brilliant qualities, but not a very safe guide for a young child. Her ideas were anti-religious, and she was a follower of Rousseau rather than of Christ. When Aurore was fifteen years old, she knew well how to handle a gun, to dance, to ride on horseback, and to use a sword. She was a young Amazon, charming, witty, and yet coarse. She was fond of field sports, yet knew not how to make the sign of the cross. When she was twenty years old she was sent to a convent in Paris, to receive a religious education. She loved her grandmother to adoration, and the separation cost her a great deal of suffering. She often alludes in her volumes to this grandparent, in terms of warm love and veneration. In her "Letters of a Traveller" she gives us some details of her life with her grandmother at the chateau de Nahant. She says:
"Oh, who of us does not recall with delight the first, books he devoured! The cover of a ponderous old volume that you found upon the shelf of a forgotten closet—does it not bring back to you gracious pictures of your young years? Have you not thought to see the wide meadow rise before you, bathed in the rosy light of the evening when you saw it for the first time? Oh! that the night should fall so quickly upon those divine pages, that the cruel twilight should make the words float upon the dim page!
"It is all over; the lambs bleat, the sheep are shut up in their fold, the cricket chirps in the cottage and field It is time to go home.