When I read in "Leon Leoni" the account of the jeweller's daughter's life with her mother, passed in dressing, and learning to be looked at when dressed, "avec un front impassible," it reminded me of —— and her mother. What a heroine she would be for Sand! She has the same fearless softness with Juliet, and a sportive naïveté a mixture of bird and kitten, unknown to the dupe of Leoni.
If I were a man, and wished a wife, as many do, merely as an ornament, a silken toy, I would take —— as soon as any I know. Her fantastic, impassioned and mutable nature would yield an inexhaustible amusement. She is capable of the most romantic actions,—wild as the falcon, voluptuous as the tuberose; yet she has not in her the elements of romance, like a deeper or less susceptible nature. My cold and reasoning ——, with her one love lying, perhaps never to be unfolded, beneath such sheaths of pride and reserve, would make a far better heroine.
—— and her mother differ from Juliet and her mother by the impulse a single strong character gave them. Even at this distance of time there is a light but perceptible taste of iron in the water.
George Sand disappoints me, as almost all beings do, especially since I have been brought close to her person by the "Lettres d'un Voyageur." Her remarks on Lavater seem really shallow, à la mode du genre feminin. No self-ruling Aspasia she, but a frail woman, mourning over her lot. Any peculiarity in her destiny seems accidental; she is forced to this and to that to earn her bread, forsooth!
Yet her style—with what a deeply smouldering fire it burns! Not vehement, but intense, like Jean Jacques.
FROM A NOTICE OF GEORGE SAND.
It is probably known to a great proportion of readers that this writer is a woman, who writes under the name, and frequently assumes the dress and manners, of a man. It is also known that she has not only broken the marriage-bond, and, since that, formed other connections, independent of the civil and ecclesiastical sanction, but that she first rose into notice through works which systematically assailed the present institution of marriage, and the social bonds which are connected with it.
No facts are more adapted to startle every feeling of our community; but, since the works of Sand are read here, notwithstanding, and cannot fail to be so while they exert so important an influence abroad, it would be well they should be read intelligently, as to the circumstances of their birth and their tendency.