embodiment of intellect and sensibility, perhaps indicative of the future condition of humanity when refined by juster laws and circumstances. In M. Hubert we have a symbol of the past mind, with all its hereditary prejudices and some of its better superstitions. In Patience, a creature nobly gifted, who has struggled to knowledge of the profoundest kind by the sheer dint of his own powers. Never were noble ideas better realised. Never have we found a completer, finer notion, of literary art as exemplified in fiction: truly every line proves our theory, that a great work of the imagination is produced by "realising a great ideality.” The authoress has determined to illustrate these wonderful processes, and has realized them with such vigour, delicacy, and completeness, that her work reads like a literal narrative of actual circumstances.

The characterization, which is wonderful, is not the only merit: the language and sentiments are equally felicitous. The story, as we have said, is the reclamation, or rather the development, of the soul of a young savage, Mauprat, brought up with bandits of the most ferocious kind, who, by the uncouth passion he has for Edmée is gradually and truly civilised into a noble human creature. The delicate delineation by which this process is made manifest can only be conceived by an attentive perusal of the book. To show that we are not creating a theory, we make the following scraps of extract :

"I knew something of the remarkable history of this old man ; but I had always had a lively wish to learn the details, and above all to hear them from himself. His strange destiny was a philosophical problem that I desired to solve; thus I examined his features, his manners, and his household, with peculiar interest.

*

*

"Here is a grave question to be resolved: 'Are there unconquerable propensities within us, and can education only modify, or altogether destroy them? For myself I dare not give judgment upon it; I am neither a metaphysician, a psychologist, nor a philosopher; but I have had terrible experiences in my life.

*

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*

"I was already violent, but with a violence sombre and concentrated; blind and brutal in my anger; apprehensive to cowardice at the approach of danger, but bold to folly when once engaged in it, I was at the same time timid and brave through the love of life. I was rebelliously obstinate; and my mother was the only one who could succeed in subduing me; and without reasoning upon the matter, for my intellect was very late in its development, I obeyed her as by a sort of magnetic necessity. Under this influence, which I well remember, and of one other woman to whose power I submitted later in life, there was that within me which led to good. But I lost my mother before she could give me any lasting impressions; and, when I was transplanted to Roche-Mauprat, I could only feel for the wickedness committed there, an instinctive repugnance, feeble enough perhaps, if fear had not been mingled with it.

"But I thank Heaven from the bottom of my heart, for the bad treatment with which I was overwhelmed; and above all, for the hatred my uncle Jean conceived against me. My misfortunes preserved me from indifference to vice, and my sufferings induced me to abhor those who committed it."

Surely the writer of these penetrating lines will never again be accused of promoting vice by her writings. The following and other passages will show that Sand's object is to reveal the power of circumstances and institutions over character; and this she does by contrasting eras of time, as well as by difference of existing relations :

"You may well imagine that brought up within the walls of Roche-Mauprat, and living in a state of perpetual siege, my ideas were absolutely those which a man-at-arms would have entertained in the times of feudal barbarism. That which out of our dwelling, was called by other men, assassination, pillage, and torture, I had been taught to call combat, conquest, and submission.

"I know not whether I was sufficiently susceptible to a feeling of good, to be inspired by them with pity for the victims; but it is certain I experienced the sentiment of selfish commiseration which is part of our very nature; and which, brought to perfection and ennobled, among civilised men has become charity.

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"I will make no excuses about it; you see before you a man who has followed the profession of a bandit. It is a thought which leaves me no more remorse than a soldier feels for having made a campaign under the orders of his general. I believed myself still living in the middle ages. The strength and wisdom of the established laws, were, for me, but words without meaning."

The following is inserted as a note, by Sand, to justify herself with laying the story in so late a time-just before the French Revolution :"The Lord of Pleumartin has left behind him in the province remembrances which will preserve the story of Mauprat from all reproach of exaggeration. The pen refuses to trace the ferocious obscenities and the refinements of torture, which signalised the life of this madman; and which will perpetuate the traditions of feudal brigandism in Berry, until the last days of the ancient monarchy. His castle was besieged, and, after an obstinate resistance, he was taken and hanged. Many persons still living, and of no very advanced age, can remember this monster."

:

Of the beautiful and exquisite pictures of scenery: of the fine bursts of eloquence of the gentle and sweet philosophy of the passionate and pathetic scenes in this beautiful little novel, we can give the reader no idea. He must read it for himself-with an earnest desire to draw out of it all the multiplied meanings with which it is impregnated. The following will give some idea of the peasant philosopher, who has struggled, unaided, to an intellectual day :

"Before I knew the poets,' he said, in his latter years, 'I was like a man in whom a sense is wanting. I saw clearly that this sense was necessary, since so many things solicited its exercise. I walked alone through the night, in unrest, asking why I could not sleep, why I had so much pleasure in gazing at the stars, which I could not draw down to me in this contemplation; why my heart suddenly beat with joy at the sight of certain colours, or grew sad to tears at certain sounds. But I quickly consoled myself in the assurance that my folly was sweet, and would rather have ceased to exist than have given it up. Now it suffices me to know that the same things have been

thought beautiful in all times, and by all intelligent men-to understand what they are, and in what they are useful to mankind. I rejoice in the thought that there is no flower, no cloud, no breath of air, which has not courted the attention, and moved the heart of other men, even to the receiving a name respected among all people. Since I have learned that it is permitted to man, without degradation to his intellect, to people the universe and to explain it in his dreams, I live entirely in the contemplation of that universe; and when the sight of social miseries and crimes breaks my heart and overturns my reason, I throw myself into my dreams; I say to myself, that, since all men have agreed in loving the works of God, so they will some day agree in loving one another. I imagine that, from father to son, education advances to perfection. Perhaps I am the first uneducated man who has divined that of which he had no idea communicated from without. Perhaps also, many others before me have been disquieted at what was passing within them, and have died, without finding the clue. Poor creatures that we are!' added Patience they forbid us neither excess in physical labour, nor in wine, nor in any debauch which may destroy our intelligence. There are people who pay dear for the labour of our arms, so that the poor, to satisfy the wants of their family, labour beyond their strength; there are public houses, and other places still more dangerous, whence the government, it is said, derives its revenue; there are also priests who mount into the pulpits to tell us what we owe to the lord of our village, but never what the lord of the village owes to There are no schools where they teach us our rights, or where they teach us to distinguish our true and honest wants from those which are disgraceful and fatal; where they teach us, in short, what we can and ought to think about, when we have toiled all the day for the gain of another, and when we are seated in the evening on the threshold of our cottages, watching the red stars rise above the horizon." "

us.

Of the beauty of the story-of the fierce anguish through which the young savage passes, owing to the vehemence of his passions-of the exquisite mode in which the love of the tender, truly intellectual Edmée, is made to mould him to an heroic existence-we can give no adequate idea by extract. We will, however, give the following, as a brief ensample of Sand's power of description. After six years' trials, Mauprat returns to the woman and the home he adored :—

"As I placed my foot upon the steps of the château, I clasped my hands, and, seized with a feeling of religious awe, invoked Heaven in a kind of terror. I know not what vague dread was aroused within me; I imagined all that could interfere with my happiness, and hesitated to cross the threshold of the house; then I darted forward. A cloud passed across my eyes, a deafening noise filled my ears. I met Saint-Jean, who, not recognising me, uttered an exclamation, and threw himself before me to prevent my entering unannounced; I pushed him from my path, and he fell terrified upon a chair in the ante-chamber, while I impetuously gained the door of the salon. But as I was about to throw it suddenly open, I stopped, seized with a new terror, and unclosed it so timidly, that Edmée, occupied with her embroidery frame, did not raise her eyes, thinking that she recognised in this slight noise the respectful manner of Saint-Jean. The chevalier was sleeping and did not awake. This old man, tall and thin like all the Mauprats, was bent nearly

double, and his pale and wrinkled head, which the insensibility of the tomb seemed already to have enveloped, resembled one of those angular figures, in sculptured oak, which ornamented the back of his large arm-chair. His feet were resting before a fire of vine-cuttings, though the sun was warm, and a bright ray falling upon his white head made it shine like silver. How shall I describe to you what the attitude of Edmée made me feel? She was bending over her tapestry, and from time to time raised her eyes to her father as though to question the slightest movement of his sleep. But what patience and resignation pervaded her whole being! Edmée did not like needlework; her mind was too serious to attach importance to the effect of shade upon shade, and the agreement of one stitch with another. Moreover her blood was impetuous; and when her mind was not absorbed by intellectual labour, she needed exercise and the open air. But since her father, a prey to the infirmities of old age, had scarcely left his arm-chair, she never quitted him a single moment; and, not being able always to read and live by the intellect alone, she had felt the necessity of adopting these feminine occupations, which are,' she said, 'the amusements of captivity.' She had then conquered her natural disposition in an heroic manner. In one of those obscure struggles which often take place beneath our eyes without our suspecting their merit, she had done more than conquer her natural disposition, she had even changed the very circulation of her blood. I found her thinner, and her complexion had lost that first blush of youth which is like the bloom that the breath of morning deposits upon fruit, and which is gone at the least exterior touch, though the ardour of the sun has respected it. But there was in this precocious paleness, and the attenuation almost sickly, an indefinable charm; her deep and always impenetrable look had less of pride and more of melancholy than of old; her mouth, more flexible, wore a more delicate and less disdainful smile. When she spoke, it seemed as though I saw two persons in her, the old and the new; and, instead of having lost her beauty, I found that she had attained the ideal of perfection; I often, however, heard it said by several persons that she was greatly changed; which meant to say, according to them, that she had lost a great deal of her beauty. But beauty is like a temple whose exterior riches are all that are seen by the profane. The divine mystery of the artist's thought reveals itself only to minds in sympathy with his own, and the smallest detail of a sublime work contains an inspiration which escapes the perception of the vulgar. One of your modern writers has said this, I believe, in other and better words. As for me, in no one moment of her life did I ever find Edmée less beautiful than in another; even in hours of suffering, when beauty seems to be effaced in its material form, hers became divine in my eyes, revealing a new moral beauty whose reflection inspired her face. For the rest, am but little gifted in the arts, and, had I been a painter, I should never have produced more than one type, that with which my soul was filled; for in the course of a long life, one woman only ever seemed beautiful to me, and that was Edmée."

And with this we must close. But, deeply as we feel the merit of Sand, we have two regrets to express, with regard to this noble production. We wish, in the first place, that she had taken a larger canvass -that she had given herself greater scope, that she might have delineated the characters of the relations of Mauprat more in detail. It is

strange, and somewhat annoying, to know that the French novelists of an unworthier kind indulge in the utmost prolixity, and to find that so powerful and teeming a writer as Sand condenses to a fault. Her works are essences. The second objection we have, is, that she has troubled herself to be ingenious, in unravelling the plot, and complicated it with invention that would win her the ecstatic applause of the admirers of the Porte de St. Martin dramas. It is extremely well managed, and very clearly told; but it is as if Minerva-Athene should come off her pedestal, and dance the bolera. Her theme is so high, her powers so great, that they are alone sufficient to fill the mind and govern the emotions. Timely arrivals, shots mistaken, disguises

assumed, are not necessary to Sand, in order to create an interest. It is indeed wonderful to see how she invests these tricks with energy and power; and the delineation of character is never lost sight of. We have said thus much to show we are not blind worshippers of this gifted woman's writings. We are anxious to introduce her to those who wish to separate the true from the false, the conventional from the natural, and the really great from the pretentious small.

Of the translator we can say that which is the highest praise. She translates with a kindred feeling-with a sympathising mind that lends vigour to every line. It may be, as has been said, that a few peculiar or provincial expressions have been mistaken; but we are quite sure no mere lexicographer, however correct in his literal rendering, could have imparted the nervous, racy, and vigorous tone to a translation, that Miss Hays has. She has a kindred sensibility and imagination; and Sand is fortunate in having so able a transferer of her sweet and powerful fictions.

A HISTORY OF SERVIA, AND THE SERVIAN REVOLUTION, from original MSS. and Documents. Translated from the German of Leopold Ranke, by Mrs. Alexander Kerr. 8vo. John Murray.

THE old and almost worn-out adage, for we have not met with it very lately, that "one half the world does not know what the other is doing," is applicable in a more extensive sense than is usually assigned to it. "The Servians are too little known to the rest of Europe," says Mrs. Kerr; but as regards England, and probably all the western and southern portions of the Continent, she might have said, nothing is known of Servia. Here is a nation, professing the Christian religion, and lying like a frontier between it and Mahometanism, of which a few sentences in a school geography furnish all that is known to nine hundred and ninety nine English, or Frenchmen, out of a thousand-a brave and noble branch of the great Sclavonian family, who have worked out for themselves their freedom and nationality, by twenty years of fierce contest with their remorseless masters. Diplomatists and politicians have, of course, closely watched the struggle, and alternately availed themselves of the vicissitudes of the war. Russia has