is the symbol of the principle of expiation and of rehabilitation”; but she adds,—­“Our society recognizes this principle in religious theory, but not in practice; it is too great, too beautiful for us.”  She says farther,—­“There still exists a pretended aristocracy of virtue, which, proud of its privileges, does not admit that the errors of youth are susceptible of atonement.  This condemnation is the more absurd, because, for what is called the World, it is hypocritical.  It is not only women of really irreproachable life, nor matrons truly respected, who are called upon to decide upon the merits of their misled sisters.  It is not the company of the excellent of the earth who make opinion.  That is all a dream.  The great majority of women of the world is really a majority of lost women.”  We must understand these remarks as applying to French society, in respect even of which we are not inclined to admit their truth.  Yet there is a certain justice in the inference that women are often most severely condemned by those who are no better than themselves; and this insincerity of uncharity is far more to be dreaded than the over-zeal of virtuous hearts, which oftenest helps and heals where it has been obliged to wound.

At the risk of unduly multiplying quotations, we will quote here what George says of her mother in this, the flower of her days.  At a later day, the ill-regulated character suffered and made others suffer with its own discords, which education and moral training had done nothing to reconcile.  The manly support, too, of the nobler nature was wanting, and the best half of her future and its possibilities was buried in the untimely grave of her husband.  Here is what she was when she was at her best:—­

“My mother never felt herself either humiliated or honored by the company of people who might have considered themselves her superiors.  She ridiculed keenly the pride of fools, the vanity of parvenus, and, feeling herself of the people to her very finger-ends, she thought herself more noble than all the patricians and aristocrats of the earth.  She was wont to say that those of her race had redder blood and larger veins than others,—­which I incline to believe; for, if moral and physical energy constitute in reality the excellence of races, we cannot deny that this energy is compelled to diminish in those who lose the habit of labor and the courage of endurance.  This aphorism is certainly not without exception, and we may add that excess of labor and of endurance enervates the organization as much as the excess of luxury and idleness.  But it is certain, in general, that life rises from the bottom of society, and loses itself in measure as it rises to the top, like the sap in plants.