there, presented, indeed, in a fragmentary shape and under wayward disguises, but nevertheless giving to the motley groups the strong and uumistakable charm of reality.  Her grandmother, by whom she was brought up, disgusted at her not being a boy, resolved to remedy the misfortune as far as possible by educating her like a boy.  We may say of this, as of all the other irregularities of her strange and exceptional life, that whatever unhappiness and error may be traceable thereto, its influence on her writings has been beneficial, by giving a greater range to her experience.  It may be selfish to rejoice over the malady which secretes a pearl, but the possessor of the pearl may at least congratulate himself that at any rate the pearl has been produced; and so of the unhappiness of genius.  Certainly few women have had such profound and varied experience as George Sand; none have turned it to more account.  Her writings contain many passages that her warmest admirers would wish unwritten; but although severe criticism may detect the weak places, the severest criticism must conclude with the admission of her standing among the highest minds of literature.  In the matter of eloquence, she surpasses everything France has yet produced.  There has been no style at once so large, so harmonious, so expressive, and so unaffected:  like a light shining through an alabaster vase, the ideas shine through her diction; while as regards rhythmic melody of phrase, it is a style such as Beethoven might have written had he uttered in words the melodious passion that was in him.  But deeper than all eloquence, grander than all grandeur of phrase, is that forlorn splendor of a life of passionate experience painted in her works.  There is no man so wise but he may learn from them, for they are the utterances of a soul in pain, a soul that has been tried.  No man could have written her books, for no man could have had her experience, even with a genius equal to her own.  The philosopher may smile sometimes at her philosophy, for that is only the reflex of some man whose ideas she has adopted; the critic may smile sometimes—­at her failure in delineating men; but both philosopher and critic must perceive that those writings of hers are original and genuine, are transcripts of experience, and as such fulfil the primary condition of all literature.

This clear, intellectual apprehension of what woman can effect in literature, had much to do with George Eliot’s own success.  Yet it is doubtful if she was so true, in some directions, to the instincts of her sex as was George Sand, Mrs. Browning or Charlotte Bronte.  Hers was in large measure an intellect without sex; and though she was a woman in all the instincts of her heart, yet intellectually she occupied the human rather than the woman’s point of view.  With a marvellous insight into the heart of woman, and great skill in portraying womanly natures, she had a man’s way, the logical and impersonal