The works of Madame Sand, those romances, the poetry of matter, are born of the epoch.  Notwithstanding her superiority, it is to be feared that the author has narrowed the circle of her readers by the very character of her writings.  George Sand will never be a favorite with persons of all ages.  Of two men equal in genius, one of whom preaches order and the other disorder, the first will attract the greater number of hearers.  The human race never give unanimous applause to what wounds morality, on which repose the feeble and the just.  We do not willingly associate with all the recollections of our life those books which caused us the first blush, and whose pages were not those we learned by heart as we left the cradle:  books which we have read only in secret, which have never been our avowed and cherished companions, and which were never mingled with either the candor of our sentiments or the integrity of our innocence.  Providence has confined to very straight limits all success which has not its source in goodness, and has given universal glory as an encouragement for virtue.

I am aware that I reason here like a man whose narrow view does not embrace the vast humanitary horizon, like a retrograde attached to a ridiculous system of morality, a morality already passing to decay, and at the best good only for minds without intelligence, in the infancy of society.  There is close at hand the birth of a new gospel, far above the common-places of this conventional wisdom, which hinders the progress of the human race, and the restoration to dignity and honor of this poor body, so calumniated by the soul.  When women all resort to the street—­when to perform the marriage ceremony it will be enough to open the window and call on God as witness, priest, and wedding-guest—­then all prudery will be destroyed; there will be espousals everywhere, and we shall rise the same as the birds to the grandeur of nature.  My criticism on books of the sort of George Sand’s has then no value except in the vulgar order of things past, and therefore I trust she will not be offended by it.  The admiration I profess for her ought to make her excuse these remarks, which have their origin in the infelicity of my age.  Once I should have been more carried away by the Muses.  Those daughters of heaven were in times past my lovely mistresses, now they are only my ancient friends.  At evening they kept me company by the fireside, but they soon depart; for I go to bed early, and then they hasten to take their places around the hearth-stone of Madame Sand.

Without doubt Madame Sand will in this path prove her intellectual omnipotence, but yet she will please less, because she will be less original.  She will fancy she augments her power by venturing into the depths of these reveries, beneath which we deplorable common mortals are buried, and she will be mistaken.  In fact she is much superior to this extravagance, this vagueness, this presumptuous balderdash.  At the same time that a person endowed with a rare but too flexible faculty, should be guarded against follies of the higher order, he ought also to be warned that fantastic compositions, subjective or intimate, painting (so runs the jargon) are restricted; that their course is in youth; that its springs are drying up every instant, and that after a number of productions the writer finishes with nothing but weak repetitions.