It is the best production on George Sand that has yet been published.  The author modestly refers to it as a sketch, which it undoubtedly is, but a sketch that gives a just and discriminating analysis of George Sand’s life, tastes, occupations, and of the motives and impulses which prompted her unconventional actions, that were misunderstood by a narrow public.  The difficulties encountered by the writer in describing this remarkable character are shown in the first line of the opening chapter, which says, ’In naming George Sand we name something more exceptional than even a great genius.’  That tells the whole story.  Misconstruction, condemnation, and isolation are the penalties enforced upon the great leaders in the realm of advanced thought, by the bigoted people of their time.  The thinkers soar beyond the common herd, whose soul-wings are not strong enough to fly aloft to clearer atmospheres, and consequently they censure or ridicule what they are powerless to reach.  George Sand, even to a greater extent than her contemporary, George Eliot, was a victim to ignorant social prejudices, but even the conservative world was forced to recognize the matchless genius of these two extraordinary women, each widely different in her character and method of thought and writing....  She has told much that is good which has been untold, and just what will interest the reader, and no more, in the same easy, entertaining style that characterizes all of these unpretentious biographies.”—­Hartford Times.

Famous Women Series.

GEORGE ELIOT.

BY MATHILDE BLIND.

One vol. 16mo.  Cloth.  Price, $1.00.

“Messrs. Roberts Brothers begin a series of Biographies of Famous Women with a life of George Eliot, by Mathilde Blind.  The idea of the series is an excellent one, and the reputation of its publishers is a guarantee for its adequate execution.  This book contains about three hundred pages in open type, and not only collects and condenses the main facts that are known in regard to the history of George Eliot, but supplies other material from personal research.  It is agreeably written, and with a good idea of proportion in a memoir of its size.  The critical study of its subject’s works, which is made in the order of their appearance, is particularly well done.  In fact, good taste and good judgment pervade the memoir throughout.”—­Saturday Evening Gazette.

“Miss Blind’s little book is written with admirable good taste and judgment, and with notable self-restraint.  It does not weary the reader with critical discursiveness, nor with attempts to search out high-flown meanings and recondite oracles in the plain ‘yea’ and ‘nay’ of life.  It is a graceful and unpretentious little biography, and tells all that need be told concerning one of the greatest writers of the time.  It is a deeply interesting if not fascinating woman whom Miss Blind presents,” says the New York Tribune.