where the girl is awaiting the summons to execution, when the priest, goaded by the double pangs of passion and remorse, offers to sacrifice all his eternal and temporal hopes to secure her love, and is spurned from her feet, is one of unmixed power, and drawn with the hand of a master. His broken ejaculations--his wild confession-his terrible appeals, like the pleadings of a lost soul-are stamped with a fearful earnestness and truth, which carry conviction with them, and awake our compassion for his sufferings. Nor is the effect lessened when, in despairing fury, he bursts forth into imprecations, and, groveling in the dust before his intended victim, announces his determination of destroying her, as the murderer of his peace! In almost any other hands, this scene would have been one of unmixed horror, exciting only sensations of disgust; but in those of Victor Hugo, the priest becomes an object of sympathy: we recognize the human being, not the fiend; we perceive that his only hate springs from his only love that the bitterness of the one arises from the intensity of the other-and feel that in the vulture-talons of his own conscience Esmeralda finds an avenger.

The plot of the novel is simple. An Egyptian dancing girl attracts the admiration, and fires the soul, of a stern and ascetic priest, Claude Frollo by name, noted for his learning and his austerity; but who, surrendering himself to his mad passion, persecutes the unfortunate girl with his importunities. She, far from reciprocating his feelings, loathes and spurns him. Maddened by love and jealousy, he accuses her of witchcraft, and subjects her to torture and finally to death-perishing himself by the hand of a wretched deaf-mute, who also loves her, and whose revolting passion is also closely entwined with her destinies. This deaf-mute, uncouth in form and horrible in aspect, plays a conspicuous part in the book. A hideous abortion, both mentally and physically, he embodies and exhibits one of the peculiar mental crotchets of Victor Hugo, which he has made the groundwork of several of his later novels and dramas-the effort to combine moral beauty with physical deformity, and to enlist the sympathies of his readers with all the various forms of nature which are most unseemly and repulsive. In some of his dramas this strange propensity manifests itself in a still more striking form, where he spe

cially selects as his chief characters prostitutes, thieves and murderers; as in Marion de Lorme, Le Roi d'Amare, Bug Jargal, et id genus omne. Among these impurities, "Les Feuilles d'Antoniné" and "La Dernière Jour d'un Condamné" stand alone. In the same track Eugene Sue has followed, whose Fleur de Marie is evidently copied from Esmeralda. The situation of the characters is almost precisely identical. In both, sentiment is admitted as a substitute for moral obligation, and both dispense with fixed principles of any kind.

This is the new evangel of the French moral code, and as such may be worthy of a few words of comment; since no cause, supported by talents of so high an order, can be deemed too absurd or contemptible to produce mischief, whatever its abstract falsity may be. That moral purity might possibly be found to exist in the breast of one whose earliest associations had all been connected with scenes of vice and low debauchery, is but within the extreme verge of possibility-a kind of special miracle, to be met with in possibly one instance out of ten thousand; but to make it the rule, and not the exception, appears to have been the special object of Victor Hugo and his school. It is not, therefore, wonderful that his failure should have been signal, and his attempt to gloss over the distinctions between vice and virtue created only a sentiment of regret in wellregulated minds that genius so rare, and talents so varied, should have been perverted to so base an end; while, if only enlisted in the cause of virtue and sound morality, they might have effected so much good, both for himself and others. As it is, in reading his novels, we are continually impressed with the incongruity subsisting between the sentiments expressed and the sources whence they emanate courtesans exemplifying the duties of maternal fondness-strumpets testifying disinterested attachmentsthieves and murderers actuated by the most generous and noble impulses-and the whole foundations of the social system uprooted and overturned, to carry out an idle and absurd theory of a gifted author! Among the varied eccentricities of authors, we know of none more strange and perverse than this of Victor Hugo, or which will react more fatally upon his own reputation; though we can often feel the movement of the Antæus beneath the mountain which he has voluntarily

drawn down upon himself. The early circumstances of his life, however, have doubtless exercised considerable influence on the formation of his character. Much of romance has mingled with his actual experiences, and the Spanish blood he has inherited asserts itself in those gloomy and terrible dramas which create mingled terror and disgust. His love for the intensely tragic elements of character-his fondness for dwelling upon painful and morbid feelings are far more Spanish than French; and the originals whence he drew those bloody and terrific images of horror which fill his dramas, are to be sought in the writings of Calderon and Lope de Vega, and not in those of Racine and Corneille, the great French models.

For life

And here we may as well remark, once for all, that those who search in the French novelists generally for any traces of a high and pure morality, will lose both their time and their labor. like delineations of character, power of description, depth of passion and intensity of interest, they are indeed unrivaled; but they cannot be said to inculcate either good or bad morality, for they appear to be totally unconscious of the existence or necessity of any morality at all, save the conventional one of good society. They seem to think that their golden era of the " age of reason has eradicated those antiquated prejudices (as they regard them) from the minds of men, and they address themselves solely to the intellect and the passions. Their model wives usually have a lover or two, to whom they are devotedly attached; and the most exalted sentiments are put in the mouths of those whom we consider the Pariahs and outcasts of the social circle. We are well aware that "they manage these matters differently in France," as Sterne says; yet with all our prejudices, we would be loth to accept the pictures of social life presented in these novels as universally applicable; for we cannot believe that any state of society so utterly heartless and corrupt could exist among a refined, cultivated and enlightened people, whose correct taste and delicate sensibilities have become proverbial.

Balzac, Dumas and De Kock are samples of another class of writers-light, airy persifleurs, such as it would be difficult to find anywhere out of Paris-to whom fresh air and license are necessaries of life-easy, graceful triflers, to whom the world is in fact "a stage, and

all the men and women merely players

"

full of humor and fun, with a quick eye and keen perception of the ludicrous in character and situation-whose sole object is to amuse, without aspiring to create any higher or stronger sensation; and such is the piquant raciness of their style, that the sternest moralist cannot refrain from smiling over their ludicrous descriptions of men and things. Of the writers we have mentioned, Balzac is the most refined, Dumas the most dramatic, and De Kock the most amusing. All three are " men of wit and pleasure about town," familiar with all the Protean phases of city life; and their sketches are true to nature as far as they go—that is, to Parisian nature, which is a thing peculiar and sui generis, the inhabitants of that city regarding it as the centre of the social system, around which all other cities should revolve, as satellites around the sun. The whole of this class of writers, whose name is Legion, appear to entertain as vague and indefinite ideas of virtue as Pilate did of truth-with this difference, however, that they do not seem to have any curiosity on the subject, regarding virtue, as did the "dying Roman," as "nothing but a name." They are the avowed chroniclers and advocates of an open and unblushing licentiousness; and if we should form our opinion of French society from their delineations of it, we might well entertain the same holy horIor of its "manifold sins and wickednesses," which animates the hearts of pious old ladies and seriously sedate young gentlemen, who eschew omelets as savoring of papistry, and turn up their eyes with a scared sanctity at the moustaches and morality of "la jeune France." But the estimate formed from the admissions of these writers is an erroneous one. They represent but one phase of that many-sided Parisian life-they are conversant only with the manners and habits of a particular class, and that class far from the highest either in station, character or intelligence. When they attempt to portray the manners or conversation of ladies and gentlemen, they either sink into coarse familiarity or broad caricature; but when, descending some steps lower in the social scale, they introduce the reader into the society of the grisettes and students of Paris, with their reckless "abandon" and careless "insouciance," they are evidently at home, and do the honors with an ease and grace quite captivating. They are, indeed, the modern

Asmodei, literally unroofing the garrets of that great city for our inspection; for the class with whose sayings and doings they make us familiar, usually perch in these airy attics-the consequence of the inmates of a Parisian lodging being always in an inverse ratio to the height of the dwelling-place to which they are elevated. The poorer a man is in Paris, the higher up in the world they put him; bringing economy and the study of the heavenly bodies into close alliance.

It would be both useless and tedious to attempt anything like an enumeration of the writings of these authors. They are as prolific as rabbits; and novel succeeds novel with a rapidity almost marvelous, and each filled with incident enough to furnish material for half-adozen ordinary tale-writers. Dumas, sitting at ease in his dressing-gown, by his sea-coal fire, in his Parisian lodging, writes book after book of "Travels," crammed with descriptions of places he has never seen, and filled with the most unimaginable lies to give them zest. Balzac cultivates the intimacy of a "woman of a certain age"-then makes a book out of his study of her charactercombining the utile with the dulce, like a true French philosopher of the nineteenth century. De Kock immortalizes the amours of sprightly grisettes with melancholy students; which, translated into our vernacular, furnish the literary dramdrinking of the young men of our country, to the great waste of their time and detriment of their principles, which are more surely sapped by these licentious novels than by all the subtil arguments and sarcastic pleasantries of those bugbears, the open and avowed infidels, whose works are placed under the ban of a sober and God-fearing community. No man ever yet was reasoned into vice, but many have been allured into it by ridicule and humor; and we therefore scruple not to say, that we regard these novels of Paul de Kock, light and trifling as they seem, as more pernicious in the influence they exert over youthful minds than all the elaborate pleadings of Voltaire, Diderot and the Encyclopedists. The danger to be apprehended from these is almost exclusively confined to the more youthful class of readers, whose imaginations are excited, and passions inflamed, by the highly-wrought pictures of sensual indulgence with which they are filled and the exuberant life with which they abound. Those of maturer

age will find in their coarseness an antidote to their immorality, and turn from the allurements of the sensual sty with loathing and disgust.

Far more insidious, and more dangerous, however, are the writings of the remaining two, whom we have named as the types of the Fourth School, who aspire to blend the character of Social Reformers with that of Romancers; Madame Dudevant, better known as George Sand, and Eugene Sue, whose writings have been almost as extensive and interminable as the wanderings of his last hero, "The Wandering Jew." Rousseau may be regarded as the Parent of the School of which they are now the chief disciples; a School which would exalt virtue, by refining away the common rules of morality; whose fine-spun theories of social perfectibility, and universal benevolence, flimsily conceal the rottenness of their social and moral code; and whose lives afford the best commentary, on their fitness to preach or practice reforms of any kind. In the "Contrast Social," and "Emile," that frenzied enthusiast, whose morbid vanity was sublimated almost to madness by a genius as erratic as it was powerful, struck his blows, boldly and fearlessly, at the very foundations of society; disgusted at the corruption which did undoubtedly prevail, in that social circle in which his lot was cast, he fell into the error of arguing from thence, that none purer or better did exist; that these evils were not mere fungi or excrescences upon the surface of society, but the natural products and result of its organization; and that the only remedy was, to topple down the whole fabric, that out of its materials a stronger and nobler edifice might be erected. How, or by whom, this task was to be effected, he neither cared nor considered. His mission was simply one' of destruction. He was the greatest Architect of ruin the world ever saw-a moral Marius, who would have sat unshaken amid the wreck his own hands had wrought; and the Dragon's teeth sown by him, brought forth, in after time, their full harvest of armed men. In the person of that perverse but gifted man, were combined more conflicting elements than ever before made their battlefield of a human soul:-confiding, yet treacherous-frank, yet suspicious-hating meanness and insincerity in others, yet habitually practising them in his own person-timorous as a child or a woman,

and shrinking from the very shadow of danger, yet smiting with indignant and burning wrath all that he considered evil or unjust a philanthropist, whose love for the human race overflowed in the most Utopian schemes for their improvement and happiness-yet a fickle lover, a cold friend, an indifferent husband, a cruel, unnatural father. Such is the picture of himself, drawn by his own hand in his celebrated Confessions, where the beautiful drapery of sentiment and passion woven by his genius permits us to behold the naked deformity of the figure it conceals.

Similar to him in many points of character, and in the objects at which they aim, the two disciples whom we have named above, proceed a step farther than their master; they are more practical in their labors, and designate distinctly the social institutions which they disapprove of, and wish to do away with; for, like Alfonso of Arragon, they think that "had they been consulted at the scheme of Creation, they might have spared many absurdities to the designer." George Sand is the apostle of one idea, and that idea is, the injustice, inequality and absurdity of the marriage tie, which she admits springs from the dependence of woman upon man, based upon a natural law-which law, however, she stigmatizes as unjust-attempting, with shrill outcries, to mar the majestic harmony of nature. Herself a divorcée, she practises as she preaches, allowing herself the largest liberty of conduct; and in a series of Novels, as remarkable for beauty of diction and power of expression, as for the want of any fixed or settled sentiments of right or wrong, dilates upon the wrongs, sufferings and miseries of her sex in the married state, as at present constituted; for which she openly proposes no remedy, but leaves one sufficiently manifest to the imagination of the reader-dissolution of the tie as soon as it becomes irksome or disagreeable. Her Lelia, Valentine, Indiana, and other Novels, are filled with pictures of wedded unhappiness, and embody her solemn protest against the regulations of society in that respect. She seems to consider the whole institution as radically wrong-productive only of crime and misery-repugnant to morality and common sense. In its stead, she would substitute a species of marriage, such as is said to constitute a part of the creed of the modern sectaries of our western country, resting on the proposition, that sensuality is of the soul

not of the body, and that all connections are lawful where there is a harmony of spirit between the two; the law of love transcending the laws of society-inferring plainly, that in her own example is to be found the model of a perfect woman. It does not please us to speak harshly of any person invested with the sanctity of the female form. But we must plainly state, that we regard her as one who has unsexed herself; who has thrown aside that winning softness and delicacy, which give to the female character its peculiar charm; substituting in their place a fierce, repining, discontented spirit, dissatisfied with itself and all the world; forming a character as repulsive as it is unfeminine.

Nor are we better pleased with the practical effects of her doctrines, as exemplified in her own life; for, let critics preach as they may, character and intellect must and will react upon each other; and a knowledge of the one will often furnish a clue to the peculiarities of the other. It is this which gives so great a value to biographical writings, which are not intended merely to gratify an idle curiosity as to private habits of distinguished men, but to illustrate their inner nature, by tracing the external causes which gave a certain bias to their minds, or direction to their actions. This is a branch of writing, of late much cultivated by some of the most gifted of modern writers; conspicuous among whom stands Thomas Carlyle, whose youthful efforts were directed to illustrating the character of one of the noblest of the German thinkers, and whose ripened intellect is, even now, busied in lighting up the dark places in the history of England's greatest statesman and warrior, Oliver Cromwell.

The biographer of Madame Dudevant would have but little difficulty in collecting the particulars of her life, for, unhappily, they are too notorious; and though Madame Rumor is a great liar, yet she does sometimes give publicity to undoubted truths. If, then, the current gossip of her associates is to be credited, George Sand constitutes one of that numerous class, of whom it is said, in strong but homely phrase, that "they are no better than they should be;" and that assuming occasionally the masculine costume, she also habitually exercises the privileged vices which custom and society have restricted to the sex who wear the pantaloons. To sum up our estimate of her in a few words: we

regard her as a gifted, reckless, unprincipled woman of genius; possessing a vivid imagination, fiery passions, and great energy of character, but totally devoid of female delicacy, moral principle, or a sense of shame-proud of her foibles, and exulting in her avowed exemption from all social or moral ties.

This plain speaking will not please her admirers; many of whom, bitten by this social tarantula, dance distractedly after her along the devious path she has chosen, swearing that it is a plain, straight road, and that the public is troubled with an obliquity of vision in thinking it otherwise. Doubtless, there is something very fascinating in the sparkling paradoxes and passionate pleadings of this self-constituted champion of the wrongs of women; yet we love and revere the female character too much to accept her either as a fit exponent or advocate of the feelings or sentiments of refined and virtuous. women-those intermediate links between men and the angels who, kept apart and above the contaminating influences to which the ruder sex are exposed, preserve inviolate that purity of heart and feeling, which makes a modest and true-hearted wife the best and highest good attainable here below.

In the June number of this Review, for 1845, appeared an article, from a contributor, written with much force and talent; in which George Sand was elevated to the rank of a high moral teacher, and the Correspondent of the National Intelligencer assailed for having expressed the same opinions which we, as well as a great majority of her readers on this side of the Atlantic, have been compelled to entertain, both as to the matter and manner of her books. "Malum est cum Platone errare," if it be an error; though from a mere perusal of the quotations cited by the critic himself in his defence, we believe any impartial reader would derive sufficient insight into the real character of the author to damn his cause.

Those who have read the work there referred to (Lelia), as well as the other novels of George Sand, will, we think, arrive at the conclusion, that the highflown speeches of Lelia, in that novel, actually amount to nothing-present nothing tangible-but consist merely of high-sounding words--" most excellent words;" while the speeches of the courtesan, Pulcherie, are sharp, pungent and to the point-embodying (perhaps un

consciously) the real sentiments and opinions of the author, as practically demonstrated in her life and history. One passage, admirably translated by the writer of the article referred to, we will quote, as illustrating our position: Lelia relates to Pulcherie the happiness she had expected, and the disappointments she has experienced, from connubial love. Pulcherie replies: "That you have lost your labor, Lelia, does not surprise me. You would make love what God has not permitted it should be here below. If I understand your case, you have loved with the whole energy of your being, and your love has not been requited; what a misapprehension! Knew you not that man is brutal and woman is mutable? These two beings, at once so like and so dissimilar, are constituted in such sort that there is ever between them, even in the transports of love, an ineradicable germ of hatred; the first sentiment that succeeds their embrace is one of aversion and dejection. It is a law of Heaven, against which it is idle to strive. In the design of Providence, the union of man and woman is evidently temporary. Every consideration opposes the perpetuity of their associ ation, and change is a necessity of their nature." Lelia, in reply, admits the fact, but differs as to its cause; and enters into a long and rambling jeremiade on the wrongs of women, married women especially, whose husbands are so unreasonable as to expect their wives to love them, when the "necessity of their nature" demands a change in the objects of affection. The writer referred to pleads hard that George Sand shall not be made responsible for the sentiments of the courtesan, for she "should not be made to talk like a parson." Undoubtedly not; the speech is in keeping with the woman's supposed character, and receives its color from the position she occupies in society, and her station in life. But then it is worth while to remark, that hers is the very position which George Sand occupies towards her reading public; for that she has "worn the weeds" of voluntary widowhood, even the most infatuated of her admirers will hardly venture to assert, and her life has been a commentary on the text we have italicized above, or the world has done her grievous injustice.

66

Spiridion" is of a higher mood than the rest of her novels, though it shares, with the others, a general character of vagueness, and want of point and concentration: it was probably suggestive