day to speak of Amiel, not because I found him supplying water for any particular mill, either mine or any other, but because it seemed to me that by a whole important side he was eminently worth knowing, and that to this side of him the public, here in England at any rate, had not had its attention sufficiently drawn. If in the seventeen thousand pages of the Journal there are many pages still unpublished in which Amiel exercises his true vocation of critic, of literary critic more especially, let his friends give them to us, let M. Scherer introduce them to us, let Mrs. Humphry Ward translate them for us. But sat patriæ Priamoque datum : Maïa has had her full share of space already: I will not ask for a word more about the infinite illusion, or the double zero, or the Great Wheel. GEORGE SAND To-DAY a statue of George Sand is unveiled at La Châtre, a little town of Berry, not far from Nohant, where she lived. She could hardly escape a statue, but the present is not her hour, and the excuses for taking part in to-day's ceremony prove it. Now is the hour of the naturalists and realists, of the great work, as it is called, and solid art of Balzac, which Monsieur Daudet and other disciples are continuing; not of the work of humanitarians and idealists like George Sand and her master Rousseau. The work, whether of idealists or realists, must stand for what it is worth, and must pay the penalty of its defects. George Sand has admirably stated the conditions under which Rousseau's work was produced: 'Rousseau had within him the love of goodness and the enthusiasm of beauty-and he knew nothing of them to start with. The absence of moral education had prolonged the childhood of his spirit beyond the ordinary term. The reigning philosophy of his time was not moralist; in its hatred of unjust restraints, it left out the chapter of duty altogether. Rousseau, more logical and more serious than the rest, came then to perceive that liberty was not all, and that philosophy must be a virtue, a religion, a social law.' Of George Sand herself, too, we may say that she suffered from the absence of moral education, and had to find out for herself that liberty is not all, and that philosophy must be a virtue, a religion, a social law. Her work, like Rousseau's, has faults due to the conditions under which it arose - faults of declamation, faults of repetition, faults of extravagance. But do not let us deceive ourselves. Do not let us suppose that the work of Rousseau and George Sand is defective because those writers are inspired by the love of goodness and the desire for beauty, and not, according to the approved recipe at present, by a disinterested curiosity. Do not let us assume that the work of the realists is solid-that the work of Balzac, for instance, will stand, that the work of M. Daudet will stand, because it is inspired by disinterested curiosity. The best work, the work which endures, has not been thus inspired. M. Taine is a profound believer in the motive of disinterested curiosity, a fervent admirer of the work of Balzac. He even puts his name in connection with that of Shakspeare, and appears to think that the two men work with the same motive. He is mistaken. The motive |