It has been customary--and though these customary things are sometimes delusive and too often mechanical, there is also occasionally, and, I think, here, her work, something not negligible in them, if they be not applied too rigidly--to divide George Sand's long period (nearly half a century) of novel-production into four sub-periods, corresponding roughly with the four whole decades of the thirties, forties, fifties, and sixties.[177] The first, sometimes called, but, I think, misleadingly, "Romantic," is the period of definite and mainly sexual revolt, illustrated by such novels as _Indiana_, _Valentine_, _Lelia_, and _Jacques_. The second is that of _illumine_ mysticism and semi-political theorising, to which _Spiridion_, _Consuelo_, _La Comtesse de Rudolstadt_, and others belong. The third, one of a certain _apaisement_, when the author had finally settled at her country-house of Nohant in Berry, turns to studies of rural life: _La Petite Fadette_, _Francois le Champi_, _La Mare au Diable_, etc. The last is represented by novels of no one particular, or at least single, scope or bent, _Les Beaux Messieurs de Bois-Dore_, _Le Marquis de Villemer_, _Mademoiselle La Quintinie,_ etc., reaching to _Flamarande_ and its sequel shortly before her death. The thing, as has been hinted already, is one of those first rough sketches of the ground which, if not too closely adhered to, are often useful. As a matter of fact, the divisions often--as one might be sure they would--run cross. There is a lot of occult or semi-occult stuff in _Lelia_, and the "period of appeasement" did not show much reconciliation and forgiveness of injury in _Elle et Lui_, whether we take this as by the injured or as by her who had done the wrong. But if we take the two first novels briefly and _Lelia_ itself more fully for Period I.; _Consuelo_ and its sequel (_Spiridion_ has been "done and done thoroughly"[178] by Thackeray in the _Paris Sketch-book_) for II.; the three above-mentioned _berquinades_ for the Third, with _Lucrezia Floriani_ thrown between as an all-important outsider, and _Les Beaux Messieurs de Bois-Dore_ for IV., giving each some detailed criticism, with a few remarks on others, it ought to suffice as a fairly solid groundwork for a general summing-up. [Sidenote: _Indiana_.]