"Some time after the July revolution, there appeared a book entitled, _Rose et Blanche_, or the Actress and the Nun. This book, which at first passed unnoticed, fell by chance into a publisher's hands; he read it, and, struck by the richness of certain descriptive passages, and by the novelty of the situations, he inquired the author's address. He was referred to a humble lodging-house, and, upon applying there, was conducted to a small attic. There he saw a young man writing at a little table, and a young woman painting flowers by his side. These were Watelet and Margaret Lecomte. The publisher spoke of the book, and it appeared that Margaret, who could write books as well as Watelet, and even better, had written a good part, and the best part, of this one; only, as books sold badly, or not at all, she combined with her literary occupations the more lucrative labour of a colourist. Encouraged by the publisher's approval, she took from a drawer a manuscript written entirely by herself; the publisher examined it, bought it, doubtless very cheap, and might have paid a much higher price without making a bad speculation, for it was the manuscript of _Indiana_. Soon after that, Margaret Lecomte left Watelet, took half his name, called herself George Sand, and of that half name has made herself one which shines to-day amongst the greatest and most glorious." Somebody has hazarded the sweeping assertion that the lover is the _King_ of George Sand's novels. George Sand herself is the queen of the class of _femmes incomprises_, the victim of a _mariage de convenance_. The death of her grandmother left her, at the very moment she quitted the convent where she had been educated, alone and almost friendless. Ignorant of the world, she allowed herself to be married to a rough old soldier, who led a prosaic existence in a lonely country-house, had no notion of romance, sentiment, or reverie, and made little allowance for them in others. The days that ought to rank amongst the brightest memories of a woman's heart, the early years of marriage, were a blank, or worse, to Aurora Dudevant, and the bitterness thus amassed not unfrequently breaks forth in her writings. It has been urged by her partisans, in extenuation of her conjugal _faux pas_, that her husband was ignorant and brutal. On the other hand, the idle have invented many of the delinquencies imputed to her since her separation, just as they have told absurd stories about her fantastical habits; and have made her out a sort of literary Lola Montes, swaggering and smoking in man's attire, and brandishing pistol and horsewhip with virile energy and effect. The atmosphere of Paris is famous for its magnifying powers. Seen through it, a grain of sand becomes a mountain, an eccentricity is often distended into a vice. We lay this down as a rule, which none who know and understand the French metropolis will dispute; but we do not, at the same time, in any way take up the gloves