But Mrs. Browning, though her life had been mainly one long seclusion on her sofa, was unhampered by these conventional barriers. What she felt was the attraction of the massive and fascinating brain and heart of the great French woman, what she heard was "that eloquent voice," what she saw was "that noble, that speaking head." She had warm, quick sympathies and intuitional appreciations of genius. In regard to so wide and so complicated a character as George Sand's, we cannot be astonished at finding very different judgments and impressions; indeed we are prepared to feel in all of them some note of inadequacy and of incompleteness. But in our relation to her as a Great Writer, of this, as readers, we are assured, we _know_ that it is no common matter to have come into contact with so gifted and great a nature, with a genius that possessed "a current of true and living ideas," and which produced "amid the inspiration of them." NOTES: [1: 1886. "Mind" Vol. 11. "The need of a Society for experimental Psychology."] [2: 1888. "Mind" Vol. 13. "The Psychological Laboratory at Leipsic."] [3: Essays. On the genius and tendency of the writings of Thomas Carlyle. "The Camelot Series."] [4: See supplementary notice of "Hamlet" in Charles Knight's Pictorial Edition of Shakespeare.]