library, to draw from old illuminated MSS., my friend, the librarian, M. d'Orange, said to me, 'Madame, do you know that you have George Sand in your hotel?' When I went back, she had just gone with the gentleman who had lent her his name to travel with, for she was entered as his 'Comtesse' in the book of the hotel. He was a Radical Deputy. I told my lively landlady, who declared that M. d'Orange '_n'en savait rien_,' and opened her book to show me the names of M. le Comte and Madame la Comtesse So-and-So. Then she said, 'If it was George Sand,' her books, '_ma foi_,' of which she had read one or two—instancing a couple of the best—were not '_grande chose_.' When I got back to England, I looked at a fine lithographed portrait of George Sand, and saw it was the woman. Perhaps it was for the best that I had not known who she was, as my impression, which is still vivid, remains of her as she seemed, and not such as my fancy would at once have set to work to make her out. Thinking of her afterward, I was reminded of that passage in her autobiography in which she tells how, in a moment of misery, she tested her own strength by lifting a large heavy stone, and said to herself in despair, 'And I may have to live forty years!' Also I thought of Alfred de Musset's taunting her—she never forgot it—with having no _esprit_. Of '_esprit Gallois_' she seems to have had little. The Northern races had the uppermost in her making, I should say. I have a notion that the Königsmarks were Pomeranian—of the Bismarck build—and had she not the blood of the Counts Horn? I forget. However, Marshal Saxe spoke for himself in her. Mr. Hamerton says that an intense desire to study character had its strong share in her illicit liaisons with poets, musicians, lawyers, novelists, etc., all being men above the common run. But here, again, I cannot help thinking that race descent from Augustus II. of Saxony and Aurore de Königsmark counted for much. Her genuine feeling for the poor, and a sort of homely motherliness, seem to have made her greatly loved by the Berry people.“—_Spectator._ * * * * *