Any classification of her works in order of time that professes to show a progressive change of style, a period of super-excellence or of distinct decadence, seems to us somewhat fanciful. From _Indiana_ and its immediate successors, denounced by so many as fraught with peril to the morals of her nation, down to _Nanon_ (1872), which might certainly carry off the prize of virtue in a competition in any country, George Sand can never be said to have entirely abandoned one "manner" for another, or for any length of time to have risen above or sunk below a certain level of excellence. _Andre_, extolled by her latest critics as "a delicious eclogue of the fields," was contemporary with the bombastic, false Byronism of _Jacques_; the feeble narrative of _La Mare au Diable_ with the passion-introspection of _Lucrezia Floriani_. The ever-popular _Consuelo_ immediately succeeded the feeble _Compagnon du Tour de France_. _La Marquise_, written in the first year of her literary life, shows a power of projection out of herself, and of delicate analysis, hardly to be surpassed; but _Francia_, of forty years' later date, is an equally perfect study. From the time of _Indiana_ onwards she continued to produce at the rate of about two novels a year; and at intervals, rare intervals, the product was a failure. But we shall find her when approaching seventy still writing on, without a trace of the weakness of old age. The charge of "unreality" so commonly brought against her novels it may be well briefly to examine. Such little fantasy-pieces in Hoffmann's manner as _Le Chateau des Desertes_, _Teverino_, and others, making no pretense to be exact studies of nature, cannot fairly be censured on this head. Like fairy tales they have a place of their own in art. One of the prettiest of these is _Les Dames Vertes_, in which the fable seems to lead us over the borders of the supernatural; but the secret of the mystification, well kept till the last, is itself so pleasing and original that the reader has no disappointing sense as of having had a hoax played upon his imagination.