The intellectual power of George Sand is attested by the suffrages of Europe. The use to which she has put it is another question. Unfortunately, she has applied it, for the most part, to so bad a use, that half the people who acknowledge the ascendency of her genius, see too much occasion to deplore its perversion. The principles she has launched upon the world have an inevitable tendency toward the disorganization of all existing institutions, political and social. This is the broad, palpable fact, let sophistry disguise or evade it as it may. Whether she pours out an intense novel that shall plow up the roots of the domestic system, or composes a proclamation for the Red Republicans that shall throw the streets into a flame, her influence is equally undeniable and equally pernicious. It has been frequently urged, in the defense of her novels, that they do not assail the institution of marriage, but the wrongs that are perpetrated in its name. Give her the full benefit of her intention, and the result is still the same. Her eloquent expositions of ill-assorted unions--her daring appeals from the obligations they impose, to the affections they outrage--her assertion of the rights of nature over the conventions of society, have the final effect of justifying the violation of duty on the precarious ground of passion and inclination. The bulk of her readers--of all readers--take such social philosophy in the gross; they can not pick out its nice distinctions, and sift its mystical refinements. It is less a matter of reasoning than of feeling. Their sensibility, and not their judgment, is invoked. It is not to their understanding that these rhapsodies are addressed, but to their will and their passions. A writer who really meant to vindicate an institution against its abuses, would adopt a widely different course; and it is only begging George Sand out of the hands of the jury to assert that the _intention_ of her writings is opposed to their _effect_, which is to sap the foundations upon which the fabric of domestic life reposes.