upon me when I read the book (probably in 1867) for the first time. I saw plainly enough that Jacques is to a certain extent an unreal character--and Sylvia also; for she is nothing more than Jacques' understanding confidante; but the ideal current between them is real, and it electrified me. Sylvia has her origin in the distressful cry of the genius for its equal and mate; she is undoubtedly nothing more than the expression of the urgent craving and demand of the great, lonely heart--but what is poetry else than this? Imperfect as the novel otherwise may be, the friendship between Jacques and Sylvia lends it an atmosphere of real poetry; we feel, while reading of it, as if, above the low-lying world of the passions, we caught a glimpse of a higher one, where purer, yet still quite earthly beings, love and understand each other. Characters such as these illustrate the strong instinct of friendship which George Sand possessed, and which was quite in the spirit of the youthful Romanticism of the period. Her _Lettres d'un Voyageur_, which follow the first group of novels, and begin immediately after the separation from Alfred de Musset in Venice, give us an insight into her friendships. These letters belong to the works in which she has most directly revealed her own personal feelings, although they are written with a reserve concerning actual events which makes them obscure to the uninitiated. In them we follow her from the days of her life with the handsome, stupid Italian, Dr. Pagello, for whom she gave up De Musset, to the period of her devotion to Everard (Michel de Bourges), her counsel in the divorce suit, who inspired her with the idea of the pretty tale, _Simon_. Between these two extremes lie all the good, cordial friendships, with François Rollinat, Jules Néraud, &c.--frank, clever men, with whom she felt a constant desire to exchange ideas and letters, with whom she studied, from whom she learned much, and whom, in the Romantic spirit of good fellowship, she addressed with the familiar "thou"; as also all the genuine artistic comradeships with Franz Liszt, the Comtesse d'Agoult, Meyerbeer, and many others--the men and women of genius of the day.