In my opinion _Horace_ is one of George Sand's best books. In its hero she represents with more shrewdness and profundity than ever before or after the young bourgeois of the reign of Louis Philippe. The acuteness and insight she in this case displays are in no way inferior to Balzac's. She is inspired by a strong antipathy, which, however, does not preclude a good-humouredly tolerant treatment. With Horace is contrasted the noble proletarian, Arsène. This man, originally a painter, has been compelled by poverty to take a place as waiter in a _café_; but the dependent position has not degraded him. The simple goodness and beauty of his character make him most attractive. We believe in him. Arsène has friends among the _Bousingots_, the circle of young students who in the Thirties transferred the style and deportment of the Romantic School to the domain of politics. They figure in many of the lithographs of the period with their Robespierre waistcoats, thick sticks, and glazed hats or red velvet caps. In outward appearance they somewhat resembled German _corps_ students; and they took part in all riots which were demonstrations of discontent with the _Juste-milieu_ government. George Sand defends them warmly. "None of the men," she says, "who at that time caused a slight disturbance of public order need blush now at the thought of having displayed a little youthful ardour. If the only use which youth can make of such nobility and courage as it possesses, is to attack society with it, the condition of society must be very bad." Arsène fights like a hero and is badly wounded in the working-men's revolt of the 5th of June 1832, which is sympathetically described; and in the course of a few years he becomes an experienced, able politician. The story of his political education is peculiarly interesting to us, because, in telling it, the authoress gives unambiguous expression to her own feelings. Arsène's hero is Godefroy Cavaignac; George Sand describes him and his friends, the society _Les amis du people_. "Their ideas," she writes, "at any rate indicated a great advance upon the liberalism of the Restoration period. The other Republicans were a little too much taken up with the idea of overthrowing monarchy, and did not give sufficient thought to the laying of the foundations of the republic; Godefroy Cavaignac's thoughts were of the emancipation of the people, of free education, of universal suffrage, of the gradual modification of the rights of property, &c." Horace's cold-heartedness and narrow-mindedness display themselves in his contemptuously sweeping condemnation of Saint-Simonism, which to him is pure charlatanism. He is incapable of appreciating its conception of the mutual relations of the sexes, and is obliged to submit to being reproved with the calmness of conscious superiority by a young dressmaker who lives with her friend, a clever young doctor, and regards this life of theirs as "the truly religious