After my brother's return from Europe, I read such works of George Sand and Balzac as he would allow me to choose from his library. Of the two writers, George Sand appeared to me by far the superior, though I then knew of her works only "Les Sept Cordes de la Lyre," "Spiridion," "Jacques," and "André." It was at least ten years after this time that "Consuelo" revealed to the world the real George Sand, and thereby made her peace with the society which she had defied and scandalized. Of my German studies I have already made mention. I began them with a class of ladies under the tuition of Dr. Nordheimer. But it was with the later aid of Dr. Cogswell that I really mastered the difficulties of the language. It was while I was thus engaged that my eldest brother returned from Germany. In conversing with him, I acquired the use of colloquial German. Having, as I have said, the command of his fine library, I was soon deep in Goethe's "Faust" and "Wilhelm Meister," reading also the works of Jean Paul, Matthias Claudius, and Herder. Thus was a new influence introduced into the life of one who had been brought up after the strictest rule of New England Puritanism. I derived from these studies a sense of intellectual freedom so new to me that it was half delightful, half alarming. My father undertook one day to read an English translation of "Faust." He presently came to me and said,-- "My daughter, I hope that you have not read this wicked book!" I must say, even after an interval of sixty years, that I do not consider "Wilhelm Meister" altogether good reading for the youth of our country. Its great author introduces into his recital scenes and personages calculated to awaken strange discords in a mind ignorant of any greater wrong than the small sins of a well-ordered household. Although disapproving greatly of Goethe, my father took a certain pride in my literary accomplishments, and was much pleased, I think, at the commendation which followed some of my early efforts. One of these, a brief essay on the minor poems of Goethe and Schiller, was published in the "New York Review," perhaps in 1848, and was spoken of in the "North American" of that time as "a charming paper, said to have been written by a lady."