The individual in tight boots and a rolling collar, with the copious golden locks, and the solemn blue eyes, who had just gazed on Spiridion, and inspired him with such a feeling of tender awe, is a much more important personage than the reader might suppose at first sight. This beautiful, mysterious, dandy ghost, whose costume, with a true woman’s coquetry, Madame Dudevant has so rejoiced to describe--is her religious type, a mystical representation of Faith struggling up towards Truth, through superstition, doubt, fear, reason,--in tight inexpressibles, with ‘a belt such as is worn by the old German students.’ You will pardon me for treating such an awful person as this somewhat lightly; but there is always, I think, such a dash of the ridiculous in the French sublime, that the critic should try and do justice to both, or he may fail in giving a fair account of either. This character of Hebronius, the type of Mrs. Sand’s convictions--if convictions they may be called--or, at least, the allegory under which her doubts are represented, is, in parts, very finely drawn; contains many passages of truth, very deep and touching, by the side of others so entirely absurd and unreasonable, that the reader’s feelings are continually swaying between admiration and something very like contempt--always in a kind of wonder at the strange mixture before him. But let us hear Madame Sand:-- ‘Peter Hebronius,’ says our author, ‘was not originally so named. His real name was Samuel. He was a Jew, and born in a little village in the neighbourhood of Innspruck. His family, which possessed a considerable fortune, left him, in his early youth, completely free to his own pursuits. From infancy he had shown that these were serious. He loved to be alone; and passed his days, and sometimes his nights, wandering among the mountains and valleys in the neighbourhood of his birthplace. He would often sit by the brink of torrents, listening to the voice of their waters, and endeavouring to penetrate the meaning which Nature had hidden in those sounds. As he advanced in years his inquiries became more curious and more grave. It was necessary that he should receive a solid education, and his parents sent him to study in the German universities. Luther had been dead only a century, and his words and his memory still lived in the enthusiasm of his disciples. The new faith was strengthening the conquests it had made; the Reformers were as ardent as in the first days, but their ardour was more enlightened and more measured. Proselytism was still carried on with zeal, and new converts were made every day. In listening to the morality and to the dogmas which Lutheranism had taken from Catholicism, Samuel was filled with admiration. His bold and sincere spirit instantly compared the doctrines which were now