was so quickly recognised as that of Indiana and Valentine. The author might abstract herself awhile from passing events and write idylls, but the public had probably not yet settled down into the proper state of mind for fully enjoying them. Moreover Madame Sand's antagonists in politics and social science, as though under the impression that she could not write except to advance some theory of which they disapproved, presupposed in these stories a set purpose of exalting the excellence of rustic as compared with polite life—of exaggerating the virtues of the poor, to throw into relief the vices of the rich. The romances themselves do not bear out such a supposition. In them the author chooses exactly the same virtues to exalt, the same vices to condemn, as in her novels of refined society. She shows us intolerance, selfishness, and tyranny of custom marring or endangering individual happiness among the working-classes, as with their superiors. There are Philistines in her thatched cottages, as well as in her marble halls. Germain, in La Mare au Diable, has some difficulty to discover for himself, as well as to convince his family and neighbours, that in espousing the penniless Marie he is not marrying beneath him in every sense. François le Champi is a pariah, an outcast, in the estimation of the rustic world. Fanchon Fadet, by her disregard of appearances and village etiquette, scandalises the conservative minds of farmers and millers very much as Aurore Dupin scandalised the
