In naming George Sand we name something more exceptional than even a great genius. Her rise to eminence in the literature of her century, is, if not without a parallel, yet absolutely without a precedent, in the annals of women of modern times.
Upon no woman of the century has the public fixed its eye with a more eager interest and curiosity than upon Aurore Dudevant, known to the world as George Sand.
The utmost heights of panegyric and adulation have been scaled in describing her and her work; also the lowest depths of denunciation and of calumny. Her admirers describe her as being not only the greatest genius of her time, which perhaps few will dispute, but as being the most magnificent and adorable of women as well; while her detractors can find no language in which to express the depths of their loathing both for her life and some of her works. As usual, a just estimate of such a character as this will be found between the two extremes. She was neither a monster nor a saint, but a woman of magnificent qualities and of defects upon a corresponding scale. As with her life, so with her works. Some are undoubtedly pernicious to an alarming degree, while the influence of others cannot by any stretch of imagination be called bad. The two kinds may perhaps be divided under the head of earlier and later works. When the tumultuous feelings and wild visions of youth were calmed by age, a new kind of literary product came forth. And her life in its latter years was as quiet as her books, and ran as little against the traditions and usages of mankind.
