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the abstractions of mind. And this is providentially ordained, that we may be obliged to earn the bread of wisdom only by constant assiduity, circumspection and labor. In availing ourselves at all, then, of the circumstances, whethor moral or physical, in which we are placed here, we must take the evil with the good, the false with the true. That is to say, we must try all things." This is the dictate of reason and the demand of necessity, as well as the precept of revelation. The wisdom, both speculative and practical, of mankind consists in a knowledge of events including that of the laws of their occurrence, and in the choice and application of them, so as best to educe the greatest amount of benefit-of Good, alloyed with the least of inconvenienceof Evil. This is what the ancients too understood by prudence, which they made the mother of all the virtues: Prudentia est enim locata in delectu bonorum et malorum. But this knowledge implies and requires an acquaintance with the false as well as the true. To quote the Christian Cicero (or rather the Cicero of the Christians) as we have introduced the Pagan; Primus, says Lactantius, sapientiæ gradus FALSA intelligere. We might still accumulate the authority of Satan (or Milton) to prove this study, so very contaminating to mortal purity, to be a principal ingredient of even angelic and god-like knowledge. Facts, moreover, all bear out the position; and we venture the opinion, however paradoxical it may seem to the unreflecting, that science and civilization are at least as much indebted to the errors and exploded theories, as they are to the sagacity and successes, of the searchers after Truth.

It may be additionally remarked, that the iniquity of this critical dogmatism does not confine itself to the past, and the actual, of its victim. It assumes to decide, also, upon the future of the fallen author. By a sort of literary attainder, more irrational and barbarous still than the feudal, it consigns his subsequent offspring, however free in fact from the parental offence, to the merciless hue-andcry of the popular prejudice, for all time. It is, after all, no more than natural that hypocrites should be rigorous exactors of the observances which they themselves despise and live by. That dupes should be ostentatiously intolerant of disrespect to the sounds or symbols they blindly revere. But is it natural, is it excusable, that persons who belong to

neither of these indeed comprehensive categories, should yield the acquiescence even of silence to this pernicious despotism, whether of critics or populace: a despotism which goes to compromise truth by checking inquiry, to consecrate every existing error and abuse, to prevent the diffusion of much innocent amusement and useful instruction; which, in short, opposes the liberalization and disciplination of the public mind, and, of course, the civilization of humanity: for such evidently are the direct tendencies of all restraint upon the utmost freedom of speculation.

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A" dangerous book"! Dangerous to whom? to what? To the institutions or the tenets moral, political, religious, of society? But the established opinions and systems are sound, are salutary, or they are not. If the latter, inquiry and exposure is, we take it for granted, to be desired, not to be deprecated. If the former be the fact, where is the danger? There certainly can be none, if the new doctrines be true, and be rationally urged -truth being necessarily not merely compatible with, but confirmative of itself. În neither alternative, then, can such a book be accounted dangerous to the true interests of society; on the contrary, its tendency must be, in the one case, to reform bad institutions; in the other, to reinforce good ones. But suppose the doctrines to be dangerous," to be, in fact, opposed to those interests, and of course false, politically. Is it to be admitted that truth, in the present day, and in matters within popular competency, within general experience, is not, at least even-handed, a match for error? But in the case in contest, truth would derive incalculable odds, from the circumstances. Not to mention the physical protection of the public force, it has the sanction of establishment; it is consecrated by prejudice as well as conviction; it is aided by the propensity (salutary as a check, pernicious as a principle,) of mankind to adhere to things as they are, and the consequent difficulty of disturbing even the worst form of creed or government thus cemented by the interest of many, the ignorance of most, and the indolence of all. Public force, personal interest, popular prejudice, can truth, and truth thus triply guarded, be imperilled, be affected, by the false doctrines or the fanatical denunciations of every radical

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visionary," or obscure pamphleteer? The apprehension is ludicrously absurd!

But further, however exceptionable we might imagine a book to be, it should always be remembered that the motives of the author may yet be benevolent and patriotic. Indeed, the writers of this obnoxious class, more generally and intensely than any others, are known to be in fact thus nobly actuated. What else than enthusiasm, and enthusiasm kindled and fed by virtuous intention, could induce and enable them to encounter the probability, if not certainty, of the abuse and calumny of the sort of criticism in question, and to expose themselves to what is more galling still, perhaps, to the generous mind, the ingratitude of those whom it has devoted, disinterestedly, its energies, its time, and its talents to serve? We should not, however, insist upon this credit to the author, in examining the book. It is a consideration for the public, to be decided upon a different principle, and to be offered only in mitigation of critical rigor. With motives, as with all else that is merely personal, we cannot allow the critic, as such, to have any proper concern.

One or two precautionary remarks before quitting this general aspect of our subject. We may be deemed, in the preceding animadversions upon the delinquency of the critic and the intolerance of the crowd, to have employed an undue, or at least an unusual warmth or harshness of language. To this charge we should only have to say, that the writer protests he has no other feelings in the matter than such as he cares not and dares not to dissemble, namely—a cordial contempt for dogmatical ignorance; a detestation almost morbid of all hypocrisy and cant, especially, the "cant of criticism;" an enthusiastic love of the sole independence which has much of reality for man upon earth-the independence of the mind; a not unintelligent conviction that the exercise and the encouragement of this independence (things almost entirely in the dispensation of a sound and liberal criticism,) are the means and the measure of human happiness and social progress; and, finally, a reverence too sincere for the sanctity of Truth to permit the slightest mitigation of the august severity of her image, by the profane foppery of your courtly phrases.

The other remark is, that we would not be understood as including in this remonstrance what are really "indecent publications." Such," it may be objected to us, according to your argu

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ment, if true, cannot be detrimental—if false, not dangerous." The answer is, that such are properly neither true nor false. Addressing themselves to the passions, they afford no hold to argument. They are, therefore, still less refutable than a " sneer" (a thing, by the by, quite refutable, with deference to Paley); they are thus insusceptible of the common antidote, irresistible by the common weapon, of reason, and are properly therefore a subject of police.

Among the many who have fallen victims to, and the few who have triumphed over, the persecutions of popular bigotry and the denunciations of its jackalls of the critical press, we select for the exemplification of the preceding observations, one of the most signal sufferers from this injustice; time will, perhaps, enable the literary historian to add, one of the most victorious instances of the triumph.

We do not here intend a review of the writings, various and voluminous, of this author-not even of the single work to which we shall confine ourselves. Our notice of it, which, for the rest, will be kept to the letter of our own critical canon-expositive, not judicative-is meant to be subsidiary to the main design, of vindicating the great principle of FREEDOM OF SPECULATION.

This is a principle of infinite and of universal importance in the present day. It is, we think, of peculiar consequence to this country. Politically and to a degree religiously, the American people have renounced the tutelage with the tyranny of Authority, have abandoned the beaten paths of the past, and recognize, or profess to recognize, Reason alone for their public and private guide. Other countries have their creeds "established by law,"-human or divine. There, custom, antiquity still maintain an undisputed dominion or a decisive influence. Even in those States where Liberty has conquered an organization more or less imperfect, in the form of a systematic or a settled constitution, the rules of private action and the restraints upon opinion remain, in most cases, amenable to particular and peremptory usages. It is deplorable no doubt that men should be lead by these "blind guides;" but blind though they be they are not unsafe ones, being, of course, familiar with routes which they have been passing over for ages. They leave less freedom, indeed, but, also, less need, for inquiry; they pre

vent the advantages, but they preclude the dangers, of uninterdicted innovation. With us the state of things is nearly the reverse. We will not obey authority, while we have not the courage, or not the confidence, to follow out reason. Religion even is not held sacred from popular curiosity and arbitrament. And though we have written constitutions and a multitude of other principles recognized in practice they are allowed (at least theoretically) to oppose no bar to the utmost freedom of examination and discussion. Conclusive upon as only de facto, they permit-indeed it is their spirit to solicit —appeal to an ulterior tribunal, to a more perfect truth. We then, the American people-and it is now the rapid, however unconscious, tendency of almost entire Europe also-may be said to have cut ourselves adrift on the great ocean of inquiry, with Speculation for our bark and Reason our compass. And it is on the progress of this speculation, on the perfectionment of this reason alone that depend, very evidently, our actual safety and our ultimate success.

In a people thus circumstanced how particularly preposterous the disregard of this the cardinal principle of its action and existence! how pernicious, the daily violation of it in the persons of thinking writers, our sole navigators (to resume the metaphor) through those devious seas! How inconsistent, not to say unwise, after repudiating all authority, to substitute the blind impulses of the multitude for the time-tried axioms of Antiquity and Aristotle! Nor is it to be supposed that intolerance towards individual authors is no disavowal or violation of the general principle. A principle, it is hardly necessary to say, is violated equally in the most obscure, as in the most important instance; and it is in the former that it is vindicated the most effectually; for there we the most emphatically assert the sanctity of its character.

Entertaining these views of the importance of free discussion and the mischievousness of the opposition which it encounters, we select, for the clearer illustration, the writer and the work of that writer which seem to us best to represent the principle we contend for, and the infraction of that principle which we have deemed it a duty to denounce. The writer is George Sand--the book is "Lelia."

George Sand, our readers, or most of them, must be aware is a French woman

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of great celebrity as a philosophical novel-writer, and who,-perhaps from delicacy no less than diffidence, had chosen this pseudonomous designation, to conceal her sex as well as identity, in the world of Letters. Her real name is, by marriage, Dudevant; by family, Dupin: she is, we believe, a kinswoman of the distinguished French lawyers of this name. The conjugal history of Madame Dudevant we beg to leave with her biographer and confessor-first, because, doubtless, there is no curiosity to hear it repeated, but chiefly, because we deem it irrelevant to the merits of her writings. Some critics, and after them the public, have, we know, determined otherwise, and insisted upon viewing the successful author through the medium of the rebellious wife. But this is part of our issue with the critics and the public. Without prejudicing her cause, it may, however, be admitted that the lady is in fact "guilty" of the inexpiable transgression of having separated,-separated, however, by mutual consent from a man whom she found it, after several years of painful effort, impossible to live with. what is perhaps still more unpardonable, she has continued to maintain herself in this state of defiance, without the alimonial or the eleemosynary aid of husband or public. It is, of course, no extenuation of her offence that an utter incompatibility of temper and taste had in fact existed, though the stereotyped and competent plea, in a majority of such cases. Nothing, that a young woman, full of the exquisite sensibility, the yearning sympathy, the expansive independence which are the tax we pay for genius, should continue to brook the brutal despotism, or repulsive rusticity, of a country-bred soldier in the decline of life -a condition which to a woman so constituted, is the most oppressive, perhaps, of tyrannies, the most unendurable of existences. The character of this man is supposed to be drawn in that of Colonel Delmare, in Indiana, one of the earliest publications of the author; and it is presented with those occasional effusions of kindly feeling and of selfcriminating candor, and that constant consideration of both the infirmities of the species and the redeeming points of the individual, which, coming from the pen of an "injured wife," it must be regarded as a proof of woman's highest qualities to have retained, of more than woman's magnanimity not to have dis

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sembled. In this respect, how advantageously would Madame Dudevant compare with the cold-hearted, prudish Madame Byron, or that virulent and vulgar caricaturist, the authoress of "Cheveley," in their treatment of men endowed with perfections above the common, both of body and mind. Yet these are held up to the "rising generation" as patterns of pious prudery-victims of marital tyranny! while George Sand, for having done only what they did-" left her lord"-but with the difference of having left, without calumniating, him-is decried as if she had outraged the entire decalogue. is charged indeed, that the latter has It erected her transgression into a principle, and that she advocates (particularly in the publication we are about to consider) the substitution of libertinism for the marriage relation. The private conduct of the author, we repeat, we have nothing to do with, and do not, of course, presume to extenuate, denounced as it is on earth and condemned, no doubt, in heaven. But with respect to the charge against her writings, of being designed to defend any irregularities of her life, we venture to reply:

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1st. That it were at least a case," that George Sand should be denied hard the natural and legal right of defending her own conduct, and in her own way. 2d. That she has not availed herself, in fact, of this right, by any such means as those imputed, but on the contrary, has expressly renounced these means with something of the despairing resignation of Hecuba,

Non tali auxilio, nec defensoribus istis. 3d. That the aim of her speculations on the subject of marriage, (an aim we think she has not unsuccessfully attained) was, simply, to shew, that there must be something somewhere wrong-positively, not naturally or necessarily in the actual organization of this institution.

The first proposition asserts a principle which, enunciated in the abstract, no one, we suppose, will be found to contest.

The second and third involve points of fact, which we undertake to sustain severally from the very words of our author. To the former, the following direct disclaimer will be a sufficient answer. As it is short, and to obviate all suspicion of the translation, we quote it (contrary to our rule throughout this

[June,

paper) in the explicit original. “Quelques tort de croire que ma conduite est une personnes qui lisent mes livres ont le profession de foi, et le choix des sujets de mes historiettes une sorte de plaidoyer contre certaines lois; bien loin de là, je reconnais que ma vie est pleine de fautes, et je croirais commettre une lâcheté si je me battais les flancs pour trouver une philosophie qui en autorisût l'example.”* The other charge, of seeking the subversion of marriage might be met by an equally peremptory denial from the author. "In truth, I have been astonished," says she, in the work just referred to, "when asked by some SaintSimonians, conscientious philanthrotruth-what I was going to substitute pists, estimable and sincere searchers after instead of husbands. I answered them naïvely, that it was marriage; in the same manner as for a priesthood that has so much compromised religion, I would This, the main matter of the accusation, have religion be made the substitute." may, however, demand a more full and particular discussion. In conducting the examination (to be more than fair, ez abundanti) we pledge ourselves to proof the obnoxious construction. duce only the passages most susceptible here, it will be in order, to premise a few acter of the book itself in question. remarks on the nature and general char

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And

regarded as one of the most original proLelia," in many respects, must be ductions of the age. It is stamped with the noble audacity of genius. It combines the speculative boldness of Faust, with the philosophical design of St. more comprehensive than the latter, more Leon-more systematic than the former, eloquent, perhaps, than either of these most eloquent writers. But, in conception, ly, the author, indeed of her own adin arrangement, in the execution generalmission, has entirely failed. With all her imagination-an imagination at once still rarer in her sex, she seems to have fine and fertile-and a vigor of intellect sunk appalled beneath the titanic magnigiven us, in "Lelia," the skeleton of a tude of her idea. She has, however, grand poem, (for poem it is--a poem of life) teeming with those thoughts which involve whole sciences, and views which open upon the intelligent reader like revelations. With the thinker, the tame handicraft of the artist could add nothing to the value of such a book, while it

*Lettres d'un Voyageur.

would, probably, diminish its impressiveness. Lelia, in the grandeur of its imperfection, reminds you of the Hyperion of Keats,-whom, by-the-by, (Keats' cockneyism aside) our author, we think, remarkably resembles. The genius of George Sand is essentially Grecian; at once subtle and sublime, clear and comprehensive; prone rather to the contemplative than the active; too attentive to, or instinct with, the spirit of form, to be prolific of creation; too devoted an admirer of the ideal to be a diligent observer of the real. To this character it is easy to trace the failure alluded to, in the execution of Lelia. And accordingly the same defects are, more or less, chargeable to all the productions of the author -which while admirable for acute analysis and profound views into character, as for skill and force of description, and a style (if a foreigner may pronounce) without a living equal, are greatly wanting (at least as taste goes) in plot, action and incident.

The story, it is obvious, from the preceding intimations, would be of little account to the reader, even were it within our purpose. The truth is, there is only so much of it as serves to string together the disquisitions, which mainly compose the book. These disquisitions are thrown into the discussive and familiar form of dialogue, or colloquies, which pass between the principal personage and the subordinates who, severally, gravitate around her, and on the subjects respectively which the latter are designed to typify. Before coming to quotation it is proper to introduce the speakers.

The chief characters are Lelia, Stenio, Trenmor, and Pulcherie. These are symbolical, not merely fictitious, impersonations. They represent classes, orders, ages; but not as in other philosophical novels not socially, but psychologically. In the generalizations of our author, all that which comes under the denomination of "manners," is allowed no place, or no part. They are incarnations of certain faculties or passions, conceived as essential, and of course universal, to the particular description to be personified. These personages do not profess to act every-day life; they only pretend to exhibit life, on a large scale to represent the forces and the tendencies that latently actuate society, disencumbered of the accidental circumstances and the distracting details which so complicate and mystify its operations, and the study

of them, in the positive world. This system of transcendental impersonation (so to call it) has obvious and great advantages over that of ordinary fiction. While this, copying as it does, from the present, or some other particular point of time, must contain much that is transitory and trivial; the former, embracing also the future and the past, exhibits but what is, more or less proximately, universal and unchangeable. The characters taken from actual life, create, of course, more interest in the mass of readers; being addressed to the senses and to the sympathies of all, they are intelligible to ordinary, to every comprehension. But those of the other description are infinitely more instructive; instead of individuals, or any aggregations of individuals, they are theories personified, embodying grand social results as they have been evolved consecutively in the progress of civilization, and indicating, in the leading tendencies of the periods they symbolize, the direction, the destination, and the desires of humanity.

That, on the other hand, distinctness of character and life-like realization of action and incident, are extremely difficult, if not impossible, in the latter system, is a disadvantage, no doubt; but it is a disadvantage here to be remembered, only in justice to the author, by those who censure Lelia as vague and visionary. Thanking George Sand for having chosen the better part, let us excuse her for not having combined incompatabilities. Nothing, at least short of the highest creative energies, disciplined in the school of the world, and directed by a familiar knowledge of men as well as of man-a knowledge and a discipline which genius is peculiarly unfitted to acquire and to undergo-could hope to succeed in clothing the abstractions of imagination or of intellect, with that flesh-and-blood garb of habit, manner, and circumstance, which alone can ensure the recognition, and of course excite the interest, of the mass of readers. Shakspeare himself has not done this-has not, indeed, attempted it.

From the foregoing very imperfect account of the nature and distinctive character (as we interpret them) of this remarkable book, it must, we think, be evident that the author is to be criticized upon other-upon higher than the common canons, moral as well as literary. This it is that we claim for her. Those who will not ascend to the sphere where

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