284 FRENCH AUTHORESSES. 



splendour of her imagination does not resemble the flashing lightning, 

 it has all the softened brilliancy and lambent radiance of the northern 

 lights. The world of sentiment is peculiarly her own. She is al- 

 most always eloquent, and what she wants in force she makes up in 

 ingenuity. All these properties, we contend, are particularly appa- 

 rent in the writings of Madame Sand. We know of no English 

 authoress whom we could select as a parallel to convey an idea of 

 her peculiar manner. She is not so profoundly Malthusian as Miss 

 Martineau, nor so masculine and philosophical as Miss Edgworth ; 

 neither is she a describer of balls and routs and a pufter of tradesmen, 

 like Mrs. Gore. Her style is peculiarly her own. When she paints 

 the ideal world at war with the real, the lofty aspirations of the spirit 

 at war with the tame realities of life, she is in her own peculiar 

 element, and handles a subject so congenial with her own feelings 

 with vigour and precision. 



The energies of the mind bound around and fettered down by the 

 petty usages of the conventional rules, the false delicacies of society 

 the fretting of the spirit against its prison-bars, " till the blood stain 

 its plumage" are set forth by our authoress with forcible truth and 

 accuracy ; frequently with extreme delicacy of perception, and fine- 

 ness of colouring. Avoiding all descriptions of outward and super- 

 ficial matters, she confines herself to tracing the web of sentiments, 

 guiding us into those heights and depths, and untrodden wildernesses 

 of the soul, into which the acutest individual penetration affords us 

 no glimpse. 



The little work before us, bearing the title of " Rose and Blanche," 

 is not so laboured as "Indiana/' and some others of her productions, 

 but is not less deficient in interest. It developes the history of two 

 young girls of the most opposite callings, the one being an actress, 

 and the other a nun, whose destinies though seemingly cast so far 

 apart, it is the continual caprice of fate to associate, and again rend 

 wide as the poles asunder. Though we feel convinced that the laws 

 which regulate the transmutation of ideas and expressions, make it 

 hopeless to think of preserving all the graces of the original in a 

 hurried translation, we shall proceed to lay some passages before our 

 readers. 



Horace de Cazales, a young man of family and fortune, while as- 

 cending the Gironde to Bourdeaux, in an open boat, unluckily falls 

 overboard in a squall. An aged mariner instantly plunges after him, 

 and rescues him from death. The gratitude of the young man dis- 

 plays itself in a manner suitable to the magnitude of the obligation, 

 and by his ample means not only does he render the condition of his 

 preserver easy and comfortable, but what is more consoling to the 

 feelings of the old man, promises to be the protector of his idiot 

 daughter in the event of his death'; and this following soon after, 

 Horace Cazales is placed in the singular position of being guardian 

 to a young idiot girl of sixteen, " tall, slender, fresh as a rose of Eden, 

 beautiful as a poet's dream ; her long black hair escaped from beneath 

 a small flat velvet hat which left uncovered the whitest and purest of 

 foreheads." 

 Notwithstanding the even line of her black and silken eyebrows, 



