170 WILD SCENES AND SONG-BIRDS. 



u And Shelley in his white ideal 



All statue blind ," 



is a falsehood base enough to be incendiary. The " white 

 wings " she prayed might sprout upon the shoulders of George 

 Sand, were singularly unfaithful to her own strong aspira- 

 tions for the Eternally True at this particular juncture. 



A cruel and unrighteous falsehood with regard to that 

 heroic man has been conveyed by her in this characteriza- 

 tion. Its meaning, as a Poetical image, most significantly 

 and effectually shuts him out from the whole region of hu- 

 man sympathies. 



This is the very error in which the mobocracy of mind 

 has persisted with regard to him, and to find a genius pos- 

 sessed of such remarkable prowess as her's has given abun- 

 dant evidences of, stooping to demagogue with a scrubby 

 prejudice for the sake of an effective image, is painfully dis- 

 pleasing to us. "Well might his saddened shade be imagined 

 as exclaiming "ettu Brute!" (with a feminine affix) to a 

 thrust coming from such a hand. Yet, though she, herself, 

 has first really unsexed genius, she has as well unfraternized 

 it in thus countenancing the mongrel herd which has so long 

 been barking at his heels. 



What, Shelley ! meekest of the " Elder Brothers of hu- 

 manity " who would gladly have anointed the feet of the 

 poor fallen ones and wiped them with his hair, could he 

 thereby have raised them up again 



" To live, as if to love and live were one " 



who informed himself of medical science, and walked the 

 hospitals while a mere youth, in view of no other rewards 

 than those which the consciousness of ministering to the woes 

 of others might bring whose whole private life with all its 

 passionate derelictions upon mistaken principles is now ac- 

 knowledged on every hand to have been spent in the " dedi- 



