170 
WILD SCENES AND SONG-BIEDS. 
" 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 efiective image, is painfully dis- 
pleasing to us. Well might his saddened shade be imagined 
as exclaiming "e^^w Brute!" (with a feminine afi&x) 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 — witlf all its 
passionate derelictions upon mistaken jprinciples — is now ac- 
knowledged on every hand to have been spent in the " dedi- 
