that it is because he never read a line of them! Even by the French, undauntable as they are in all matters of profligacy and impiety, the works in question are marked out no less as chefs-d'œuvre of blasphemy and obscenity, than of originality and eloquence; and we should have held it our duty to pass them over in silence (notwithstanding their enormous circulation in the excitementseeking circles of la jeune France), did not the commendations of the 'Edinburgh Review' render it probable that these books, to which those of Crebillon and Louvet are chaste productions, may find their way into the hands of English females, as being written in a purer spirit' than 'Notre Dame' or 'Atar-Gull.' We venture to assert, that nothing but the cadaverous licentiousness of the resuscitated nuns in Robert le Diable, ever equalled the cold-blooded indecency exhibited in Lelia,' the last novel published by the writer thus flatteringly noticed by the Edinburgh'!

"Can the critic be aware that the writer whom he exhibits in the epicene gender of M. Sand,' and whose novels are published under the name of Georges Sand,' is in reality a woman and a mother? -a woman whose real name is pledged in the orgies of certain coteries, in Paris, as the Byron of France'; and whose adventures and eccentricities had rendered her the object of general attention, even before she became the founder of a school, of which Rousseau's Confessions afford a feeble type?

"The day you devote to reading Lelia,' says a popular periodical writer of Paris, who appears to differ strangely in opinion from him of the Edinburgh,' 'send your daughter to beguile the time with her companions in the fields;send your wife into society, unguarded by your protection. Far better they should be away from you, unwatched and unsupported, than catch a glimpse of these corrupt and corrupting pages. A corrosive poison exists in every line of Lelia!""

The writer in the Court Journal likewise mentions the error of the reviewer in attributing the novel of "Un Marriage sous l'Empire" to Madame de Girardin; it having been written by her mother, Madame Sophie Gay. - EDD.]

ART. X.- Lelia: a Novel. By GEORGE SAND. Paris: London, Dulau & Co.

THE authoress of this work, who conceals her odd and harshsounding name, Dudevant, under the pseudonym of George Sand, seems to have taken for her model the symbolic and mystical school of Germany. "Lelia" is one of that class of works in which fiction and reality, truth and untruth, assimilate and mingle in "most admired disorder"; in which living men and unreal shadows cross our path and perplex our understanding, coming and departing at the mysterious waving of the magician's wand.

This style is new to the writer: there is nothing like it in her "Valentin" and "Indiana." But, though she has certainly succeeded in producing something "rare and strange," though the eulogies of French criticism have been prodigally lavished upon this work, though a duel has been fought lately in Paris, which certainly could not determine the merit of the work, we cannot look upon it but as an unreal mockery," a bold, brazen paradox, born, fostered, and nourished in the very hot-bed of skepticism, in the whirl and turbulence of Parisian politics, manners, and questionable morality.

66

Lelia is herself a repulsive being a woman who fain would love, and pray, and have a faith, but who finds in her heart an utter incapacity either to love, pray, or believe. Her soul is

withered. The drama in which she acts, exhibits her under a double and contradictory light she is at once young and enthusiastic, yet old in heart and dead in feeling. You meet everywhere with exalted sentiments, high-sounding rhetoric, soul-touching poetry hand in hand with unbelief, scorn for what is gentle and good, contempt of the world, and inability to appreciate all that is mental and spiritual in it; the result is a monster, a Byronic woman, -endowed with rich and energetic faculties, delicate perceptions, rare eloquence, fine talents, but no heart, a woman without hope and without soul. Religion, morals, human sympathies, but "sear her eyes"; she holds them all to be false, deceitful, ridiculous. Unable to feel any pure, true, and devoted affection, she finds her chastisement and torture in that very inability. Virtue is with her a hoax, and she is too wise to be deceived; so, keeping her eyes steadfastly fixed upon the objects of her unattainable desires, she writhes and dies in the agonies of an irremediable despair.

Something of this melancholy theory, which represents all things as false, vice and virtue as indifferent, something of this perverse philosophy, whose motto should be "Fair is foul and foul is fair," has always been interwoven with the incidents and characters of the fashionable French novels: but no woman had heretofore declared herself as a disciple.

Such is "Lelia." You may find in it an apology for every crime, a panegyric on every vice: debauchery is here a sublime expansion of human power; gaming, a magnificent heroism; a murderer is a bold contemner of the laws of social life; and a forçat, a galleyslave, is a strong-minded man, at war with society, but greater and nobler than his fellow-creatures. If you condescend to be lectured by Lelia, she will teach you that the bold face of vice is a proof of strength, and the humbleness of virtue a proof of weakness. She will bid you admire the giant-like crime, which towers above the prejudices, opinions, feelings, and morality of the every-day world, as the frozen summit of the Jungfrau towers above the plains. That we do not calumniate Madame Dudevant, the following fragment, containing the apology for gaming, will sufficiently prove. It is a most eloquent and elaborate portrait of the hero of the tale, Trenmor.

"He was a gamester. He had quaffed often of the cup of love, but had now drunk of a new passion, a more energetic, more intense, more intoxicating draught; a passion full of terrible incidents, -gaming! We must dare declare the truth. If the end be apparently base, the fervor is powerful, the audacity sublime, the sacrifices dreadful and unbounded. No such man can ever again be inspired by woman: gold is the stronger power of the two. The energy, devotedness, perseverance of the gamester, throw into the deepest shade all the like passions of the lover, who is but a boy in comparison. How few men have we ever seen ready to sacrifice, for their mistresses's sake, that inestimable treasure, that priceless jewel, tha' condition of our being, that life of our life, — honor. The most devoted o lovers offers but his life, the gamester sacrifices his honor, and lives on. "The gamester is a stoic, a Roman hero, a martyr; he is calm amidst

his triumphs, unyielding when he falls. He rises to the highest and falls to the lowest station in a few hours, and remains firm, immovable, unaltered. There, without leaving the very table, where his demon rivets him, body and soul, he runs through all the vicissitudes of life, and submits to all the chances of fortune, good or ill. By turns a beggar and a king, he plunges at once from the highest to the lowest grade of social life, ever self-possessed, ever calm, ever sustained by his ambition, ever stimulated on by the unquenchable thirst which devours him.

"What will he be in another minute? a prince? a slave? How will he leave the gaming-table? a naked wretch? or a millionaire, bending under the weight of his gold? He is indifferent. To-morrow he will come again, to lose a fortune or to double it.

"One thing to him is impossible, and that is repose. He is as the seabird, delighting in the tumult of the hurricane and the roar of the boiling billows. You say he loves gold? no; he throws away guineas by thousands, those hellish gifts cannot satisfy or quench his thirst. Possessed of riches, he pants after poverty, that he may once again feel that terrible emotion, without which life has no relish for him.

"What is the value of gold to the gamester?-Less than grains of sand to us. But he sees in it a symbol of the good and evil which he loves to struggle with and to defy. Gold is his plaything, his paramour, his friend, his dream, his poetry. It is the shadow which he constantly pursues, fights, grapples with, to conquer it, and then to quit his grasp, in order to begin again the horrid battle with destiny. Oh! it is great,-it is beautiful, though absurd! It is sublime! "

The whole romance is illustrative of this axiom: "Virtue is inferior to vice, in strength, in greatness, and in beauty." If written in England, the work would have been pursued by the hue-andcry of every critic in the kingdom.

We feel some difficulty in giving an analysis of a novel without incident, the actors in which are pure creations, mere allegorical beings, and the tendency of which is to prove the stupidity of being any thing but a thorough-paced scoundrel. The following however is the broad outline:--Trenmor, the type or symbol of energetic vice, triumphs over Stenio, the symbol of purity and innocence. Lelia, who gives her name to the work, seems at once symbolical of woman and civilization in the abstract. She despises her humble and virtuous lover, discards him, throws him into the arms of her sister, a common courtesan, and chooses for her partner through life, Trenmor, the galley-slave; the man whose shoulder bears the brand of the burning-iron; the atheist, the gamester, the forger, the scorner of God, of nature, and of his fellow men. The dénouement of such a drama is, of course, suicide. The subordinate characters are worthy associates of the superiors: for example, a priest, Magnus, who murders Lelia, by strangling her with his rosary; and Lelia's sister, the common courtesan, who finds perfect happiness in the mere pursuit of sensual gratifications.

We shall not again dip our pen in this mire of blood and dirt, over which, by a strange perversity of feeling, the talent of the writer, and that writer a woman! has contrived to throw a lurid, fearful, and unhallowed light.

[Translated from the "Ergänzungsblatt, No. 53. zur Allgemein. Lit.-Zeitung,” for June, 1833.]

[Those of our readers to whom the name of Richter, or as he is commonly. called by his admirers, Jean Paul, is not familiar, may find some account of him and a list of his numerous productions in the "Encyclopædia Americana"; and a criticism upon his genius, with a specimen of his peculiar style of writing, in Mad. de Staël's " Germany." In his own country he may be considered as having at one time rivalled Goethe in celebrity. But his writings are not, perhaps, well suited to the taste of other nations. We do not know that any one of them has been translated into English. Most of them, we understand, present such difficulties that the undertaking would be very arduous, if not impracticable. EDD.]

ART. XI. Wahreit aus Jean Paul's Leben. Nebst zwei Nachbildungen der Handschrift Jean Paul's und seinem Bildness. Erster Band. 1826. xxIV u, 154 S. Zweiter Bd. 1827. xxII u. 150 S. Dritter Bd. 1828. xxiii u. 415 S. Vierter Bd. 1829. Vi u. 389 S. Fünfter Bd. 354 S. 8. (8 Rthlr. 6 gGr.) Breslau. [Truth from Jean Paul's Life. With two Facsimiles of his Handwriting and a Portrait. 5 volumes, 8vo. Breslau.]

WE are naturally curious to learn the process by which the genius of a man of high and wide-spread reputation was unfolded, especially when his characteristic features are strongly marked. On this account the editor of the Wahrheit aus Jean Paul's Leben (Truth from Jean Paul's Life) deserves our thanks. Richter belongs, as many of his female readers at least will confess, to that class of poets, whose works, strictly speaking, are fully understood by the learned only, and in truth by but a part of them. For the fact of a reader's being dissolved in tears or convulsed with laughter, -effects which Richter's works often produce, by no means proves a perfect understanding of the author.

In the preface we are told that Jean Paul even previous to the year 1803 had formed the resolution of writing his own life on the model of the biography of the apothecary Nicholas Marggraf. "As in the case of all his productions," says the Preface, "he was employed for years in preparing materials for this work with a conscientious and religious devotedness. These materials he gradually brought together under different heads, with a view to combine them eventually into a well-ordered whole. The most important collection of materials is comprised in a particular book containing Monumenta Jeanpauliana, and called by Richter himself, perhaps in imitation of Dante Alighieri, Vita, vita propria.

In this book Richter wrote, as circumstances afforded occasion, reminiscences of his life, and reflections thereupon, from the year 1806 to the 23d of February, 1824. In the year 1818 he began to put his materials into shape. He selected the form of academic lectures, appointing himself, Professor of his own history, and

presenting himself in that capacity to the public. His lectures however are but three in number, they embrace only the period from his birth (the 15th of February, 1763) to his confirmation, and form the first number of this work. The boy, as described herein with much humor, attracts us by his soft but intellectual character, so much so that we would gladly accompany him through his subsequent course. We should separate from him with reluctance on the confines of youth, did we not expect that. he would begin again to unfold his character in his letters while at the high school of Leipsic. The few joys and many sorrows of the young Richter at the gymnasium of Hof and subsequently at the University of Leipsic, are particularly described in the third part, and meanwhile we will direct our attention to the second, which presents us with fragments from the abovementioned Vita-book.

If all the parts of this book do not appear to us worthy of publication, no blame attaches to Richter (who did not prepare it with the view of giving it to the public in its present form), but only to the editor. The words of Jean Paul, "If I could, (what no author can) I would gladly have all my thoughts made known to the world after my death, no idea should be omitted,"-by no means justify the editor; for Jean Paul would certainly have put some limit to the application of this strange and somewhat vain sentiment. He was certainly conscious when he wrote this, that many ideas, even of the deepest thinker, become fit to be given to the world only when brought into connexion with others and moulded into a particular form. But we have more than once thought, while reading this collection, that the editor had determined to print every syllable of the Vita-book, and that he looked upon the German public as disposed, like the followers of the Dalai-Lama, to revere and preserve the very excrements of the object of their veneration.. At least he seems to have taken for granted the existence of an endemic Jean-Paulomania, which however has fortunately subsided. That there are some grains of wheat in the mass of chaff, we do not wish to deny; but these are all that it was desirable to have given to the public.

The third number shows us Richter at the gymnasium at Hof, and afterwards at the University of Leipsic. In his life at the gymnasium we find nothing extraordinary, nor very important. The most interesting occurrence related is, that Richter, whose religious notions were heterodox, in a school disputation between the pupils and the assistant-teacher of the institution, who had selected as the subject of the exercise one of the great doctrines of religion, nonplussed the instructer and made him quit the room in a passion, to the great joy of his school-mates. This edifying incident may be found described in No. III, page 47, seq. But the orthodox citizens of Hof took part with the teacher, and as every one who overstepped the strict limits of orthodoxy was termed an atheist, and exposed to contempt and even persecution,