"I admit that," I answered: "and the last point particularly is a cause of despair; because I am obliged to write in the language of the Academy, when there is another I know so much better, and which is so far superior for expressing a whole order of emotions, sentiments and thoughts."

"Yes, yes, the world devoid of art!" he said; "the unknown world, closed to our modern art, and that no amount of study will allow even you to express to yourself,-you, the peasant by nature, if you wished to introduce it into the domain of civilized art, into the intellectual intercourse of artificial life."

"Alas!" I replied, "that fact has often been in my mind. Like all civilized beings, I have seen and felt that primitive life has been the dream, the ideal, of all men and all times. From the shepherds of Longus to those of Trianon, pastoral life has been a perfumed Eden, where souls tormented and wearied by the world's tumult have tried to take refuge. Art, the great flatterer and obliging purveyor of consolation for all over-happy people, has gone through an uninterrupted series of pastorals. I have often wanted to write a learned and critical book entitled 'The History of Pastorals,' wherein all the various sylvan dreams so passionately cherished by the upper classes would have been reviewed. I should have followed their modifications, which were always in an inverse ratio to the depravity of morals, and grew purer and more sentimental in proportion as society became more shameless and corrupt. I wish I could order such a book from an author more capable of writing it than I am; and I should then read it with pleasure. It would be a complete treatise on art; for music, painting, architecture, literature in all its forms, the drama, poetry, novels, eclogue, songs, even fashions, gardens, and costumes, have had to submit to the infatuation of the pastoral dream. I have often asked myself why there are no more shepherds; for we are not so impassioned for Truth in these latter days, that our arts and literature have the right to despise these conventional types in favor of those that fashion is now introducing. We are all given over to energy and atrocity at present, and are embroidering ornaments on the canvas of these passions, terrible enough to set our hair on end if we could but take them seriously."

"If we have no more shepherds," returned my friend,— “ if literature no longer has that false ideal, which was worth as much as to-day's, perhaps it is because art is making an unconscious

attempt to level itself, to put itself within the reach of all classes of intelligence. Does not the dream of equality, flung into society, drive art to become brutal and impetuous, so as to awaken the instincts and passions common to all men, of whatsoever rank they may be? Truth has not yet been reached. It lies no more in disfigured reality than in over-ornamented ideality: but it is quite evident that it is being sought; and if it is not well sought, the seekers are none the less eager to find it. For instance, the drama, poetry, and the novel have dropped the crook and taken up the dagger; and when rustic life is put upon the scene they give it a certain realistic form, not found in the pastorals of former days. Yet there is but little poetry in it, and I find fault with this; still I do not see the means of elevating the rustic ideal without heightening its color or blackening it. You have often thought of doing it, I know; but will you succeed?”

"I do not hope to," I replied; "for I have no form to cast it in, and my feeling for rustic simplicity finds no language for its expression. If I make the rustic speak as he really does, the civilized reader would need a translation on the opposite page; and if I make him speak as we do, then I make an unnatural creature of him, and have to pretend that he has ideas he really has not."

"And even if you did make him speak as he does, your own language would make a disagreeable contrast every moment; and you have laid yourself open to that reproach, in my opinion. You portrayed a rustic maiden, called her Jeanne, and put words in her mouth which strictly speaking she might say. But you, the novelist, wishing to make your readers share the attraction you feel in delineating the type, compare her to a druidess, a Joan of Arc, and what not. Your feelings and your words alongside of hers have the same incongruous effect as the clash of harsh tones in a picture; and I cannot quite enter into nature thus, even when it is idealized. You have made a better study of truth since then, in 'La Mare au Diable' [The Devil's Pool]. But I am not satisfied yet. The author still peeps out now and then; there are authors' words in it. . . . You must try again, even though you do not succeed; masterpieces are only successful attempts. Provided you make conscientious attempts, you may console yourself for not making masterpieces."

"I am consoled on that point beforehand," I replied, "and will begin again whenever you wish: advise me."

"Yesterday, for instance, we were at the rustic wake at the farm," he said. "The hemp-breaker told stories up to two o'clock in the morning. The village priest's servant helped or corrected him: she was a somewhat cultured peasant; he was ignorant, but happily endowed and very eloquent in his own way. These two persons jointly told us a rather long, true story, which appeared to be a familiar novel. Do you remember it?"

"Perfectly, and I could repeat it literally in their very lan

"Their language would need a translation: you must write in French, and not allow yourself a single word which does not belong to the language, unless it be so intelligible that a footnote would be useless for the reader."

"I see you are setting me a task fit to make me lose my mind, one I have never plunged into without coming out dissatisfied with myself, and penetrated by a sense of my weakness."

(

"Never mind! You will plunge into it again; I know the artist nature: nothing stimulates you as much as obstacles, and you do poorly what you do without suffering. Come, begin,— tell me the story of the Champi'; but not as I heard it with you. It was a masterpiece for our minds and ears to the manner born.' Tell it as if there were a Parisian at your right speaking the modern language, and a peasant at your left before whom you would not wish to say a word or phrase he could not fathom. Thus you will have to speak plainly for the Parisian, simply for the peasant. One will rebuke you for absence of color, the other for that of elegance; but I shall be there too,I, who am trying to find the conditions by which art, without ceasing to be art for every one, may enter into the mystery of primitive simplicity, and communicate to the mind the charm pervading nature."

"We are going to make a joint study, it seems."

"Yes; for I shall interfere when you stumble."

THE BUDDING AUTHOR

From 'Convent Life of George Sand.' Copyright 1893, by Roberts Brothers BEGAN, of course, by writing verses; rebelling against the Alexandrine, which however I understood perfectly. I tried to preserve a sort of rhythm without attending to the rhyme or the cæsura; and composed many verses that had a great success among the girls, who were not very critical. At last I took it into my head to write a novel; and though I was not at all religious at that time, I made my story very pious and edifying. It was more of a tale, however, than a novel. The hero and heroine met in the dusk of evening, in the country, at the foot of a shrine, where they had come to say their prayers. They admired and exhorted each other by turns. I knew that they ought to fall in love, but I could not manage it. Sophia urged me on; but when I had described them both as beautiful and perfect beings, when I had brought them together in an enchanting spot at the entrance of a Gothic chapel under the shade of lofty oaks, I never could get any further. It was not possible for me to describe the emotions of love: I had not a word to say, and gave it up. I succeeded in making them ardently pious; not that I knew any more about piety than I did about love; but I had examples of piety all the time before my eyes, and perhaps even then the germ was unconsciously developing within At all events, my young couple, after several chapters of travel and adventure that I have completely forgotten, separated at last, both consecrating themselves to God,- the heroine taking the veil, and the hero becoming a priest.

me.

Sophia and Anna thought my novel very well written, and they liked some things about it; but they declared that the hero (who rejoiced, by the way, in the name of Fitzgerald) was dreadfully tiresome, and they did not seem to consider the heroine much more amusing. There was a mother whom they liked better; but upon the whole my prose was less successful than my verses, and I was not much charmed with it myself.

Then I wrote a pastoral romance in verse, still worse than the novel; and one winter day I put it into the stove. Then I stopped writing, and decided that it was not an amusing occupation, though I had taken infinite delight in the preliminary composition.

Translation of Maria Ellery Mackaye.

LÉONARD SYLVAIN JULES SANDEAU

(1811-1883)

HEN Jules Sandeau (as he is usually known) was a humble young law student, he visited Nohant, and there he met the young Baroness Dudevant (George Sand), whose influence was to change the whole course of his life. Up to that time he had pursued the regular routine of French boys.

Born in the heart of France-at Aubusson, in the Department of Creuse in 1811, he passed his school days there; and then was sent to the law school in Paris.

JULES SANDEAU

It was during one of his vacation trips that he and Baroness Dudevant discovered their congeniality of tastes and ambitions. She was heartily tired of her husband and of an irksome domestic life, and convinced of her own latent power of authorship; while Sandeau too inclined more toward literature than law. So they went to Paris together in 1831, when Sandeau was twenty and Madame Dudevant twenty-seven. There they rented a garret on the Quai Saint Michel, and toiled cheerfully for a meagre livelihood.

Henri de Latouche, editor-in-chief of Le Figaro, became interested in these gifted young Bohemians. He subjected them to severe but helpful criticism, and accepted some of their sketches for his paper. At his suggestion they wrote a novel in collaboration,- 'Rose et Blanche,' a colorless tale not indicative of either's power. It is said that Sandeau suggested the plot of George Sand's powerful novel 'Indiana.' He also furnished her with her nom de plume: George because upon St. George's day he advised her to try her hand alone, and Sand from his own name. The liaison terminated in two years, when Sandeau went off to Italy; and with the exception of one moment's chance encounter, the two never met again. Unquestionably the strongly emotional period spent with the gifted young woman deepened Sandeau's nature, and stimulated all his faculties. He continued to write, and proved his possession of individual though not powerful talent. In 1839 Marianna' appeared,- a delicate analysis of the ebb and flow of passion;