The philosophers are from night to morning drunk, the politicians are drunk, the literary men reel and stagger from one absurdity to another, and how shall we understand their vagaries? Let us suppose, charitably, that Madame Sand had inhaled a more than ordinary quantity of this laughing gas when she wrote for us this precious manuscript of Spiridion.That great destinies are in prospect for the human race we may fancy, without her ladyship's word for it: but more liberal than she, and having a little retrospective charity, as well as that easy prospective benevolence which Mrs.Sand adopts, let us try and think there is some hope for our fathers (who were nearer brutality than ourselves, according to the Sandean creed), or else there is a very poor chance for us, who, great philosophers as we are, are yet, alas! far removed from that angelic consummation which all must wish for so devoutly.She cannot say--is it not extraordinary?--how many centuries have been necessary before man could pass from the brutal state to his present condition, or how many ages will be required ere we may pass from the state of man to the state of angels? What the deuce is the use of chronology or philosophy? We were beasts, and we can't tell when our tails dropped off: we shall be angels; but when our wings are to begin to sprout, who knows? In the meantime, Oman of genius, follow our counsel: lead an easy life, don't stick at trifles; never mind about DUTY, it is only made for slaves; if the world reproach you, reproach the world in return, you have a good loud tongue in your head: if your straight-laced morals injure your mental respiration, fling off the old-fashioned stays, and leave your free limbs to rise and fall as Nature pleases; and when you have grown pretty sick of your liberty, and yet unfit to return to restraint, curse the world, and scorn it, and be miserable, like my Lord Byron and other philosophers of his kidney; or else mount a step higher, and, with conceit still more monstrous, and mental vision still more wretchedly debauched and weak, begin suddenly to find yourself afflicted with a maudlin compassion for the human race, and a desire to set them right after your own fashion.There is the quarrelsome stage of drunkenness, when a man can as yet walk and speak, when he can call names, and fling plates and wine-glasses at his neighbor's head with a pretty good aim; after this comes the pathetic stage, when the patient becomes wondrous philanthropic, and weeps wildly, as he lies in the gutter, and fancies he is at home in bed--where he ought to be; but this is an allegory.
I don't wish to carry this any farther, or to say a word in defence of the doctrine which Mrs.Dudevant has found "incomplete";--here, at least, is not the place for discussing its merits, any more than Mrs.Sand's book was the place for exposing, forsooth, its errors:
our business is only with the day and the new novels, and the clever or silly people who write them.Oh! if they but knew their places, and would keep to them, and drop their absurd philosophical jargon! Not all the big words in the world can make Mrs.Sand talk like a philosopher: when will she go back to her old trade, of which she was the very ablest practitioner in France?
I should have been glad to give some extracts from the dramatic and descriptive parts of the novel, that cannot, in point of style and beauty, be praised too highly.One must suffice,--it is the descent of Alexis to seek that unlucky manuscript, Spiridion.
"It seemed to me," he begins, "that the descent was eternal; and that I was burying myself in the depths of Erebus: at last, Ireached a level place,--and I heard a mournful voice deliver these words, as it were, to the secret centre of the earth--'He will mount that ascent no more!'--Immediately I heard arise towards me, from the depth of invisible abysses, a myriad of formidable voices united in a strange chant--'Let us destroy him! Let him be destroyed! What does he here among the dead? Let him be delivered back to torture! Let him be given again to life!'