The International Weekly Miscellany - Volume I, No. 3

International Weekly Miscellany
Vol. I. No.
by Various

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Title: International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850
Author: Various
Release Date: July 22, 2004 [EBook #12982]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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INTERNATIONAL WEEKLY ***

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INTERNATIONAL WEEKLY MISCELLANY
Of Literature, Art, and Science.
* * * * *
Vol. I. NEW YORK, JULY 15, 1850. No. 3.
* * * * *

GEORGE SAND, IN THE MEMOIRS OF CHATEAUBRIAND.
George Sand is about to publish a book called "Memoirs of my Life,"
which is looked for with great expectations by both the admirers of her
genius and the lovers of scandalous gossip. It is certain that if she
makes a clean breast of her adventures and experiences, the world will
have reason both for admiration and disgust over the confessions:
admiration for the generosity of her character--for she never did a mean
thing, and probably never had a mean thought--disgust at the
recklessness with which she has cast off the delicacy and modesty of
woman, and undermined the morality on which the holiest institutions
of society depend. The interest with which the French public look
forward to the book may be understood from the enormous price she
has received for it between $30,000 and $40,000. The Credit, a most
respectable daily journal of Paris, has purchased of the publisher, for
$12,000, the right of issuing the first six volumes in its feuilleton, in
advance of the regular publication, and will soon commence them.
Chateaubriand, in one of the latest chapters of his Posthumous
Memoirs, speaks at some length of George Sand. The verdict of the
most illustrious French literary man of the age which has just closed,
upon this most remarkable writer of the age now passing, is every way
interesting, and we translate it for the International from the columns
of La Presse, as follows:
Madame Sand possesses talents of the first order. Her descriptions are
true as those of Rousseau in his Reveries, and those of Bernardin St.

Pierre in his Studies. Her free style is stained by none of the current
faults of the day. Lelia, a book painful to read, and offering only here
and there one of the delicious scenes which may be found in Indiana
and Valentine, is nevertheless a master-work of its kind. Of the nature
of a debauch, it is yet without passion, though it produces the
disturbance of passion. The soul is wanting, but still it weighs upon the
heart. Depravity of maxims, insult to rectitude of life, could not go
farther; but over the abyss descends the talent of the author. In the
valley of Gomorrah the dew falls nightly upon the Dead Sea.
The works of Madame Sand, those romances, the poetry of matter, are
born of the epoch. Notwithstanding her superiority, it is to be feared
that the author has narrowed the circle of her readers by the very
character of her writings. George Sand will never be a favorite with
persons of all ages. Of two men equal in genius, one of whom preaches
order and the other disorder, the first will attract the greater number of
hearers. The human race never give unanimous applause to what
wounds morality, on which repose the feeble and the just. We do not
willingly associate with all the recollections of our life those books
which caused us the first blush, and whose pages were not those we
learned by heart as we left the cradle: books which we have read only
in secret, which have never been our avowed and cherished
companions, and which were never mingled with either the candor of
our sentiments or the integrity of our innocence. Providence has
confined to very straight limits all success which has not its source in
goodness, and has given universal glory as an encouragement for
virtue.
I am aware that I reason here like a man whose narrow view does not
embrace the vast humanitary horizon, like a retrograde attached to a
ridiculous system of morality, a morality already passing to decay, and
at the best good only for minds without intelligence, in the infancy of
society. There is close at hand the birth of a new gospel, far above the
common-places of this conventional wisdom, which hinders the
progress of the human race, and the