judgment which, even in her most extravagant romances, is never for a
moment swayed from that sane impartiality described by the unobservant
as common sense.

Her fairness to women was not the least astounding of her gifts. She is
kind to the beautiful, the yielding, above all to the very young, and in
none of her stories has she introduced any violently disagreeable female
characters. Her villains are mostly men, and even these she invests
with a picturesque fatality which drives them to errors, crimes,
and scoundrelism with a certain plaintive, if relentless, grace. The
inconstant lover is invariably pursued by the furies of remorse; the
brutal has always some mitigating influence in his career; the libertine
retains through many vicissitudes a seraphic love for some faithful
Solveig.

Humanity meant far more to her than art: she began her literary career
by describing facts as she knew them: critics drove her to examine their
causes, and so she gradually changed from the chronicler with strong
sympathies to the interpreter with a reasoned philosophy. She discovered
that a great deal of the suffering in this world is due not so much to
original sin, but to a kind of original stupidity, an unimaginative,
stubborn stupidity. People were dishonest because they believed,
wrongly, that dishonesty was somehow successful. They were cruel because
they supposed that repulsive exhibitions of power inspired a prolonged
fear. They were treacherous because they had never been taught the
greater strength of candour. George Sand tried to point out the
advantage of plain dealing, and the natural goodness of mankind
when uncorrupted by a false education. She loved the wayward and
the desolate: pretentiousness in any disguise was the one thing she
suspected and could not tolerate. It may be questioned whether she ever