Her fantastic, impassioned, and mutable nature would
yield an inexhaustible amusement. She is capable of the most
romantic actions;--wild as the falcon, and voluptuous as the
tuberose,--yet she has not in her the elements of romance,
like a deeper and less susceptible nature. My cold and
reasoning E., with her one love lying, perhaps, never to be
unfolded, beneath such sheaths of pride and reserve, would
make a far better heroine.
'Both these characters are natural, while S. and T. are
_naturally factitious_, because so imitative, and her mother
differs from Juliet and her mother, by the impulse a single
strong character gave them. Even at this distance of time,
there is a slight but perceptible taste of iron in the water.
'George Sand disappoints me, as almost all beings have,
especially since I have been brought close to her person
by the _Lettres d'un Voyageur_. Her remarks on Lavater seem
really shallow, and hasty, _a la mode du genre femenin_. No
self-ruling Aspasia she, but a frail woman mourning over a
lot. Any peculiarity in her destiny seems accidental. She is
forced to this and that, to earn her bread forsooth!
'Yet her style,--with what a deeply smouldering fire it
burns!--not vehement, but intense, like Jean Jacques.
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