Page:Margaret Fuller by Howe, Julia Ward, Ed. (1883).djvu/122

Rh tion. Her somnambulic utterances had told of her good faith, and of her belief in things truly human and divine. Her revolutionary indignation was against the really false and base, and her progress was to a position from which she was able calmly to analyze and loftily to repudiate the disorders in which she was supposed to have lost for a time the sustaining power of reason and self-command.

To those of us who remember these things in the vividness of their living presence, it is most satisfactory to be assured of the excellence of Margaret's judgment. The great Frenchwoman, at the period of which we write, appeared to many the incarnation of all the era which her sex could represent. To those of opposite mind she appeared the inspired prophetess of a new era of thought and of sentiment. To Margaret she was neither the one nor the other. Much as she loved genius, that of George Sand could not blind her to the faults and falsities that marred her work. Stern idealist as she was, the most objectionable part of Madame Sand's record could not move her to a moment's injustice or uncharity in her regard.

In Woman in the Nineteenth Century Margaret says,—

"George Sand smokes, wears male attire, wishes to be addressed as mon frère. Perhaps, if she found those who were as brothers indeed, she would not care whether she were brother or sister."

And concerning her writings:—

"This author, beginning like the many in assault upon bad institutions and external ills, yet deepening the experience through comparative freedom, sees at last that the only efficient remedy must come from individual character.