Madame Dudevant.

Aemantine Lucille Aurore Dupin was bom in Paris in 1804. She was, in an irregular manner, of noble, perhaps of royal descent, and her grandmother, the Countess de Horn, was a daughter of Marshal Saxe. i urore's father,; a Captain in the army of the Empire, was killed by an accident, and the girl was brought up by the gradnmother already mentioned, a lady whose reli gious ideas were derived from the writ ings of Koussea, and who was less noted for sound judgment than for vivacious spirits. Aurore was taught to ride and shoot and dance, and she had naturally a taste for literature,which was gratified in the home of the Countess de Horn, at JNahant, with books scarcely suitable for a young girl's reading. Undoubt edly the loose morality of the first novels of Georges Sand was due in part to her early education, or lack of education, and the effect of an unres tricted course of reading upon her young imagination. When Auroro had attained her fifteenth year, however, a sensible friend of her grandmother suggested to that volatilolady the advisability ofteachiug her ward something of religion other than that embodied m dousseau s works, and the young woman was accordingly placod in the Convent of Dames Anglaises, in Paris. Aurore was charmed with tho poetry of the Eoman Catholic faith, and be came a devout pupil of the nuns ; and upon the death of her guardians (two years afterwards) , was only deterred from taking the veil by the authority of her family, who arranged for her marriage with the Baron Casimir Dudovant, a retired soldier of mature years. To Baron Dudevant, the little fortune which Auroro brought was very acceptable, for it enabled him to improve his farm; he bought merinos, improved the quality of his fruit trees, and left his young wife to her own persuits

Two children were born to this ill assorted pair, and with her infants some years afterward, Madam Dude vant, went by orderof her physician, to Bordeaux. Ifore for the first time since her marriage, she received the homage of brilliant society ; her mind revolted against tho sombre home in Nahant, and her dull, unimaginative husband. When slio returned, it was to throw open her house to the world, of art and literature. Among her guests was Jules Saudeau, a young law student, whose attention to Madame Dedevant excited the jealousy of the Baron.

Soon afterword the husband and wife were separated, and Aurore, resigning all her fortune,, went to Paris aud began with Bandeau a struggle against poverty. Madame Dudevant fivod at this time in a little garret in the Quai St. Michel, and while Sandeau built air-castles, (it is not on record that he ever did much else,) Auroru earned a few sous daily by decorating match-boxes and tho like, for a toy vender.

It has been said that these erratic young persons were advised to give their attention to 1 i terature by Latouche, the editor of the Figaro, and although it scarcely seems possible that so experienced a journalist could have advised two untried persons to do anything of the sort, yet they did give their attention to literature, and together they wrote a series of articles for Latouche's Journal, and afterwards contributed to the same periodical a novel called ' Rose et Blanche,' under tho pen-name of* Jules Sand.' ' ose et Blanche' was followed by ' Indiana, which was written entirely by Madame Dudevant, and upon its title-page appeared for the first time the norn de piumeof ' Georges Sand.' Sandeau was to have written a part of this novel, but be had neglected his work, and was too honorable to share the glory, so a new signature had to be chosen, and as the discussion occured on St. George's day, Madame Dudevant adopted that name as a prefix. The popularity of Georges Sand was soon established; but Julus Sandeau, the companion of her poverty, disappeared altogether.

fier nexttwonovels were 'Valentine' and ' Lelia,' the latter being published in 1833, in the Revue dcs Deux Mpiulcs. She traveled through Italy in 1831, in company with Alfred de Musset, and she afterwards wrote ' I.es Lettres dun Voyageur,' in which she recorded a great many of her early impressions, as well as an account of her journey. ' Jacques/ ' Andre' and ' Le Secretaire Intime,' three novles of considerable power, followed ' Les Lettres' in rapid

succession; aird, after adding to herj list of acquaintances such men as Michale de Bourges, the gifted advocate; Pierre Leroux, the socialist, and the Abbe Laminnais, she showed the influence of their arguments upon her mind in her succeeding novels, ' Simon,' ' Spiridon,' ' Consuelo,' which is by many critics regarded as her masterpiece, and, its less eutertaining sequel,' La Comtesse de Eudolstadt.' In the winter of 1838, after winning a suit against the baron Dudevant, for the recovery of her children, Maurice and Solange, she made her home upon the beautiful Spanish Island of Majorca, Mediteranean Sea, and, of course, she found there material for a new book ' Un Hiver a Majorque.' Not the least interesting episode of her life, was her acquaintance with Chopin, which began during her stay at Majorca. Georges Sand was herself a musician of no little ability, and in the later years of her life she spent much of her time _at the pianoforte, improvising melodies, for she could express her thoughts with tones as well as words.

In 1815 she began to write pastoral novels, such as ' Francois le Champi' (which she dramatized in 1819;, and ' La G-rillon,' which was dramatized for the German stage'by Charlotte Birch Pfeift'ev, and is known upon the Aineri-^ can stage as ' Fanchon, the Cricket.' ' La Mare au Diablo' was also written at this time.

lii 18 fcß Georges Sand wrote political papers for tho press, as she had done 10 years before for Lamennais's journal' Le Monde, and a number of ' leaders which appeared in various newspapers upholding the measures of Leoru- Eollin, who was then a member of the provisional Government, wore at tributed to her pen

Jn 1851 she contributed to La Presse a ' Histoire do ma Vie,' which was, however, not so much a record of tho events of her life as an exhibition of her opinions and principles. Sho wrote altogether about sixty ( novels and twenty plays, some of the latter being adaptations of her stories. Her plays, as a general thing were not so popular as her novels ; but a few of them, notably ' Le Manage de Yictorino',' were highly successful. These dramas were usually first acted before the author and her intimate friends in a small theairo adjoining her house, so that faults could be discovered and improvements accom plished before the pieces were givenlo the public.

Very recently Georges Sand has written tho 'Journal dun Voyageur pendant la Guerie,' a series of papers contributed to the Ilevue dcs Deux Mondes, during the French aud German war, and ' impressions et Souvenirs/ which was published in; IS7J3. She had lived for many years amid the pleasant .surroundings in tho house where she passed her childhood, the Chateau de JSahaut, near Herri. Jior yearly income was, twenty years ago, estimated at six thousand dollars, and it probably has since increased with the increase of values. Her son Maurice was the host in Nahant, where there were always many guests, and Madame Dudevant passed her later years quietly and happily.

This is n.)t the time to fix the literary position of Georges baud Many, if not most, of her works will pass out of remembrance. The rapidity of her work made it impossible that all iier efforts .should be of equal merit, but sho was one of the most remarkable writers of the French romantic school, both as a dramatist and as a novelist, and she was also one of the most remarkable women of tho nineteenth century.

Quiet Mr. Smith.

FttBTT said ! What a quiet man you husband is Mrs Smith,'

' Quiet! a snale is an ' express train' to him! If the top of this* house should blow off, he'd just sit still and spread his umbrella! He's a regular pussy cat. Comes into the front, door as though the entry was paved with cg^,. and sits down in his chair as if (here was a nest of kittens under the cushions. He'll- be the death of mn yet. I vend him all the horrid ancidents. dreadful collisions, murders, and explosions, and he takes it just as easy as if I was saying the ten commandments.

He is never astonished, or startled, or delighted. If a ea'nncn hall should come through the winuow, he wouldn't move an eye-lush; If I should make the voyage of the world, and return some Cine day, he'd take off his spectacles, put them in the case, fold up the newspaper, and settle his dicky, before he'd be ready to say ' Good morning, Mrs Smith.' If he'd been born of a poppy he couldn't be more soporific,

I wonder if all the Smiths are like him. When Adam got' tired of naming his numerous desendants, he said, ' Let all the rest be called Smith !' Well, I don't care for that, but he ought to have known better than to call my husband Abel Smith. Do you suppose if I were a man, I would let a woman support me? Where do you think Abel's coats, and ' cravats, and canes, and cigars come from ? Out of my brain ? ' Quiet ?'—it's perfectly refreshing to mo. to hear of a comet, or see a locomotive, or look at a streak of chain lightning ? I tell you he is the expressed essence of chloroform.

The Dead City.

A pleasant American writer, Grace Greenwood, in a letter to the .New York Times, thus describes a visit to Pompeii:

One bright, mild day I was ahle to spend in Pompeii. We went by rail to Torre dell'Anunziata, where we took a carriage and entered Pompeii by the Porta della Marina. I had had already through the vast number of new treas ures in the museum at Naples, brought to light by the excavations of the last twenty years, a foretaste of the won ders I was to behold —' the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen,' and yet I was hardly prepared for the extent of the new revelations. It was almost another Pompeii that I entered this time 'and roamed over all that long golden day. Tho first wonderful sight we saw was that strange collection of/piteous, awful human shapes, so almost miracu lously preserved by plaster casts shapes of woful tragedy, brought forth to the light of day out of the mystery and darkness of eighteen centuries of inhumation—petrified death-pangs, re surrected fear, and horror.and agony. No poet's imagination, nor painting, nor sculpture could give one so terribly vivid an idea of the awful ddstriiction which not only burst upon those doomed Pompeiians in earthquake and scorire, and stifled fchem in hot, sul phurous fumes, but pursued after them, and searched into their deepest and most cunning hiding places—in drifting ashes and impalpable dust, packing itself about them, incasing them, hiding them for long centuries of blind forget fulness. Most terrible of all these shapes is the figure of tho miser, girt with his money-belt, and most pathetic is the group of the mother and daugh ter —but very pitiful is the figure of the dog, writhing and biting himself in his strange agony. It .may be a humble monument of fidelity—the poor brute niay have refused to escape without his master. I need not, lam sure, attempt any description of Pom peii.—that wondrous unlocked mystery, that open sepulchre—that imperishable witness of a perished civilization—-with its temples of invisible worship—its empty, thronged theatres and forums, its halls of silent revelry. Pompeii does not stand bacfe dark against the dawn of the world like the obelisks and pyramids of Egypt, chroniclers of forgotten tyrant, sepulchres of royal Titans, gloomy and mysterious—nor is it lifted up in sad eternal beauty, like the Parthenon, sublime in desolation, a house of mourning for the dead gods — it is, in all its aspects, singularly hu man and home-like, with an indestruc tible cheerfulness and coziness about it So nearly habitable is it that you half fancy that the gay men and women who once strolled along its streets, and the joyous children that once played in its courts, have only gone away for a little while—into tho country, per haps, for a brief holiday ; and you would hardly be surprised to see them come straggling back to their .houses and shops in their chariots, or cars, or on donkeys, or on foot, bringing flow ers aud fruits, bundles of salad, and baskets of fresh egg;?. We took our lunch, like tho romau. tic young party that we were, in the peristyle of the house of the 'Drama tic Poet,' Bulwer's Glaucus.- We made believe that our hard-boiled eggs, iron-clad rolls, tough apples and ten - cious tongue, were the classic and choice viands, fruits and "sweetmeats that he set before his guests on the occasion of his famous banquet, and that our poor yin ordinaire was deli cious Falernian. In our Conversation we moved stiffly in the stilts of a high classic style, from which, however, we soon dropped gradually down into easy society chat, criticizing the perform ance at the last gladiatorial matinee, and indulging in bits of piquant Pom peiian gossip. We made free with our classic neighbors right and left—were merry over the pomposity of old Pansa, the gluttony of Sallust, the vulgar taste of Marcus Lucretius, and the pedantry and pretension of the Plinys.

We questioued if Julia Diomed's color was real; we showed smad respect for the money bags of her rich father; we even expressed grave misgivings as to the walk aud conversation of Eev. Arbaces Barneses, of the little temple round the corner. We indulged, as a matter of course, in a few whisperejl criticisms of our handsome and gener ous host—young Grlaucus. It was not, we thought, quite proper for him to have that blind flower-girl, Nydia, flitting about among his roses and jassmines. She was much too pretty for a bachelor's establishment. 'But these poets are so unconventional, my dear; no regard for the hiensemices, you know It is quite shocking.' After all, this old romance, one of the earliest of Bulwer's, is still the best guide to old Pompeii. It was written, in the first glow of the world's wonder and enthusiasm over the resurrected city, and it still has a wondrous subtle charm for all readers, pedantic and melodramatic as is much of the lan guage, unnatural as are some of the characters, and absurdly improbable as are some of the incidents ; such, for instance, as the hurling down by two separate earthquakes of two separate pieces of sculpture on the head of one man, the priest Arbaces ; though when things get to tumbling on a popular clergyman there is no knowing when they will.stop. There is, somehow, the very essence of reality about those unreal! personages —those exhumed, bare, skeleton names, clothed upon by the imagination of the poet—those shadow of shadows. In spite of my good share cf years and experience, and my modicum of good, hard sense, I found myself, as I looked into the dreary, vacant tablinwn of Glaucus, picturing the table of eitrean wood, covered with rare fruit and wine ; the richly-cushioned couches on which lounged and feasted the handsome Greek poet, and just the guests named in the novel—none other. As we passed out, I found myself looking down the street far the stately form of Julia, coming from the temple or the thermal, dressed in the very latest Koman style, and for the gliding, grop ing figure of poor Nydia. I wondered for a.moment if the lighter traces of wheels on the pavement were not made by the chariot of Glaucus, and in dulged in a.'hope that his beautiful horses, 'worthy of Phoebus,' escaped on the day of wrath, even if the groom ran away with them.

We lingered for some time in thpi house of one Cornelia It is a prettyj, elegant mansion, rather cosy than sumptious, and strange sweet atmos phere of home seems still hovering about, it. 1 felt for Mme. Cornelia. It may be that she made good her escape in her litter or her car to the seashore, where her private barge awaited her ; and that she was evenablo to carryaway with her her best tunic, her jewels, her precious little steel mirror, her rougepot, her choice cosmetics, her favourite lares, and perhaps her husband and children, but it must have been hard to leave that bijou of a' house—so bright, so neat —to be shut up ift. silence and darkness, and.not even to be aired and dusted for eighteen huudred years.

There are two theatres in Pompeii —the Tragic and the Comic—but equally tragic to us, aud far more im pressive and solemn than the temples.. I think it is always so with places once dedicated to pleasure, but which some catastrophe or crime has re-dedicated to.tragedy. We look down from the upper row of saats upon the rude Btage, from which the actors made so sudden an exit before that tempest of ashes and burning stones —probably the only. actors who ever bade farewell to any stage with no expectation of returning. Yet hardly is the vacant scene silent. History declaims and poetry chants from it the story of that mightiest tragedy of all, that drowned and closed its mimic life and dropped upon it the awful curtain of a' night of ages. Not even the ruined old ' amphitheatre is abandoned, to common desolatiou and utter emptiness. The seats, tier above tier, are filled, to the mind's eye, with stern .Roman shades, stately aud patrician, or vulgar and brutal— men gay but cruel; women light but pitiless. The silent arena is peopled with ghostly gladiators, or therein still rage and bound those 'fell grim wanderers of the desert,' the wild .beasts—scarce beastlier than . their masters—hungrily howling for their victims or crouching for a deadly spring, like a council of divines after schismat ics and heretics, or a Democratic in vestigating committee after Republican officials. Upon the whole, long-buried Pompeii is the most live place to know, except that other resurrected city, i Chicago.

Up in a Balloon.

On September 5, 1862, two Ju, aeronauts, Glaisher and CoxvJ? name, made one of the most remark ascents recorded in the history m looning. They started from %i hampton, England, and the e W reached was the highest ever attjk by man—nearly or quite seven? above the earth. Mr. GlaisW given a modert yet thrilling accoJ J this almost fatal adventure. Tfev loon left the earth at three lninuW 1 o'clock p.m. Nothing 'ioffl occiired until the party, at forty SHI past 1 o'plock, reached the altSfl four miles from the earth. Disci sand, they rose to the height M miles during the next ten Stife. More sand was discharged a3V balloon shot rapidly Mr. Glaisher's sight failed, andgll not read the fine divisions on hill nients. .AUthe^me the baUoJP been spinning round and roui&S the valve-line had become so enll? that Mr. Coxwell had to climb 2 ring above the car and adjustfp this moment (1 o'clock and SJtaBE Mr. Glaisher looked at-the-W and found its reading to be':9|S| implying a height of over-29 qjffi -Wishiiig_ to record the ods*| he found his right, arm powerle^ f tried to move the other, and« powerless too. * Then I tried' SI myself, and succeeded, but'l see 2 have no-limbs. On looking sbS ometer my head fell over ;%t shoulder; I struggled and shoot * body again, but could not nftjjjjj arms. Getting my head upright ki instant only, it felLon my right,'^, der; then I fell backward, mjU resting upon,, the, side of the car, at my hea&oh its edge. *'In tins pod% my eyes were directed.to Mr. Cox^ | in the ring. When I shook my ffik; I seemed to have full power oS muscles of the backhand consider^ so oyer those of the neck, but none^ either my arms-or my legs. Asiai ease of the arms so all/ muscular.™^ was.,lost .in an instant, from nijjjjj and 'neck., I dimly .saw myf»J ■ Mr. Coxwell, .and Endeavored to6^, to him but could not. In an-instati intense darkness -overcame me, vfs#l was still conscious, "with as a(S§ll brain as at the present moment mm writing this. I thought T had Imj seized1 with asphyxia,; .and belieijdl' should experience nothing mor^ni" death would come unless we descends speedily; other thoughts were entoi} my mind, when I suddenly bet»p unconscious," as "on' gdiiig to sleep.1 Meanwhile Mr. Coxwell was ip mM as critical a condition. . lipaivfrqsti|« 1 all around the neck of the .balloon,;ai' the ring was piercingly ..cold. -He i - tempted to leave the ring,: and foiC that his hands wore frozen.' "'< He'drop-f ped to the car almost insensible,"!^ discovered that his companion W appirently dead. He tried to. go jM him, but could not. He wished tp;pp®V: the valve, but his hands- were:frozen and his arms powerless. - Feeling | insensibility coming rapidly over Mrs, he made a desparate effort, caught'tla valve-line with his teeth and'held % 1 valve open until the balloon took $ decided downward turn. , In jale^ minutes Mr. .Glaisher began to revive, and soon became conscious "tkattiMr.jl Coxwell was trying to rouse himP'L then heard him speak more empM'ticallf but could not see, speak, or "move. I heard: him say, :h Do try '; now %>M

MORNING SUMMONS.

Come, love, the suu has risen long, Hffl

And hedge and tree Are all alive with tremulous song;

Awake, and come with me. The grass is pearled with gleamingcleff, The larks are trilling in the 5ky,,'...., ': And all the world's awaiting you-^.' „,. And I—my darling—l. : Look from above, that those dear eyes, j

May dawn on me. My love, my life, my light, arise,

That I the morning see. i There's ne'er a cloud to mar the, day . The air is soft, and fresh, and.s.wce . I But all the world is dull and gray. ,;., j ' Till thy dear face I greet. i>ifiM|i

A 'bumptious' traveller, overtakingH I old Presbyterian minister whose nag \ffl*. i much fatigued, quizzed tho old gentleffltf upon his.' turn out.' ' A nice horsejouft doctor, very—valuable beast thai-w» what makes him wag his tail so, doctor? ' Why, as you have asked me, I wiM*" you. It is for the same reason that W I tongue wags so —a sort of natural wetf" I ness.' i If

Printed and published by the proprietor, H*E Brett, of Parnell, at his General Steam EWH Office, Wyndham-street, in the City of AW**") New Zealand. Saturday, September IG, 1876

JE suing Star Sixpplemeixt, September 1Q» 18*70