SANDEAU, Léonard Sylvain Jules (1811-1882), a French novelist of much grace and not a little power, was born at Aubusson (Creuse) on February 9, 1811. He made acquaintance as an art student with Madame Dudevant (George Sand), who had just taken to an unrestrained literary life at Paris. The intimacy did not last long, but it produced Rose et Blanche (1831), a novel written in common, and from it George Sand took the idea of the famous nom de guerre by which she is and always will be known. Sandeau’s subsequent work showed that he could run alone, and for nearly fifty years he continued to produce novels and to collaborate in plays. His best works are Marianna (1839), Le Docteur Herbeau (1841), Catherine (1845), Mademoiselle de la Seiglière and Madeleine (1848), La Chasse au Roman (1849), Sacs et Parchemins (1851), La Maison de Penarvan (1858), La Roche aux Mouettes (1871). The famous play of Le Gendre de M. Poirier is only one of several which he wrote with Emile Angier,—the novelist usually contributing the story and the dramatist the theatrical working up. Meanwhile Sandeau, who had accepted the empire, but who never took any active part in politics, had been made conservateur of the Mazarin library in 1853, elected to the Academy in 1858, and next year appointed librarian of St Cloud. At the suppression of this latter office, after the fall of the empire, he was pensioned. He died on the 24th of April 1882. He was never a very popular novelist, judging by the sale of his works; and the peculiar quiet grace of his style, as well as his abstinence from sensational incident, and his refusal to pander to the French taste in fictitious morals, may be thought to have disqualified him for popularity. But his literary ability has always been recognized by competent ...