new national epoch, the awakening of the people itself to an independent political and social life.

Turgenieff is, however, unable to understand rightly this new feature in the intellectual development of modern Russia, as his "Bazaroff" in "Fathers and Sons," and especially his last novel, "Virgin Soil," undoubtedly prove. The uncouth, energetic representatives of "Young Russia" are utter strangers to the veteran poet. In representing them as children of that same aristocracy whom he sneers at in "Smoke," Turgenieff commits a grave error. As it often happens with the great men of literature or history, Turgenieff fails to recognize a social event which he himself has helped in bringing about; he does not perceive that the men whom he now treats as a set of turbulent, half-crazy children are but the sons of that same people whose cause he formerly espoused with so much ardor. The social importance of Turgenieff's writings in the intellectual development of Russian society has ended with "Smoke." But his fame as a poet, as a profound judge of the human heart and its passions, will never die, for it belongs to all nations, to all ages.

Count Leo Tolstoy is in this respect Turgenieff's equal, indeed, in the subtileness of his psychological analysis, perhaps even his superior. But in everything else both authors are, as we have already mentioned, the very antipodes of each other. The first of Tolstoy's works, which appeared shortly before the Crimean war, "Childhood and Youth," marked the place its author was to occupy in Russian fiction. This strange book, which can scarcely be termed "a novel," contains a full and eminently poetic account of the education, moral and intellectual development of a young Russian nobleman. The first part of it, "Childhood," is a poem of Russian domestic life, of wonderful beauty and purity. The author dwells with fond tenderness on every petty incident in the early life of his hero, Prince Nechludoff. With a masterly art and a profound knowledge of those mysterious laws by which from a series of early impressions the nature and character of man are gradually shaped, the author shows us how the idle and monotonous country life in Russia, devoid of intellectual interests, works on the mind and imagination of a naturally clever, impressible boy. Nechludoff becomes a dreamer, utterly detached from the realities of every-day life, thirsting for higher, metaphysical science. The studies in abstract philosophy which he pursues at the university with indefatigable ardor give a new direction to his morbid mind;

he becomes a skeptic, an infidel, and thence rushes headlong into the coarsest form of sensualism, into a life of dissipation and debauchery of every kind, which ultimately leads him through a series of the bitterest deceptions to-suicide.

This type of the Russian nobleman, created by Tolstoy, a type we meet with in almost every one of his novels, and his method of treating it, might lead to the conclusion that Tolstoy, as a portrayer of Russian society, is still more negative, still more disconsolate than Turgenieff. Yet it is not so. While the latter finds in the Russian aristocracy nothing but an artificial graft on the nation's body, rotten to the core, and past any attempt at regeneration, the former, on the contrary, though perfectly aware of the vices and foibles of the class he describes, seeks to revive it by an ideal born out of its own life, by a philosophy corresponding to all its peculiar characteristics.

This ideal is the family with all the feelings, duties, and pleasures it engenders, and severed, in order to preserve its entire purity, from all interests and passions of public life. This philosophy is a peculiar sort of fatalistic creed, somewhat similar to Schopenhauer's pessimism, or Hartmann's "Philosophy of the Unconscious." According to this creed, the individual is utterly powerless in the making of a nation's history. The progress of the human race is the result of elementary forces working in and by the masses, unconsciously for the latter, and the greatest wisdom on the part of the individual consists in submitting passively to these mysterious forces. To the expounding of this curious philosophy Tolstoy has devoted his most important work, "War and Peace." For its subject he has selected one of the most eventful epochs of modern Russian history-the great national struggle with Napoleon in 1812. In a series of masterly-drawn pictures he attempts to prove that all the so-called great men of the time, from Napoleon himself down to the last of the Russian generals, were nullities in themselves, and acquired their importance only from the fact of being blind instruments of a mysterious Something which pushed them forward. It must be confessed that this somewhat childish philosophy often produces on the reader an almost ludicrous impression, reminding him of the well-known French adage, “Il n'y a pas de grand homme pour son valet de chambre !"

An illustration of Tolstoy's ideal of family life, which he but slightly touches in "War and Peace," we find in his last novel,

finished a year ago, " Anna Karenina." As a true and artistic picture of "high life" this novel is a masterpiece without an equal, perhaps, in any literature. In one frame the author has combined two love-stories-the one pure and quiet, the other passionate and criminal. The latter, the love between the heroine, Anna, and the brilliant aide-de-camp, Prince Vronsky, is conducted by Tolstoy step by step to its tragical end with a pitiless logic, and a profound knowledge of all the subtile instincts of the human heart, of all the innumerable prejudices and peculiarities of Russian aristocratic life. The scene of the heroine's suicide, which she commits by throwing herself under the wheels of a railway-train, is in its tragical grandeur one of the most remarkable dramatic effects in modern literature. Beside these two rebel hearts, who seek their own way to love and happiness in open defiance of the decrees of society, the author has placed another pair-the plain, unsophisticated country gentleman Levin and the young girl who ultimately becomes his wife. Their romance, disturbed for a moment by the interference of the disorderly element in the person of Vronsky, flows on quietly and peacefully. The young Mrs. Levin becomes an utterly prosaic and even somewhat slovenly materfamilias; her husband remains what he always had been, a quiet country gentleman, ignoring entirely all manner of social "problems" or political "questions," raising his corn and potatoes with the persistency, if not with the civic courage, of a Cincinnatus. And at the close of the book we seem to hear the author exclaiming, "Go and do likewise!"

Such is the moral and social creed of this great poet of Russian aristocracy. The reader will not be slow in detecting all its shallowness. An author who says to the class he represents : "You are estranged from the rest of the people-you are by nature lazy and indolent, that is true, but no matter; be still more indolent, retire once for all from public life, bury yourselves in your families, on your estates, and you shall be saved!"-such an author is unconsciously writing a bitterer satire on that class than any of its most implacable enemies could have done.

Thus the two greatest novelists of modern Russia, both born and bred in that class of Russian society which has until now held undisputed the scepter of intellectual and political power-both, the one with a set purpose, the other unconsciously, pass a deathwarrant against the present social organization of their country.

In their works, as in a mirror, the actual condition of Russian society is reflected with a merciless accuracy. They are not only the poets, they are the physiologists, the historians, of their people, and, by the powerful influence they exert on the public mind, they may yet prove to be, in defiance of the proverb, "prophets in their own land!"

S. E. SHEVITCH.

PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED.

Modern Fishers of Men among the Various Sexes, Sects, and Sets of Chartville Church and Community. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 16mo, pp. 179.

The House and its Surroundings. 24mo, pp. 96.

New York: D. Appleton & Co.

New York: D.

Premature Death: Its Promotion or Prevention. Appleton & Co. 24mo, pp. 94.

A Dream of Arcadia, and Other Verses. By LAWRENCE B. THOMAS. Baltimore: Turnbull Brothers. 24mo, pp. 87.

Wine in the Word. An Inquiry concerning the Wine Christ made, the Wine of the Supper, etc. By ABRAHAM COLES, M. D., LL. D. New York: Nelson & Phillips. 16mo, pp. 48.

The Early Years of Christianity. By E. DE PRESSENSE, D. D. Translated by ANNIE HARWOOD HOLMDEN. New York: Nelson & Phillips. 16mo, pp. 528.

The People's Commentary. Including Brief Notes on the New Testament, with Copious References to Parallel and Illustrative Scripture Passages, designed to aid Bible Students and Common Readers to understand the Meaning of the Inspired Word. By AMOS BINNEY and DANIEL STEELE, S. T. D. New York: Nelson & Phillips. 12mo, pp. 724.

Library of Theological and Biblical Literature. Edited by GEORGE R. CROOKS, D. D., and JoHN F. HURST, D. D. New York: Nelson & Phillips. 8vo, pp. 738.

The Multitudinous Seas. By S. G. W. BENJAMIN. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 24mo, pp. 132.

A History of American Literature. By MOSES COIT TYLER. 2 vols. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. 8vo, pp. 292, 330.

Origin, Progress, and Destiny of the English Language and Literature. By JOHN A. WEISSE, M. D. New York: J. W. Bouton. 8vo, pp. 701.

Stanfield's Coast Scenery: A Series of Picturesque Views in the British Channel and on the Coast of France. From Original Drawings taken expressly for the Work. By CLARKSON STANFIELD. New York: J. W. Bouton. 8vo, pp. 92.

Bryant among his Countrymen: The Poet, the Patriot, the Man. By SAMUEL OSGOOD, D. D., LL. D. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. 8vo, pp. 34.