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COUNT LEO TOLSTOY'S NOVELS.

TOWARDS the close of the Crimean War, there appeared in the Russian magazine Sovremennik, several articles which attracted great attention, so vivid were the pictures drawn in them of the scenes witnessed, the life led, by the defenders of Sebastopol. From their pages might be gained a clear idea of what went on within the lines of that beleaguered city, then the centre point of all Russian hopes and fears; of the fierce excitement, and at the same time the terrible monotony of the siege, and of the effect which they produced upon the minds of the men who were straining their energies to the utmost to withstand the banded invaders of Holy Russia. In the year 1856 they were published as a separate volume, under the title of Voennuie Razskazai (or War Sketches), and soon made widely known the name of their author, Count Leo Tolstoy, then in his eight-and-twentieth year. The military censor, whose permission it was necessary to obtain, was by no means enthusiastic in their favour. And he was a difficult personage to persuade, for he was a very deaf old general, and, when he did not wish to hear anything, he was wont to lay aside his ear-trumpet, and thus cut himself off from the world of argument. Several passages in the description of siege-life in Sebastopol were not to his taste. For instance, in one admirable scene a group of soldiers was depicted, attempting to relieve their dulness by means of literature. Crouching in a corner at night, they had stuck a light on the end of a bayonet, and one of them read aloud to the others from a grimy little volume of skazki, or fairy tales. The idea of soldiers reading such childish trash displeased the general. Here was an opportunity, he cried, of recommending to the army useful literature. Why did not the author represent the men as listening to a sound work which should point out to them the merits of military discipline and organisation? However, the book was steered sagely between censorial shoals, and arrived safely in the haven of popularity. The author became famous, especially after the publication, also in 1856, of his romance Dyetsvo i Otrochestvo (Childhood and Youth); a most interesting record of Russian family life, rich in poetic descriptions of nature, and full of very remarkable studies of the first movements and gradual development

of thought and feeling in youthful minds. As it has been translated into English, there is no occasion to dwell upon it at length. And the same may be said of another of his romances, which has been recently translated by Mr. Schuyler, The Cossacks; a work also full of poetic colouring, and highly prized in Russia as giving an idea of the free, unconventional life led by the vigorous borderers whom it describes. To the Russian mind there is a charm which we are scarcely fitted to appreciate aright in the picture of Marianka, the young Cossack maiden, who disdains the allurements of civilised life, and prefers to worldly advantages the society of her strong, brave, but somewhat brutal, Cossack lover. Of these two books English readers can judge for themselves. But with Count Tolstoy's more recent and more ambitious novels it is difficult for them to become acquainted, for they have not been translated into any familiar tongue. In one of these, Voina i Mir (War and Peace), he has drawn a series of pictures of Russia, military and domestic, as it appeared during the first quarter of the present century, especially at the period when it bore up against the tremendous shock of Napoleon's invasion, and changed the course of European history. In the other, Anna Karenina, he has taken as his subject society as it exists at the present day in Russian aristocratic circles, combining with his graphic descriptions of the life now led by the upper classes, a series of subtle studies of an erring woman's heart. seems likely to be translated into English. causes may be mentioned their length. contains more than 1,800 large pages! It may, therefore, be worth while to attempt a summary of their stories, or at least of that of the earlier and the more generally interesting of the two. That they have many merits may be considered as proved by the unanimous and enthusiastic consent of Russian readers in their favour. But it is as impossible to do justice to a romance by giving an outline of its story, as it would be to convey a just idea of a Bird of Paradise by exhibiting its skeleton. Still, in default of a stuffed specimen, to which a translation of a work of fiction may generally be compared, a skeleton may do good service when intelligently surveyed. But of many of the chief merits of Count Tolstoy's striking pictures of War and Peace no just opinion can possibly be conveyed; it would be a hopeless task to attempt to do more than to call attention to them. Out of a great mass of small details he carefully composes an admirable picture. Once begin to suppress details, and the picture gradually fades away. We may take as instances the lifelike scene of an artillery contest early in the book, in which the busy young officer, Tushin, and the gunners who obey his orders, are brought before the reader's eye with wonderful force and clearness; and the descriptions of Moscow, teeming with life and energy when the invasion began, deserted and as though dead when the invaders looked down upon it

Neither of these works Among other deterrent War and Peace, for instance,

'

from the Sparrow Hills, and Napoleon vainly waited for deputations of Boyars.' Still more impossible is it to give an idea of the keen insight shown by the author in his slight but true analyses of peasant and soldier character, or in his fuller delineations of the changes wrought by time and fortune in the minds of the principal actors on his stage.

Whether he will produce any other really great work seems to be uncertain; for, like most Russians, except those who sway the diplomacy and other foreign relations of the empire, he is apt to change his plans freely. At one time he devoted himself to primary education, produced reading and writing books, and took under his personal protection the instruction of the young rustics in the neighbourhood of his estate of Yasnaya Polyana, in the government of Tula. His opinion that children should be taught what they liked, when they liked, and that education should be made attractive instead of repulsive, was at first hailed with enthusiasm; but whether it was that the young barbarians at play were too demonstrative, or that their parents thought that they did not pay sufficient attention to work, or merely that the young master tired of his employment, from some reason or other-or perhaps from no reason at all, as often occurs in Russia-the new educational experiment came to an end.

Novel-writing was at least found more productive of practical result than pædagogical philanthropy. Anna Karenina, which only recently appeared in a complete form, after a long periodical appearance in the Russky Vyestnik, is said to have brought to its author more money than any other Russian work ever produced; and a large pecuniary harvest was produced by War and Peace, which was published in 1868.

Pierre Bezukhof, the most interesting, though not at first sight the most attractive, of the three heroes of War and Peace, was in many respects a typical Russian. Good-humoured, soft-hearted, wellmeaning, emotional, indolent, and all but destitute of moral backbone, he was everything by turns, and nothing long, except in so far as that he always remained true to the natural kindliness of his disposition. Among other weak points in the Russian character seems to be an incapacity to recognise the advantage of telling the truth, the necessity of keeping a plighted word. The tendency to colour or distort statements is closely connected in many instances with the fervid imagination of a poetic temperament, or the desire to please of an amiable disposition; the fracture of a promise is more often due to a childlike forgetfulness than to any deliberate intention to play false. In the very outset of the present story Pierre is described as giving his word of honour not to go to a party to which he had been invited by the dissipated young Prince Anatole

Kuragine. But no sooner does he find himself alone than a desire to to it arises within his mind.

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And there immediately came into his head the thought that his plighted word was of no consequence, because before he gave it he had also given his word to Anatole to go to him; and he ended by thinking that all these plighted words were mere conventional ideas, not having the least definite meaning, especially when a man considers that on the morrow he may either die or else meet with something or other so extraordinary that honour and dishonour will no longer exist for him. So off he drove to his friend's house. On arriving there he found that an officer named Dolokhof, a man renowned as a hard drinker, a gambler, and a duellist, had made a bet with an English traveller that he would drink off a bottle of rum at a single draught, sitting on the sill of a window which looked down from a great height upon the street, with his legs hanging outside, and without holding on to anything but the bottle with his hands. Pierre, after having drunk freely, looked on in silence while the feat was accomplished. Poised on the sill, Dolokhof placed the bottle to his lips. Slowly it tilted upwards. After a time a shudder ran through his whole body. One of his hands rose as if about to seize hold of the window frame. Then a pause, and the bottle was empty and Dolokhof standing safely in the room. Pierre rushed forward, called for a fresh bottle, and was eager to perform the feat himself. With difficulty did his friends induce him to give up the idea, and join instead in the less hazardous amusement of tying together a tame bear and a policeman, and ducking them in the river; a freak for which Pierre was sent away from St. Petersburg, and Dolokhof was reduced to the ranks.

Helena Kuragine was

Pierre's next folly was to get married. beautiful exceedingly, with the loveliest shoulders ever seen; but her father had tried to cheat Pierre out of his rich inheritance, her brothers, though good boon-companions, were certain to prove objectionable relatives, and about her own character scandals had been whispered in Pierre's ears. He came to the wise conclusion that she would be a most unsuitable wife, and that he had better seek safety in flight. But then he glanced at her beautiful shoulders, and remained. At length her father said to himself: 'This must come to an end: I am a parent;' and arranged that after a party on the occasion of Helena's birthday, she and Pierre should be left alone together in a small boudoir, the other guests having taken leave. After a while he sent his wife to see how the courtship was progressing. She reported that all was just as usual, that is to say, Pierre was admiring Helena through his spectacles (for he was short-sighted), but not proposing. The father frowned, threw back his head, and with decided steps strode into the boudoir. On arriving there, his face assumed such an unusually majestic appearance that Pierre was frightened, and timidly stood up.

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"Glory be to God!' cried the prince. My wife has told me everything.' He threw one arm round Pierre, the other round his daughter. 'My friend-Helena ! I am very, very glad.' His voice shook. 'I loved your father. And she will make a good wife. God bless you both!' He again embraced his daughter and then Pierre, and kissed him. Actual tears bedewed his cheeks. 'Princess! come here!' he cried. Helena's mother came, and she cried too. Pierre was kissed, and he kissed repeatedly the hand of the beautiful Helena. After a while he and she were again left alone. 'All this was to be,' thought Pierre,' and could not possibly be otherwise. So there's no use in asking if it is good or bad.' Helena!' said he aloud, and stopped short. There's some proper thing to say in such cases,' he thought; but he could not anyhow remember what was the proper thing to say. He looked into her face. She came closer to him. Her cheeks flushed. Ah!' she said, 'take off these these things;' pointing to his spectacles.

His marriage proved a failure, though Pierre did not for some time acknowledge the fact even to himself. But at length he found that Dolokhof, whose courage in the field had in the meanwhile obtained his pardon, was always haunting his house and paying attention to his wife. Grave rumours as to her conduct reached his

ears.

Bitter

An anonymous letter contained definite charges. thoughts rose within Pierre's heart, stirring up hatred towards Dolokhof, with whom at last he took an opportunity of quarrelling at a banquet. A duel followed. On a foggy morning Pierre and Dolokhof met in a forest near Moscow. The combatants were to approach a barrier and fire when they pleased. Pierre, who was no shot, fired first, and when he saw his enemy fall was horrified, and rushed forward to see if he was hurt. But Dolokhof sternly ordered him back to the barrier, and then, painfully sitting up, and having cooled his hot lips with snow, fired. Missed!' he exclaimed, as the bullet flew past harmlessly, and then fell back fainting on the snow, to be conveyed with difficulty to the home of his devoted mother, whose opinion was that her son was too noble and pure-hearted for this evil world of ours.' The duel was followed by an explanation between Helena and her justly irritated husband. With a certain quiet majesty she came into his study robed in white, the plaits of her splendid hair twice coiled like a diadem around her beautifully shaped head, her features calm, but a line of anger marking her marble brow. Accustomed to rule, she was prepared to reprimand him into his usual submission. For his intellect was duller than hers. He was by no means her equal in a conflict of wits; but physically of great strength, and the inheritor from his father of a vast store of latent wrath, he was not a spouse to be driven too far by a sharptongued wife, and this is how the interview ended.

'We had better separate,' he said in a broken voice.

'Separate, if you like; but only if you assign me a competence,' said Helena. Separate! What have they been scaring him about?'

Pierre leaped from his couch, and rushed towards her, trembling with rage. 'I will kill you,' he cried; and, tearing from a table a marble slab, made a step

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