that the old adage, "Scratch a Russian and you will find a Tartar," still holds good and that the Russians are only superficially civilized. They may be dominated by a single emotion or a barren idea in somewhat the same manner that animals are by fear or propensity. In Tourguéneff's novels there is usually a central personage of whom a passionate motive has taken possession, which hurries him to a tragic catastrophe. The action is nec essarily rapid and the book is therefore short. It has already been said that the author does not talk about his characters. In fact, he. does not speak at all in his own capacity. He does not take a text from a conversation or incident and engage in abstract discussion. He is an artist whose primary function is the objective portrayal of human nature. Although some of his books have had enough public significance to procure his banishment, this element is always an incidental one. In "Fathers and Sons," "Smoke," and "Virgin Soil" are presented certain political and social conditions of Russia. But they are given simply as the environment of the characters which are, especially in "Fathers and Sons" and "Smoke," among the most skillfully drawn lesh and blood people in the whole range of his productions. One always looks with uspicion upon a novel with a didactic purJose. If written to exhibit a tendency or xpose an abuse, we are prepared in advance o find the characters lay figures, like those of a ventriloquist, through which the author iscourses in dialogue form. Tourguéneff's haracters were not created to serve as illusations of a phase of life. They are, of ourse, to an extent, the product of their Arroundings, and these are pictured so faithilly to the fact that the powers of absolusm, which dread nothing so much as the uth, considered his writings a menace to e peace of Russia. Probably, too, it was s secondary design in the selection of some the minor persons to be introduced, to exbit the most representative types to Russia erself and the world at large. But this feate is always subsidiary to the main purpose. The stories are admirably constructed. Generally, the past life of the chief figures is briefly narrated up to the time when the influences which are to mold them appear. The action of the novel then begins, and proceeds by natural stages to a climax. The interest is by no means absorbed by the hero. The other characters are not sketched or shown only in their relation to him. They are all well rounded and each has a distinct personality. There is one body of men in the characterization of whom Tourguéneff is open to criticism. There can be little doubt that the Russian civil service is administered by shallow-minded officials, subsisting on a diet of red-tape and filled with the most petty aspirations and jealousies. These creatures are constantly strutting through Tourguéneff's books, and the author, in his contempt, forgets that after all they are human beings, and caricatures them. Dickens excelled all others in the art of personifying an idiosyncrasy and imparting a semblance of life to the abnormal conception. Tourguéneff does not satirize the people in question to the extent that Dickens would have done, but he is prone to draw them as mere specimens of a class, and not as actual men. The real characters of his works constantly bid defiance tocon ventional restraints. They are under the dominion of motives so deep that social rules do not enter into consideration. In discussing the general qualities of his art, two things should not be overlooked: his literary style and his descriptive powers. His style is more like that of a scientific writer than of a litterateur. It is a perfect vehicle of expression, which attracts no attention to itself whatsoever. He is always terse, compact and direct. His descriptive powers are of a fine order, and he has the same faculty of painting a landscape as of drawing a person in a few sentences. Like everything else he puts into his works, the descriptions of scenery are but accessories to dramatic portraiture. Nature is viewed from the standpoint of character, and the mood of the person is wrought into the picture in the subtle blending of the inner and outer worlds which we find in the poets. His works abound in patches of poetry, each of which intensifies a situation in the story by giving it setting and atmosphere. There is a description of Venice of considerable length in "On the Eve." It is Venice seen through the eyes of a pair of lovers with the shadow of approaching death resting on one of them. The narrative is interfused with their complex and sombre emotions, and has pathos as well as exquisite beauty. . Of all the author's productions, probably "Fathers and Sons" is most famous. This is largely due to the fact that in it are shown certain tendencies in their inception which have since powerfully affected Russia. The Russians of the old school are represented by two brothers, Nicholas Petrovitch Kirsanof, a landed proprietor who has remained at home and is provincial, and Paul Petrovitch Kirsanof, who has traveled extensively and acquired the polish of a man of the world. In sharp contrast to this pair are the two young men, Bazarof, in whom the interest principally centers, and Arcadi, his college chum, who is the son of Nicholas Petrovitch. Arcadi takes Bazarof home with him to pass a vacation, and there immediately springs up a strong antagonism between the latter and Paul Petrovitch. Bazarof is a thorough materialist. The word he applies to himself is "nihilist," and the term which has become so widely known was here originated. Baz arof's nihilism is not simply political. It consists in the negation of everything impalpable to the physical senses. There results from this a coarse theory and boorish conduct of life. He has a sovereign contempt for love and sentiment, poetry and belles lettres, and even social courtesy. He devotes himself to natural science as the only field worthy of a man, and holds the opinion that all rational enjoyments are to be derived from physical sources. Paul Petrovitch, on the other hand, stands for the old chivalrous type of manhood. He has nourished a hopeless passion for a certain lady of rank all his days, and remained a blighted being, as it ludicrously seems, almost from a sense of duty. He has all the whimsies, all the re fined and technical notions of personal honor, of a French gentleman of the ancien régime. The enforced intercourse between these two persons of strong character soon runs into hatred, and in the end Paul compels Bazarof to fight a duel with him. Bazarof falls in love, quite in the usual style, and his materialistic philosophy is unable to resist this feeling, although he struggles against it. He finally dies of blood-poisoning, resulting from a slight cut of his scalpel in an autopsy he was conducting, perhaps softened a little by love, but true to his positivism to the last. The characterization of the other persons, as well as that of the four men, is well executed, notably that of the parents of Bazarof, who love him with natural affection in spite of his cold indifference toward them. In the book "Smoke," we are introduced at the beginning to a young man, betrothed to a good and commonplace girl. Some years before he has had a love affair with a beautiful woman, which was broken off on account of her mercenary ambition. He meets her again, and she is now the wife of General Ratmirof, a disagreeable nonenity, and a public functionary after Tourguéneff's ordinary type. Irene is tired of the hollow parade of her present life, and thinks she is willing to sacrifice everything for the affection revived at the sight of her early lover. After a number of thrilling scenes they plan an elopement. The hero, Litvanof, makes all preparations, and at the last moment Irene succumbs to the same influences which controlled her before, and finds herself unable to renounce ease and social distinction. The story ends in an anti-climax. Irene remains with her husband and Litvanof goes back to his betrothed. The most interesting stud is that of the character of Irene, Her vacil lations under the sway of conflicting motives are portrayed with minute fidelity to nature Incidentally are brought forward a circle c sensational reformers, male and female, whe convene in the apartments of their chief, i Baden Baden, and discuss the future Russia. There is also in this book one the most interesting of Tourguéneff's cre. tions. His name is Potoughine, and he is Russian who has been much abroad and who, although a patriot at heart, can view his countrymen and their works impartially. One cannot help identifying him in some measure with the author. He is by no means a mere mouthpiece: he is a well-defined character whom the reader respects and loves. But in his strictures on Russian society he occupies an absolute standpoint, and we feel that they are as just as they are scathing. There is another person, Solomine by name, in the novel "Virgin Soil," who is also capable of the same sort of criticism. He is a workingman of rare intelligence, who, while sympathizing with the agitators for freedom, can only half-heartedly join with them because he can find nothing upon which to base a rational hope of success. He views Russia from within, while Potoughine looks upon the nation collectively from without. Tourguéneff's consummate art appears in that Solomine's mental horizon is no broader than that of a man in his position would naturally be. As far as his personal observation has gone, his wisdom is great, ind at times it seems that he expresses the uthor's opinions, but only because they trike us as intrinsically sound. One of the greatest of Tourguéneff's aristic achievements is the delineation of Dimitri Roudine. He is a man to whom night be applied the reproach of Emerson's nes: "Wilt thou uncalled interrogate, Talker! the unreplying Fate?" Roudine is a talker, filled with the loftiest opes for the good of mankind which he ever does anything to realize. He has true oquence; that is, he has the power of iniring other people to action, but he weakis himself when the time to move arrives. e danger in attempting to portray a pure ealist is that the result will prove an abaction instead of a person. There is nevany doubt of Roudine's existence; he is al enough to excite a kindly pity. A second character in this same book is ichael Leschnieff, a former classmate of imitri Roudine, who meets him after many He is a clever man in spite of gro ars. VOL. III.-20. tesque peculiarities, and, being the opposite of Roudine in temperament, is the latter's harshest critic. His portraiture by Tourguéneff is notable because, although an eccentric personage, he is not in the least caricatured. In the novels "Liza," "On the Eve," and "Spring Floods," a woman is the central figure. Liza is a thoroughly lovable being, pure and unfortunate. Her history is related with delicacy and pathos. Ellen Nikolaevna Stachoff in "On the Eve" is developed by love from a moody, slightly morbid girl into a heroine. Her character is womanly even in its matured strength. Maria Nikolaevna Polozoff, who is presented in "Spring Floods," is physically and intellectually a charming woman in whom the moral qualities are entirely absent. represents a possible though fortunately rare feminine type. "A Lear of the Steppe" is a sombre picture which terminates in genuine tragedy, though the means employed are homely. She It has been said that Tourguéneff is simply an artist, and that his writings are objective and impersonal. There is, however, an atmosphere common to all of them. A recent writer has said that "his forte is the 'set gray life' which has nothing to fear and nothing to hope." All of his works are tragedies. They terminate in disappointment and sorrow, and a brooding vein of sadness pervades them. The melancholy cast of his genius may have been constitutional. Doubtless it was deepened by domestic unhappiness, of which vague rumors have reached us. But a further cause may be found in the character of the man and the field upon which he was exercised. Tourguéneff never ceased to be a patriot. His long residence in Paris did not wean him from Russian ways and sympathies. He is never cosmopolitan at the expense of national flavor. But he was a man of acute observation and judicial temper, and could never see Russia but as she is. It is inconceivable that he satirized his country, and that the pictures he draws are not fairly typical ones. To see Russia as she is, is to make the observer pensive and unhopeful, and it will be profitable to refer briefly to some of the moral, social and political conditions which appear in Tourguéneff's novels. Allusion has already been made to her civil service. The officers who compose it are place-holders and place-seekers, without patriotism or statesmanship, but pompous to the last degree. So long as the manifestations of the spirit in question were confined to the formation of mutual-admiration societies, such as are shown in "Smoke," little practical harm was done. With its entrance into the political field began the difficulties under which Russia has labored for years past. In “Virgin Soil" are given the details of an attempt to excite an uprising against the government. The leaders are visionary fanatics. One of them is half-witted, even for a Russian. Another is constantly traveling and writing hundreds of pages of letters, to what end no one can perceive. The head of the organization is a mythical personage as far as the reader vaguely represented as directing everything, and one reason assigned for his chieftainship is that he would kill anybody who opposed him. The agitators have no definite plans, and no conception of the magnitude of their undertaking and the insufficiency of the About the year 1850 Russia began to feel the movement of the nineteenth century. Her young men went abroad and studied physical science and the new political philosophy founded upon popular representation and the rights of the individual. But the good seed found no soil in which to take root. Not only is the stratum of civilization over the Asiatic nature very thin, but the original Tartar often crops out above the surface. Such characters as Polozoff in "Spring Floods," and Urban Ivanovitch Stachoff in "On the Eve," are animals, with hardly an instinct or sentiment of the civilized man. They are related to and associate with the best people, and seem to be common features of Russian society. Somewhat is concerned. He never appears, but is above them is the class of persons of whom Pigasoff in "Dimitri Roudine" and Goubaref and his coterie in "Smoke" are specimens, They are cruel at heart, but have sufficient superficial capacity and knowledge to carry on a dumb show of argument, using with clumsy pedantry the technical terms of various systems. But they are arrogant, selfassertive and conceited, adopting with avidity the external habits of foreigners, and with a coarse contempt for principles which lie deeper than their comprehension. This type is constantly recurring, and its members seem to be the most distinctive Russians. They are pretentiously intellectual, but at the same time incapable of thought, and, what is worse, without the receptive faculties through which alone improvement could come. Their fondness for learned terms as the insignia of culture is suggestive of the savage's love of decking himself in civilized fineries of costume. Still, they are a well-defined class, and there is every reason to suppose that they are representative specimens of the present national character. Russia has certainly aped the dress, the social etiquette, and the polite vices of other European countries, without receiving much stimulus from the study of their fundamental institutions. means at their command. But the crowning mistake is that they suppose the peasants will rise when the signal is given. As a mat ter of fact, it is the peasants themselves who, of their own accord, seize the agitators and hand them over to the authorities. This incident must have been inserted advisedly. Nothing demonstrates the hopelessness of the movement so clearly as the apathy of the masses toward it. The peasants are represented as contented with the establishe order of things, thoroughly degraded, con sumed with alcoholism, and incapable of comprehending efforts made on their beha The accounts that have reached us of th actions of the revolutionists rather tend t confirm the opinion drawn from "Virgi Soil." The secret society may be compar tively large, but its operations have consiste of crimes of individuals. There have bee no signs of general, growing interest in t cause. It would seem, therefore, that ti Nihilistic leaders are sophomoric doct aires, who are endeavoring to force popular gence and capacity. Not until Russia shall institutions upon Russia when the people have grown many stages further away from themselves are indifferent or even inimical Tartarism, and her people shall have opened to the cause. They are trying to build down their minds to instruction in the essentials instead of up. Their inhumanity, as well as of progress, will she begin to rank with the their lack of sagacity, bears witness to their other nations of Europe. This was the low grade of civilization. Surely men are teaching of Potoughine, this was the secret little above barbarians who hope to work a thought of Solomine, both of them exceptionrevolution in a State by assassination and al Russians. This is the practical lesson to The key to the whole intellectual be learned from the works of Russia's greatand political condition of Russia is found in est man of letters, who recently went to his the effect of large ideas on limited intelli- last rest. arson. Wilbur Larremore. LAZY LETTERS FROM LOW LATITUDES. I. AFLOAT. II. ASHORE. III. A SABBATICAL MATINEE. I. IV. A POI-FEED. V. KAPENA. VI. THE COLONIAL TRANSIT. VII. DAY of Rest. IN HONOLULU HARBOR. Dear, deluded Navigator : I FIND the log of your canoe club uneventful. What shall it profit a yachtsman though he gain a whole length in a race from Suisun to Santa Barbara, and lose his own dinner on the high seas? Your canoeist is burdened with disadvantages in due proportion. The boatmen that buffet the windy Waves of San Francisco Bay are for the most art in pickle; and I have not yet forgotten he regattas where the lads were gooseleshed, and the lasses, "for all their eathers, were a cold." It likes me not; I ave no stomach for the nautical as exemplied in your summer cruising on raw and usty Saturdays; and while I beg pardon of e Chispa, the Viva, and the Consuelo, of leasant memory, I must confess it was othing to me when the fleet went into winquarters on some obscure mud-flat where le chill ripples slapped it under the bows ntil the spring tides came in. Our spirits rise with the full moon in this titude, and we go down to the sea in pairs, th a guitar balanced upon the shoulder. There is a dock whereon boats lie keel upward in the moonlight-where the air is pregnant with the odor of imported lumber and of oakum and of mellow pitch. A few broad, easy steps lead down to the water, on which a skiff is floating, apparently in midair, for it seems scarcely to touch the water; about us tower the silhouettes of ships, looking very large indeed, and with tall masts that almost touch the stars. There is not a sound; there is no one visible; we seem to have suddenly become a part of a picture which was incomplete until we entered. Some one strums a guitar; immediately a boatman is materialized out of a shadow; he draws in the skiff as one would draw a water lily by the stem; hardly a word is spoken; it is like a fairy interlude wherein everything is done to slow music-for with a guitar in hand, it is next to impossible to keep from fondling the strings. In a moment we have cast off and are drifting away in space over the shadow of a filmy cloud wherein the stars glimmer like pearls. There are two belles sharing the helm between them; there are two benedicks who pull languidly at the oars; and there are two amidships, one who cheers the crew with |