man, clad in rags, which the rain has drenched. The feeble light which falls on him as he sits on a bench in the corner just serves to show his wan and wrinkled face, his restless look, his emaciated limbs. The child lies down on the floor at his feet and goes to sleep. The forester sits at the table, resting his head on his hands. A cricket chirps in the corner; the rain continues to fall heavily on the thatched roof, and to splash against the windows. For some time the inmates of the cottage remain silent. At last the peasant begins to plead for his liberty. "Let me go," he says; "it is hunger that has made me do it-let me go." His head shakes, he draws his breath with difficulty; a sort of ague-fit seems to have seized him. He and all his are utterly ruined, he says. It is the bailiff who has done it. If he is taken before the authorities, he is lost. "Let me go," he cries in a tone of utter despair; "in God's name let me go! I will pay for the tree, so help me God I will! It was hunger made me do it, I swear the children are crying for food, you know that well enough. It's so hard to get a living anyhow." Then he begs the forester not to take away his horse-all that he has to live by a wretched, half-starved creature, which is standing outside all this time, a captive like its master. It is the old story-bitter, hopeless, helpless misery -the petty tyrant (in the person of the bailiff) grinding the faces of the poor, and no hand ever stretched forth to help. Such subjects as these have been described by many pens besides M. Turguenief's, but it would be difficult to find any writer who has so thoroughly succeeded as he has done in investing his work with an air of reality. He is a perfect master of the art of story-telling, knowing exactly what is wanted to bring a scene vividly before his readers' eyes, and never using a superfluous word in so doing. In attaining a stage effect he never lets his machinery become visible for a moment, and the illusion he produces is therefore complete. Nothing careless or slovenly can ever be detected in his execution. In all the series of these pictures of country life no figure is ever out of drawing; there is never anything unmeaning or incongruous in the colouring. Take, for instance, the chapter called Death," in which M. Turguenief relates several anecdotes in illustration of his remark that the Russian peasant dies "coolly and simply, as if he were perform ing some rite." They only occupy ten pages in the original, but in that small space five stories are told, each of which has its own distinct character. The first describes a death in the forest. A falling tree has crushed the foreman of a band of wood-cutters, and, as he lies dying, he utters a few broken words to the peasants who surround him. It is his own fault, he says; he has worked and made others work on a Sunday; the Lord has punished him. He asks the men he has had under him to forgive him if he has ever injured them. They uncover their heads, and reply that it is they whom he has to forgive. He is silent for a time; then, with great difficulty, he says, "Yesterday I bought a horse-from Yefime-of Sichovo I paid him the earnest-money-so it's mine-give it to my wife." His body quivers all over, "like a wounded bird," and then stiffens. "He is dead," mutter the peasants. The next story is that of a cotta ger who is dying from injuries received at a fire. A visitor finds him breathing with difficulty, and evidently fast approaching his end. The room is dark, hot, and smoky. A deathlike silence prevails in it. In one corner sits the dying man's wife, now and then shaking a finger of warning at a little girl of five, who is hiding in another corner, and munching a piece of bread. Outside, in the passage, there is a sound of steps and of voices, and a woman is chopping cabbages. The visitor asks if anything can be done for the sufferer, but they say he wants nothing. Everything has been put in order; the dying man is quietly waiting for death. The third describes a visit paid to the physician of a country hospital by a miller, a very powerful man, who has received an internal injury, of which he has unfortunately made light. The doctor tells him that he is in great danger, but that every attention shall be paid him if he will remain in the hospital. The miller reflects a moment, looking steadfastly at the floor, then gives the back of his neck a scratch, and takes up "Where are you going?" asks the doctor. "Where?" replies the miller; "why, home, if it's so bad a business. I must settle my affairs, if that's the case." "But you'll do yourself harm; I wonder you ever managed to get here; you'd better stop." "No, brother; if I'm to die, I'll die at home. If I died here, God knows what might happen at home." The miller pays the doctor half a rouble, takes a prescription from him, leaves the room, and gets into his cart. "Goodbye, doctor," he says; "don't be angry with me, and don't forget my orphan children if-" "Do stay," replies the doctor; but the miller only shakes his head and drives off. The road is in a wretched state, but the miller manages to get along it capitally, and never neglects to salute the passers-by whom he meets. his cap. Three days afterwards he is dead. The next story relates the quiet death of an enthusiastic young student who fills the post of tutor in a very unsympathetic family, and who, even when death is staring him in the face, maintains the cheerful enthusiasm, the unselfish interest in what others are doing, which had marked his earlier years. The last gives an account of the last moments of an old lady of the upper class : "The priest had begun to read the deathbed prayer, when suddenly he perceived that she was actually on the point of expiring; so he hurriedly pressed the crucifix to her lips. The old lady drew her head back with an air of vexation. What are you in such a hurry about, good father?' she said in a faltering voice. You will have time to-!' She kissed the crucifix, tried to put her hand under her pillow, and expired. Under the pillow there lay a silver rouble. She had wished to pay for her own deathbed rites herself." to his naturally eccentric character the peculiarities of sectarian fanaticism : "At last the heat compelled us to take shelter in the wood. I lay down under a thick hazel-bush, above which a slender young mapletree gracefully extended its high branches. There, lying on my back, I began to amuse myself by noticing the quick the brightness of the far-off sky. There is a play of the tangled leaves in clear relief against strange pleasure in lying on one's back in a gazing into a profound ocean, which stretches wood and looking upwards. You seem to be for away beneath you, and the trees do not appear to be growing upwards from the earth, but, like roots of huge plants, to shoot downwards, hanging suspended in those crystal wa ves of light. As to the leaves, they are i some parts translucent as emeralds; in other they assume a denser green, here tinged with gold, there almost passing into black. Now and then, far far away, a solitary leaf that tips a delicate twig stands out motionless against a blue spot of limpid sky, and by its side another If space permitted, we would gladly give vibrates, with a movement that seems spontaa few extracts from some of the other sketch-neous, voluntary, and not attributable to the es of rural life, such as the charming prose idyll called "The Bejine Prairie," in which the belated sportsman passes the early hours of the night in listening to what may be called ghost stories, told round their campfire by a number of boys who are in charge of the horses belonging to their village; or from that styled "The Country House," in which the narrator overhears a conversation carried on by the men employed by a landed proprietor to manage his estate, and so becomes acquainted with many of the secrets of their profession; or that entitled "The Singers," containing so poetic a description of the effect which music can produce even upon a village audience in Russia. Then there are also the illustrations of the life led by the small landed proprietors, a class about which the general public in England is almost as ignorant as it is about the peasants, and one which affords to M. Turguenief an opportunity of displaying his wealth of humour-that quiet style of humour which enabled Mrs. Gaskell to render so charming her descriptions of the somewhat monotonous life led by the good people of Cranford. All that we can now do is to attempt, by a brief extract, to convey some idea of M. Turguenief's style in those portions of his work which are devoted to descriptions of the beauties of nature-pictures which have somewhat in common with those which Mr. George MacDonald knows so well how to paint. The passage we are about to quote occurs in the account of Kasian, a strange being who belongs to one of the branches of dissent from the established Russian church, and who has grafted on wind. Like magic islands submerged, round white clouds come slowly sailing by, and slowly pass away. Then suddenly across all that radiant aerial sea, all those twigs and leaves bathed in the dazzling sunlight, a tremulous to wave to and fro, and there arises a soft shudder swiftly runs; the whole scene begins whispering, like the rippling sound of suddenlyagitated waters, You gaze aloft without stirring, and no words can express the sweetness of that feeling of quiet happiness which fills your heart. You gaze, and the sight of those clear azure depths calls up to your lips a smile as guileless as they are themselves. Like the clouds in the sky, and as if together with them, your mind, and it seems to you as though your happy memories pass in slow succession through gaze pierced farther and farther on, and drew you yourself after it into that tranquil bright abyss, and that from that distance, be it height or depth, you will never return.' These Notes by a Sportsman are written by M. Turguenief in so concise a style that the first volume of one of the editions of his collected works contains them all, twentytwo in number. In the four volumes which follow, besides other writings, just as many more stories are included, each of them illustrating some phase of Russian society, and all of them abounding in those same good qualities which rendered the sportsman's sketches so attractive, They are all admirably told. Each has some peculiar feature of its own, and many of them contain studies of character as carefully elaborated as if they had been intended to occupy the post of honour in a regular novel. Instead of giving a mere string of all their names, we will say a few words about two or three of those among them which offer the most marked characteristics. One of the most touching is that of "Moo- | her, and at last she becomes vexed and moo," which has already been made known angry. The next day she declares Moomoo to English readers by Mr. Sala.* Moomoo is has kept her awake by its barking during a dog which has been rescued from drown- the night, and that it must be sent away. ing, and carefully brought up by Garasime, Of course she is obeyed, one of the servants the deaf and dumb drornik, or porter, in the secretly kidnapping Moomoo, and selling it house of a selfish and whimsical old Moscow in the marketplace. Garasime is almost in lady. Cut off by his infirmity from almost despair, but at night he is roused from an all society with his fellowmen, Garasime unquiet slumber by the return of Moomoo, leads a secluded and cheerless life for some which has escaped from its new master. time after his removal from his native vil- The mute knows now the peril his favourite lage to the town-house of his mistress. But runs, so he tries to keep Moomoo concealed. after a while he becomes attached to His fellow-servants know that the dog has Tatiana, one of the maid-servants in the returned, but they say nothing about it. family, and manages in his uncouth way, by Unfortunately Moomoo betrays itself. It signs and smiles, to let her know that he barks, and wakens the old lady. The dog's loves her. Unluckily his owner takes it in- doom is sealed. The next day Garasime, to her head to marry Tatiana to another of who has been made to understand what his her serfs, a drunken tailor. The superin- mistress wishes, carefully washes Moomoo tendent of the household, who is ordered to and combs its fleccy coat, then carries it to get the couple married, is greatly perplexed an eating-house and feeds it daintily, and how to manage it without offending Gara- afterwards takes it on board a boat, rows up sime, who is a giant in stature, aud terrible the river to a quiet spot, and there drowns when his anger is roused. At last recourse the only friend he has in the world. That is had to a trick. Drunkenness is a failing night he leaves Moscow, and makes his way for which Garasime has the greatest aver- back on foot to his native village. There he sion, so Tatiana is induced one day to feign spends the rest of his days, always remainintoxication in his presence. The stratagem ing as grave and reserved, as sober and inis crowned with success. Garasime is hor- dustrious, as he had been in former years. rified at the sight of Tatiana's supposed The neighbours remark that he will never degradation. He takes her by the hand and even so much as look at a woman, and that leads her, half dead with fear, across the he does not keep even a single dog in his courtyard and into the servants' hall. There cottage; but they are not surprised at that, he leaves her, waving a farewell to her with for, as they say, such a strong fellow as he is his hand, and then returns to his den, where does not want a woman to work for him nor he shuts himself up for twenty-four hours. a dog to guard his hut. After that he takes no notice of Tatiana till she leaves the house a year later, her husband's drunkenness having become intolerable. Just before she goes, Garasime comes up to her and gives her a red cotton handkerchief he had bought for her a year before. Up to this moment Tatiana has worn an air of indifference, but now she bursts into tears, and leaning forward as she sits in the telega," she kisses him three times in Christian fashion." He accompanies the telega some way, then makes a sign of farewell, and returns slowly along the river side, his eyes fixed on the water. It is then that he saves Moomoo from drowning. The dog soon becomes for him the one joy of his life. It is his single friend, his solitary companion. Every day he becomes more and more attached to it. At last he may be said to be even happy, for he has found something to love. Que day his mistress sees Moomoo and sends for it to her room. She tries to please it, but it only growls at There is one other story turning on the relations which used to exist between the serfs and their owners, which is worthy of special notice. It is called "The Tavcrn," the scene being laid in a country inn which stands by the side of one of the highroads of Russia. It is kept by a serf named Akim Semenof, an intelligent and well-informed man, who has travelled much, and benefited by his travels, and who has thriven and laid by money. Unfortunately he has made an unwise marriage, having chosen as his second wife a young and pretty servant-maid, Avdotia, some six-and-twenty years his junior. It is true that no harm comes of this marriage for several years, during which Akim is perfectly contented with the behaviour of his young wife, whom he loves devotedly; but misfortune only tarries, it does not forget to come. One evening a young commercial traveller named Naum Ivanof visits the tavern, and from * Translated by M. Xavier Marmier in the Scènes In the volume containing "The Two Prima Don- de la Vie Russe, under the title of L'Auberge de nas," and other tales. Grand Chernin. that day Akim's sorrows date. Naum gains | to know which to select as the most characAvdotia's heart, and she not only bestows teristic, so many of them have claims to be her affections on him, but she also gives him considered, which are embarrassing when Akim's money, taking it from time to time only a small amount of space can be accordout of her husband's secret hoard. When ed to them. As a specimen of a romantic Naum has thus obtained the whole of story, it may perhaps be best to select Faust, Akim's savings, he goes to Akim's mistress one of the most remarkable of the author's and offers to give her two thousand roubles minor works, so far as his singular power of for the tavern and its contents. At first analysing character is concerned. Paul she hesitates, doubting if she has a right to Alexandrovich B. is a young man who, at a sell Akim's property, but her confidential very early age, falls in love with a young servant, whom Naum has bribed, points out girl of sixteen, Viera Eltzof. Viera is a to her that as Akim belongs to her, of course rather strange being, who has been brought all that Akim has is hers also, so at last she up in a singular manner by a mother who is yields. We can scarcely praise too highly also somewhat eccentric. Madame Eltzof the skill with which the scenes are depicted has a strong aversion to all that can excite in which Naum makes his bargain with the the imagination, and will not allow her lady, and Akim vainly strives to gain re- daughter to read a line of poetry or a page dress from her, and, gloomiest of all, that of romance. She very seldom smiles, and in which the poor old man, as he returns she scarcely ever addresses her daughter in from his fruitless errand, is met by the wife the tone of fondness usually adopted by mothwho has betrayed him for Naum's sake, and ers, but Viera is devotedly attached to her, whom Naum has now driven from the house. in spite of her cold manner and her hard and A little later comes another sombre scene, somewhat gloomy character. The young in which Naum discovers Akim in the act Paul is kindly treated by both ladies, but of revenging himself by setting the tavern when he proposes for Viera's hand her on fire, seizes him and locks him up all night mother declines the offer. He goes away, in a cellar. The next morning Akim is and, after the manner of very young men, about to be handed over to the authorities, forgets his love. Nine years later, on takwhen a neighbour arrives, whose entreaties ing up his residence on his estate in the and arguments induce Naum to let his pris- country, he finds that Viera, now Madame oner go, on condition that he swears he will Priemkof, is one of his neighbours. give up all ideas of vengeance for the future. soon renews his acquaintance with her, and Akim swears as he is bid, takes a long silent she receives him with friendly frankness, and farewell of the house and barus he has him he finds her just the same as she used to be, self built, and which belong to him no more, with the quiet look on her face which it and then slowly goes away. Another very wore in olden days. Her life has evidently sad scene follows, in which Akim forgives flowed in an even current; nothing has ocand takes leave of his wretched wife. curred to trouble the calm which always Then he leaves the village in which he has seemed to dwell upon her smooth brow. lived so long, and sets out on a pilgrimage, Paul and Viera become great friends, and with the view of visiting the chief holy soon chat away without reserve. He learns places of Russia, and there "praying away that her mother, who has been dead some his sins." Years go by, and he still wan- years, gave her leave to read any books she ders on, but every now and then he returns liked as soon as she married, but that she to his village, and on such occasions he has never cared to profit by her liberty, so never fails to offer to his mistress a conse- that she is still ignorant of what is meant crated loaf brought from some famous mon- by the charm of poetry or of romance. This astery, where he has offered up a prayer for greatly astonishes him, and he offers to act her health. On her side," she often men- as her introducer into the enchanted realm tions Akim's name, and declares, that ever of fiction. She consents, and he begins by since she had known his worth, she has reading to her his favourite poem, Goethe's thoroughly esteemed the Russian peasant." Faust. As she understands German As for Naum, he keeps the inn for some thoroughly, he is able to read it to her in time, and grows rich. At last he retires the original. Her husband and an old Gerfrom it, and, if common report is to be be- man friend assist at the reading, which lieved, makes a great fortune as a Govern- takes place one evening in a summer-house in the garden, and at the termination they applaud loudly, but she rises silently, and quietly goes out into the night. When she returns, it is evident that she has been cry ing, a fact which greatly astonishes her hus ment contractor. We will turn now from M. Turguenief's pictures of peasant life to those which he has devoted to the higher ranks of society. The only difficulty in dealing with them is He band, who has scarcely ever seen her in tears. So commences Viera's introduction into the land of romance. The result shows how right her mother had been in forbidding her to enter it. Though so calm and composed in appearance, Viera is really of a very nervous and excitable temperament, and endowed with all an artist's susceptibility. She has hitherto been unconscious of the existence of the chords which are beginning to thrill within her heart, but she finds it impossible to still their vibrations now. The change which takes place in her is very subtly analysed, up to the moment when she feels herself, as it were, irresistibly urged aside from the path of duty and honour, and she is on the brink of utterly falling. Then comes a most striking description of how, as she goes out at night into the park to keep a clandestine engagement, her heart throbbing, her brain swimming, she sees, or thinks she sees, the form of her dead mother coming towards her with open arms, and how she never recovers from the shock, but falls ill and soon after dies. This is how Paul describes his last interview with her : "I have seen her once more before her end. It is the bitterest of all the recollections of my life. I had learnt from the doctor that there was no hope. Late at night, when all was still in the house, I crept to the door of her room and looked at her. Viera was lying on the bed, with closed eyes, thin, wan, a feverish glow on her cheeks, as if petrified. I stood looking at her. Suddenly she opened her eyes, turned them toward me, regarded me fixedly, and, stretching out her wasted hand, exclaimed,What seeks he in the holy place?'* uttering the words in so strange a voice that I fled from the spot." A very different Viera is the heroine of another story, that of "The Two Friends." Hers is a quiet, simple, affectionate character, but she has no intellectual resources, and there is nothing romantic about her, and accordingly her husband, who is afflicted with a somewhat poetic soul, and has taken pains to cultivate his intellect, begins to get tired of her society soon after his marriage. At first he had imagined he was perfectly happy, but after a time he finds out that his wife, al though an excellent manager and altogether a person of a thoroughly well-regulated mind, is but an unsatisfactory companion,-that she cannot enter into his plans, share his ideas, or sympathize with his enthusiasms. The account of his ardent hopes and his sad "Was will der an dem heiligen Ort?"-the words uttered by Margaret at the end of the scene which concludes the first part of Faust. disappointments is excellent, and so is that of the thoroughly happy life which Viera leads, when she has married again, after the death of the husband she never could comprehend, and has found a companion as irreproachably good and as utterly commonplace as herself. Another story, in which the sorrows of a romantic and poetic spirit in its communion with unsympathetic minds are excellently described, is that which takes its name from its hero, Yakof Pasinkof. He is an enthusiast who is always indulging in day-dreams, from which he is rudely wakened by some unexpected shock, who is continually looking forward to some happy future, from the pleasant anticipation of which he is too often summoned to realize the unhappiness of his actual life. He is very ready to fall in love, but he bestows his affections without prudent discrimination. In very early youth he adores a sentimental German maiden, who rivals him in fondness for poetry, but all of a sudden she marries a thoroughly commonplace and commercial countryman, and that without evincing the slightest compunction. Some years afterwards he is so unfortunate as to fall in love with a Russian girl, whose character has afforded to M. Turguenief the subject of an interesting study. She is quiet and reserved, but she possesses singular strength of will, and is obstinate in the extreme. So when she has made up her mind to marry a certain officer of somewhat bad repute, nothing will turn her aside from her purpose, and the ill-starred Pasinkof is again compelled to witness the ruin of his hopes. And a similar ill-fortune attends his steps wherever he goes, until at last he dies, worn out before his time. But it would serve but little purpose were we to attempt to give an account of each of the stories or novelettes which M. Turguenief has published at various times and in different periodicals. Suffice to say that there is not one of them which has not some special merit, besides exhibiting that general excellence of workmanship which is to be found in all that their author has produced. Some of them are very sad, a few of them are even terrible, from the gloominess of the pictures they present of vice and passion. Very sad, for instance, is the description of the unhappy love and the tragic end of the heroine of the story called after Pushkin's poem on the "Upas Tree," and terrible, even repulsive, are such narratives as "The which M. Marmier has translated under Three Portraits," or the dramatic sketch the title of Le Pain d'Autrui. The story of "A First Love," also, though it has much in it that is very beautiful, is ren |