He began to recognize that literary work was not merely a pastime, but his moral duty; and the first result of this conviction was his great play "The Inspector," finished in April, 1836. The authorities refused to produce it, but the Emperor Nicholas I. heard about it, read it, and gave imperative orders that it should be put on the stage, upholding Gogol with rapturous delight. Everybody--officials, the police, literary people, merchants--attacked the author. They raged at this comedy, refused to recognize their too lifelike portraits, and still endeavored to have the play prohibited. Gogol's health and spirits failed under this persecution, and he fled abroad, whence thereafter he returned to Russia only at long intervals and for brief visits, chiefly to Moscow, where most of his faithful friends resided. He traveled a great deal, but spent most of his time in Rome, where his lavish charities kept him perennially poor despite the eventual and complete success, both artistically and financially, of "The Inspector," and of Part I. of "Dead Souls," which would have enabled him to live in comfort. He was wont to say that he could see Russia plainly only when he was at a distance from her, and in a measure, he proved the truth of his contention in the first volume of "Dead Souls." Thereby he justified Pushkin's expectations in giving him the subject of that work, which he hoped would enable Gogol to depict the classes and localities of the fatherland in the concentrated form of types. But he lived too long in Rome. The Russian mind in general is much inclined to mysticism, and Little Russia, in Gogol's boyhood, was exceptionally permeated with exaggerated religious sentiment. Mysticism seems to be peculiarly fatal to Russian writers of eminence; we have seen how Von Vizin and Zhukovsky were affected toward the end of their lives; we have a typical and even more pronounced example of it in a somewhat different form at the present time in Count L. N. Tolstoy. Lermontoff had inclined in that direction. Hence, it is not surprising that the moral and physical atmosphere of Rome, during a too prolonged residence there, eventually ruined Gogol's mind and health, and extinguished the last sparks of his genius, especially as even in his school-days he had shown a marked tendency (in his letters to his mother) to religious exaltation. Now, under the pressure of his personal tendencies and friendships, and the clerical atmosphere of Rome, he developed into a mystic and an ascetic of the most extreme type. He regarded all his earlier writings as sins which must be atoned for (precisely as Count L. N. Tolstoy regards his masterpieces at the present time); and nevertheless, his overweening self-esteem was so flattered by the tremendous success of "The Inspector" and the first part of "Dead Souls" that he began to regard himself as a sort of divinely commissioned prophet, on whom it was incumbent to preach to his fellow-men. It will be seen that the parallel