Gogol's _Dead Souls_ made a deep impression upon educated Russia. It pleased the enthusiasts for Western Europe by its reality, its artistic conception and execution, and by its social ideas; and it pleased the Slavophile Conservatives by its truth to life, and by its smell of Russia. When the first chapter was read aloud to Pushkin, he said, when Gogol had finished: "God, what a sad country Russia is!" And it is certainly true, that amusing as the book is, inexpressibly comic as so many of the scenes are, Gogol does not flatter his country or his countrymen; and when Russians read it at the time it appeared, many must have been tempted to murmur "_doux pays!_"--as they would, indeed, now, were a writer with the genius of a Gogol to appear and describe the adventures of a modern Chichikov; for, though circumstances may be entirely different, although there are no more "souls" to be bought or sold, Chichikov is still alive--and as Gogol said, there was probably not one of his readers who after an honest self-examination, would not wonder if he had not something of Chichikov in him, and who if he were to meet an acquaintance at that moment, would not nudge his companion and say: "There goes Chichikov." "And who and what is Chichikov?" The answer is: "A scoundrel." But such an entertaining scoundrel, so abject, so shameless, so utterly devoid of self-respect, such a magnificent liar, so plausible an impostor, so ingenious a cheat, that he rises from scoundrelism almost to greatness.