Turgenev's splendid education, his wealth which made him independent, his protracted residence in Russia, in Germany, and in Paris, his intimate knowledge of various languages, and his bachelor life gave to his innate genius the most perfect equipment that perhaps any author has ever enjoyed. Here was a man entirely without the ordinary restraints and prejudices, whose mind was always hospitable to new ideas, who knew life at first hand, and to whose width of experience was united the unusual faculty of accurately minute observation. He knew people much better than they knew themselves. He was at various times claimed and hated by all parties, and belonged to none. His mind was too spacious to be dominated by one idea. When we reflect that he had at his command the finest medium of expression that the world has ever possessed, and that his skill in the use of it has never been equalled by a single one of his countrymen, it is not surprising that his novels approach perfection. His own standpoint was that of the Artist, and each man must be judged by his main purpose. Here is where he differs most sharply from Tolstoi, Dostoevski, and Andreev, and explains why the Russians admire him more than they love him. To him the truth about life was always the main thing. His novels were never tracts, he wrote them with the most painstaking care, and in his whole career he never produced a pot-boiler. His work is invariably marked by that high seriousness which Arnold worshipped, and love of his art was his main inspiration. He had a gift for condensation, and a willingness to cultivate it, such as no other novelist has shown. It is safe to say that his novels tell more about human nature in less space than any other novels in the world. Small as they are, they are inexhaustible, and always reveal beauty unsuspected on the previous reading.