"Even making allowance for the enthusiasm of his admirers, it is true to say that almost any Russian judge of literature at the present day would place Dostoevski as being equal to Tolstoi and immeasurably above Turgenev; in fact, the ordinary Russian critic at the present day no more dreams of comparing Turgenev with Dostoevski, than it would occur to an Englishman to compare Charlotte Yonge with Charlotte Bronte." This last sentence shows the real animus against Turgenev that obsesses Mr. Baring's mind; once more the reader queries, Suppose Dostoevski be all that Mr. Baring claims for him, why is it necessary to attack Turgenev? Is there not room in Russian literature for both men? But as Mr. Baring has appealed to Russian criticism, it is only fair to quote one Russian critic of good standing, Kropotkin. He says:-- "Dostoevski is still very much read in Russia; and when, some twenty years ago, his novels were first translated into French, German, and English, they were received as a revelation. He was praised as one of the greatest writers of our own time, and as undoubtedly the one who 'had best expressed the mystic Slavonic soul'--whatever that expression may mean! Turgenev was eclipsed by Dostoevski, and Tolstoi was forgotten for a time. There was, of course, a great deal of hysterical exaggeration in all this, and at the present time sound literary critics do not venture to indulge in such praises. The fact is, that there is certainly a great deal of power in whatever Dostoevski wrote: his powers of creation suggest those of Hoffmann; and his sympathy with the most down-trodden and down-cast products of the civilisation of our large towns is so deep that it carries away the most indifferent reader and exercises a most powerful impression in the right direction upon young readers. His analysis of the most varied specimens of incipient psychical disease is said to be thoroughly correct. But with all that, the artistic qualities of his novels are incomparably below those of any one of the great Russian masters Tolstoi, Turgenev, or Goncharov. Pages of consummate realism are interwoven with the most fantastical incidents worthy only of the most incorrigible romantics. Scenes of a thrilling interest are interrupted in order to introduce a score of pages of the most unnatural theoretical discussions. Besides, the author is in such a hurry that he seems never to have had the time himself to read over his novels before sending them to the printer. And, worst of all, every one of the heroes of Dostoevski, especially in his novels of the later period, is a person suffering from some psychical disease or from moral perversion. As a result, while one may read some of the novels of Dostoevski with the greatest interest, one is never tempted to re-read them, as one re-reads the novels of Tolstoi and Turgenev, and even those of many secondary novel writers; and the present writer must confess that he had the greatest pain lately in reading through,