“But when the dark clouds gather in the sky, and the black wood is shaken to its roots, the oak trees tremble, and the lightnings, bursting in the clouds, light up the whole world again, terrible then is the Dnieper. The crests of the waters thunder, dashing themselves against the hills; fiery with lightning, and loud with many a moan, they retreat and dissolve and overflow in tears in the distance. Just in such a way does the aged mother of the Cossack weep when she goes to say good-bye to her son, who is off to the wars. He rides off, wanton, debonair, and full of spirit; he rides on his black horse with his elbows well out at the side, and he waves his cap. And his mother sobs and runs after him; she clutches hold of his stirrup, seizes the snaffle, throws her arms round her son, and weeps bitterly.” Another characteristic description of Gogol’s is the picture he gives us of the Steppes: “The farther they went, the more beautiful the Steppes became. At that time the whole of the country which is now Lower New Russia, reaching as far as the Black Sea, was a vast green wilderness. Never a plough had passed over its measureless waves of wild grass. Only the horses, which were hidden in it as though in a wood, trampled it down. Nothing in Nature could be more beautiful than this grass. The whole of the surface of the earth was like a gold and green sea, on which millions of flowers of different colours were sprinkled. Through the high and delicate stems of grass the cornflowers twinkled--light blue, dark blue, and lilac. The yellow broom pushed upward its pointed crests; the white milfoil, with its flowers like fairy umbrellas, dappled the surface of the grass; an ear of wheat, which had come Heaven knows whence, was ripening. “At the roots of the flowers and the grass, partridges were running about everywhere, thrusting out their necks. The air was full of a thousand different bird-notes. Hawks hovered motionless in the sky, spreading out their wings, and fixing their eyes on the grass. The cry of a flock of wild geese was echoed in I know not what far-off lake. A gull rose from the grass in measured flight, and bathed wantonly in the blue air; now she has vanished in the distance, and only a black spot twinkles; and now she wheels in the air and glistens in the sun.” Of course, descriptions such as these lose all their beauty in a translation, for Gogol’s language is rich and native; full of diminutives and racial idiom, nervous and highly-coloured. To translate it into English is like translating Rabelais into English. I have given these two examples more to show the nature of the thing he describes than the manner in which he describes it.