The only complete play which he wrote except 'The Inspector' is the comedy 'Marriage,' which is still acted, though very seldom. It is full of naturalness and his own peculiar humor, but its subject does not appeal to the universal public of all lands as nearly as does the plan of 'The Inspector.' The plot, in brief, is founded on a young girl's meditations on marriage, and her actions which lead up to and follow those meditations. The Heroine, desirous of marrying, invokes the aid of the Match-maker, the old-time matrimonial agent [Pg 6459] in the Russian merchant and peasant classes by conventional etiquette. The Match-maker offers for her consideration several suitable men, all strangers; the Heroine makes her choice, and is very well content with her suitor. But she begins to meditate on the future, becomes moved to tears by the thought of her daughter's possible unhappiness in a hypothetical wretched marriage in the dim future, and at last, unable to endure this painful prospect, she evades her betrothed and breaks off the match. While the characteristic and national touches are keen and true,—precursors of the vein which Ostrovsky so happily developed later,—the play must remain a matter of greater interest to Russians than to foreigners. The interest of 'The Inspector,' on the other hand, is universal: official negligence and corruption, bribery, masculine boastfulness and vanity, and feminine qualities to correspond, are the private prerogatives of no one nation, of no one epoch. The comedy possesses all the elements of social portraiture and satire without caricature: concentration of time, place, action, language, and a tremendous condensation of character traits which are not only truly, typically national, but which come within the ken of all fair-minded persons in other countries. The volume with which he scored his first success, and which must remain a classic, is 'Evenings at a Farm-House near Dikanka.' As the second volume, 'Mirgorod,' and his volume of 'St. Petersburg Tales,' all combine essentially the same ingredients, though in varying measure, we may consider them together. All the tales in the first two volumes are from his beloved birthplace, Little Russia. Some of them are simply the artistic and literary rendering of popular legends, whose counterparts may be found in the folk literature of other lands. Such are the story of the vampire, 'Vy,' 'St. John's Eve,' and the exquisite 'A May Night,' where the famous poetical spirit of the Ukraina is displayed in its full force and beauty. 'The Lost Document,' 'Sorotchinsky Fair,' 'The Enchanted Spot,' and others of like legendary but more exclusively national character, show the same fertility of wit and skill of management, with close study of every-day customs, superstitions, and life, which render them invaluable to both Russians and foreigners.