In 1868 he writes from Baden to Ambroise Thomas about a sketch made by Viardot for the libretto of an opera. Nothing, however, came of the matter. But only in the new letters translated by Rosa Newmarch, do we catch Turgénieff’s opinion of the neo-Russian school of music. For the most part it is rather a contemptuous opinion and not pleasant reading for his contemporaries. He hated humbug, and the cry of young Russia, with its hatred of the sources whence it derived its inspiration, angered the writer. In correspondence with Vladimir Vassilievich Stassov we catch glimpses of the tempest brewing in the Slavic _samovar_. “Have faith in your nationality,” preaches Stassov, “and you shall have works also.” “Russian individuality!” cries the contemptuous voice of Turgénieff. “What humbug, what blindness and crass ignorance, what willful disregard of all that Europe has done!” He loved Schumann, naturally enough, this Schumann, himself a dreamer of dreams. But Balakirew, Glinka, “a rough diamond,” and the rest he would not have. He believed in the genius of the sculptor Antokolsky and in Tschaïkowsky and Rimsky-Korsakoff. I wonder if Tschaïkowsky and Turgénieff ever met? Probably they did, although I can find no reference in the correspondence. He listened to Dargomijsky, to Cui, to Moussorgsky, but could find nothing but “Slavonic barbarism” and “undisguised Nihilism.” He loved the playing of Anton Rubinstein, but his operas—! He writes Stassov in 1872:— You are quite wrong in fancying that I “dislike” Glinka: _he_ was a very great and original man. But come, now, it is quite different with the others—with your M. Dargomijsky and his Stone Guest. It will always remain one of the greatest mysteries of my life how such intelligent people as you and Cui, for example, can possibly find in these limp, colorless, feeble,—I beg your pardon,—senile recitatives, interwoven now and then with a few howls, to lend color and imagination—how you can find in this feeble piping not only music, but a new, genial, and epoch-making music. Can it be unconscious patriotism, I wonder? I confess that, except a sacrilegious attempt on one of Poushkin’s best poems, I find nothing in it. And now cut off my head, if you like! Of all these young Russian musicians, only two have decided talent—Tschaïkowsky and Rimsky-Korsakoff. All the rest, for what they are worth, may be put in a sack and thrown into the water! Not, of course, as men—as men they are charming—but as artists. The Egyptian Pharaoh Rameses XXIX is not more utterly forgotten than these men will be fifteen or twenty years hence. This is my one consolation. This prophecy is accomplished. A new generation has arisen in Russia. Speaking of some piano pieces of Stcherbatchev he confesses to Stassov:—