The two great geniuses of lyric poetry, Puchkine and Lermontof, confirm this theory. Though both perished before the descriptive and observing faculties of their countrymen were matured, they had both instinctively turned to the novel, and perhaps the possible direction of their genius was thus shadowed forth as by accident. Puchkine seems to me endowed with qualities which would have made him a delightful novel-writer. His heroes are clearly and firmly drawn and very attractive; he has a certain healthy joyousness of tone which is quite classic, and a brightness and freedom of coloring that I like; in the short historic narrative he has left us we never see the slightest trace of the lyric poet. As to Lermontof, is it not marvellous that a man who died at the age of twenty-six years should have produced anything like a novel? But he left a sort of autobiography, which is extremely interesting, entitled "A Contemporary Hero," which hero, Petchorine by name, is really the type of the romantic period, exacting, egotistical, at war with himself and everybody else, insatiable for love, yet scorning life, a type that we meet under different forms in many lands; now swallowing poison like De Musset's Rolla, now refusing happiness like Adolfo, now consumed with remorse like Réné, now cocking his pistol like Werther, and always in a bad humor, and to tell the truth always intolerable. "My hero," writes Lermontof, "is the portrait of a generation, not of an individual." And he makes that hero say, "I have a wounded soul, a fancy unappeased, a heart that nothing can ease. Everything becomes less and less to me. I have accustomed myself to suffering and joy alike, and I have neither feelings nor impressions; everything wearies me." But there are many fine pages in the narratives of Lermontof besides these poetical declamations. Perhaps the novel might also have offered him a brilliant future. The sad fate of the writers during the reign of Nicholas I. is remarkable, when we consider how favorable it was to art in other respects. Alexander Herzen calculated that within thirty years the three most illustrious Russian poets were assassinated or killed in a duel, three lesser ones died in exile, two became insane, two died of want, and one by the hand of the executioner. Alas! and among these dark shadows we discern one especially sad; it is that of Nicholas Gogol, a soul crushed by its own greatness, a victim to the noblest infirmity and the most generous mania that can come upon a man, a martyr to love of country. III. Russian Realism: Gogol, its Founder.