As the character of the hero was drawn to the life, the nation recognized it at once, and the word _oblomovism_ became incorporated into the language, implying the typical indolence of the Sclav. On some accounts I find Turguenief's "Living Relics" more comparable to this novel than any others of his. Both present one single phase or state of the soul; both are purely psychological studies; the chief character of both does not change position, the position in which he has been fixed by the will of the novelist,--I had almost said the dissecting surgeon. "Oblomof" is in reality a type of the Sclav who chases the butterfly of his dreams through the still air. Study he regards, from his pessimist point of view, as useless, because it will not lead him to earthly happiness; and yet his soul is full of poetry and his heart of tenderness; he reaches out toward illimitable horizons, and his imagination is hard at work, but all his other faculties are asleep. III. Dostoiëwsky, Psychologist and Visionary. Now let us turn to that visionary novelist whom Voguié introduces to his readers in these words: "Here comes the Scythian, the true Scythian, who puts off the habiliments of our modern intellect, and leads us by the hand to the centre of Moscow, to the monstrous Cathedral of St. Basil, wrought and painted like a Chinese pagoda, built by Tartar architects, and yet consecrated to the God whom the Christians adore. Dostoiëwsky was educated at the same school, led by the same current of thought, and made his first appearance in the same year as Turguenief and Tolstoï; but the latter are opposite poles, and have but one ground in common, which is the sympathy for humanity, which was incarnate and expanded in Dostoiëwsky to the highest degree of piety, to pious despair, if such a phrase is possible." Dostoiëwsky is really the barbarian, the primitive type, whose heart-strings still reverberate certain motive tones of the Russian soul that were incompatible with the harmonious and tranquil spirit of Turguenief. Dostoiëwsky has the feverish, unreasoning, abnormal psychological intensity of the cultivated minds of his country. Let no one of tender heart and weak nerves read his books; and those who cling to classic serenity, harmony, and brightness should not so much as touch them. He leads us into a new region of æsthetics, where the horrible is beautiful, despair is consoling, and the ignoble has a halo of sublimity: where guilty women teach gospel truths, and men are regenerated by crimes; where the prison is the school of compassion, and fetters are a poetic element. Much against our will we are forced to admire a novelist whose pages almost excite to assassination and nightmare horrors, this Russian Dante who will not allow us to omit a single circle of the Inferno.