failing to show faithfully his true physiognomy. Corruption, effeminacy, and vice characterize the upper classes, particularly the employees of government, or any persons charged with public trusts; and to make these the more odious, they are attributed with a detestable hypocrisy made more hateful by apparent kindliness and culture. There is a humorous little novel by Chtchédrine (an author who merits especial mention) entitled "The Generals[1] and the _Mujik_," which represents two generals of the most ostentatious sort, transported to a desert island, unable either to get food or to get away, until they meet with a _mujik_, who performs all sorts of services for them, even to _making broth in the hollow of his hand_, and then, after making a raft, conveys them safely to St. Petersburg; whereupon these knavish generals, after recovering back pay, send to their deliverer a glass of whiskey and a sum amounting to about three cents. But this bitter allegory is a mild one compared with the mystical apotheosis of the _mujik_ as conceived by Tolstoï. In one of his works, "War and Peace," the hero, after seeking vainly by every imaginable means to understand all human wisdom and divine revelation, finds at last the sum of it in a common soldier, imperturbable and dull of soul, and poor in spirit, a prisoner of the French, who endures with calm resignation ill treatment and death without once entertaining the idea of taking the life of his foreign captors. This poor fellow, who, owing to his rude, uncouth mode of life, suffers persecution by other importunate lesser enemies which I forbear to name, is the one to teach Pierre Besukof the alpha and omega of all philosophy, wherein he is wise by intuition, and, in virtue of his condition as the peasant, fatalistic and docile.