When Russia entered into a better period, in the early sixties, the novels of N. D. Hvóschinskaya also took a different, much more hopeful character, and among them _The Great Bear_ (1870-71) is the most prominent. At the time of its appearance it produced quite a sensation amidst our youth, and it had upon them a deeper influence, in the very best sense of the word, than any other novel. The heroine, Kátya, meets, in Verhóvskiy, a man of the weakling type which we know from Turguéneff’s _Correspondence_, but dressed this time in the garb of a social reformer, prevented only by “circumstances” and “misfortunes” from accomplishing greater things. Verhóvskiy, whom Kátya loves and who falls in love with her--so far, at least, as such men can fall in love--is admirably pictured. It is one of the best representatives in the already rich gallery of such types in Russian literature. It must be owned that there are in _The Great Bear_ one or two characters which are not quite real, or, at least, are not correctly appreciated by the author (for instance, the old Bagryánskiy); but we find also a fine collection of admirably painted characters; while Kátya stands higher, is more alive, and is more fully pictured, than Turguéneff’s Natásha or even his Helen. She has had enough of all the talk about heroic deeds which “circumstances” prevent the would-be heroes from accomplishing, and she takes to a much smaller task: she becomes a loving school mistress in a village school, and undertakes to bring into the village-darkness her higher ideals and her hopes of a better future. The appearance of this novel, just at the time when that great movement of the youth “towards the people” was beginning in Russia, made it favourite reading by the side of MORDÓVTSEFF’S _Signs of the Times_, and Spielhagen’s _Amboss und Hammer_ and _In Reih und Glied_. The warm tone of the novel and the refined, deeply humane, poetical touches of which it is full--all these added immensely to the inner merits of _The Great Bear_. In Russia it has sown many a good idea, and there is no doubt that if it were known in Western Europe, it would be, here as well, a favourite with the thinking and well inspired young women and men.