Of course, Turguéneff’s peasants (Túla and Oryól) are more real, his types are more definite, and every one of the modern folk-novelists, even of the less talented, has gone much further than Grigoróvitch did into the depths of peasant character and life. But such as they were, the novels of Grigoróvitch exercised a profound influence on a whole generation. They made us love the peasants and feel how heavy was the indebtedness towards them which weighed upon us--the educated part of society. They powerfully contributed towards creating a general feeling in favour of the serfs, without which the abolition of serfdom would have certainly been delayed for many years to come, and assuredly would not have been so sweeping as it was. And at a later epoch his work undoubtedly contributed to the creation of that movement “towards the people” (_v naród_) which took place in the seventies. As to the literary influence of Grigoróvitch, it was such that it may be questioned whether Turguéneff would ever have been bold enough to write as he did about the peasants, in his _Sportsman’s Note Book_, or Nekrásoff to compose his passionate verses about the people, if they had not had a forerunner in him. Another writer of the same school, who also produced a deep impression on the very eve of the liberation of the serfs, was MME. MARIE MÁRKOVITCH, who wrote under the pseudonym of MÁRKO VOVTCHÓK. She was a Great Russian--her parents belonged to the nobility of Central Russia--but she married the Little-Russian writer, MÁRKOVITCH, and her first book of stories from peasant-life (1857-58) was written in excellent Little Russian. (Turguéneff translated them into Great Russian.) She soon returned, however, to her native tongue, and her second book of peasant stories, as well as her subsequent novels from the life of the educated classes, were written in Great Russian.