Suffice it to say that, according to A. N. PÝPIN, the author of an exhaustive _History of Russian Ethnography_ (4 vols.), not less than 4000 large works and bulky review articles were published during the twenty years, 1858-1878, half of them dealing with the economical conditions of the peasants, and the other half with ethnography in its wider sense; and research still continues on the same scale. The best of all this movement has been that it has not ended in dead material in official publications. Some of the reports, like MAXÍMOFF’S _A Year in the North_, _Siberia and Hard Labour_, and _Tramping Russia_, AFANÁSIEFF (_Legends_), ZHELEZNÓFF’S _Ural Cossacks_, MÉLNIKOFF’S (PETCHÉRSKY), _In the Woods_ and _On the Mountains_, or MORDÓVTSEFF’S many sketches, were so well written that they were as widely read as the best novels; while the dry statistical reports were summed up in lively review articles (in Russia the reviews are much more bulky, and the articles much longer than in England), which were widely read and discussed all over the country. Besides, admirable researches dealing with special classes of people, regions, and institutions were made by men like PRUGÁVIN, ZASÓDIMSKIY, PYZHÓFF (_History of the Public Houses_, which is in fact a popular history of Russia). Russian educated society, which formerly hardly knew the peasants otherwise than from the balcony of their country houses, was thus brought in a few years into a close intercourse with all divisions of the toiling masses; and it is easy to understand the influence which this intercourse exercised, not only upon the development of political ideas, but also upon the whole character of Russian literature. The idealised novel of the past was now outgrown. The representation of “the dear peasants” as a background for opposing their idyllic virtues to the defects of the educated classes was possible no more. The taking of the people as a mere material for burlesque tales, as NICHOLAS USPÉNSKIY and V. A. SLYEPTSÓFF tried to do, enjoyed but a momentary success. A new, eminently realistic school of folk-novelists was wanted. And the result was the appearance of quite a number of writers who broke new ground and, by cultivating a very high conception concerning the duties of art in the representation of the poorer, uneducated classes, opened, I am inclined to think, a new page in the evolution of the novel for the literature of all nations. POMYALÓVSKIY