The _Provincial Sketches_ determined once for all the character of Saltykóff’s work. His talent only deepened as he advanced in life, and his satires went more and more profoundly into the analysis of modern civilised life, of the many causes which stand in the way of progress, and of the infinity of forms which the struggle of reaction against progress is taking nowadays. In his _Innocent Tales_ he touched upon some of the most tragic aspects of serfdom. Then, in his representation of the modern knights of industrialism and plutocracy, with their appetites for money-making and enjoyments of the lower sort, their heartlessness, and their hopeless meanness, Saltykóff attained the heights of descriptive art; but he excelled perhaps even more in the representation of that “average man” who has no great passions, but for the mere sake of not being disturbed in the process of enjoyment of his philistine well-being will not recoil before any crime against the best men of his time, and, if need be, will lend a ready hand to the worst enemies of progress. In flagellating that “average man,” who, owing to his unmitigated cowardice, has attained such a luxurious development in Russia, Saltykóff produced his greatest creations. But when he came to touch those who are the real geniuses of reaction--those who keep “the average man” in fear, and inspire reaction, if need be, with audacity and ferocity--then Saltykóff’s satire either recoiled before its task, or the attack was veiled in so many funny and petty expressions and words that all its venom was gone. When reaction had obtained the upper hand, in 1863, and the carrying out of the reforms of 1861 and of those still to be undertaken fell into the hands of the very opponents of these reforms, and the former serf-owners were doing all they could in order to recall serfdom once again to life, or, at least, so to bind the peasant by over-taxation and high rents as to practically enslave him once more, Saltykóff brought out a striking series of satires which admirably represented this new class of men. _The History of a City_, which is a comic history of Russia, full of allusions to contemporary currents of thought. _The Diary of a Provincial in St. Petersburg_, _Letters from the Provinces_, and _The Pompadours_ belong to this series; while in _Those Gentlemen of Tashkent_ he represented all that crowd which hastened now to make fortunes by railway building, advocacy in reformed tribunals, and annexation of new territories. In these sketches, as well as in those which he devoted to the description of the sad and sometimes psychologically unsound products of the times of serfdom (_The Gentlemen Golovlóffs_, _Poshekhónsk Antiquity_), he created types, some of which, like Judushka, have been described as almost Shakespearian.