It does not enter into the plan of this book to analyse contemporary Russian writers. Another volume would be required to do them justice, not only on account of the literary importance of some of them, and the interest of the various directions in Art which they represent, but especially because in order to properly explain the character of the present literature, and the different currents in Russian Art, it would be necessary to enter into many details concerning the unsettled conditions under which the country has been living during the last thirty years. Moreover, most of the contemporary writers have not yet said their last word, and we can expect from them works of even greater value than any they have hitherto produced. I am compelled, therefore, to limit myself to brief remarks concerning the most prominent living novelists of the present day. OERTEL (born 1855) has unfortunately abandoned literature during the last few years, just at a time when his last novel, _Smyéna_ (_Changing Guards_), had given proofs of a further development of his sympathetic talent. He was born in the borderland of the Russian Steppes, and was brought up on one of the large estates of this region. Later on he went to the university of St. Petersburg and, as a matter of fact, was compelled to leave it after some “students’ disorders,” and was interned in the town of Tver. He soon returned, however, to his native Steppe region, which he cherishes with the same love as Nikítin and Koltsóff. Oertel began his literary career by short sketches which are now collected in two volumes under the name of _Notebook of a Prairie-Man_, and whose manner suggests Turguéneff’s _Sportsman’s Notebook_. The nature of the prairies is admirably described in these little stories, with great warmth and poetry, and the types of peasants who appear in the stories are perfectly true to nature, without any attempts at idealisation, although one feels that the author is no great admirer of the “intellectuals” and fully appreciates the general ethics of rural life. Some of these sketches, especially those which deal with the growing _bourgeoisie du village_, are highly artistic. _Two Couples_ (1887), in which the parallel stories of two young couples in love--one of educated people and the other of peasants--are given, is a story evidently written under the influence of the ideas of Tolstóy, and bearing traces of a preconceived idea, which spoils in places the artistic value of the novel. There are nevertheless admirable scenes, testifying to very fine powers of observation.