A work of very great value, which is still in progress, is the _Biographic Dictionary of Russian Writers_, published and nearly entirely written by S. Venguéroff, who is also the editor of new, scientifically prepared editions of the complete works of several authors (Byelínskiy is now published). Excellent biographies and critical sketches of all Russian writers will be found in the _Russian Encyclopædia Dictionary_ of Brockhaus-Efron. The first two volumes of this Dictionary (they will be completed in an Appendix) were brought out as a translation of the _Lexikon_ of Brockhaus; but the direction was taken over in good time by a group of Russian men of science, including Mendeléeff, Woiéikoff, V. Solovióff, etc., who have made of the 82 volumes of this _Dictionary_, completed in 1904 (at 6 sh. the volume)--one of the best encyclopædias in Europe. Suffice it to say that all articles on chemistry and chemical technics have been either written or carefully revised by Mendeléeff. Complete editions of the works of most of the Russian writers have lately been published, some of them by the editor Marks, in connection with his weekly illustrated paper, at astoundingly low prices, which can only be explained by a circulation which exceeds 200,000 copies every year. The work of Gógol, Turguéneff, Gontcharóff, Ostróvskiy, Boborýkin, Tchéhoff, and some minor writers, like Danilévskiy and Lyeskóff, are in this case. FOOTNOTES: [24] I borrow these remarks about the predecessors of Byelínskiy from an article on Literary Criticism in Russia, by Professor Ivánoff, in the _Russian Encyclopædic Dictionary_, Vol. 32, 771. [25] The speech of Homyakóff is reproduced in Skabitchévskiy’s _History_ (l. c.). I was very anxious to get Tolstóy’s speech, because I think that the ideas he expressed about “the permanent in Art, the universal” hardly did exclude the denunciation of the ills from which a society suffers at a given moment. Perhaps he meant what Nekrásoff also meant when he described the literature to which Schédrin’s _Provincial Sketches_ had given origin as “a flagellation of the petty thieves for the pleasure of the big ones.” Unfortunately, this speech was not printed, and the manuscript of it could not be found. INDEX Abolition of serfdom committees, 119 Absolutism, historical necessity of, 272 Æsthetics, philosophical, 287 theories of, 290 of the leisured class, 306 Agricultural Academy of Moscow, 302 Agricultural labourers in Western Europe, hardships of, 267 Agricultural population of Russia, immense, 244 Agricultural village, life in an, 245 “Akib, the Assyrian King,” 8 Aksákoff, Iván, 176 Konstantín, 176 Serghéi Timoféevitch, prose writer, 176; a Slavophile, 268, 269, 301 Alexander the Great, legends of, 8