Turguéneff: The main features of his Art--_A Sportsman’s Notebook_--Pessimism of his early novels--His series of novels representing the leading types of Russian society--Rúdin--Lavrétskiy--Helen and Insároff--Bazároff--Why _Fathers and Sons_ was misunderstood--_Hamlet and Don Quixote_--_Virgin Soil_: movement towards the people--_Verses in Prose_. TOLSTÓY: _Childhood and Boyhood_--During and after the Crimean War--_Youth_: In search of an ideal--Small stories--_The Cossacks_--Educational work--_War and Peace_--_Anna Karénina_--Religious crisis--His interpretation of the Christian teaching--Main points of the Christian ethics--Latest works of Art--_Kreutzer Sonata_--_Resurrection_. TURGUÉNEFF Púshkin, Lérmontoff, and Gógol were the real creators of Russian literature; but to Western Europe they remained nearly total strangers. It was only Turguéneff and Tolstóy--the two greatest novelists of Russia, if not of their century altogether--and, to some extent, Dostoyévskiy, who broke down the barrier of language which had kept Russian writers unknown to West Europeans. They have made Russian literature familiar and popular outside Russia; they have exercised and still exercise their share of influence upon West-European thought and art; and owing to them, we may be sure that henceforward the best productions of the Russian mind will be part of the general intellectual belongings of civilised mankind. For the artistic construction, the finish and the beauty of his novels, Turguéneff was very probably the greatest novel-writer of his century. However, the chief characteristic of his poetical genius lay not only in that sense of the beautiful which he possessed to so high a degree, but also in the highly _intellectual_ contents of his creations. His novels are not mere stories dealing at random with this or that type of men, or with some particular current of life, or accident happening to fall under the author’s observation. They are intimately connected with each other, and they give the succession of the leading intellectual types of Russia which have impressed their own stamp upon each successive generation. The novels of Turguéneff, of which the first appeared in 1845, cover a period of more than thirty years, and during these three decades Russian society underwent one of the deepest and the most rapid modifications ever witnessed in European history. The leading types of the educated classes went through successive changes with a rapidity which was only possible in a society suddenly awakening from a long slumber, casting away an institution which hitherto had permeated its whole existence (I mean serfdom), and rushing towards a new life. And this succession of “history-making” types was represented by Turguéneff with a depth of conception, a fulness of philosophical and humanitarian understanding, and an artistic insight, almost equal to foresight, which are found in none of the modern writers to the same