So much as this we seem to decipher between the lines of M. Turgeneff's minutely written chronicle. He himself has sought to understand as zealously as his most eminent competitors. He gives, at least, no meager account of life, and he has done liberal justice to its infinite variety. This is his great merit; his great defect, roughly stated, is a tendency to the abuse of irony. He remains, nevertheless, to our sense, a very welcome mediator between the world and our curiosity. If we had space, we should like to set forth that he is by no means our ideal story-teller--this honorable genius possessing, attributively, a rarer skill than the finest required for producing an artful _rechauffe_ of the actual. But even for better romancers we must wait for a better world. Whether the world in its higher state of perfection will occasionally offer color to scandal, we hesitate to pronounce; but we are prone to conceive of the ultimate novelist as a personage altogether purged of sarcasm. The imaginative force now expended in this direction he will devote to describing cities of gold and heavens of sapphire. But, for the present, we gratefully accept M. Turgeneff, and reflect that his manner suits the most frequent mood of the greater number of readers. If he were a dogmatic optimist we suspect that, as things go, we should long ago have ceased to miss him from our library. The personal optimism of most of us no romancer can confirm or dissipate, and our personal troubles, generally, place fictions of all kinds in an impertinent light. To our usual working mood the world is apt to seem M. Turgeneff's hard world, and when, at moments, the strain and the pressure deepen, the ironical element figures not a little in our form of address to those short-sighted friends who have whispered that it is an easy one. END OF VOL. X INDEX TO THE TEN VOLUMES [Roman numerals indicate volumes, Arabic numerals indicate pages] Adams, Henry; biographical note on, X, 219; Jefferson's retirement, 219. Adams, John; biographical note on, IX, 87; articles by--on his nomination of Washington to be commander-in-chief, 87; an estimate of Franklin, 90. Adams, John Quincy; biographical note on, IX, 133; articles by--of his mother, 133; the moral taint inherent in slavery, 135. Addison, Joseph; biographical note on, III, 236; articles by--in Westminster Abbey, 236; Will Honeycomb and his marriage, 240; on pride of birth, 246; Sir Roger and his home, 251. Aldrich, Thomas Bailey; biographical note on, X, 195; articles by--a sunrise in Stillwater, 195; the fight at Slatter's Hill, 198; on returning from Europe, 204. Andersen, Hans Christian; biographical note on, VIII, 231; the Emperor's new clothes, 231. Aquinas, St. Thomas; biographical note on, VII, 12; a definition of happiness, 12.