The historical novel, pure and simple, exists no longer. Writers of genius who seem to write historical novels in reality are only transferring to the stage of the world a drama which is being played in their own souls. They transfer thither that drama in order to show that the struggle which is now going on in us is eternal. Mérejkowski sees the question, which is of supreme interest to us, being asked by the great spirits of a wealthy and imperial civilisation closely resembling our own, in the fourth century. And, what is of more interest still, he not only sees the momentous problem and places it before us with remarkable lucidity, but he also seems, in his own fashion, to arrive at a solution. Moreover, this novelist, this psychologist, is also an artist and a poet, possessed by what he somewhere calls the "Nostalgia of the Distant." With an ardour as of Flaubert in _Salammbo_, and with perhaps more skill than Sienkiewicz in _Quo Vadis_, the author of _The Death of the Gods_ has succeeded in re-creating the wonderful rich scenes and characters of that remote epoch. We see the racing stables of the Hippodrome of Constantinople, battles with wild German warriors round Strasburg, the interior of the baths at Antioch, dinners of epicures and men of letters at Athens, pictures of a Roman Emperor at his toilet-table, or of a lovelorn child in the Temple of Aphrodite. Before writing this first of his great romances Mérejkowski himself travelled through Asia Minor and Greece, visited Constantinople and Syria, and gathered everywhere living impressions to serve his art and his thought. He was besides admirably prepared to handle a subject which had attracted him from youth. A delicate Hellenist, his first appearance in literary life was as a harmonious translator of Æschylus and Sophocles. Later, the Gnostics, the Fathers of the Eastern Church, the Greek Sophists (who represented the last throes of expiring Paganism and already dreamed of reviving it), were the young poet's objects of study. Thus was born the romance of _The Death of the Gods_, which he has continued later in _The Resurrection of the Gods_ (of which Leonardo da Vinci is the hero), and completed by _The Anti-Christ_, portraying the savage figure of Peter the Great, the creator (despite all natural obstacles) of St. Petersburg and of modern Russia.