The _Contemporary_ was a monthly review founded by Poúshkin and Pletnéf in 1836. It passed in 1847 to Panáef and the poet Nekrásof, and when Tolstoy began to write, was recognised as the leading and most progressive Russian literary periodical. Its chief contributors formed an intimate group, united by close personal acquaintance, by sympathy with the Emancipation movement then making itself felt, and also by a common agreement (not it is true very strictly or very permanently observed) to write exclusively for the _Contemporary_. The point to be noticed is that the circle Tolstoy entered consisted of a friendly, sociable group of people who considered themselves ardent reformers; and that though Tolstoy's talent and his wish to have his works published, threw him and them together, he never appears to have had the least inclination to co-operate on that footing of mutual give-and-take toleration which is so essential in public life. Certainly he never became friendly with the more advanced men, Tchernyshévsky, Miháylof, and the ultra-democratic Dobrolúbof, who were intent on spreading democratic and socialistic ideas in Russia. It has been suggested that this was due to the fact that he was an aristocrat and that they were democrats; but one has to go deeper than that for the explanation, which lies, to a considerable extent, in the fact that the advanced Russian Radicals were, for the most part, admirers of Governmental Jacobinism, whereas Tolstoy has from the very start tended to be a No-Government man, an Anarchist, and has objected to linking himself closely with any group, since such alliance always implies some amount of compromise, and some subordination of one's own opinions. The poet Fet, himself a young officer, made Tolstoy's acquaintance at this time. A couple of years later he purchased an estate at no very great distance from Yásnaya Polyána, and became a friend of Tolstoy's--one in fact of the very few people, not of his own family, with whom the latter ever formed a close personal friendship. 1855 His first acquaintance with Tolstoy was however hardly auspicious. Calling on Tourgénef in St. Petersburg at ten o'clock one morning, he saw an officer's sword hanging in the hall, and asked the man-servant whose it was. 'It's Count Tolstoy's sword,' replied the man. 'He is sleeping in the drawing-room. Iván Sergéyevitch [Tourgénef] is having breakfast in the study.' During Fet's visit of an hour's duration, he and his host had to converse in low tones for fear of waking Tolstoy. 'He is like this all the time,' said Tourgénef. 'He came back from his Sevastopol battery; put up here, and is going the pace. Sprees, gipsy-girls and cards all night long--and then he sleeps like a corpse till two in the afternoon. At first I tried to put the break on, but now I've given it up, and let him do as he likes.'