A few years later than the time of which we are speaking, Tolstoy commenced a novel called _The Decembrists_, which begins with a description of these reform years. The passage shows how scornfully he regarded the whole movement for the liberation of the people and the democratisation of their institutions. These are his words: This happened not long ago, in the reign of Alexander II, in our times of civilisation, progress, _problems_, re-birth of Russia, etc. etc.; the time when the victorious Russian army returned from Sevastopol which it had surrendered to the enemy; when all Russia was celebrating the destruction of the Black Sea fleet; and white-walled Moscow greeted, and congratulated on that auspicious event, the remainder of the crews of that fleet, offering them a good old Russian goblet of vódka, and in the good old Russian way bringing them bread and salt and bowing at their feet. This was the time when Russia, in the person of her far-sighted virgin politicians, wept over the destruction of her dream of a Te Deum in the Cathedral of St. Sophia, and the deep-felt loss to the fatherland of two great men who had perished during the war (one who, carried away by impatience to hear the Te Deum referred to above, had fallen on the fields of Wallachia, not without leaving there two squadrons of Hussars; and the other an invaluable man who distributed tea, other people's money, and sheets, to the wounded without stealing any of them); in that time when from all sides, in all departments of human activity in Russia, great men sprang up like mushrooms: commanders, administrators, economists, writers, orators, and simply great men without any special calling or aim; in that time when at the Jubilee of a Moscow actor, public opinion, fortified by a toast, appeared and began to punish all wrongdoers; when stern Commissioners galloped from Petersburg to the South and captured, exposed, and punished the commissariat rascals; when in all the towns dinners with toasts were given to the heroes of Sevastopol, and to those of them whose arms and legs had been torn off, coppers were given by those who met them on the bridges or highways; at that time when oratorical talents were so rapidly developed among the people that one publican everywhere and on all occasions wrote, printed, and repeated by heart at dinners, such powerful speeches that the guardians of order were obliged to undertake repressive measures to subdue his eloquence; when even in the English Club in Moscow a special room was set apart for the consideration of public affairs; when periodicals appeared under the most varied banners; journals developing European principles on a European basis but with a Russian world-conception, and journals on an exclusively Russian basis, developing Russian principles but with a European world-conception; when suddenly, so