No modern writer has ever more carefully eschewed the practice Dickens here attacks than Tolstoy has done throughout his career. Indeed, he is far stricter than Dickens in this respect. But much more important than the influence of Dickens was that of Rousseau, of whom Tolstoy once remarked: I have read the whole of Rousseau--all his twenty volumes, including his _Dictionary of Music_. I was more than enthusiastic about him, I worshipped him. At the age of fifteen I wore a medallion portrait of him next my body instead of the Orthodox cross. Many of his pages are so akin to me that it seems to me that I must have written them myself. Another writer who influenced Tolstoy, though to a very much smaller extent, was Voltaire, of whom he says: I also remember that I read Voltaire when I was very young, and his ridicule (of religion) not only did not shock me, but amused me very much. Everything Tolstoy has done in his life he has done with intensity; and that this applies to the way in which he read books in his youth, is shown by the fact that we find him as an old man, in 1898, in _What is Art?_ according the highest praise to books he had read before he was twenty-one, or even before he was fourteen. It was in the spring of 1847 that Tolstoy, who was not yet nineteen, returned to his estate of Yásnaya Polyána, to live with his dear Aunty Tatiána; to 'perfect' himself, to study, to manage his estate, and to improve the condition of his serfs. The last part of this programme, at any rate, was not destined to have much success. Though one must never treat Tolstoy's fiction as strictly autobiographical, yet _A Squire's Morning_ gives a very fair idea of his own efforts to improve the lot of his serfs, and of the difficulties and failures he encountered in the course of that attempt. In that story Prince Nehlúdof decides to leave the University and settle in the country, and writes to his aunt: As I already wrote you, I found affairs in indescribable disorder. Wishing to put them right, I discovered that the chief evil is the truly pitiable, wretched condition of the serfs, and this is an evil that can only be remedied by work and patience. If you could but see two of my serfs, David and Iván, and the life they and their families lead, I am sure the sight of these two poor wretches would convince you more than all I can say in explanation of my intention. Is it not my plain and sacred duty to care for the welfare of these seven hundred people for whom I must account to God? Will it not be a sin if, following plans of pleasure or ambition, I abandon them to the caprice of coarse Elders and stewards? And why should I seek in any other sphere opportunities of being useful and doing good, when I have before me such a noble brilliant and intimate duty?