Garshin is another writer heretofore unknown to the English world. His _Signal and other Stories_ are achingly Russian. Garshin is a product of the Eighties, the epoch of “petty deeds,” when the heavy boot of Alexander III. drove into the underground all that was idealistic in his country. The soil-less _Intelligentzia_ had the alternative of turning retrogrades or going insane. Garshin’s lot was with the latter category. His few stories ache with the black melancholy which finally hurled him down a flight of stone steps,—his last flight. His war impressions are gripping with the resigned Russian sadness; they are all-human, universal; but _Attalea Princeps_, the symbolical tale of an exotic plant chafing in a hot-house—who but a compatriot of mad Garshin will fathom its profound tragicness! The republication of Kropotkin’s _Ideals and Realities in Russian Literature_ will be of service to the critical student of Russian literature. I say critical, for although the book is rich in material the personal views of the author and his valuations of the writers are considerably obsolete and tainted with the liberalistic tendency of “problem”-friends. Below are more reviews of Mr. Knopf’s publications. The most important one is Przybyszewski’s _Homo Sapiens_. It deserves a special article. See the next issue! Homo Monstrosus _Taras Bulba, by Nicolai Gogol. New York: Alfred A. Knopf._ They burned him at the stake, bound to a great tree in iron chains. The flames lapped at his feet, glowing into his old face that was scarred and leathered with battle, brightening the silver of his fierce mustache.... Out of the reddened shadows that fell over him like a mantle his lips could be seen curling in a smile, contemptuous and arrogant, and he turned his eyes toward the Dnyeper where the boats of his brothers were pulling away under a rain of lead. “Farewell, comrades,” he shouted to them; “remember me, and come hither again next spring to make merry!” And then he turned to the Lyakhs against whom he had waged war and who knew him as the raven of the steppe. The fire had risen above the faggots and the great tree was burning. Out of the flames came the voice of the hero.... “A Tzar shall arise from the Russian soil and there shall not be a Power in the world which shall not submit to him.” Thus died Taras Bulba, kazak. In this day when a man’s skin is his most greedily guarded possession and the lisping of pale, pretty words his greatest glory, Taras Bulba comes charging into America, a figure in need. On his black horse he comes, his scalp lock flying in the wind, his sword waving in great circles above his head, his body leaning over the shining neck of his steed and his voice ringing with the battle whoop of the kazak. He is the eternal warrior, the plundering hero, the lusty knight of battle, a devil of a man with boiling blood in his veins and the savage joy of life in his heart.