On the publication of his historical Cossack romance, _Taras Bulba_, he reached the summit of his fame. His admirers compared him to Homer; even the Government patronized him. Then a new idea began to dominate him; he thought that he painted his country with so much crudity and realism that the picture might incite to a revolution which would not be kept within reasonable limits, and might overturn society, religion, and the family, leaving him the remorse of having provoked it. This idea took possession of his mind and dominated it, as it had formerly been dominated by love, by the drama, and by the novel. He then sought by his writings to combat western liberalism, but the antidote attracted fewer readers than the poison. Then he abandoned work, shut himself up in his house, giving himself up to prayer to the saints, and supplicating them to obtain God’s pardon for his revolutionary sins. He accomplished a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, from which he returned somewhat consoled, when the revolution of 1848 broke out, and his remorse was again aroused. He was constantly pursued by visions of the triumph of Nihilism, and in his alarm he called on Holy Russia to overthrow the pagan West, and to found on its ruins the orthodox Panslavist empire. In 1852, the great novelist was found dead at Moscow of exhaustion, or rather of tabes dorsalis, in front of the shrine before which he was accustomed to lie for days in silent prayer. PART II. _THE CAUSES OF GENIUS._ CHAPTER I. METEOROLOGICAL INFLUENCES ON GENIUS. The influence of weather on the insane--Sensitiveness of men of genius to barometrical conditions--Sensitiveness to thermometrical conditions. _The Influence of Weather on the Insane._--A series of clinical researches, which I carried on for six consecutive years, has shown me with certainty that the mental condition of the insane is modified in a constant manner by barometrical and thermometrical influences.[185] When the temperature rose above 25°, 30°, and 32° C., especially if the rise was sudden, the number of maniacal attacks increased from 29 to 50. On the days on which the barometer showed sudden variations, especially of elevation--and more particularly two or three days before and after the variation--the number of maniacal attacks rapidly increased from 34 to 46. This meteoric sensibility, as I term it, increased in an inverse ratio to the integrity of the nervous tissues, being very great in idiots and slightest in monomaniacs. The study of 23,602 lunatics has shown me that the development of insanity generally coincides with the increase of monthly temperature and with the great barometrical perturbations in September and March; the onset of heat, acts more efficaciously, however, than the intense heat which follows; and the heat which has become habitual in August acts much less harmfully. The minimum number of outbreaks of insanity is found in the coldest months. (_See_ Plate.)