Among the books that are at present all the vogue, Tolstoï’s “Kreutzer Sonata” stands in the front rank. Numberless articles in the newspapers and the magazines have already made this wonderful work the subject of discussion, both from the æsthetical and from the moral point of view. Now comes a physician, who discusses the psychological aspect of the story, and discusses it in a manner which must claim our interest and to which in the main points it emphasises we cannot deny our assent. Dr. H. BECK has published at the house of Rauert and Rocco of Leipsic, a brochure bearing the title _Des Grafen Leo Tolstoï Kreutzer Sonate vom Standpunkte des Irrenarztes_, and arrives on the basis of a careful analysis at the result that Tosdnischew is a decidedly neuropathical character. Now as Tolstoï, on his own express declaration in his concluding remarks, places his own views in Tosdnischew’s mouth, this judgment respecting the principal character of the story also holds good in great measure of its author. Generally, indeed, Beck is very considerate towards Tolstoï’s person, in the expression of his opinions; but he is nevertheless very plainly outspoken when he says at the conclusion of his little book: “Let us characterise this monstrous product, the ‘Kreutzer Sonata,’ as that which it appears to every person of sound sentiments—as the emanation, namely, of a diseased brain, of a degenerated Psyche.” The Munich physician Dr. Puschmann, who in the year 1873 in a special treatise represented Richard Wagner, then still alive, as psychically diseased, has thus found, as we see, in a certain sense a successor in Dr. Beck. But while Puschmann’s pamphlet, having been occasioned by certain conditions of affairs in Munich, was written in a hostile spirit, and while the little book of Beck’s makes no secret of its author’s aversion to Tolstoï and his works, a notorious representative of unhealthy “young Germany,” the novelist Wilhelm Walloth, meets at other hands with an uncommonly tender treatment. There is indeed nothing remarkable in this, for if anyone is in need of tender treatment it is a man who is sick. But it is very remarkable that the diseased state of a nervous system should be accredited to the writer Walloth as a great poetic excellence.