Such cheerfulness, such good philosophy, with cap and bells, such banter and blasphemy, such sound and solid sense drive to madness the priest who thinks the curse of Rome can fright the world. How the snake of superstition writhes when he finds that his fangs have lost their poison. He was one of the gentlest of men--one of the fairest in discussion, dissenting from the views of others with modesty, presenting his own with clearness and candor. His mental manners were excellent. He was not positive as to the "unknowable." He said "Perhaps." He knew that knowledge is good if it increases the happiness of man; and he felt that superstition is the assassin of liberty and civilization. He lived a life of cheerfulness, of industry, devoted to the welfare of mankind. He was a seeker of happiness by the highway of the natural, a destroyer of the dogmas of mental deformity, a worshiper of Liberty and the Ideal. As he lived, he died--hopeful and serene--and now, standing in imagination by his grave, we ask: Will the night be eternal? The brain says, Perhaps; while the heart hopes for the Dawn.--North American Review, November, 1892. TOLSTOÏ AND "THE KREUTZER SONATA." COUNT TOLSTOÏ is a man of genius. He is acquainted with Russian life from the highest to the lowest--that is to say, from the worst to the best. He knows the vices of the rich and the virtues of the poor. He is a Christian, a real believer in the Old and New Testaments, an honest follower of the Peasant of Palestine. He denounces luxury and ease, art and music; he regards a flower with suspicion, believing that beneath every blossom lies a coiled serpent. He agrees with Lazarus and denounces Dives and the tax-gatherers. He is opposed, not only to doctors of divinity, but of medicine. From the Mount of Olives he surveys the world. He is not a Christian like the Pope in the Vatican, or a cardinal in a palace, or a bishop with revenues and retainers, or a millionaire who hires preachers to point out the wickedness of the poor, or the director of a museum who closes the doors on Sunday. He is a Christian something like Christ. To him this life is but a breathing-spell between the verdict and the execution; the sciences are simply sowers of the seeds of pride, of arrogance and vice. Shocked by the cruelties and unspeakable horrors of war, he became a non-resistant and averred that he would not defend his own body or that of his daughter from insult and outrage. In this he followed the command of his Master: "Resist not evil." He passed, not simply from war to peace, but from one extreme to the other, and advocated a doctrine that would leave the basest of mankind the rulers of the world. This was and is the error of a great and tender soul.