It is one of the secrets of Tolstoy's greatness that he experienced, directly and at first hand, so many different kinds of life, and no change could well have been greater than that from the artificial, feverish, corrupt St. Petersburg to the primitive life of the hunter and mountaineer. The hero, Olyénin, is a reflection of Tolstoy himself. We are told how he delights in the first signs of danger, such as the carrying of weapons, &c. Before he has seen them he cannot believe in the beauty of snow-clad mountains; he thinks it as much a figment of the imagination as the melody of Bach's music or the romantic love of woman, in neither of which he is able to believe. But when he sees the mountains they surpass all he has heard and transcend his wildest dreams; they give him an almost Wordsworthian depth of inspiration. "At first the mountains aroused in Olyénin's mind only a sentiment of wonder, then of delight; but afterwards, as he gazed at this chain of snowy mountains, not piled one upon another, but growing and rising straight out of the steppe, little by little he began to get into the spirit of their beauty and he felt the mountains.... From that moment all that he had seen, all that he had thought, all that he had felt, assumed for him the new, sternly majestic character of the mountains.... 'Now life begins,' seemed to be sounded in his ears by some solemn voice." He shares in the romantic, adventurous life of the Cossacks, a little tribe barricaded away in their own corner of the world and surrounded by their enemies--the semi-civilised Mohammedans. The most interesting character in the book is the old Cossack hunter, Yeroshka; whole past ages of the world seem to live again in this primitive and fascinating figure; he takes us back to the very childhood of man. He is so strong that, when he has killed a wild boar weighing three hundred and sixty pounds, he can carry it home on his back. He says to Olyénin: "I {22} will find and show you every sort of animal, every kind of bird, and how and where.... I know it all. I have dogs and two fowling-pieces, and nets, and decoys, and a falcon. I can find the track of any wild beast.... I know where he comes to his lair and where he comes to drink or wallow." Yeroshka has studied all the wisdom of the animals, he is continually pitting his wits against theirs, and he thinks them, on the whole, much cleverer than men: notwithstanding his hunting he loves all creatures so much that he will save even moths from the flame.