Virgin Soil

word of his greater testament. It was the book in which many English readers were destined to make his acquaintance about a generation ago, and the effect of it was, like Swinbur

y as narrative prose can do. without using the wrong music: while over his realism or his irony he cast a tinge of that mixed modern and oriental fantasy which belonged to his temperament. He suffered in youth, and suffered badly, from the romantic malady of his century, and that other malady of Russia, both expressed in what M. Haumand terms

urgenev strictly in his growth and contemporary relations, we ought to begin with his Sportsman’s Note Book. But so far as his novels go, he is the last writer to be taken chronologically. He was old enough in youth to understand old age in the forest, and young enough in age to provide his youth with fresh hues for another incarnation. Another element of his work which is very finely revealed .and brought to a rare point of characterisation in Vi

-day; and nothing could be surer than the wilder or tamer glimpses which are seen in this book and in its landscape settings of the characters. But Russ as he is, he never lets his scenery hide his people: he only uses it

— that is in Paris-on the 4th of September, 1883. But at his own wish his remains were carried home and buried in the V

w, c

re gr

kn

Russia

here lie

ned despite all he suffered at her hands, and all the delicate

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