Oddly enough, at times they grow very familiar to us, and in spite of
their Polish titles and faces, and a certain tenderness of nature that
is almost feminine, they seem to have good, stout, Saxon stuff in
them. Especially where the illustrious knights recount their heroic
deeds there is a Falstaffian strut in their performance, and there
runs riot a Falstaffian imagination truly sublime.

Yet, be it observed, however much in all this is suggestive of the
literature of other races and ages, these characters never cease for a
moment to be Poles. Here is a vast, moving panorama spread before us;
across it pass mighty armies; hetman and banneret go by; the scene
is full of stir, life, action. It is constantly changing, so that
at times we are almost bewildered, attempting to follow the quick
succession of events. We are transported in a moment from the din
and uproar of a beleaguered town to the awful solitude of the vast
steppes,--yet it is always the Polish Commonwealth that the novelist
paints for us, and beneath every other music rises the wild Slavic
music, rude, rhythmical, and sad.

There is, too, a background against which these pictures paint
themselves, and it reminds us not a little of Verestchagin,--the same
deep feeling for nature, and a certain sadness that seems inseparable
from the Russian and Lithuanian temperaments, tears following closely
upon mirth. At times, after incident upon incident of war, the reader
is tempted to exclaim, "Something too much of this!" Yet nowhere,
perhaps, except from the great canvases of Verestchagin, has there
ever come a more awful, powerful plea for peace than from the pages of
"Fire and Sword."

In "Without Dogma" is presented quite another theme, treated in a