on the rule; for the _heretic_, from his birth to his burial, is never
lost sight of, and almost the whole action, from the beginning to the end,
is either directly or indirectly connected with his fortunes, which
preserve their interest throughout, amidst sovereigns and ambassadors,
officials and nobles, court intrigues and affairs of state, of love, of
war, and of religion. This machinery, though somewhat complicated, is on
the whole very skilfully constructed, and moves on smoothly enough without
jolting or jarring, without tedious stops or disagreeable interruptions,
and without having to turn back every now and then to pick up the
passengers it has dropped by the way. The author, however, appears to have
assumed--and, writing for Russians, was entitled to assume--that his
readers had some previous acquaintance with the history of the country and
the times to which his story belongs. His prologue, which has no connexion
with the body of the work, but which relates a separate incident that
occurred some years after the conclusion of the principal narrative,
introduces us to the death-bed of Iván III., at whose court the whole of
the subsequent scenes occur; and is calculated from this inversion of time,
and the recurrence of similar names, and even of the same persons, to
create little confusion in the mind of the reader who is ignorant of
Russian history.

"The epoch chosen by Lajétchnikoff," says his translator, "is the
fifteenth century; an age most powerfully interesting in the history
of every country, and not less so in that of Russia. It was then that
the spirit of enquiry, the thirst for new facts and investigations in
religious, political, and physical philosophy, was at once stimulated
and gratified by the most important discoveries that man had as yet
made, and extended itself far beyond the limits of what was then
civilized Europe, and spoke, by the powerful voice of Iván III., even
to Russia, plunged as she then was in ignorance and superstition.