the "Divine Comedy" and "Faust" for the first time discovers new
realms of truth for himself, and gains not only the joy of discovery,
but an immense addition of territory as well.

The most careless and superficial readers do not remain untouched by
the books of life; they fail to understand them or get the most out of
them, but they do not escape the spell which they all possess,--the
power of compelling the attention and stirring the heart. Not many
years ago the stories of the Russian novelists were in all hands. That
the fashion has passed is evident enough, and it is also evident that
the craving for these books was largely a fashion. Nevertheless, the
fashion itself was due to the real power which those stories revealed,
and which constitutes their lasting contribution to the world's
literature. They were touched with a profound sadness, which was
exhaled like a mist by the conditions they portrayed; they were full
of a sympathy born of knowledge and of sorrow; their roots were in the
rich soil of the life they described. The latest of them, Count
Tolstoi's "Master and Man," is one of those masterpieces which take
rank at once, not by reason of their magnitude, but by reason of a
certain beautiful quality which comes only to the man whose heart is
pressed against the heart of his theme, and who divines what life is
in the inarticulate soul of his brother man. Such books are the rich
material of culture to the man who reads them with his heart, because
they add to his experience a kind of experience otherwise inaccessible
to him, which quickens, refreshes, and broadens his own nature.




Chapter VIII.