Roudine' who asserted that the great misfortune of the hero was his
ignorance of his native land:--"Russia can get along without any of us,
but we cannot do without Russia. Wo betide him who does not understand
her, and still more him who really forgets the manners and the ideas of
his fatherland! Cosmopolitanism is an absurdity and a zero,--less than a
zero; outside of nationality, there is no art, no truth, no life
possible."

Perhaps it may be feasible to attempt a reconciliation of Turgenieff and
Goethe, by pointing out that the cosmopolitanism of this growing century
is revealed mainly in a similarity of the external forms of literature,
while it is the national spirit which supplies the essential inspiration
that gives life. For example, it is a fact that the 'Demi-monde' of
Dumas, the 'Pillars of Society' of Ibsen, the 'Magda' of Sudermann, the
'Grand Galeoto' of Echegaray, the 'Second Mrs. Tanqueray' of Pinero, the
'Gioconda' of d'Annunzio are all of them cast in the same dramatic mold;
but it is also a fact that the metal of which each is made was smelted
in the native land of its author. Similar as they are in structure, in
their artistic formula, they are radically dissimilar in their essence,
in the motives that move the characters and in their outlook on life;
and this dissimilarity is due not alone to the individuality of the
several authors,--it is to be credited chiefly to the nationality of
each.

Of course, international borrowings have always been profitable to the
arts,--not merely the taking over of raw material, but the more
stimulating absorption of methods and processes and even of artistic
ideals. The Sicilian Gorgias had for a pupil the Attic Isocrates; and
the style of the Athenian was imitated by the Roman Cicero, thus helping
to sustain the standard of oratory in every modern language. The 'Matron