to appreciate the motives from which they spring; those motives in turn
requiring the key which lies in his temperament, his associations, his
nationality. Such a key is peculiarly necessary to English or American
students of Tolstoy, because of the marked contrast existing between the
Russian and the Englishman or American in these respects, a contrast
by which Tolstoy himself was forcibly struck during the visit to
Switzerland, of which mention has been already made. It is difficult
to restrain a smile at the poignant mental discomfort endured by
the sensitive Slav in the company of the frigid and silent English
frequenters of the Schweitzerhof ("Journal of Prince D. Nekhludov,"
Lucerne, 1857), whose reserve, he realised, was "not based on pride,
but on the absence of any desire to draw nearer to each other"; while he
looked back regretfully to the pension in Paris where the table d' hote
was a scene of spontaneous gaiety. The problem of British taciturnity
passed his comprehension; but for us the enigma of Tolstoy's temperament
is half solved if we see him not harshly silhouetted against a
blank wall, but suffused with his native atmosphere, amid his native
surroundings. Not till we understand the main outlines of the Russian
temperament can we realise the individuality of Tolstoy himself: the
personality that made him lovable, the universality that made him great.

So vast an agglomeration of races as that which constitutes the Russian
empire cannot obviously be represented by a single type, but it will
suffice for our purposes to note the characteristics of the inhabitants
of Great Russia among whom Tolstoy spent the greater part of his
lifetime and to whom he belonged by birth and natural affinities.

It may be said of the average Russian that in exchange for a precocious
childhood he retains much of a child's lightness of heart throughout
his later years, alternating with attacks of morbid despondency. He