and believe me, who am a phlegmatic person enough, that is the most
precious quality in our times. We have all become insufferably
reasonable, indifferent, and slothful; we are asleep and cold, and
thanks to any one who will wake us up and warm us! . . . He is not an
actor, as I called him, nor a cheat, nor a scoundrel; he lives at
other people's expense, not like a swindler, but like a child. . . .
He never does anything himself precisely, he has no vital force, no
blood; but who has the right to say that he has not been of use? that
his words have not scattered good seeds in young hearts, to whom
nature has not denied, as she has to him, powers for action, and the
faculty of carrying out their own ideas? . . . I drink to the health
of Rudin! I drink to the comrade of my best years, I drink to youth,
to its hopes, its endeavours, its faith, and its purity, to all that
our hearts beat for at twenty; we have known, and shall know, nothing
better than that in life. . . . I drink to that golden time,--to the
health of Rudin!"

It is plain that the speaker is something of a Rudin himself.

The next novel, "A House of Gentlefolk,"* is, with the possible
exception of "Fathers and Children," Turgenev's masterpiece. I know of
no novel which gives a richer return for repeated re-readings. As the
title implies, this book deals, not with an exciting narrative, but
with a group of characters; who can forget them? Like all of its
author's works, it is a love-story; this passion is the mainspring
of the chief personages, and their minds and hearts are revealed by
its power. It is commonly said that Turgenev lacked passion; one
might say with equal truth that Wordsworth lacked love of nature.
Many of his novels and tales are tremulous with passion, but they
are never noisy with it. Like the true patrician that he was, he