doctrine whatever, but gives us, with an unimpeachable, artistic
objectiveness, the living men and women in whom certain ideas,
doctrines, and aspirations were embodied. And he never evolves these
ideas and doctrines from his inner consciousness, but takes them from
real life, catching with his unfailing artistic instinct an incipient
movement just at the moment when it was to become a historic feature
of the time. Thus his novels are a sort of artistic epitome of the
intellectual history of modern Russia, and also a powerful instrument
of her intellectual progress.




III


_Rudin_ is the first of Turgenev's social novels, and is a sort of
artistic introduction to those that follow, because it refers to the
epoch anterior to that when the present social and political movements
began. This epoch is being fast forgotten, and without his novel it
would be difficult for us to fully realise it, but it is well worth
studying, because we find in it the germ of future growths.

It was a gloomy time. The ferocious despotism of Nicholas
I.--overweighing the country like the stone lid of a coffin, crushed
every word, every thought, which did not fit with its narrow
conceptions. But this was not the worst. The worst was that
progressive Russia was represented by a mere handful of men, who were
so immensely in advance of their surroundings, that in their own
country they felt more isolated, helpless, and out of touch with the