realities of life than if they had lived among strangers.

But men must have some outlet for their spiritual energies, and these
men, unable to take part in the sordid or petty pursuits of those
around them, created for themselves artificial life, artificial
pursuits and interests.

The isolation in which they lived drew them naturally together. The
'circle,' something between an informal club and a debating society,
became the form in which these cravings of mind or heart could be
satisfied. These people met and talked; that was all they were able to
do.

The passage in which one of the heroes, Lezhnyov, tells the woman he
loves about the circle of which Dmitri Rudin and himself were members,
is historically one of the most suggestive. It refers to a circle of
young students. But it has a wider application. All prominent men of
the epoch--Stankevitch, who served as model to the poetic and touching
figure of Pokorsky; Alexander Hertzen, and the great critic,
Belinsky--all had their 'circles,' or their small chapels, in which
these enthusiasts met to offer worship to the 'goddess of truth, art,
and morality.'

They were the best men of their time, full of high aspirations and
knowledge, and their disinterested search after truth was certainly a
noble pursuit. They had full right to look down upon their neighbours
wallowing in the mire of sordid and selfish materialism. But by living
in that spiritual hothouse of dreams, philosophical speculations, and
abstractions, these men unfitted themselves only the more completely
for participation in real life; the absorption in interests having