nothing to do with the life of their own country, estranged them still
more from it. The overwhelming stream of words drained them of the
natural sources of spontaneous emotion, and these men almost grew out
of feeling by dint of constantly analysing their feelings.

Dmitri Rudin is the typical man of that generation, both the victim
and the hero of his time--a man who is almost a Titan in word and a
pigmy in deed. He is eloquent as a young Demosthenes. An irresistible
debater, he carries everything before him the moment he appears. But
he fails ignominiously when put to the hard test of action. Yet he is
not an impostor. His enthusiasm is contagious because it is sincere,
and his eloquence is convincing because devotion to his ideals is an
absorbing passion with him. He would die for them, and, what is more
rare, he would not swerve a hair's-breadth from them for any worldly
advantage, or for fear of any hardship. Only this passion and this
enthusiasm spring with him entirely from the head. The heart, the deep
emotional power of human love and pity, lay dormant in him. Humanity,
which he would serve to the last drop of his blood, is for him a body
of foreigners--French, English, Germans--whom he has studied from
books, and whom he has met only in hotels and watering-places during
his foreign travels as a student or as a tourist.

Towards such an abstract, alien humanity, a man cannot feel any real
attachment. With all his outward ardour, Rudin is cold as ice at the
bottom of his heart. His is an enthusiasm which glows without warmth,
like the aurora borealis of the Polar regions. A poor substitute for
the bountiful sun. But what would have become of a God-forsaken land
if the Arctic nights were deprived of that substitute? With all their
weaknesses, Rudin and the men of his stamp--in other words, the men of
the generation of 1840--have rendered an heroic service to their