Turgenev began his literary career and won an enormous popularity in
Russia by his sketches from peasant life. His _Diary of a Sportsman_
contains some of the best of his short stories, and his _Country Inn,_
written a few years later, in the maturity of his talent, is as good
as Tolstoi's little masterpiece, _Polikushka_.

He was certainly able to paint all classes and conditions of Russian
people. But in his greater works Turgenev lays the action exclusively
with one class of Russian people. There is nothing of the enormous
canvas of Count Tolstoi, in which the whole of Russia seems to pass in
review before the readers. In Turgenev's novels we see only educated
Russia, or rather the more advanced thinking part of it, which he knew
best, because he was a part of it himself.

We are far from regretting this specialisation. Quality can sometimes
hold its own against quantity. Although small numerically, the section
of Russian society which Turgenev represents is enormously
interesting, because it is the brain of the nation, the living ferment
which alone can leaven the huge unformed masses. It is upon them that
depend the destinies of their country. Besides, the artistic value of
his works could only be enhanced by his concentrating his genius upon
a field so familiar to him, and engrossing so completely his mind and
his sympathies. What he loses in dimensions he gains in correctness,
depth, wonderful subtlety and effectiveness of every minute detail,
and the surpassing beauty of the whole. The jewels of art he left us
are like those which nations store in the sanctuaries of their museums
and galleries to be admired, the longer they are studied. But we must
look to Tolstoi for the huge and towering monuments, hewn in massive