give a few biographical traits which bear particularly upon the novel
before us, and account for his peculiar hold over the minds of his
countrymen.

Turgenev, who was born in 1818, belonged to a set of Russians very
small in his time, who had received a thoroughly European education in
no way inferior to that of the best favoured young German or
Englishman. It happened, moreover, that his paternal uncle, Nicholas
Turgenev, the famous 'Decembrist,' after the failure of that first
attempt (December 14, 1825) to gain by force of arms a constitutional
government for Russia, succeeded in escaping the vengeance of the Tsar
Nicholas I., and settled in France, where he published in French the
first vindication of Russian revolution.

Whilst studying philosophy in the Berlin University, Turgenev paid
short visits to his uncle, who initiated him in the ideas of liberty,
from which he never swerved throughout his long life.

In the sixties, when Alexander Hertzen, one of the most gifted writers
of our land, a sparkling, witty, pathetic, and powerful journalist and
brilliant essayist, started in London his _Kolokol_, a revolutionary,
or rather radical paper, which had a great influence in Russia,
Turgenev became one of his most active contributors and
advisers,--almost a member of the editorial staff.

This fact has been revealed a few years ago by the publication, which
we owe to Professor Dragomanov, of the private correspondence between
Turgenev and Hertzen. This most interesting little volume throws quite
a new light upon Turgenev, showing that our great novelist was at the
same time one of the strongest--perhaps the strongest--and most