to-morrow. He is the Slav whose inherent force Europe is as ignorant
of as he is himself. Though he speaks only twenty sentences in the
book he is a creation of Tolstoian force. His very words are dark and
of practically no significance. There lies the irony of the portrait.
The last words of the novel, the most biting surely that Turgenev ever
wrote, contain the whole essence of _On the Eve_. On the Eve of What?
one asks. Time has given contradictory answers to the men of all
parties. The Elenas of to-day need not turn their eyes abroad to find
their counterpart in spirit; so far at least the pessimists are
refuted: but the note of death that Turgenev strikes in his marvellous
chapter on Venice has still for young Russia an ominous echo--so many
generations have arisen eager, only to be flung aside helpless, that
one asks, what of the generation that fronts Autocracy to-day?

'Do you remember I asked you, "Will there ever be men among us?" and
you answered, there will be. O primaeval force! And now from here in
"my poetic distance" I will ask you again, "What do you say, Uvar
Ivanovitch, will there be?"

'Uvar Ivanovitch flourished his fingers, and fixed his enigmatical
stare into the far distance.'

This creation of an universal national type, out of the flesh and
blood of a fat taciturn country gentleman, brings us to see that
Turgenev was not merely an artist, but that he was a poet using
fiction as his medium. To this end it is instructive to compare Jane
Austen, perhaps the greatest English exponent of the domestic novel,
with the Russian master, and to note that, while as a novelist she
emerges favourably from the comparison, she is absolutely wanting in
his poetic insight. How petty and parochial appears her outlook in