unfortunately, lingering among us; but _On the Eve_, of all the novels,
contains perhaps the most instructive political lesson England can
learn. Europe has always had, and most assuredly England has been
over-rich in those alarm-monger critics, watchdogs for ever baying at
Slav cupidity, treachery, intrigue, and so on and so on. It is useful
to have these well-meaning animals on the political premises, giving
noisy tongue whenever the Slav stretches out his long arm and opens
his drowsy eyes, but how rare it is to find a man who can teach us to
interpret a nation's aspirations, to gauge its inner force, its aim,
its inevitability. Turgenev gives us such clues. In the respectful, if
slightly forced, silence that has been imposed by certain recent
political events on the tribe of faithful watchdogs, it may be
permitted to one to say, that whatever England's interest may be in
relation to Russia's development, it is better for us to understand
the force of Russian aims, before we measure our strength against it
And a novel, such as On the Eve, though now nearly forty years old,
and to the short-sighted out of date, reveals in a flash the attitude
of the Slav towards his political destiny. His aspirations may have to
slumber through policy or necessity; they may be distorted or
misrepresented, or led astray by official action, but we confess that
for us, _On the Eve_ suggests the existence of a mighty lake, whose
waters, dammed back for a while, are rising slowly, but are still some
way from the brim. How long will it take to the overflow? Nobody
knows; but when the long winter of Russia's dark internal policy shall
be broken up, will the snows, melting on the mountains, stream
south-west, inundating the Valley of the Danube? Or, as the national
poet, Pushkin, has sung, will there be a pouring of many Slavonian
rivulets into the Russian sea, a powerful attraction of the Slav races
towards a common centre to create an era of peace and development
within, whereby Russia may rise free and rejoicing to face her great