France for three or four years, and for twelve a German; even Dr.
Henrik Ibsen in his hot youth essayed a _Catiline_, and in later life
seeks the subject of what is perhaps his masterpiece, the _Emperor and
Galilean_, in the Rome of the fourth century. But in Russia Tolstoi
begins, and in Russia he ends. As volume after volume proceeds from
his prolific pen--essays, treatises theological or social, tales,
novels, diaries, or confessions--all alike are Russian in scenery,
Russian in character, Russian in temperament, Russian in their
aspirations, their hopes, or their despairs. Nowhere is there a trace
of Hellas, Rome does not exist for him, the Middle Age which allured
Hugo has for Tolstoi no glamour. In this he but resembles the Russian
writers from Krilov to the present day. It is equally true of Gogol,
of Poushkine, of Tourgenieff, of Herzen, of Lermontoff, of Dostoievsky.
If Tourgenieff has placed the scene of one of his four longer works at
Baden, yet it is in the Russian coterie that the tragedy of Irene
Pavlovna unfolds itself. Thus confined in his range, and in his
inspiration, to his own race, the work of a Russian artist, or thinker,
springs straight from the heart of the race itself. When therefore
Tolstoi speaks on war, he voices not his own judgment merely but the
judgment of the race. In his conception of war the force of the
Slavonic race behind him masters his own individual genius. Capacity
in a race for war is distinct from valour. Amongst the Aryan peoples,
the Slav, the Hindoo, the Celt display valour, contempt for life
unsurpassed, but unlike the Roman or the Teuton they have never by war
sought the achievement of a great political design, or subordinated the
other claims of existence, whether of the nation or the individual, for
the realization of a great political ideal. Thus the history of the
two western divisions of the Slavonic race, Poland and Bohemia, reads
like the history of Ireland. It is studded with combats, but there is
no war. The downfall of Bohemia, the surrender of Prague, the
Weissenberg, are but an illustration of this thesis. And three
centuries earlier Ottokar and his flaunting chivalry go down before the
charge of Rudolf of Hapsburg, like Vercingetorix before Caius Julius.
Ziska's cry of havoc to all the earth is not redeemed by fanaticism and
has no intelligible end. And the noblest figure in Czech history,
George of Podiebrad, whose portrait Palacky[7] has etc