mately and generally an historical character is known,
the more unfit must it be for the purposes of fiction.

Then again, in fiction, as in real life, our sympathies are more readily
awakened, and more strongly moved, by the sufferings or the successes of
those with whom we have much in common--of whose life we are, or fancy
that we might have been, a part. The figures that we see in history
elevated above the ordinary attributes of man, are magnified as we see
them through the mist of our own vague perceptions, and dwindle if we
approach too near them. If they are brought down from the lofty pedestal
of rank or fame on which they stood, that they may be within reach of the
warmest sympathies of men who live upon a lower level, the familiarity to
which we are admitted impairs their greatness, on the same principle, that
"no man is a hero to his _valet-de-chambre_."

We are inclined to believe that the great attraction of historical prose
fiction is not any facility which it affords for the construction of a
better story--for we think it affords none--nor any superior interest
that attaches to the known and the prominent characters with which it
deals, or to the events it describes; but rather the occasion it gives for
making us familiar with the everyday life of the age and the country in
which the scene is laid. Independent of the merits of the fiction as a
work of imagination, we find another source of pleasure; and, if it be
written faithfully and with knowledge, of instruction in the vivid light
it casts on the characteristics of man's condition, which history does not
deign to record. This kind of excellence may give value to a work which is
defective in the higher essential qualifications of imaginative writing;
as old ballads and tales, which have no other merit, may be valuable
illustrations of the manners of their time, so by carefully collecting and
concentrating scattered rays, a man possessed of talents for the task may
throw a strong light on states of society that were formerly obscure, and
thus greatly enhance the pleasure we derive from any higher merits we may
find in his story.

M. Lajetchnikoff, in the work before us, appears to have aimed at both
these kinds of excellence; and, in the opinion of his countrymen, to have
attained to that of which they are the best or the only good judges. Mr
Shaw, to whom we are indebted for all we yet know of this department of
Russian literature, tells us in his pr