no Liberal in
Russia could admit then, and one which they can scarcely admit now.

His criticism of the Liberals was creative, and not negative, in this:
that, instead of confining himself to pointing out their weakness and
the mistaken course they were taking, he did his best to point out the
right path. Dostoyevsky was likewise subjected to the same ostracism.
Turgenev suffered from it; but the genius of Dostoyevsky and the art
of Turgenev overstepped the limits of all barriers and frontiers.
Europe acclaimed them. Leskov's criticism being more local, the
ostracism, although powerless to prevent the popularity of his work in
Russia, succeeded for a time in keeping him from the notice of
Western Europe. This barrier is now being broken down. One of Leskov's
masterpieces, _The Sealed Angel_, was lately translated into English;
but he is one of the most difficult authors to translate because he is
one of the most native.

A far bitterer and more pessimistic note is heard in the work of
Pisemsky. He attacks the new democracy mercilessly, and not from any
predilection towards the old. His most important work, _The Troubled
Sea_ (1862), was a terrific onslaught on Radical Russia; and Pisemsky
paid the same price for his pessimistic analysis as Leskov did for his
impartiality, namely social ostracism.

The work of OSTROVSKY (1823-86) belongs to the history of the Stage,
to which he brought slices of real life from the middle class; the
townsmen, the minor public servants, merchants great and small, and
rogues, a _milieu_ which he had observed in his youth, his father
having been an attorney to a Moscow merchant. Ostrovsky may be called
the founder of modern Russian realistic comedy and drama. In spite of
the epoch at which his plays were written (the fifties and the
sixties), there is not a trace of _Scribisme_, no tricks, no effective
exits or curtains; he thus anticipated the form of the quite modern
drama by about seventy years. His plays hold the stage now in Russia,
and form part of the stock repertories every season. They give,
moreover, just the same lifelike impression whether read or seen
acted; and they are as interesting from a literary as they are from a
historical or dramatic point of view, interesting because they are
intensely national, and as Russian as beer is English.

This brief summary of the epoch would be still more incomplete than it
is without the mention of yet another novelist, GRIGOROVICH. Alt