rds 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 _Emma_, compared to the
wide and unflinching gaze of Turgenev. She painted most admirably the
English types she knew, and how well she knew them! but she failed to
correlate them with the national life; and yet, while her men and women
were acting and thinking, Trafalgar and Waterloo were being fought and
won. But each of Turgenev's novels in some subtle way suggests that the
people he introduces are playing their little part in a great national
drama everywhere around us, invisible, yet audible through the clamour
of voices near us. And so _On the Eve_, the work of a poet, has certain
deep notes, which break through the harmonious tenor of the whole, and
strangely and swiftly transfigure the quiet story, troubling us with a
dawning consciousness of the march of mighty events. Suddenly a strange
sense steals upon the reader that he is living in a perilous atmosphere,
filling his heart with foreboding, and enveloping at length the
characters themselves, all unconsciously aw