aiting disaster in the
sunny woods and gardens of Kuntsovo. But not till the last chapters are
reached does the English reader perceive that in recreating for him the
mental atmosphere of a single educated Russian household, Turgenev has
been casting before his eyes the faint shadow of the national drama
which was indeed played, though left unfinished, on the Balkan
battlefields of 1876-7. Briefly, Turgenev, in sketching the dawn of love
in a young girl's soul, has managed faintly, but unmistakably, to make
spring and flourish in our minds the ineradicable, though hidden, idea
at the back of Slav thought--the unification of the Slav races. How
doubly welcome that art should be which can lead us, the foreigners,
thus straight to the heart of the national secrets of a great people,
secrets which our own critics and diplomatists must necessarily
misrepresent. Each of Turgenev's novels may be said to contain
a light-bringing rejoinder to the old-fashioned criticism of the
Muscovite, current up to the rise of the Russian novel, and still,
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short-sighted out of date, reveals in a flash the attitude of the Slav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