themselves capable of reorganising human society from top to bottom, and
when they had acquired this conviction they were of course unfitted for
the patient, plodding study of details.

To remedy these evils, Count Dimitri Tolstoy, who was regarded as a
pillar of Conservatism, was appointed Minister of Public Instruction,
with the mission of protecting the young generation against pernicious
ideas, and eradicating from the schools, colleges, and universities all
revolutionary tendencies. He determined to introduce more discipline
into all the educational establishments and to supplant to a certain
extent the superficial study of natural science by the thorough study of
the classics--that is to say, Latin and Greek. This scheme, which became
known before it was actually put into execution, produced a storm of
discontent in the young generation. Discipline at that time was regarded
as an antiquated and useless remnant of patriarchal tyranny, and young
men who were impatient to take part in social reorganisation resented
being treated as naughty schoolboys. To them it seemed that the
Latin grammar was an ingenious instrument for stultifying youthful
intelligence, destroying intellectual development, and checking
political progress. Ingenious speculations about the possible
organisation of the working classes and grandiose views of the future
of humanity are so much more interesting and agreeable than the rules of
Latin syntax and the Greek irregular verbs!

Count Tolstoy could congratulate himself on the efficacy of his
administration, for from the time of his appointment there was a lull in
the political excitement. During three or four years there was only one
political trial, and that an insignificant one; whereas there had been
twenty between 1861 and 1864, and all more or less important. I am not
at all sure, however, that the educational reform which created
much momentary irritation and discontent had anything to do with the
improvement in the situation. In any case, there were other and more
potent causes at work. The excitement was too intense to be long-lived,
and the fashionable theories too fanciful to stand the wear and tear of
everyday life. They evaporated, therefore, with amazing rapidity when
the leaders of the movement had disappeared--Tchernishevski and others
by exile, and Dobrolubof and Pissaref by death--and when among the less
prominent representatives of the younger generation many succumbed to
th