y bad health, and the eminent
specialists he consulted sent him from one resort to another, to Rome,
the Isle of Wight, Soden, and the like. When Madame Viardot left the
stage in 1864 and took up her residence at Baden-Baden, he followed her
and built there a small house for himself. They returned to France
after the Franco-Prussian War, and bought a villa at Bougival, near
Paris, and this was his home for the rest of his life. Here, on
September 3, 1883, he died after a long delirium due to his suffering
from cancer of the spinal cord. His body was taken to St. Petersburg
and was buried with national honors.

The two works by Turgenev contained in the present volume are
characteristic in their concern with social and political questions,
and in the prominence in both of them of heroes who fail in action.
Turgenev preaches no doctrine in his novels, has no remedy for the
universe; but he sees clearly certain weaknesses of the Russian
character and exposes these with absolute candor yet without
unkindness. Much as he lived abroad, his books are intensely Russian;
yet of the great Russian novelists he alone rivals the masters of
western Europe in the matter of form. In economy of means,
condensation, felicity of language, and excellence of structure he
surpasses all his countrymen; and "Fathers and Children" and "A House
of Gentlefolk" represent his great and delicate art at its best.

W. A. N.

CRITICISMS AND INTERPRETATIONS

I
BY EMILE MELCHIOR, VICOMTE DE VOGUE

Ivan Sergyevitch (Turgenev) has given us a most complete picture of
Russian society. The same general types are always brought forward;
and, as later writers have presented exactly similar ones, with but few
modifications, we are forced to believe them true to life. First, the
peasant: meek, resigned, dull, pathetic in suffering, like a child who
does not know why he suffers; naturally sharp and tricky when not
stupefied by liquor; occasionally roused to violent passion. Then, the
intelligent middle class: the small landed proprietors of two
generations. The old proprietor is ignorant and good-natured, of
respectable family, but with coarse habits; hard, from long experience
of serfdom, servile himself, but admirable in all other relations of
life.

The young man of this class is of quite a different type. His
intellectual growth having been too rapid, he sometimes plunges into
Nihilism. He is often well educated, melancholy, rich in idea