s but poor
in executive ability; always preparing and expecting to accomplish
something of importance, filled with vague and generous projects for
the public good. This is the chosen type of hero in all Russian novels.
Gogol introduced it, and Tolstoy prefers it above all others.

The favorite hero of young girls and romantic women is neither the
brilliant officer, the artist, nor rich lord, but almost universally
this provincial Hamlet, conscientious, cultivated, intelligent, but of
feeble will, who, returning from his studies in foreign lands, is full
of scientific theories about the improvement of mankind and the good of
the lower classes, and eager to apply these theories on his own estate.
It is quite necessary that he should have an estate of his own. He will
have the hearty sympathy of the reader in his efforts to improve the
condition of his dependents.

The Russians well understand the conditions of the future prosperity of
their country; but, as they themselves acknowledge, they know not how
to go to work to accomplish it.

In regard to the women of this class, Turgenev, strange to say, has
little to say of the mothers. This probably reveals the existence of
some old wound, some bitter experience of his own. Without a single
exception, all the mothers in his novels are either wicked or
grotesque. He reserves the treasures of his poetic fancy for the young
girls of his creation. To him the young girl of the country province is
the corner-stone of the fabric of society. Reared in the freedom of
country life, placed in the most healthy social conditions, she is
conscientious, frank, affectionate, without being romantic; less
intelligent than man, but more resolute. In each of his romances an
irresolute man is invariably guided by a woman of strong will.

Such are, generally speaking, the characters the author describes,
which bear so unmistakably the stamp of nature that one cannot refrain
from saying as he closes the book, "These must be portraits from life!"
which criticism is always the highest praise, the best sanction of
works of the imagination.--From "Turgenev", in "The Russian Novelists,"
translated by J. L. Edmands (1887).

II
BY WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS

Turgenev was of that great race which has more than any other fully and
freely uttered human nature, without either false pride or false shame
in its nakedness. His themes were oftenest those of the French
novelist, but how far he was from h