rsisting suffusion of sympathy and never to be remembered without a
recurring tenderness. Remembered, did I say? It is unforgettable.
There are few books of American origin that resist so well the passing
of the years, that take on more steadily the glamour of "the
unimaginable touch of time." "Rezanov" is a classic, or I miss my
guess. This, though it was first published so recently as 1906.

The story has the merit of being, to some extent historically, and
wholly artistically, true. For the matter-of-facts Mrs. Atherton
provides a bibliography of her authorities. Those authorities I have
not read, nor should others. Sufficient unto me is the authority of
the novel itself splendidly demonstrated and established in the high
court of the reader's head and heart by the author's visualizing
veritism. Not twenty pages have you turned before you know this
Rezanov, privy councilor, grand chamberlain, plenipotentiary of the
Russo-American company, imperial inspector of the extreme eastern and
northwestern dominions of his imperial majesty Alexander the First,
emperor of Russia--all this and more, a man. He comes out of mystery
into the softly bright light of California, in strength and shrewdness
and dignity and personal splendor. And there is amidst it all a pathos
upon him. He commands your affection even while suggesting a doubt
whether the man may not be overwhelmed in the diplomat, the intriguer.
The year is 1806. The monstrous apparition of Napoleon has loomed an
omen of the doom of ancient authority and the shattering of nations in
Europe. That faithless, incalculable idealist Alexander, plans he knows
not what of imperial glory in the Eastern and Western world. Rezanov
is his servant, a man of ambition, perhaps in all favor at court,
desirous of doing some great service for his master. He dreams of
dominion in this sun-soaked land so lazily held in the lax grasp of
Spain. He has come from failure. He had been to Japan with presents
to the emperor, was received by minor officials with a hospitality that
poorly concealed the fact that he was virtually a prisoner, and then
dismissed without admission to the audience he sought with the mikado.
He had gone then to bleak, inhospitable Sitka, to find the settlement
there in a plague of scurvy and starvation only slightly mitigated by
vodka. Down the coast then he sailed to the Spanish settlement for
food for the settlement. He comes to that place where in his