he meaning, the import, what I should like to call the moral of
it all--what of that? Tolstoy has shown us a certain length of time's
journey, but to what end has he shown it? The question has to be
answered, and it is not answered, it is only postponed, if we say that
the picture itself is all the moral, all the meaning that we are
entitled to ask for. It is of the picture that we speak; its moral is
in its design, and without design the scattered scenes will make no
picture. Our answer would be clear enough, as I have tried to suggest,
if we could see in the form of the novel an image of the circling
sweep of time. But to a broad and single effect, such as that, the
chapters of the book refuse to adapt themselves; they will not draw
together and announce a reason for their collocation. The story is
started with every promise, and it ceases at the end with an air of
considerable finality. But between these points its course is full of
doubt.

It is admirably started. Nothing could be more right and true than the
bubbling merriment and the good faith and the impatient aspiration
with which the young life of the earlier chapters of the book comes
surging upon the scene of its elders. A current of newness and
freshness is set flowing in the atmosphere of the generation that is
still in possession. The talk of a political drawing-room is stale and
shrill, an old man in his seclusion is a useless encumbrance, an
easy-going and conventional couple are living without plan or
purpose--all the futility of these people is obvious to an onlooker
from the moment when their sons and daughters break in upon them. It
was time for the new generation to appear--and behold it appearing in
lively strength. Tolstoy, with his power of making an eloquent event
out of nothing at all, needs no dramatic apparatus to set off the
effect of the irruption. Two people, an elderly man of the world and a
scheming hostess, are talking together, the room fills, a young man
enters; or in another sociable assembly there is a shriek and a rush,
and the children of the house charge into the circle; that is quite
enough for Tolstoy, his drama of youth and age opens immediately with
the right impression. The story is in movement without delay; there
are a few glimpses of this kind, and then the scene is ready, the
action may go forward; everything is attuned for the effect it is to
make.

And at the other end of the book, after many hundreds of pages, the