stands these people, he can think in their languages, and thus reproduce faithfully their characteristics not merely by observation but by sympathetic intuition. Furthermore, the very fact that Tolstoi, for example, writes in an inaccessible language, makes foreign translations of his works absolutely necessary. As at the day of Pentecost, every man hears him speak in his own tongue. Now if an Englishman writes a successful book, thousands of Russians, Germans, and others will read it in English; the necessity of translation is not nearly so great. It is interesting to compare the world-wide appeal made by the novels of Turgenev, Dostoevski, and Tolstoi with that made by Thackeray and George Eliot, not to mention Mr. Hardy or the late Mr. Meredith.
The combination of the great age of Russia with its recent intellectual birth produces a maturity of character, with a wonderful freshness of consciousness. It is as though a strong, sensible man of forty should suddenly develop a genius in art; his attitude would be quite different from that of a growing boy, no matter how precocious he might be. So, while the Russian character is marked by an extreme sensitiveness to mental impressions, it is without the rawness and immaturity of the American. The typical American has some strong quali-
