the readers of his earliest efforts found the writer’s countenance familiar. It was not long, however, before his own personality found self-expression. His Boyhood (Adolescence), though less pure and less perfect than Childhood, exhibits a more orginal power of psychology, a keen feeling for nature, and a mind full of distress and conflict, which Dickens or Töppfer would have been at a loss to express. In the Russian Proprietor (October, 1852[1]) Tolstoy’s character appeared sharply defined, marked by his fearless sincerity and his faith in love. Among the remarkable portraits of peasants which he has painted in this novel, we find an early sketch of one of the finest conceptions of his Popular Tales: the old man with the beehives;[2] the little old man under the birch-tree, his hands outstretched, his eyes raised, his bald head shining in the sun, and all around him the bees, touched with gold, never stinging him, forming a halo… But the truly typical works of this period are those which directly register his present emotions: namely, the novels of the Caucasus. The first, The Invasion (finished in December, 1852), impresses the reader deeply by the magnificence of its landscapes: a sunrise amidst the mountains, on the bank of a river; a wonderful night-piece, with sounds and shadows noted with a striking intensity; and the return in the evening, while the distant snowy peaks disappear in the violet haze, and the clear voices of the regimental singers rise and fall in the
