Divine Being for the renewal of man's spirit, and giving him an opportunity for the play of his fancy. According to the poet Tutschef, "Our earthly life is bathed in dreams, as the earth by ocean's waves." Their songs and myths are the music of history, embracing their whole national life, and changing it into dreams and fancies. The Cossack fisher-folk have sung them upon their mighty rivers for more than eight centuries.
When, in the future, Russia shall produce her greatest and truest poets, they have only to draw from these rich sources, an inexhaustible store. Never can they find better material ; for the imagination of that anonymous author, the people, is the more sublime, and its heart more truly poetical, because of its great faith, simplicity, and many sorrows. What poem can compare with that description of the universe in a book, written in the fifteenth century, called "Book of the Dove " ? —
"The sun is the fire of love glowing in the Lord's face ; the stars fall from his mantle. . . . The night is dark with his thoughts ; the break of day is the glance of his eye. . . ."
And where can the writers of the modern realistic Russian novel find tenderer touches or more sharply bitter allusions than in the old dramatic poem, "The Ascension of Christ"? Jesus, as he is about to rise to heaven, thus
