cant and convention; they have all the same unconquerable love of freedom; they are all democrats and pacifists. And although typical Russians, they are equally good Europeans. Although educated in the darkest days of political reaction, they all have the same generous and magnanimous belief in humanity. They all repudiate the gospel of Prussianism; they are all in communion and sympathy with the common people. And if we may judge of the aspirations of the Russian nation from the writings of her greatest sons, we can be left in no doubt as to the ultimate Orientation of the Russian people.
II
Russian literature is the finest of all heroic literatures. No other has raised to a higher level the dignity of a novelist. The Russian novelist is at the same time a man of thought and a man of action. He has a cure of souls; he is an apostle. The Russian novel of the nineteenth century, like the French novel of the eighteenth, has been the chief and almost the only instrument of political and social freedom. The novel in Russia under Nicholas I took the place of the newspaper, the pulpit, and
