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GREAT RUSSIA
of his characters, and made them all act according to the strict logic of their temperaments.
It should be added that, though Turgenev contemplates the "Human Comedy" with the disillusioned smile of the sceptic, his smile is often mixed with tears, and his scepticism never excludes tenderness, emotion, and sympathy. So far from excluding goodness and indulgence, his fatalism rather implies them; for to him to understand all is to pardon all. One pre-eminently Christian virtue has survived the shipwreck of his Christianity—the virtue of resignation, and he has kept the best part of Christian piety, which is pity. Like all great Russian writers, he has, amid the loss of many beliefs, retained the religion of human suffering.
