Kovalevsky and forbade him to continue his address, and Kovalevsky would always resume his seat with the invariable, "I submit."
The strain of all these labors could not but affect the health of the tireless worker, who had been ailing for some years past. The present War found him in a water resort of Austria, and he was compelled to undergo internment for several months. This enforced stay in the midst of the most distressing circumstances of the World War also affected Kovalevsky's health. On March 23, 1916, he succumbed to a complication of diseases, among which were diabetes, gout, and heart disease.
III.
Kovalevsky had the rare distinction of exerting a tremendous influence over the generation whose political work culminated in the upheaval of 1905. And this influence was exerted not through actual political leadership, not through any party affiliation, but through intellectual guidance. It may be asserted, with perfect correctness, that the last generation of the nineteenth century was brought up, politically, on Kovalevsky's ideas. Such political leaders as Milyoukov refer to him as their teacher, who had guided them to the realization of great political truths. The speeches delivered at Kovalevsky's grave by representatives of every class in Russia bear ample witness to the unique position that this man occupied in his country.
He was a popularizer of science, as well as its master. Besides his strictly scientific works, he wrote an enormous number of newspaper and magazine articles, sometimes giving, in non-technical language, the results of scientific investigations conducted by himself and others, sometimes writing on some great man with whom he had been associated, or some great event that he had followed with the studious and appreciative attention of a scholar. During the past ten years, it was the charm of his personality, perhaps more than anything else, that endeared him to the whole of cultured Russia. There was not an organization in the country that did not consider it the highest honor and the greatest inspiration to see Kovalevsky in its chair. And he presided over numberless meetings, as many as his other duties permitted. Everywhere his "fascinating soul, his keen, forgiving conscience, his inexhaustible kindness, his vast intellect, his unfailing readiness to serve others" brought with them the calm and harmony that were so woefully lacking when his great body and his fascinating personality were away.
But it is as a scientist that the world outside of Russia knows Kovalevsky, and, as a scientist, he is no less an interesting figure than as a man. His scientific tendencies became evident quite early in life. As a young man, he was fond of making summer excursions to different parts of southern Russia, and curiosity often led him to the Caucasus, that never-failing source of inspiration to the great Russian poets. But it was not the grandeur of the mighty Kasbeck, nor the fascinating beauty of
