chancelry of the minister of internal affairs. He was not a zealous official; he spent most of his time reading novels, writing poems, and telling stories.

His three other long narrative poems are less ambitious and less desultory. One entitled " Razgavór," "A Conversation," is a mystical dialogue between an old hermit and a "young man.' Both have a story of disappointed love to tell; the old man has found consolation in silent service of God: but to the young man "God seems too far away, man too insignificant." In this poem we have once more the garden and the pond, and the whispering lindens, and the moon, and the song of the nightingale echoing across the steppe. The next, written in March, 1845, but not printed till the following year, originally contained six hundred and seventy-two lines, but one of the forty-two stanzas and a few lines also have probably been sacrificed by the red pencil of the censorship, which at that time was particularly prone to make itself ridiculous. It is entitled " It is entitled "Pomyeshchik," The Proprietor,' and is a sort of burlesque story of a most respectable, order-loving gentleman of the ancient nobility who "feared the devil, and his wife." The lady, having gone on a pilgrimage, the old gentleman exhausts his resources for killing time, by going to his barns, strolling down to his little river, gazing at the sunny wavelets, the clouds, the deep blue sky, chatting with his peasants, with his daughter's governess and, being at last simply bored to death, resolves to take advantage of his wife's absence to visit an old flame of his, a buxom widow-how buxom she is Turgénief ludicrously expresses by declaring that her billowy "bosom was a perfect ocean"! —living some fifteen versts distant. He sets out, but, owing to his Jehu's carelessness, is overturned, and before he has time fairly to pick himself up and brush the mud from his clothes, his "chère amie," appears, and suspecting the object of this surreptitious visit, carries him back home in disgrace. The story is enlivened with descriptions of the proprietor's dress, his private room, and especially by the country balls which his friend, the buxom widow, was in the habit of giving.

66

The third long poem is entitled "Andréi" (originally Love"), and perhaps even more than the others is inspired by Byron's influence. It has over twelve hundred lines. Among the shorter poems, most of them printed in “The

Annals of the Fatherland," is one entitled "The Old Proprietor." It is the address of a childless and unhappy old man to his nephew "Ványa," to whom he leaves all of his useless treasures. The burden of his complaint is: "I have not been loved, I have not loved."

Curiously enough, there is something in these early poems of Turgénief that reminds one of the pastoral effusions of our own Bryant. I can best illustrate this resemblance by giving a metrical rendering of one or two, trying to preserve the original rhythm so far as possible. Here is one entitled:

AUTUMN.

I like the autumn, as a face that grieves:-
When calm and cloudy is the day,

Within the grove I often stray

And gaze on skies' unchanging gray

And at the pine tree dark and high.
Tasting the bitter of the leaves,

I love in indolence to lie,

While smiling dreams about me play,
And hear the wood sprite's piercing cry.
The grass is withered: - cold and cheerless

Across it slants the gloomy ray.
And now my spirit bold and fearless
I yield to melancholy's sway.

What recollections rise before me!

What glowing visions come and go!
Like living things the pines bend o'er me

And murmur solemnly and low.

And, like a flock of viewless creatures,

The wind swoops down on sudden wings,
And in the dark and gnarlèd branches
Its ever restless song it sings.

Another is entitled:

THE STORM HAS PASSED.

Low sweeping o'er the earth the storm has passed,
I seek the garden; all around is still;

Upon the linden tops soft mist is cast,
And vivifying drops the foliage fill.

Moist breezes through the branches creep;
A heavy beetle flies amid the shadows;
And like the indolent breath of those who sleep,
Breathe fragrant vapors from the dusky meadows.

Oh! what a night! Great golden stars are gleaming
Upon the sky; the air is cool and clear,
The raindrops from the flowers are gently streaming,
As though each petal shed its favorite tear.

The lightning flashes faint and far the peal
Of thunder rolls, its echoes faintly dying;
The wide pond darkles with a gleam like steel;
And there the mansion is before me lying.

Or is thy soul within thee still tormented?

Is there no place where thou canst gain thy rest?
And dost thou live with heart still discontented
In thy long empty and deserted nest?

It is said, that once when Turgénief was travelling in Europe, he became engaged to the charming daughter of an English lord; but the engagement was broken on the shores of one of the Italian lakes, owing to a bit of personified realism on the poet's part. I don't know how true the story is, but he was of a susceptible nature. The following poem might have been written on some such occasion. It has no

title:

When I from thee was forced to part,

I will not hide the truth,

I loved thee then with all my heart,
The fiery heart of youth.

But now we meet I am not glad.
Nothing have I to say.

Thy mournful glances deep and sad
I cannot bear to-day.

And all the words thy lips repeat
Breathe heavenly purity.

My God! things beautiful and sweet,
How strange they are to me!

Ah well! how much of life has passed
In all these lingering years!

How many joys too sweet to last!
How many bitter tears!

Turgénief's harp was only the three-stringed balalaika of the steppe. He always touches the same chords. It is always the same aspect of Nature; the wind rustling through the linden tops; the passing shower with the heat-lightning flashing

mourns.

far down on the horizon; the hurrying clouds turning to gold in the sunset; the moonlight streaming over the pond and throwing its motionless shadows over the ancient house,"the gentleman's nest" where the fair maiden waits and Yet no lines are wasted; every touch tells; and the reader sees the scene. His descriptive faculty joined with the exquisite lyric note that he knew so well how to use, appears throughout his novels. Read his wonderful pictures of Nature, especially that wonderful epilogue to the "Huntsman's Recollections," where the sunrise and the early morning and the evening and the night are painted with such loving touches, worthy of Gogol, though with more delicacy, with a firmer hand, with a deeper truth! How the scene lives and glows in the rich glory of the opulent, unstinted Russian tongue!

Turgénief instinctively reminds one of the Russian personification of the national peasant, "the mighty son of the soil, who drives the plough with its golden share through the rich black soil of the steppe, and sings as he goes." We have studied him simply as a singer. He was more than that. He was a fighter and serfdom was his chosen foe: his Hannibal's oath, as he himself said, was to fight it to the death. But it is also interesting to look upon him in the character that M. Anatole France attributes to him: "Un beau génie, plein de mirages, comme un monde vaste, solitaire, rempli de chants d'oiseaux, de fleurs, et de glaces."

:

A NEW BASIS OF CHURCH LIFE.

BY WILBUR LARREMORE.

MOST readers, who are old enough, will remember the storm of religious controversy which followed the publication of Darwin's "Origin of Species." It was considered that

the whole structure of theology was assailed, and the orthodox world rose in its defence. Darwin himself never directly attacked theology. But, as the outcry against the new ideas grew louder and more bitter, some of the Scientists grew polemical. Professor Tyndall's "prayer-test," for instance, was proposed probably with a view of putting a quietus upon the supernatural claims of religion. The prevailing spirit on the ecclesiastical side was certainly short-sighted. There were notable exceptions, but, in the main, pulpit orators and denominational editors treated the evolutionists, not as conscientious seekers after truth, but as wanton destructionists.

Not only were the leaders of thought pilloried; too often wrathful denunciation was launched at young people, who, humble in spirit, as scientific studies always dispose one to be, were nevertheless beginning to feel the irresistible movement of the Zeit-Geist. For every young man who became "sceptical" because it was the fashion with his set, three others grew so because they could not help it. All the forces of sacred association and love of kindred combined to hold one loyal to the Creed and the Confession of Faith. Far from being a conceited iconoclast, the young agnostic worked out his own deliverance usually with fear and trembling, and often with tears. A favorite argument for the inviolable perpetuity of orthodoxy was the statement, that while "unbelief," or "scepticism," had constantly changed its face and shifted its ground, the Church had remained ever the same in its teachings. But the young investigator soon came to realize that the first of these propositions is misleading in the way it is put, and that the second of them is absolutely false. Undoubtedly "scepticism" has changed from time to time, but this is because the varying phases