political science.  In 1832 he went to what is now the Nicolai Military school in Petersburg, where he wrote his censurable and erotic poems that were passed about by thousands and won an immense popularity with the jeunesse dore of the time, but which were regarded as discreditable by the more serious and thoughtful society.  In November, 1832, he was appointed Second Lieutenant in the Life Guard Hussar regiment, and the young poet now plunged into the vortex of society life as Pushkin had before him.  In 1836 appeared his “Song of the Tsar Ivan Wassiljewitsch,”—­a truly classical achievement in the record of literature.  In 1837 came the poem on the death of Pushkin, that stirred the aristocratic world and caused his banishment to the Caucas by the Emperor Nicholas I. In April of the year 1840 he was again banished to the Caucas for his duel with the son of the historian de Barante, where he distinguished himself by his valor in conflict with the Tscherkes.  In February of 1841 we find the poet again at Petersburg, where the second edition of his masterpiece, “A Hero of Our Own Time,” was just appearing.  Yet toward the end of April again he was obliged to leave,—­ this time through the influence and hatred of the Countess Benkendorff.  For the third time he went to the Caucas in exile.  Here in Petigorsk he was forced into close relation with one Major Nikolai Solomonowitsch Martynow,—­whom he did not spare from his well deserved scorn.  Aroused by the local society that pursued the poet with hatred and envy, Martynow challenged him at a ball.  The seconds, as also the entire city, expected a harmless outcome only, especially as Lermontoff, as was known to his adversary, had declared he should shoot in the air.  He held his hand high with the pistol stretched aloft; Martynow approached, aimed, fired, and silently the poet fell dead.  Thus his own lament for Pushkin came to be worthily written for himself—­

  “The murderer contemptuous gazing
  Did steadfastly his weapon aim—­” etc., etc.

At the foot of the Machook mountains, July 27, 1841, in the twenty-seventh year of his age, the poet died.  After a year the body was claimed by his grandmother, who lived at this time in the Pensa district, and his remains were removed to be fitly honored in the family village of Tarchany.  In connection with the tragedy, it is pitiful to remember that his grandmother wept herself blind over the death of the poet.

COUNT ALEXIS CONSTANTINOWITSCH TOLSTOY was born at Petersburg on the 6th of September, 1817.  At the age of six weeks he was taken away from the city to Little-Russia, by his mother and maternal uncle, who was distinguished in Russian literature under the pseudonym of Anton Perowskij.  By this uncle he was brought up, enjoying a singularly happy and unclouded childhood.  Being an only child he played much alone, living in his dreams and imagination and early developing a love for poetry.  At the age