speculations in which the younger thinkers of the new school indulge.  This character is developed in the story into dimensions which must be styled inordinate if considered from a purely artistic point of view; but the story ought not to be so regarded.  Unfortunately for its proper appreciation among us, it cannot be judged aright, except by readers who possess a thorough knowledge of what was going on in Russia a few years ago, and who take a keen and lively interest in the subjects which were then being discussed there.  To all others, many of its chapters will seem too unintelligible and wearisome, both linked together into interesting unity by the slender thread of its story, beautiful as many of its isolated passages are.  The same objection may be made to “Smoke.”  Great spaces in that work are devoted to caricatures of certain persons and opinions of note in Russia, but utterly unknown in England—­pictures which either delight or irritate the author’s countrymen, according to the tendency of their social and political speculations, but which are as meaningless to the untutored English eye as a collection of “H.B."’s drawings would be to a Russian who had never studied English politics.  Consequently neither of these stories is likely ever to be fully appreciated among us[A].

[Footnote A:  A detailed account of both of these stories, as well as of several other works by M. Turgenieff, will be found in the number of the North British Review for March, 1869.]

The last novelette which M. Turgenieff has published, “The Unfortunate One” (Neschastnaya) is free from the drawbacks by which, as far as English readers are concerned, “Fathers and Children” and “Smoke,” are attended; but it is exceedingly sad and painful.  It is said to be founded on a true story, a fact which may account for an intensity of gloom in its coloring, the darkness of which would otherwise seem almost unartistically overcharged.

Several of M. Turgenieff’s works have already been translated into English.  The “Notes of a Sportsman” appeared about fourteen years ago, under the title of “Russian Life in the Interior[A];” but, unfortunately, the French translation from which they were (with all due acknowledgment) rendered, was one which had been so “cooked” for the Parisian market, that M. Turgenieff himself felt bound to protest against it vigorously.  It is the more unfortunate inasmuch as an admirable French translation of the work was afterwards made by M. Delaveau[B].

[Footnote A:  “Russian Life in the Interior.”  Edited by J.D.  Meiklejohn.  Black, Edinburg, 1855.]

[Footnote B:  “Recits d’un Chasseur.”  Traduits par H. Delavea, Paris, 1858.]

Still more vigorously had M. Turgenieff to protest against an English translation of “Smoke,” which appeared a few months ago.

The story of “Fathers and Children” has also appeared in English[A]; but as the translation was published on the other side of the Atlantic, it has as yet served but little to make M. Turgenieff’s name known among us.