reformers, viz. on the one hand, those who wished that the country should be developed on Eastern lines, and, on the other, those who looked to Western civilisation for guidance.  De Voguee says that from the accession of Peter the Great to the death of the Emperor Nicolas—­that is to say, for a period of a hundred and fifty years—­the government of Russia may be likened to a ship, of which the captain and the principal officers were persistently endeavouring to steer towards the West, while at the same time the whole of the crew were trimming the sails in order to catch any breeze which would bear the vessel Eastward.  It can be no matter for surprise that this strange medley should have produced results which are bewildering even to Russians themselves and well-nigh incomprehensible to foreigners.  One of their poets has said: 

    On ne comprend pas la Russie avec la raison,
    On ne peut que croire a la Russie.

One of the most singular incidents of Russian development on which De Voguee has fastened, and which induced him to write this book, has been the predominant influence exercised on Russian thought and action by novels.  Writers of romance have indeed at times exercised no inconsiderable amount of influence elsewhere than in Russia.  Mrs. Beecher Stowe’s epoch-making novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, certainly contributed towards the abolition of slavery in the United States.  Dickens gave a powerful impetus to the reform of our law-courts and our Poor Law.  Moreover, even in free England, political writers have at times resorted to allegory in order to promulgate their ideas.  Swift’s Brobdingnagians and Lilliputians furnish a case in point.  In France, Voltaire called fictitious Chinamen, Bulgarians, and Avars into existence in order to satirise the proceedings of his own countrymen.  But the effect produced by these writings may be classed as trivial compared to that exercised by the great writers of Russian romance.  In the works of men like Tourguenef and Dostoievsky the Russian people appear to have recognised, for the first time, that their real condition was truthfully depicted, and that their inchoate aspirations had found sympathetic expression.  “Dans le roman, et la seulement,” De Voguee says, “on trouvera l’histoire de Russie depuis un demi-siecle.”

Such being the case, it becomes of interest to form a correct judgment on the character and careers of the men whom the Russians have very generally regarded as the true interpreters of their domestic facts, and whom large numbers of them have accepted as their political pilots.