FOOTNOTE:

FOOTNOTE:[11]A kind of Shakers.

[11]A kind of Shakers.

Blue heavens, golden cupolas, green towers, red houses, pealing bells above, sleigh-bells on the streets, praying muzhiks before images of the saints, beautiful women in costly furs—when I wish to reconstruct from my recollections the picture of Moscow, these are the elements which at first mingle, charming, chaotic, like the colors in Caucasian gold-enamel. How beautiful a city this! How often have I stood upon the tower of the Ivan Veliky and looked down on this endless sea of shining cupolas and gay roofs crowded upon gently rising hills far into the blue haze of the distance! Never was the Russian love of home so intelligible to me as there in the heart of Russia, upon the battlements of the Kremlin, high above the bank of the Moskva! And involuntarily I wondered, as, indeed, would any one not a subject of the imperator, who has looked down from such battlements upon all the subject masses of Russians, whether he has really subjugated them or whether they have only been brought to a death-bringing hibernation. Æsthetic, ethnological, historical, and political suggestions swarm to the mindof the thoughtful observer in this place. What wonder if the Russian feels himself here on holy ground and would prefer to put off his shoes when he treads it?

The tongue of the people has a kindly word for St. Petersburg and a pet name for Moscow—"Little Mother Moscow," it is called, the real capital of Russiandom. And even the stranger must remark this difference of treatment. St. Petersburg astonishes, awes, frightens. Moscow ingratiates herself at first sight and wins each day a firmer hold on our hearts. One thinks with a certain tenderness of one's stay in Moscow, and in spite of unbelief predicts to himself another visit. But not with faith. For unless business calls him there he is not likely to make a second visit to Moscow in a lifetime. But one longs to pass many a pleasant day in this city, so curious and yet so homely, with her kindly inhabitants. Why? It would be hard to say in a few words. The city is in too strong a contrast to the forced founding of St. Petersburg. There the hand of man is all in evidence; nothing is refreshing. A great prison fortress of granite blocks surrounded by huts and barracks. Moscow is a product of nature, founded with enthusiasm by its dwellers in response to the open invitation of nature, and adored even with devotion. Even the stranger feels this, even though there is nothing to which he is unaccustomed except the devotion and tenderness of a people to whom he is bound by not a single tie of common association. With whatshudders one wanders through Rome, from Mont Pincio to the Vatican! how one is carried on by the ocean of world history upon the Capitoline, among the excavations of the Forum, among the palace walls of the Palatine! What is to us, in contrast, the Kremlin, this sanctuary of half-Asiatic barbarians? Yes, an exoteric delicacy, nothing else! One cannot free one's self from the charm of these places. Here a good-natured folk has created a jewel-box, gay and dazzlingly ornamented, careless of what the culture of the West has declared beautiful and holy; hither gravitate all the national feelings of a hundred million people; and, finally, all this is created to the harm of no one, to frighten no one, to oppress no one. Here the Czar is not the general-in-chief of so many million bayonets, but "Little Father Czar," who yields the countless holy images and chapels just the same devotion as his lowest muzhik. And here is the past—not alone the brazen, threatening present—the past of a strange people, but a people of lovable individuals, who, besides, are brought nearer to us than many of our nearest neighbors by a literature of unparalleled fidelity to life. One must grow to love this childlike, slow-blooded, and yet care-free people, with their irresistible heartiness. And he who has learned to love the Russians must love their Little Mother Moscow, in spite of, or just on account of, her quietness.

From St. Petersburg an express train brings usto Moscow in thirteen hours. It is always a night train that disposes of this traffic, for the Russian likes to sleep in his comfortable berth. And so we arrive in Moscow in the morning, ready at once to assimilate the first impressions of the enormous city. Our expectancy is great, of course. Moscow, the object of all most Russian! It must differ, at first sight, from all we have as yet seen. But while the hotel omnibus rattles through the streets from the depot but little that is peculiar is to be seen. An affable fellow-passenger explains to us that that is only the foreign business quarter. But now one after another the church cupolas appear, one after another in increasing brightness and variety. At our "Ah!" in expression of our satisfaction, we are instructed that we had better be more sparing of that vowel sound or we might soon become hoarse. Moscow has no less than four hundred and fifty such churches and twenty cloisters in addition. So let us be sparing. But the resolution is hard to keep. A long and mighty wall suddenly rises before us with countless angles, towers, and turrets. The wall is white, the towers are green, and through the gate we see long streets and buildings in all possible colors, dark included. It is Kitay-Gorod, the inner city, with the bazars. Bokhara cannot appear more Asiatic. Now we feel already all that we are about to see. A giant modern hotel almost destroys for us the ensemble. Look quickly to your lodgings and then out again!

We are nicely located. From our windows we see the towers of the Kremlin, which rise above the nearest roofs. Let him who will endure remaining behind double windows! After washing and having some tea we are at the door again, and quickly make a bargain with the "izwozchik" who is to drive us over the outlined tour of the city. Horse and sleigh are a bit smaller than in St. Petersburg, but still very good. And so we are out in the sunshine, off into the snowy landscape, to gain a hurried general conception of the endless city.

For two hours our good little horse draws us, gliding over bridges and pikes, up and down hill, and when we return half frozen to the hotel we have seen scarce a fraction of the periphery, but a thousand teams, with shaggy muzhiks in wicker sleighs, and, still more, little country-houses of wood, which might serve in the West for summer cottages, but which offer an inviting shelter even here in the icy winter. The whole of Moscow is a complex of official municipal buildings which are crowded together into the narrowest space, of churches and palaces narrowly crowded about the Kremlin, and of immense suburbs which lie in rings about the inner town. But these suburbs have a half-country character—broad, uneven streets and low, villa-like houses, with little gardens. Little Mother Moscow gives her children room. They do not have to crowd together in usuriously paying tenements, and houses of more than one story are quite theexception. Even in the shadow of the Kremlin a parterre for the stores and a single story above it are sufficient. Really, only the hotels stretch with three or four stories heavenward. The impression is ever recurring that Moscow has no desire to be a city, and only quite unwillingly yields to the necessity of a crowded existence.

The Kremlin, which we did not lose sight of once on our whole trip, entices us strongly. It lies before us; so let us enter.

Yes, if it were as easily done as said! We cross a broad square, across which lean little horses draw a horse-car high as the first story of a house, and then we stand before buildings which allow us to go no farther. It is the Duma, the city hall, on the left, and the historical museum on the right, both dark-red in color; on the latter the façade is built entirely of darkened stone, so that it gives the impression of the whole being incrusted. The style is to be met with frequently. It belongs to the sixteenth century and is now being revived. The idea of using a coating of Russian enamel as an element of architectural style is a brilliant one. We reach a gate of the high wall surrounding the inner city Kitay-Gorod. But before we pass the gate let us cast a glance at the peculiar doings in the little chapel, scarcely bigger than a room, which is built on its left side. It is the Iberian chapel, with the famed image of the Virgin to which the Czar pays his devotions before he enters the Kremlin.The original, with its genuine precious stones, is now in the city, where for a fee it is brought to sick people. In the mean time a copy takes its place. At the time of the daily excursions of the Virgin the governor-general, Prince Sergius, does not allow the Jews to remain on the streets. The Blessed Virgin may not see upon her way the traces of Jewish feet. Every one crosses himself before her. But most climb the few steps to her and cross themselves again, with deep bendings of the upper body; but some, men as well as women, throw themselves full length upon the ground and touch the earth with their foreheads. The candle trade flourishes; scarcely a soul enters who does not buy a candle and light it before some image. No difference of station can be recognized. The great lady, the high official, the dirty muzhik, all are the same in their worship. Their caps are continually removed, and the rather time-consuming Russian ceremony of making the sign of the cross is performed. But the really pious ones do not content themselves with worshipping before the gate. They do the same thing again when inside.

We reach, finally, the "Red Square," so called because of the red Kremlin wall and the red group of houses at the entrance. We notice again that astonishment does not exactly make one brilliant. An "Ah!" in unison is all that escapes our lips. I believe that then I cried out with enthusiasm, and I should have liked to take by the coat-lapels thepeople who, used to the scene, were indifferently going their ways, and to say to them: "Look, you barbarians! Do you not know what you have here?" Vasili Blazhenny (the Basilius Cathedral)! Many times as one may have seen the curious bit of architecture depicted and dissected, yet when one finally stands before it and allows the gay towers, with their green, red, blue, and yellow cupolas to make their impression, he seems to have entered quite another world, which no longer has a single thing in common with our Western one. A sovereign, glorying fantasy has here been formed and created, apparently without rule, led only by the law of variety; has made wings, doors, and windings, and in the narrowest space unfolded a richness which strikes us dumb, much as our feeling for style struggles against the reversal of all our national laws. One's whole architectural sense leans towards clear relationship of parts, towards rhythm and proportion; the artist of the Basilius Cathedral leans towards intricacy, lack of rhythm, disproportion. He is a colorist, and but a colorist, in contrast to our Renaissance artists, to whom the color seems almost an injury to the delicate line. And yet in all this gay confusion he has held fast to a fundamental feeling which in all the variations keeps returning, as in a joint—yes, just as in the wildest dream some guiding idea like a red thread follows through it all. This motive—I could not help always calling it to myself the Tschibuk motive,after the winding, pearl-set tubes of a Turkish pipe—is carried out with every possible Indian, Persian, and Roman ingredient, and still retains the characteristic Byzantine style. A person would show great partiality to call this building a mad-house, as many an artist has done. One must only be able to free himself for an hour from the dictator of the old taste in order to be able to comprehend the delight of Ivan the Terrible at sight of this architectural orgy. (He gave expression to this delight by having the eyes of the architect put out in order that he might build no second masterpiece like it.) And then again it must be confessed that the task of uniting in narrow space thirteen chapels with thirteen towers could not well have been solved in any other way than in this apparently most untrammelled, fantastic one. If this proposition be accepted, the master of Vasili Blazhenny can only be the object of wonder.

Now Vasili Blazhenny is typical of all Moscow, the Kremlin included. It is the spirit of curious variety, of rich fantasy, the spirit of the South and the East which rules here. The snow one feels to be almost out of place, so Southern is the character of the city. The Kremlin, too, before which we now stand, is a "free-act" work of art, a piece something like the San Marco quarter in Venice, if one thinks of the sea as removed. For the Kremlin must not be thought of as a palace is; it is a whole part of a city, surrounded by a wall twentymetres high, two kilometres long, enclosing an irregular pentagon. It lies on a rather steeply rising hill on the bank of the Moskva, and commands the whole region round about. Its beauty is not to be enjoyed in the interior of the many churches, palaces, and barracks, although there is enough worth seeing there, too. It only opens up from the balcony of the Ivan Veliky tower, or from the bastion where the colossal monument of Alexander stands. But the most beautiful view of the whole complex is from the far bank of the Moskva, where the high wall, with its countless towers and cupolas, seems like the birth of an Oriental dream-fantasy. It shines and lightens in all colors, looks into the air, and speaks kindly greetings to all below; one could simply sit and clap one's hands for joy. But to the Russian this little jewel-box is by no means a plaything. On the contrary, he very respectfully bares his head and ceases not to cross himself. For "above Moscow is only the Kremlin, and above the Kremlin is only heaven." Within, however, the muzhik regains his childlikeness, and when he stands before the enormous cannon—"the Czar of Cannon," an old bronze gun—he invariably climbs upon the pyramid of giant balls which stands before it, climbs aloft and gapes into the yard-wide mouth of the gun. And under no circumstances does he neglect to creep into the hole of the "Queen of the Bells," which is in front of the Ivan Veliky, in which there is room for two hundred people.

We who are not childlike muzhiks may not allow ourselves such diversions; we must conscientiously see all the wonders of this greatest of all rarities, a thing which will consume at least a day. We spare the reader our experiences. Even the treasure-chamber with the coronation insignia and jewels big as one's fist cannot inveigle us into a description—all that could be seen in Berlin or Vienna.

Finally, the wonderful beauty of the colossal Church of the Deliverer must here be spoken of. The work is too unique in its nature to allow of being passed over in silence. The church is built apart, is visible afar, and forms the glorious completion of the Kremlin picture seen from the Moskva. In its mighty height, with its colossal, gilded domes, of which the middle one measures thirty metres in diameter, it lightens like a promise of the light the gay, romantic air of the Kremlin. Fifty-eight high reliefs in marble ornament the façade, sixty windows give bright light to the interior, colored still more golden by the light of countless candles. The magnificence of the central nave, entirely of gold and marble, is simply overpowering, and the golden and silver garments of the patriarchs would be quite unnecessary in giving us the strongest impression of the enormous riches of the Russian Church. Together with the Cathedral of Isaac, in St. Petersburg, this church is well calculated to compete with St. Peter's, in Rome. But I believethat one should refrain from the comparison. The expression "Roma tatae!" comes from Madame de Staël, and was, within certain bounds, approved by Moltke, who would call Moscow a Russian Rome. But I must, with all due modesty, demur. Too many undertones vibrate in our souls at the word "Rome" to allow us to consider any sort of comparison. But for a Russian? Who knows where the awe of eternity touches him deeper, before St. Peter's or before this Church of the Deliverer?

But no, such a question may not be put. Muzhik and kupetz, farmer and small merchant, have absolutely no understanding of Rome—no beauty impresses them, only the barbaric pomp with the costliness of the materials. But the cultured Russian feels just as we do, and will not seek the elements which make mighty the word "Rome" anywhere else on earth. And those that I spoke to in Moscow itself would have given a good deal of the peculiarity of their country for a breath of European atmosphere. Continuity between the time of Ivan the Terrible and the present does not exist for these nobles, lawyers, and journalists of Moscow. They endure with polite but painful resignation our delight in the fantasticness of their Kremlin, their churches and cloisters. It does not flatter them in the least that they are curiosities for Western people, like the Baschkirs and Tatars, for instance; and they will not hear of their being condemned to continue a life in Russian style, apartfrom Europe. This extreme enthusiasm for the autochthonous, which is often enough only an antiquated product of chance, is, after all, a romantic reaction and nothing else. It has long been proved that the Gothic which awakened such exclusive enthusiasm in the days of the Germanic Romance is not Gothic at all, but French. And so Russia has no reason at all for considering her style, which is really Byzantine, all-sufficient. Byzantine, however, is the contrast to Europe, whose past has led by way of Rome and Wittenberg to the Paris of 1789. And so progressive Moscow seeks freedom from Byzantium. While I was pretty deeply imbued with things Russian, it was suggested to me to see a play in the "Artists' Theatre," and then to say whether Moscow was really quite Russian and Asiatic. I followed this advice and had no reason to regret it.

They were right in advising me to go to the theatre in order to correct my impression that Moscow was a thorough-going Russian city. A hotel, for instance, proves nothing at all concerning the character of a town. It betrays at most the year of its erection, for to-day, the world over, building is done in the recognized "modern style."[12]Even this or that elegant street indicates nothing. There the imitation of patterns seen elsewhere plays too great a rôle. But the theatre which is to survive must adapt itself to the ruling taste to such an extent that it can be considered really characteristic of it.

Now the "Artists' Theatre"—or, as it is called because of the "secessionistic"[12]arrangement, the "Decadent Theatre"—of Moscow is really unique, and by the preferences of the theatre public one can very well recognize the quality and quantity of the intelligence of a city. With respect to picturesqueness of staging, it is distinctly the superiorof the Meininger Theatre; and, as far as scenery and purity of style are concerned, it can well compare with the most up-to-date stages. To be sure, inquiry should not be made into the distribution of the individual rôles; to some extent this is worse than mediocre. I saw "Julius Cæsar" played where the conspirators seemed to feel it necessary to yell out their plans in the night with all their might. But, in contrast to this, the palace of the emperor was represented with a fidelity which could not have been exceeded in Rome itself; and the same with the Forum, and with the generals' tent at Philippi. The choruses were simply captivating in their execution.

But more interesting to me than the play was the audience. And the audience, composed entirely of the educated middle class, knew quite as well how to judge what was success and what failure in the performance as any of the better audiences of a Vienna or a Berlin theatre. And the foyer, very appealingly decorated by the simplest artistic means with scenes from the history of the Russian drama and with many portraits of writers and actors, was visited and enjoyed by the audience in the intermission. If I had not continually heard about me the sounds of a strange speech, and had not seen here and there a Russian student uniform, it never would have occurred to me that I was in the very heart of Russia, so far as culture was concerned.

It was the same, too, in the families with whichI spent my evenings. If anything, only the heartiness with which one is received is gratefully at variance with our habits of careful reserve towards strangers. But these hearty and hospitable people who at once lead us to the samovar are by no means backwoodsmen, but are most intimately in touch with all the advantages of the world, and they have uncommonly keen powers of observation. The visiting European who might think himself in a position to act among them would quickly become aware that the Russian writers, who astonish us by their deep psychological insight, have not picked up their art by the wayside. It is hidden in the most charming little formalities, which in Moscow, in particular, simply charmed me. Nowhere the slightest cant, nowhere the slightest false display, nowhere the forced enthusiasm for culture which makes certain circles of our great cities so repulsive to us. Naturalness is the pervading note in Moscow social life. But literary and art interests are a matter of course in a society which is scarcely paralleled by the English in its demand for reviews. To-day, of course, every other interest is forced to the wall by politics. I have been present at gatherings in the best circles of people of culture at which even the young had scarcely any interest save in political questions. Even little declamations with which the individual guests distinguished themselves were spiced with political allusions, and were enjoyed by young and old just because of this spice.

Yet Moscowism has, in a sense, a bad reputation. It is held to be the embodiment of the Russian reaction against every attempt of a civilizing nature which emanates from St. Petersburg. Of the lesser citizens, or the old-fashioned merchants at times, this may even to-day be true. The nobility in the Moscow government, however, the university, and the members of the few professions such as medicine and the law, are much less circumspect and free-minded in their political criticism than their contemporaries in St. Petersburg, for instance. Such an opposition organ as theRusskiya Vyedomostidoes not exist in St. Petersburg. There is also, to be sure, a sharp contrast between the intelligence of Moscow and that of official St. Petersburg; but this contrast is anything but one between reaction and progress. It is worth while to examine it more closely.

The present Russian régime has preserved only the despotism of the enlightened despotism of Peter; the enlightenment has vanished. The wisdom of the government consists solely in the obstruction of popular education. The means to this end is the police, with their relentless crusade against any intelligence of a trend not quite orthodox in its attitude towards the state and the ruling spirit of the old régime in the corruption of all the elements of the higher strata of society. Demoralization is encouraged, so to say, by official circles. Just as among the peasants a man caught reading hisBible is held in suspicion, so in St. Petersburg a young man makes himself subject to the displeasure of the authorities if he does not take his part in the "diversions of youth." A lordly contempt for humanity is accordingly the prerequisite for every career in that Northern Paris. The pursuit of fortune has never a conscience, least of all where it appears in military form. Thereesprit de corpsand dignity of position displace to a degree of absolute hostility all morality. Elegantly and fashionably clothed, one is always ready to wager one's life, or rather to throw it into the balance, for the most valueless stake. One is irreligious and anti-moral on principle, but of the strictest outward orthodoxy and monarchical to the very marrow.

It is to this anti-moral (anti-democratic) superficial superciliousness[13]that Moscow forms a contrast in each and every particular. Here one is benevolent, democratic, hearty, and intentionally modest in appearance. Here, too, there appears to be less struggling. The kupetz (small merchant) is rich as can be, but he lingers in his little store with narrow entrances, and never has a thought of laying aside his caftan, the ancestral overcoat, or his high boots, into which are stuffed the ends of his trousers. But it is not exactly this merchant whom I should like to cite as an example of my point, for it is just he who has brought uponMoscow the reputation for being hostile to progress. But there is probably some connection between the resistance which the nobility of Moscow offers to St. Petersburg customs and the obstinate self-sufficiency of the merchant with his old-fashioned views. Just as this kupetz does not allow himself to be dazzled by the elegant-looking clerk of the St. Petersburg merchant, but clings to his ancestral ways, so the Moscow nobleman is not dazzled by the elegance of the dressy St. Petersburg officer of the guards. People dress elegantly in Moscow, too—yes, even in the Parisian style. But the contemptible inhumanity of the struggling official of St. Petersburg does not appeal to the Moscowite as civilizational progress, but as a metropolitan degeneracy to be despised. And so among the bright people of Moscow patriarchal heartiness is preserved. It was not a matter of pure chance that Leo Tolstoï spent so many winters in Moscow society. In St. Petersburg he would not have stayed.

The most beautiful creation of this conscious devotion to Moscow is the donation of a simple merchant, the possession of which any city of the world might envy—the Tretyakov Gallery, the largest and most valuable private collection that exists anywhere. A knowledge of it is absolutely indispensable to the historian of modern Russian painting. The Alexander Museum of St. Petersburg has isolated magnificent pieces of Ryepin, Aiwasowsky,and the most beautiful sculptures of Antokolski; but it cannot be compared with the two thousand pieces of the Tretyakov Gallery. The founder gave, besides this invaluable collection, a building for it, and a fund, from the interest of which, even after his death, the collection might be augmented. Admission, of course, is free to all; even fees for coat checks may not be collected of its visitors.

In this gallery one realizes for the first time that Russian painting is about at par with Russian literature, that it also has its Tolstoïs, Turgenyevs, and Dostoyevskys. Above all, there is Ilya Ryepin with a whole collection of portraits and large genre pictures. I have tried to sketch some of those works of art elsewhere in a special article devoted to this greatest of Russian artists, and will not repeat myself here. Let me only mention the portraits of Leo Tolstoï, copies of which can now be found in the West. The poet is here depicted once behind the plough and again barefoot in his garden, his hands in his belt, his head thoughtfully sunk upon his breast. It is the best picture of Tolstoï that exists. Once, while I was walking up and down in conversation with the poet in his room at Yasnaya Polyana, I had to bite my tongue in order to suppress the remark, "Now you look as if you had been cut from the canvas of Ryepin." Ryepin may be compared as a portrait-painter with the very foremost artists of all times. The strength of his characters is simply unequalled.

But the Russians appear to me particularly great in the field of realistic genre and of landscape painting, just as in their literature, which never leaves the firm ground of observation; and just for that reason it is perfectly unique in the catching of every little event, of every feeling and atmosphere peculiar to the landscape. Among the painters of the last quarter of the nineteenth century who already have worked under Ryepin's influence, there is no longer any insidiousness of coloring. Everything is seen clearly and strongly reproduced. No Düsseldorferie and no anecdote painting. Of course, they did not shun a subject useful in itself, and they by no means avoid a slight political tendency. But they are no less artists because they disdain to beg of the fanatics of "art for art's sake" the right to the name of artists by an exclusion of all but purely neutral subjects. On the contrary, in the naïveté in which they show themselves in their art as human beings of their time, they let it be known that the problem "art for art's sake" is for them without any meaning, since with them it is an axiom that they desire to influence only through the medium of their art; and yet they judge every work of art first of all in accordance with its artistic qualities. Only they do not allow themselves by an apparently neutral, but in reality a reactionary, doctrine to be hindered from the expression of their sympathy for everything liberal, free, and human.

There is, for instance, a picture there by Doroschenko which bears the harmless title "Everywhere is life." It might, yes, it ought really to hang in the gallery of the Parisian, for it is a work of Christian spirit. Convicts are feeding doves from the railroad car which is carrying them into exile. As a painting it is excellent. The light falls full upon the whirring pigeons in the foreground and upon the convicts pressing their faces against the iron bars of the window of the car. One sees through the window, and notices on the far side of the car another barred window at which a man is standing and looking out. The interior of the car is almost dark. The group of convicts in the foreground consists of a young man, evidently the guilty one, and his wife, who is following him into exile with their year-old child on her bosom. For the sake of the child, and to please him, they are feeding the doves. A bearded old man looks on pleased, and a dark-bearded younger man, too, whom one might sooner believe guilty of some slight misdeed. But upon the face of all these exiles lies so childlike a brightness, so evident a sympathetic pleasure in the joy of the child, that one rather doubts their guilt than the fact that they are still capable of good-natured human feelings. And yet this picture of Christian pity has not been bought for the Parisian. For it is well understood, in spite of its harmless title, what its meaning is. "Everywhere is life" should read, "Everywhere is pity, everywhere humanity,except among the police, in the state, and in an autocracy." What guilt can these good little folk have committed—looking there so kindly at a child that cooingly feeds the doves—that they should be torn from their native hearth and be sent to the icy deserts of Siberia? The young father—perhaps he went among the people teaching that a farmer was a man as well as the policeman (pristav). And one thinks with a shudder of the two thousand political convicts of the year before that were sent into the department of Irkutsk....

Such is the Russian genre. It is full of references, but is never a mere illustration of some tendency or other. The painter does not make the solution of his problem easy, and does not speculate on the cooperative comprehension of the observer, who is satisfied if he finds his thoughts indicated. No, such a Russian genre picture is perfect in the characteristic of the heads, in perspective, in the distribution of light and atmosphere. The purely picturesque, to be sure, is more evident in the landscape. And in this the Russians do astonishing work. They have the eye of the child of nature for the peculiarities of the landscape—an eye which we in the West must train again. What west European writer could have been in a position to write nature studies like Leo Tolstoï'sCossacks, or like the "Hay Harvest" fromAnna Karenina? And one might also ask, What west European has so studied the forest like Schischkin, the sea likeAiwasowsky, the river and the wind like Levitan? There is a picture of Schischkin's in the Tretyakov Gallery, "Morning in the Pine Forest." A family of bears busy themselves about an enormous fallen, splintered pine. Everything is alive; the comical little brown fellows are quite as true to nature as the moss in the foreground and the veil of mist before the trees in the background.

Strange to say, Schischkin is stronger in his etchings than in his oil-paintings, the colors of which are always a little too dry. But his etchings, which I could enjoy in their first prints, thanks to the goodness of the senator Reutern in St. Petersburg, are real treasures in sentiment and character. He is, if one may express it so, the psychologist of the trees. A tree on the dunes is a whole tragedy from the lives of the pines.

Aiwasowsky, the virtuoso of the troubled sea, is more effective than the quiet Schischkin. His storms at sea, with their transparent waves, actually drive terror into the onlooker. The Black Sea has been the favorite object of his pictures. There all the furies seem to be let loose in order to frighten fisher and sailor. And these floods shine and shimmer; they are as if covered with a transparent light. Levitan, again, has understood the charm of the calm surface of a small body of water as no one else. His brush is dipped in feeling. The beauty of his pictures cannot be reproduced in words. He seems to have a special sense-organ for the shades of theatmosphere. It is a pity that he died so very young.

The collection of Vereschtschagin has now obtained a particularly enhanced value because of the awful death of the master. The Tretyakov Gallery has, with the exception of the Napoleonic pictures which ornament the Alexander Museum, almost the whole life-work of the artist. His work has only recently been universally appreciated. The power of the versatile man was astonishing; his philanthropic turn of mind and his epigrammatic spirit give spice to his pictures; but of him, first of all, perhaps, it might be said that he used his art for purposes foreign to it in spite of all artistic treatment. For it was seldom the artistic problem that charmed him. Only his Oriental color studies are to a certain extent free from ulterior purposes.

It is difficult to choose from this abundance of good masters, and particularly to name those whom one should know above the others. Pictures cannot easily be made so accessible as books, and the contents of a picture does not permit of being told at all. And so I content myself with mentioning again the names of Ryepin, Schischkin, Levitan, and Aiwasowsky, and then those of the portrait-painter Kramskoi, the landscape-painter Gay, and the master of genre painting, Makowski. And to any one whose path ever leads him to Moscow, a visit to the Tretyakov Gallery is most urgentlyrecommended. A people which produces such artists in every field as the Russian has not only the right to the strongest self-consciousness, and to the general sympathy of people of culture, but, above all, it has the right to be respected by its rulers and not to be handled like a horde of slaves.

But, in spite of it all, light has not dawned upon those in power. You may resolve as often as you will in Russia not to bother, for the space of a day, with the everlasting police, but, in spite of all, you will be continually coming into contact with them. Our path from the Tretyakov Gallery to the hotel leads past a long, barrack-like building. We ask our companion its object. He at once tells us something of interest. First, the giant building is the manége, the drill-room for the soldiers in bad weather. Its arched roof lies upon the walls without any interior support. The weight of the roof is so great that already the walls in many places have sagged and have had to be reinforced. Architects had suggested alterations, which, however, would have cost countless thousands. Such an expenditure could not be tolerated, and in the mean time the evil increased. Already they were about to take a costly bite from the sour apple, when a small peasant appeared and promised for a hundred rubles to arrange matters in a single night. He simply bored, in the top of the leaden roof, a hole, through which the air could circulate, and immediately the roof lay like a feather upon the walls withoutendangering them any longer by its weight. Such is the story of the Moskvich. Whether or not it is true, or is held to be so by people who know about such things, I do not venture to judge. But it seemed to me interesting enough to be told. But what interested me still more was the subsidiary use to which the building is put. It is near the university. Now if a student disorder arises, they manage to surround the students by Cossacks and drive them into this manége, where they are held behind lock and key, by thousands, until the worshipful officials have sought out those which may most to their purpose be called revolutionists. Chance wills that generally the Jews are held, since Herr von Plehve needs statistical proof for his theory of a purely Jewish opposition.

His accusations may have served him among those above him, but not among those below him. I found that in Moscow itself dealings between the intelligent Christians and the few Jews who are allowed upon the street were most hearty. The political bitterness, the desperate fight against the régime, unites them all; after the Russian custom they exchange, embrace, and kiss at every meeting, Jew or Christian, provided they only be friends. It was for me, a Westerner, an interesting and mortifying sight to see how young Russian nobles with world-famous names kissed on the mouth and cheek in welcome and in farewell their Jewish friends. With this impression I took my departurefrom Moscow. Terrible as the political pressure may be, the people have preserved one thing in this prison—their humanity. And thus they will one day attain happiness, just as they are in many things already happier than we, because they have remained human. For a well-known authoress, who begged me to write a few words in her album, I wrote the words which I shall here repeat, because they contain the sum of my Russian impressions, particularly after the pleasing days in Moscow: "Russia is a sack, but it is inhabited by human beings. The West is free, but it knows almost none but business-men. I often almost believe that we ought to envy them...."

FOOTNOTES:[12]Referring to a modern independent art movement in Europe.[13]Ubermenschenthum. Cf. philosophy of Nietzsche

[12]Referring to a modern independent art movement in Europe.

[13]Ubermenschenthum. Cf. philosophy of Nietzsche

From Moscow an accommodation train goes in one night to Tula, capital of the government of the same name. The infallibleBaedekeradvises the traveller to leave the train there, because it is hard to get a team at the next station, Kozlovka, though Kozlovka is nearer to Yasnaya Polyana, the estate of the poet, than is Tula. I follow myBaedekerblindly, because I have always had to repent when I departed from its advice. The GermanBaedekerdeserves the highest credit for taking the trouble to give this information to the few travellers that make the pilgrimage to Leo Tolstoï. For it is not to be supposed that Tolstoï is overrun. His family guard his retirement, and do not grant admittance to every one. I was, in fact, the only stranger who found his way there during the entire week. It was, indeed, a very special introduction which opened the gates to me.

The train reaches Tula at eight in the morning. Thoughtful friends had given me a card in Russian to the station-master to help me to find a driver who knew the way. The station-master could not,however, decipher the card, and did not understand my French. A colonel of Cossacks then helped me out. He had already been talking with the official, and now asked me if I could not speak German a little. When I assented he immediately played the interpreter. In a few minutes a muzhik was found who, with his small sleigh and shaggy, big-boned pony, had made the journey many times. The amiable Cossack then accepted an invitation to breakfast in the clean station, and we chatted for a while over our tea. He was a tall, fair-haired man, with kindly blue eyes and the short Slavonic nose. His conversation, however, emphatically contradicted his appearance. He was on his way to the Ural, where he was to meet his regiment, and talked about the bayonets of his Cossacks being bent because the men spit the "Kakamakis" (Japanese) and threw them over their shoulders. He was delighted that I was a German, for the Russians think the Germans very good fellows at present. Only the English are a bad lot—"Jew Englishmen!" Leo Tolstoï, he said, was a man of great genius, but it wasn't nice that he was an atheist. I interrupted him, laughing:

"I don't wish to be personal, colonel, but Leo Tolstoï is a much better Christian than you."

"How's that?"

I explained to him that Tolstoï wishes to reestablish the primitive Christianity and is the enemy only of the church and of the priests. The goodfellow was immediately satisfied. If it were nothing worse than that—no Russian could endure the priests. They were all rascals. The missionaries in China had turned all their girls' schools into harems. Only the dissenting priests led a moral life.

It was the talk of a big, thoroughly lovable child, in whom even the thirst for fighting was not unbecoming. Who knows whether the bullets of the "Kakamakis" have not already found him out! I spoke later to the good Tolstoï of this conversation. He also is persuaded that only right teaching is needed to turn these essentially good-hearted people from the business of murder. At present war is merely a hunting adventure for them. They form no conception of the sufferings of the defeated.

Deeply buried in furs and robes, we glided at last over the glittering snow. The city of Tula, which would have been interesting at another time on account of its metal industry, was a matter of indifference at the moment. We quitted it on the left and struck at once into the road to Yasnaya Polyana. The distance before us was almost fifteen versts (ten miles); our pony had, therefore, to make good time if it was to bring us, over all the hills covered with soft snow, to our destination before noon. A Russian horse, however, can stand a good deal, so I did not need to interrupt by inopportune consideration for animals the thoughts which surgedthrough my brain more and more as we came near the end of the journey. A meeting with Tolstoï is such an incomparable privilege for me—will fate permit me thoroughly to enjoy the moments? And if he is not the man I expect to find, if one of the great again unmasks before me as aposeur—who appears great and admirable only at a distance—how many illusions have I still to lose? May not his apostleship be merely a self-suggested idea obstinately clung to? Is not his tardy religious bent, perhaps, mere hypochondria, fear of the next world, preparation for death? A look with his eyes must show me. I must learn from the sound of his voice whether my inner ear deceives me when I hear the ring of sincerity in the primeval force of his diction. I know I cannot deceive myself. If the concept I have formed of him is corrected even in the least point by the reality, that is the end of my secret worship.

We turned in at last between two stone pillars at the park of Yasnaya Polyana. Below, beside the frozen pond, we saw a youthful figure advancing with the light step of an officer surrounded by a pack of baying and leaping dogs. Yet, if my eyes did not deceive me, a gray beard flowed over the breast of this slender, boyish figure. He stopped, shaded his eyes with his hand, and looked towards our sleigh. Then he turned back. It was he.

We had hardly reached the house and beenunwrapped from our furs and overshoes by the servants, when the door of the low vestibule opened, and there, in muzhik smock and fur, high boots and tall fur cap, as we knew him from a thousand pictures, Leo Tolstoï stood before us and held out a friendly hand.

While he, motioning away the servants, pulled off his knee-high felt overshoes, I had opportunity to look at him. That is to say, my eyes at first were held by the head alone, with its softly curling gray hair, which flows, parted, to the neck. Thick, bushy, gray brows shade the deep-set, blue eyes and sharply define an angular, self-willed forehead. The nose is strong, slender above, broad and finely modelled in the nostrils. The long, gray mustache completely covers the mobile mouth. A waving white beard, parted in the middle, flows from the hoary cheeks to the shoulders. The head is not broad—rather, it might be called narrow—wholly unslavonic, and is well poised. The broad, strongly built shoulders have a military erectness. The powerful body is set on slender hips. A narrow foot is hidden in the high Russian boot and moves elastically. The step and carriage are youthful. An irony of fate will have it that the bitterest foe of militarism betrays in his whole appearance the former officer. The man in the peasant's dress is in every movement thegrand seigneur.

We were still standing in the vestibule, which serves also as a cloak-room. The count thrust bothhands in his belt—well-shaped, powerful hands—and asked in faultless German my plan for the day. I felt the gentle eyes on my face as he spoke. The look is beaming and kindly. One is not pierced, only illuminated. Yet one feels distinctly that nothing is hidden from those quiet, kindly eyes. I answered that I should return to Moscow at midnight, and until then would under no consideration disturb him in his work. He told me, thereupon, to send back my sleigh, since he would have us driven at night to the station in his own. He would have no refusal to our eating breakfast before we withdrew to the room assigned us. The countess, he said, was in Moscow at the time, but the youngest daughter would soon return from the village school, where she taught. He would leave her to entertain us until luncheon. I should say here that my wife accompanied me on this wintry journey, as on the whole journey of investigation. Tolstoï himself would keep to his usual programme—would look over his mail, write a promised article, rest a little in the afternoon, then ride, and from dinner—that is, from six o'clock—until midnight would be at my disposal. Then he led us to a large room on the first floor. Here stood a long table, which remains spread all day. Tea and eggs were brought. Before withdrawing, however, the count sat with us awhile, asked with the tact of a man of the world about personal matters—the number of our children and how they were cared for in our absence,and the friends in Moscow who had introduced us to him—all in a low, musical voice which banished all embarrassment. Then he rose with a slight bow and walked to his room. At the door, however, he turned and came back to ask whether we brought any news of the war. It was just in the pause after the first catastrophe at Port Arthur. We were obliged, therefore, to say no. Then the servant appeared and led us back to the ground floor, where we were shown into two connecting rooms. We had time to record our first impressions.

The worst was over. There was no fear of disillusion. That was gone like a cloud of smoke. The infinite kindliness of his eyes, the gentleness of his hand-shake, the beauty of the silvery head exert a fascination. There can be no doubt of his complete sincerity. The mind is filled with an entirely new feeling, that of astonishment at the unpretentious peacefulness of this fighter, who, from the stern seriousness of his latest writings, and from his current portraits, might be taken for a philosophizing pessimist. Whatever titanic thoughts may work in this head, which looks like one of Michael Angelo's, all that is visible is a glow of serene and holy peace, which gently relaxes the tension of our own souls also. The ever-disturbing thought that we might find in the count a recluse and an eccentric—if one may use such profane expressions in connection with this illustrious man—a fanatic on the subject of woollen underclothing and a return tonature in foods, was set at rest from the first moment of meeting. The count is no eccentric, but a polished man in spite of the convenient dress of the muzhik. The peasant dress is simply the one that has proved best for his intercourse with the country people. Moreover, there is a noticeable difference between the well-cut and well-fitting coat of Tolstoï and that of the ragged peasant. I must confess that the setting at rest of even this little misgiving was of value to me. For, as people are in this world, they will not take even a saint seriously if he wraps himself in external eccentricities—if he has not good taste. Leo Tolstoï decidedly has good taste. Only he is great enough and strong enough not to submit to the tyranny of fashion. I should like, however, to see the man who felt the least suggestion of worldly superiority in talking with him. Truly the count is not the man whom any fop in the consciousness of his English tailor would presume to patronize. Perhaps, unconsciously to himself, and certainly against his will, it is unmistakably to be seen in him that he once had the idea of beingcomme il faut, as he tells in hisChildhood and Youth. However insignificant this circumstance may be in the worldwide fame of Leo Tolstoï, it must be mentioned, simply because the legend of the muzhik's smock may too easily create an entirely false impression of the personality of the poet. In spite of all the kindly simplicity of his bearing, no one can for amoment escape the impression that here speaks a distinguished man in every sense of the term.

The rooms allotted to us were parts of his large library. On a shelf I found the carefully kept catalogue of the fourteen cases, with each book on a separate slip. A glance through one of the glass doors showed me English, French, German, and Russian books; my eye even fell on a Danish grammar. There stood side by side a work on Leonardo da Vinci, Björnson'sÜber unsere Kraft, Marcel Prévost'sVierges Fortes, Jules Verne'sJourney to the Centre of the Earth, Spinoza, Renan, a book of travel by Vámbéry, a book of entomology, Buffon—the most different sorts of books, and obviously much used. The count is able to accomplish such an achievement in reading only by a careful division of the day, not to say a military exactness and thoroughness, pushed perhaps to pedantry, in all his doings. Later, in speaking with me, he used the familiar phrase, "Genius is eternal patience." He has this patience. It is well known how he works—that he has his first conception copied on the type-writer, then corrected, then copied again, and so on until the work satisfies him. On the day of my visit this man of seventy-five took an early morning walk of an hour and a half, looked over his large mail, wrote an English article upon the war, rode two full hours in the afternoon with the thermometer at six, worked again, and remained in almost uninterrupted conversation with us from sixo'clock until midnight. He spoke German most of the time, rarely French. At the end of the exceedingly intense conversation he was just as youthfully elastic as at the beginning; indeed, in the late night hours his eyes first began to glow with a light of inspiration which no one who has once seen it can ever forget. In addition to the great thoroughness of all his action and the strict division of the day, a vital energy which must be called truly phenomenal is also most essentially characteristic of his personality. Leo Tolstoï is a giant in psychical and intellectual strength, as he must once have been in physical strength also. It is not purely accidental that the two heroes in whom he has pictured himself most unmistakably—Peter, inWar and Peace, and Levin, inAnna Karenina—are large, strong men of unusual productive capacity.

It was not yet noon when the door opened and a supple, laughing creature burst in like a whirlwind and ran up the stairs, filling the house with music. Soon afterwards the servant summoned us to luncheon. When we went up-stairs the laughing singer with the voice like a silver bell met us at the door of the dining-room. It was the Countess Alexandra Lvovna, or, as she is known in the house, Sasha, a blooming, beautiful blonde, with her father's brows above great, wide-open, blue eyes. The Countess Sasha does not speak German. She did the honors of the luncheon in the absence of her father, who did not appear, since it is his custom not to interrupt his work at this time. Therefore another inmate of the house was present, a Circassian, a talented artist who had nursed the count in the Crimea and since then has remained in the family. She makes herself useful now by filing the count's correspondence. She speaks only Russian, however, so that she could take no part in the conversation.

Naturally, we spoke only of the countess's father.His health the preceding year had been very weak from attacks of malaria and typhus, and even now the family were constantly anxious about him. For he does not spare himself in the least, and will not take his advanced years into consideration at all. For twenty years he has not eaten a morsel of meat. What appeared to be cutlets, which I saw him eat later, were made of baked rice. I cautiously led the conversation to a former inmate of the house, who, in an indiscreet book upon the family of the count, made the assertion that the count was only nominally a vegetarian, but occasionally made up for his abstinence by secretly eating tender beefsteaks. It would mean nothing in and of itself if a habitual meat-eater, after going over to vegetarianism in a general way, should now and then indulge the craving for meat. The secrecy of the indulgence, however, would be a piece of that hypocrisy of which the count is accused by his most obstinate enemies. We received from the countess, however, an explanation of the circumstances in regard to the German woman's book. Since the Tolstoï family, however, have long since pardoned the repentant authoress, it would be indelicate of me to publish the ancient history. Leo Tolstoï is no hypocrite. He does not even consider it a duty to be a vegetarian. All the rest of his family, including the Countess Sasha, eat meat. Tolstoï finds, however, that a vegetable diet agrees with him, and he therefore adheres to it withoutwishing to convert anybody else to the same belief, as vegetarians are accustomed to do. The count, in general, does not try to make any converts, brings no pressure to bear on any one. Everybody may live exactly as he chooses, even in the bosom of the count's family. The Countess Sasha said, touchingly, "The only thing we can learn from him is whether a thing pleases him or not. That is enough, however, at least for me."

Nothing could be more touching than the relations between this last child remaining at home and her father. She hangs on his words. Every wish of his, spoken half aloud, is quickly and silently fulfilled by her. Since the marriage of the Countess Tatyana she has been his secretary, and her white hands operate the typewriter like those of the oldest amanuensis. She trills a little French song at the same time, and blushes to the neck when any one catches her at it and speaks of her sweet voice and accurate ear. Work for her father is a higher satisfaction to her. She subordinates herself completely to his thoughts. She used to be, like every one else, a lover of Shakespeare, but since she copied the latest work of her father upon, or rather against, Shakespeare, she has been convinced and converted by his arguments. She said this without any affectation, with the sincerity of a child. It is to be seen that the deep tenderness of her love for her father springs from her care of him. She trembles for him. Perhaps she exerts herself, too, to replace all thebrothers and sisters who have gone out from the home. Of nine living children—there were originally thirteen—she is the last. It is easy to see, too, how much the careful precautions of this daughter please the count. When his eyes rest on her face, beautiful with the distinction of race and maidenhood, it is as if a ray of light passed over his face. He does this, however, as if by stealth. His love is shy, as is hers.

Soon after luncheon the count sent me an invitation to join him. He had paused in his work to eat a few mouthfuls. Meanwhile we might chat. We again sat at the same table. The talk turned on the war, against which the count was just writing an article. He made the observation that the right-minded Russian was in a remarkable position. He contradicted all human feelings in wishing a defeat for his own nation. The bitterest misfortune that Russia could meet, however, would be the continuance of the present criminal régime, which demands so many victims, inflicts so much suffering upon Russia, and which, in case of victory, would only be strengthened. Quite recently he had received a letter from a highly gifted writer, a certain Semionov, whom he himself had discovered and taught. Semionov, a peasant, had been a janitor in Moscow, but on Tolstoï's advice had returned to his father, and had written a little volume of stories, which Tolstoï rates higher than those of Gorki. Now the gendarmes have confiscated everything he has, and, ifI am not mistaken, have even arrested the writer. The pressure, the count says, is unendurable. I told him of my meeting with the Cossack colonel in Tula and of the hotel servants in Moscow, who one and all wished to go to the scene of war for the sake of plunder. "Certainly," answered the count. "The soldier must rejoice over every war, for war gives him for the first time a kind of title to existence in his own eyes. As to these house-servants and waiters, however, who are so ready to take part in the war, their love of fighting is nothing but common love of stealing. The Europeans have rioted and plundered shamefully in China. The people of the lower classes suffer from these things, and thus all their evil instincts are awakened."

I told the count of the officially arranged patriotic demonstrations in St. Petersburg, of which I had been a witness, and in which alcohol had played its part.

"Yes, intoxication!" said the count; "they need that to make people forget that killing, robbery, and plunder are sins. If people only came to their senses they could no longer do these things; for nineteen hundred years of Christianity, however falsified, leave their trail in the consciousness of man, and make it impossible for him to rage like the heathen. But everything is done to suppress religion. Our upper classes have already completely lost religious consciousness. They either say 'Away with this nonsense!' and become grossmaterialists, or they remain orthodox and do not themselves know what they believe—stupid stuff about the world's being created in six days and lasting only six thousand years. This trash, which is taught the people as religion—that is to say, belief in the schools—is just as much a means of hindering religion as a superficial knowledge of science. Yet religion alone can free us from our evils, from war and violence, and bring men together again. Religion is at present in a latent condition in every one, and needs only to be developed. And this religion is the same for all, for the native religious consciousness is quite the same in all men. But the churches prevent this unity, and bury this religious consciousness under forms and dogmas which produce a sort of stupefaction instead of satisfying the religious hunger."

I repeated the amusing remark of the Cossack colonel of Tula, that Tolstoï was a great man, only that it was a pity that he was an atheist.

The poet laughed, with something like pain in the laugh.

"There is always a certain amount of truth in which people believe, only it is misunderstood. To that good Cossack faith and orthodoxy are identical. My own sister, who is in a convent, laments that her brother asserts that the Gospel is the worst book that has ever been written. The truth is that I made this assertion about the legends of the saints, but it is misquoted. The authorities know what Ithink of the Gospel. They have even struck out of the Sermon on the Mount two verses which I put into an alphabet for the people."

"Who struck them out?" I asked.

"The censor, to be sure. An orthodox Christian censorship strikes out of the Sermon on the Mount two verses which do not suit it. This is called Christianity."

The authorities give the Tolstoï family the greatest difficulty in its work of educating the people. The village school was suppressed, because reading and writing were taught there and not orthodoxy. The instruction which the Countess Sasha now gives is quite unsystematic. Five children come to her at the old manor, and are taught the black arts of reading, writing, arithmetic, and manual training, in constant danger that some high authority will interfere to ward off this injury to the state.

"It is quite probable that we shall all be officially disciplined when my father is no longer living," the Countess Sasha said to us, with that calmness with which every one in Russia sacrifices himself to his convictions.

There was nothing pastoral, likewise nothing exalted, in Tolstoï's manner during this conversation. After finishing his luncheon he rose and walked up and down the long dining-room with me, both hands in his belt, as he is painted by Ryepin. He spoke conversationally, with noespecial emphasis on any word, as to one whom there is no need of convincing. It was the afternoon conversation of an intelligent country gentleman with his guest—the easy, matter-of-course talking in a minute of resting—talk that is not meant to go deep or to philosophize. To me it proved only the lively interest taken by Tolstoï in all the events of the day. He was not at all the hermit, merely preparing himself by holy deeds for heavenly glory, but an alert, vigorous, elderly man who watches events without eagerness or passion, yet with sufficient sympathy—an apostle unanointed, literally or figuratively.

A half-hour's siesta was a necessity after the night spent in travel and the excitements of the morning. We rested, as did the whole house, in which at this time there was scarcely a sound. I do not know whether such stillness reigns in summer in the park, which now lay buried deep in snow. The house is very quiet now because it has become too large for the remaining occupants. A whole suite of simply furnished rooms on the ground floor stands entirely empty, and is awakened to life only when the married children come to visit. In the first floor, also, where the study and reception-room are, everything has become too large. After we had settled for our nap we heard only the click of the typewriter, on which the Countess Sasha was copying the manuscript her father had written in the morning, and the low song with which sheaccompanied her work. Then the house awoke again. The count was about to take his ride. A fine black horse was led to the door, and the old count descended the stairs with his light, quick step. He now had the Russian shawl around his neck and a broad woollen scarf belted about his body. He drew on his high felt overshoes and thick mittens, put the lambskin cap on his head, seized his riding-whip, and went out. A strange muzhik was waiting for him before the door. He had come from a distance to lay his case before the count. Tolstoï listened to him, questioned him, and then called the servant. As he was not at hand, the count asked me to tell him to give the muzhik some money. Then a foot in the stirrup, and, with the swing of a youth, the man of seventy-five seated himself in the saddle. It is easy to see, even now, that he must once have been a notable horseman and athlete. For, though strength of passion abates in an elderly man, he who has once had muscular training does not lose the effects of it.

With a nod of the head the rider rapidly disappeared in the lane that leads to the main road. It was already growing dark when he returned, chilled through, and now noticeably altered. The cold had pinched his face; his eyelids were slightly reddened; eyebrows, mustache, and beard were thickly frosted. The change was only superficial, however. An hour later he was more fresh and vigorous thanbefore, held himself erect, and spoke with ever-increasing animation.

We, however, spent the afternoon in a walk in the village with the Countess Sasha. We had accepted her invitation with pleasure. She now appeared, humming, in a lively mood, slipped on a light gray Circassian mantle and her little high overshoes, wound a long, red scarf about her, and put a gray Circassian cap on her thick hair. Nothing was ever more beautiful than this creature, so full of health and strength. She took a stout stick from the wall for protection from dogs, and then led us out into the deep snow, in which only a narrow path was trodden.

Even the deepest reverence does not require uncritical adoration. Moreover, Tolstoï is of such phenomenal importance for us all that the narrator who can communicate his own perceptions is bound to reproduce them with the most absolute fidelity. Therefore, I believe I ought not to conceal the thoughts which refused to leave me during the walk through this village. I had to admire once more the deep humanity of the Tolstoïs when I saw the Countess Sasha, in her beauty and purity, go into the damp, dirty hovels of the peasants, and caress the ragged and filthy children, just as Katyusha, inThe Resurrection, kissed a deformed beggar on the mouth in Easter greeting after the Easter mass. This absolute Christian brotherliness receives expression also in the whole attitude of the family.Countess Sasha says, quite in the spirit of her father: "The industrious peasant stands much higher morally than we who own the land and do not work it. Otherwise he differs in no way from us in his virtues and vices." This brotherliness, however, has this shortcoming, that it leaves the brother where it finds him, and does not compel him to conform to different and more refined ways of living. The Tolstoï family teaches the village children. It has established a little clinic in the village. But it does not make its influence felt in teaching the villagers personal cleanliness, taking, say, the German colonists in the south as a model. I cannot conceive of the peasants of Yasnaya Polyana looking as they would if the landlord were an English or Dutch philanthropist instead of a Russian; and I cannot believe, either, that the simplicity of manners or the warmth of brotherly love would suffer if the village looked, for instance, like those of the Moravians, which shine with cleanliness. To be sure, the count refrains from any pressure on the people about him, and if his muzhik feels better unwashed, as his fathers were before him, and prefers a dirty, unaired room, shared with the dear cattle, to one in which he would have to take off his shoes to prevent soiling the floor, the count will not exhort him to change into a Swabian or a Dutchman. Æsthetic demands do not form any part of the Tolstoï view of life—I believe that for this reason it will find slow acceptance in the West.

There is the meekness and "lowliness" of early Christianity, there is an anti-Hellenic principle in the village dirt of Yasnaya Polyana. It is true that Hellenism leads in its final outcome to the abominable "Herrenmenschenthüm"[14]of Nietzsche, to Nero's hatred of the "many too many." A predominant æsthetic valuation of the good things of life leads in a negative way to the immoral in conduct. Every final consequence, however—that is, every extreme—is absurd; even absolute spirituality, indifferent to all outward things, as well as the heartless cult of mere external beauty. If we may learn from the muzhik patience in misfortune, we have also something to offer him in return for this in ideas of how to care for the body and of æsthetically refined ways of living. But Leo Tolstoï is an enemy of all compromise, and perhaps must be so. If the impulse towards the spiritualizing of our life, towards brotherly kindness and holiness, which goes out from him, is to work in its full force, it must be free from any foreign admixture, at least in him, its source. In the actual world counteracting forces are not wanting, moreover, and in some way the balance is always struck. The synthesis of Nietzsche and Tolstoï is really not so very hard to find. It was given long ago in the "kaho-kayadin" (beauty and goodness) of the ancients as well as in the rightly understood conception of thegentleman. If Tolstoï's human ideal wears the form of the muzhik and flatly rejects every concession to the claims of an æsthetic culture, the fact leads back ultimately to the repulsion which the St. Petersburg type of civilization must awaken in every unspoiled mind. One perceives there that luxury cannot uplift man. Indeed, it is easy to come to the Tolstoï conviction that it ruins instead of ennobling him. An isolated thinker like Tolstoï reaches in this revulsion very extreme consequences. In any case the bodily uncleanness of the peasants is less unpleasant to him and his daughter than the moral impurity of the town dwellers. The dirt of the peasants is for him nature, like the clinging clay of the field.

Suppressing our thoughts, we followed our brave guide into the houses of the village. With a few blows of her stick she put to flight the snarling curs that stood in her way. In the first house there was great wretchedness. The muzhik lay sick on the oven, beside him a stunted, hunchback child. The wife sat at the loom, surrounded by a heap of other children, flaxen-haired and unspeakably filthy. Half a dozen lambs shared the room and its frightful air with the peasants, sick and well. The young countess had a friendly word for each. One of the children was a pupil of hers, and was at that very time working at her writing lesson. This, of course, was praised. There was, however, something obsequiously cringing about the peasant woman I didnot like. It was all quite different in the next house, which belonged to a rich muzhik. He likewise lay on the oven. The room was lighter, thanks to a larger window, but the floor was equally dirty, and the inevitable lambs were pushing each other about in the straw in the same way. At our entrance the muzhik awoke and got up. His mighty brown beard almost covered his breast, which showed through his open shirt, and was covered with a thick crust. This peasant, however, read the paper, spoke of the war, and put a very interesting question. A little while before the Countess Sasha had been at his house with Bryan, who had visited her father. The muzhik and his visitor had become rather friendly. Now the muzhik read in the paper that the Americans are enemies of Russia. How about his friend Bryan? The countess, therefore, had to tell him whether Bryan had now become his personal enemy. She reassured him, laughing. The peasant woman accompanied us out of the house, and made the characteristic speech: "I am ashamed; we live here like pigs; but what is any one to do? We are so, and can't help it!"

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