A Chat about New Books [pp. 411-419]

A CHAT ABOUT NEW BOOKS.
temporal government he saw in Rome-defects exaggerated by
the habitual grumblings of the Romans, who are notorious for
discontent.
Nathaniel Hawthorne and his Wife is a mine of riches-riches
made ready by the affectionate care of their son, so that he who
reads may possess them.
The Cossacks: a Tale of the Caucasus in i852, by Count Leo
TolstoY, translated by Eugene Schuyler (New York: William S.
Gottsberger), is the latest issued of this Russian novelist and
phil.osopher's works. It was written in iS6l. It is a sort of a
pastoral of Cossack life. It bears the marks of truth, it is real istic —everything is put down-and the only idealism in the
book is Olenin's attempt at self-sacrifice. Olenin is a young
Russian officer, who, longing for something beyond the gay and
sophisticated life of a great city, exiles himself in a remote Cos sack village. The people are rude, semi-barbarous; the stealing
of horses is a mere imperfection; drunkenness is a virtue and,
chastity a matter of indifference. Still, they are devout in the
Russian fashion. Olenin's friends of his own class look on
female virtue as a commodity; he rises above this, and offers to
marry a Cossack girl from pure love, although she is already engaged to Lukaska, one of the boldest of land buccaneers. But,
though Marianka encourages his advances, she refuses to marry
him when she hears that her lover has been injured while on one
of his expeditions. lie has suffered much during his struggles
against his own inclinations and the laxity of his friends, and now
he suffers more. But he says good-by to Uncle Eroshka and
the rest who have been part of his life. Going, "Olenin looked
round once. Uncle Eroshka was talking with Marianka, evidently about his own affairs; and neither the old man nor the
girl paid the slightest attention to him.." The Cossacks ends in
this way- hopelessly, disappointedly. While the descriptions
of a wild, strange life are interesting-as interesting and as
vigorous as in Gogol's Taras Bulba-yet it is hard to understand
why Tolstoi's Cossacks should be vaunted as a masterpiece. In
fact, it is hard to understand why Count Tolstoi's pessimism
affectation of realism, and general mistiness should be hailed with
such effusion by the critics.
Miss May Laffan, the author of Hogan, M.P., Tze Hon. Miss
Ferrard, etc., is not apersonagrata with Irish Nationalists. But
she is a very clever writer which is perhaps one of the reasons,
for we do not like her way of putting things. One is more likely
to be offended by witty sneers than by stupid jeers. Ismay's Chil vOL. XLVI.-27
1 887.]
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