PÚSHKIN: Beauty of form -- Púshkin and Schiller -- His youth; his exile; his later career and death -- Fairy tales: Ruslán and Ludmíla -- His lyrics -- "Byronism" -- Drama -- Evghéniy Onyéghin -- LÉRMONTOFF:Púshkin or Lérmontoff? -- His life -- The Caucasus -- Poetry of Nature -- Influence of Shelley -- The Demon -- Mtzyri -- Love of freedom -- His death -- Púshkin and Lérmontoff as prose-writers -- Other poets and novelists of the same epoch.PÚSHKIN Púshkin is not quite a stranger to English readers. In a valuable collection of review articles dealing with Russian writers which Professor Coolidge, of Cambridge, Massachusetts, put at my disposal, I found that in 1832, and...
In our busy life, preoccupied as we are with the numberless petty affairs of everyday existence, we are all too much inclined to pass by, many great evils which affect Society without giving them the attention they really deserve. If sensational "revelations" about some dark side of our life occasionally find their way into the daily Press; if they succeed in shaking our indifference and awaken public attention, we may have in the papers, for a month or two, excellent articles and letters on the subject. Many well-meant things may then be said, the most humane feelings expressed. But the agitation soon subsides; and, after having asked for some new regulations or laws, in addition to the hundreds of thousands of regulations and laws already in force; after having made some microscopic attempts at combating by a few individual efforts a deep-rooted evil which ought to be combated by the combined efforts of Society at large, we soon return to our daily occupations without c...
A painfully prominent feature of present-day Russian life is the frequency of provocaton to violence by the secret agents of the Government, which has attained an extraordinary development during the last few years, since public money is lavished upon the three or four different and rival sections of the State's secret police : as also has the participation of various police officers in all kinds of crime, of which many striking instances have been discovered of late. The consequence is, that death sentences are continually pronounced upon young and inexperienced men who have been involved in various plots by the secret agents of the Government. This has developed lately into a widely-spread system among the secret agents and the police officers for attaining promotion and receiving handsome money rewards. Every one has been hearing lately of a certain Azeff, who was for sixteen years an agent of the Russian secret police, and at the same time the chief organizer...