suffer long, and are kind; they hope all things, and believe all
things. The household is such a menagerie that it is no wonder that
the German translation of this novel is called "Tollhaus oder
Herrenhaus"? Some of the inmates are merely abnormal; others are
downright mad. There is not a natural or a normal character in the
entire book, and not one of the persons holds the reader's sympathy,
though frequent drafts are made on his pity. The hero is a colossal
hypocrite, hopelessly exaggerated. If one finds Dickens's characters
to be caricatures, what shall be said of this collection? This is the
very apotheosis of the unctuous gasbag, from whose mouth, eternally
ajar, pours a viscous stream of religious and moral exhortation.
Compared with this Friend of the Family, Tartuffe was unselfish and
noble: Joseph Surface modest and retiring; Pecksniff a humble and
loyal man. The best scene in the story, and one that arouses
outrageous mirth, is the scene where the uncle, who is a kind of Tom
Pinch, suddenly revolts, and for a moment shakes off his bondage. He
seizes the fat hypocrite by the shoulder, lifts him from the floor,
and hurls his carcass through a glass door. All of which is in the
exact manner of Dickens.

One of the most characteristic of Dostoevski's novels, characteristic
in its occasional passages of wonderful beauty and pathos, characteristic
in its utter formlessness and long stretches of uninspired dulness,
is "Downtrodden and Oppressed." Here the author gives us the life he
knew best by actual experience and the life best suited to his natural
gifts of sympathetic interpretation. Stevenson's comment on this story
has attracted much attention. Writing to John Addington Symonds in 1886,
he said: "Another has been translated--"Humilies et Offenses." It is
even more incoherent than "Le Crime et le Chatiment," but breathes much
of the same lovely goodness, and has passages of power. Dostoevski is