exclamatory, over the face of our long-suffering mother-earth."

Dostoevski was so angry when he read this book that he said it ought
to be burnt by the common hangman. But he must have approved of the
picture of the Petersburg group, who under a thin veneer of polished
manners are utterly inane and cynically vicious. One of them had "an
expression of constant irritability on his face, as though he could
not forgive himself for his own appearance."

The portrait of the Pecksniffian Pishtchalkin: "In exterior, too, he
had begun to resemble a sage of antiquity; his hair had fallen off the
crown of his head, and his full face had completely set in a sort of
solemn jelly of positively blatant virtue."

None but a great master could have drawn such pictures; but it is not
certain that the master was employing his skill to good advantage. And
while representing his hatred of all the Russian bores who had made
his life weary, he selected an old, ruined man, Potugin, to express
his own sentiments--disgust with the present condition of Russia, and
admiration for the culture of Europe and the practical inventive power
of America. Potugin says that he had just visited the exposition at
the Crystal Palace in London, and that he reflected that "our dear
mother, Holy Russia, could go and hide herself in the lower regions,
without disarranging a single nail in the place." Not a single thing
in the whole vast exhibition had been invented by a Russian. Even the
Sandwich Islanders had contributed something to the show. At another
place in the story he declares that his father bought a Russian
threshing machine, which remained five years useless in the barn,
until replaced by an American one.