therefore untrue to life.

It is seldom that Turgenev reminds us of Dickens; but Sipyagin and his
wife might belong to the great Dickens gallery, though drawn with a
restraint unknown to the Englishman. Sipyagin himself is a miniature
Pecksniff, unctuous, polished, and hollow. The dinner-table scenes at
his house are pictured with a subdued but implacable irony. How the
natural-born aristocrat Turgenev hated the Russian aristocracy! When
Solomin appears in this household, he seems like a giant among
manikins, so truly do the simple human virtues tower above the
arrogance of affectation. The woman Marianna is a sister of Elena,
whom we learned to know in "On the Eve;" she has the purity, not of an
angel, but of a noble woman. She has that quiet, steadfast resolution
so characteristic of Russian heroines. As for Mariusha, she is a
specimen of Turgenev's extraordinary power of characterisation. She
appears only two or three times in the entire novel, and remains one
of its most vivid personages This is ever the final mystery of
Turgenev's art--the power of absolutely complete representation in a
few hundred words. In economy of material there has never been his
equal. The whole novel is worth reading, apart from its revolutionary
interest, apart from the proclamation of the Gospel according to
Solomin, for the picture of that anachronistic pair of old lovers,
Fomushka and Finushka.* "There are ponds in the steppes which never
get putrid, though there's no stream through them, because they are
fed by springs from the bottom. And my old dears have such springs too
in the bottom of their hearts, and pure as can be." Only one short
chapter is devoted to this aged couple, at whom we smile but never
laugh At first sight they may seem to be an unimportant episode in the
story, and a blemish on its constructive lines but a little reflection
reveals not only the humorous tenderness that inspired the novelist's