First Love, and Panin and Barbi:a-in. By Ivan S. Targenev.
With an Introduction by Sidney Jerrold. (W. H. Allen and Co.)—Tur- genev does not shock his readers, but there is something very sombre, and sometimes one is inclined to say worse than sombre, about his tales. Take, for instance, the first of these two stories. A lad recounts the experiences of his " first love." They are described with remarkable power. We see every scene, we realise every person. But then how hideous the revelation, when we find that the lad's rival is his own father ; and that the bright creature whom he loves, with her caprice, her varying moods of gaiety and sadness, of coldness and tenderness, is nothing else than the mistress of a married man ! In the second story, there is again an element of unlawful love, but not of so hideous a kind; and Penh], the philanthropist, is a noble conception. We read of him as he straggles against wrong, in the old, evil days, when the owners of serfs did as they would with their own, with no one to say them "nay," and we part with him when he says his "Nano Dimittis," on hearing of the Emperor Alexander's emancipation of the serfs. Mr. Jerrold has prefixed an interesting introduction, describing Turgenev's life and literary work.
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