CURRENT LITERATURE.
Vera Barantzova. From the Russian of Sophia KovaIevsky. (Ward and Downey.)—Mr. William Westall and " Sergius Stepniak " supply an introduction to this short story of love, self-sacrifice, and Nihilism, which, as it includes a memoir, is fully as interesting as the work of fiction itself. It is not im- possible that had Madame Sophia Kovalevsky, the author of this tale, lived long enough, she would have made her mark upon the world as a novelist. As it was, she was one of the most remarkable even of Russian women. She had in her a little both of Marie Bashkirsteff and of George Eliot. Of aristocratic descent, she was a mathematician and a proficient in science before she became a novelist and a politician. In 1874, when she was only twenty-three years of age, she was elected Professor of Higher Mathematics in Stockholm University. A remarkable and —needless to say—a courageous woman, she was inevitably more remarkable for promise than for performance. It would, at all events, be unfair to judge her by Vera Barantzova, which can at- the very best be allowed to be a good work of more than average power. It reproduces most admirably, and to all appearance with photographic accuracy, the change brought about in a Russian aristocratic household by the decree of Alexander II. which eman- cipated the serfs. The love-affair, too, of Vera, who is the flower of the Barantzova flock, and her rather elderly teacher, has the look of sincerity ; while her second marriage to the Nihilist Palenkov, and her departure to Siberia to "live among the exiles, and comfort, console, and help them, minister to their needs, and become the intermediary of their correspondence," are just such sacrifices as have actually been made for the por- tentous "cause" to which Vera attached herself. This book is little more than a study of a very interesting and quite modern Russian girl. But of its kind, it is perfect.
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