Mr. W. R. S. Ralston, the accomplished translator of Tour-
gueneff's exquisite novel of "Liza,"—and, by the way, of a very weird and powerful tale by the same great author, called "The Idiot," in the May number of the Temple Bar magazine,--seems likely enough to create an English taste for Russian literature, such as William Taylor, of Norwich, created in England for the then almost equally unknown world of German literature, some sixty or seventy years ago. On Wednesday afternoon, Mr. Ral- ston told Russian popular stories at St. George's Hall to a crowded and interested audience, and told them with great effect. Some were myths, some fairy stories, some ghost stories, some goblin stories ; but all were striking and characteristic, and almost all, except the myths, closely related to German popular stories of the same character. It was curious to note how rug- ged and comparatively unhewn a shape the Russian forms of this common inheritance assume,—truncated shapes from which the articulated German extremities seem to have been struck off, or not yet to have grown. The symmetry of the fairy gifts is lost ; the marked features are fewer ; the outlines somewhat grander, darker, and mistier. The pathos of one of the tales, "The Dead Mother," was all the more striking for the unfinished and vague character of the legend. Mr. Ralston's experiment was a great success.
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