BOOKS.

TERRES VIERGES.*

RUSSIA is a land of contrasts and contradictions, not only so far as its physical characteristics are concerned, but also as regards its inner life. Passing, almost at a bound, from numbing cold to parching heat, its climate is always in extremes. In one region, its soil squanders cereal wealth ; in another, it scarcely bestows on a sparse population gifts sufficient for the maintenance of life. In the spring its brooks run riot, setting all restraints at defiance, hewing out fresh channels for their headlong streams ; in the summer they dwindle into puny streamlets, or utterly desert their beds ; in the winter, they are locked in a death-like slumber. In like manner, Russian thought passes rapidly from one extreme to another, shows little repugnance to the almost simul- taneous reception of conflicting ideas, and in generation after generation hurries through a youth of boisterous effervescence into a manhood of tameness, succeeded by an old age of in- capacity. Out of a most docile religious belief springs at times a scepticism which admits of no compromise ; a completely sub- missive loyalty turns here and there into a bitter antagonism to authority. Whether it be the natural result of a despotic Government, or whether it be attributable to the plastic and un- stable nature of the Slavonic character, the fact is certain that of late years discontent with existing political institutions has in the minds of the younger section of cultured Russia too often developed into a rabid hatred of all institutions whatsoever, a burning desire to sweep away all social distinctions, to cast off all religious obligations. The students at the Universities, a class of striplings for the most part steeped in a poverty against which their souls rebel, but from which they see but little hope of escaping, have long been peculiarly accessible to the doctrines of teachers who appeal at once to their indignation and their sympathy ; and among them, therefore, Socialist ideas have for years flourished and borne disastrous fruits. But recently the ranks of discontent have received an important accession, in the persons of a large number of the young women of the cultured class, who desire a wider field for their energies, a larger scope for their thought, than ordinary Russian family-life can afford. Urged by an honourable desire for work, and full of a noble sympathy with suffering of all kinds, they might, under other

• Terra Vierges. Par J. TJurgaineff. Paris: Hetzel. 1877.

circumstances, have led useful and contented lives as teachers•, nurses, medical practitioners, and so forth. But the preference given by the Slavonic mind to theory over practice, or the want of a really free Press, in which to give expression to that burning indignation which, if it finds no vent, soon grows destructive, or- the absence of that common-sense which in countries where freedom is of old standing becomes hereditary, has driven too. many of those Russian young women who are most superior to the besetting sins of their compatriots into such a senseless and fruitless opposition to authority as can but lead to their own destruction. Forming themselves into little. groups of conspirators, not so much against the Russian. Government in particular, as against all Government in general, whether administered by the State, or by employers- of labour, or by heads of families, they have devoted their energies to improving the condition of " their suffering- brothers and sisters" among the common people. With that end in view, they have gone forth among the people as Socialist missionaries, living among them, and making themselves like- unto them, in order to gain their confidence and to prepare them. to assert their rights. The recent trial at St. Petersburg of a large group of such propagandists has served to show the hope- lessness of their task and the wildness of their ideas, as well as- the disinterestedness of their motives, the firmness of their con- victions, and the savage harshness of the Russian bureaucracy in dealing with actions which are not more contrary to law than honesty and conscientiousness are to its own time-honoured tradi- tions. Before that trial took place, M. Tourgueneff had written his- story, entitled Nov', or Terres Vierges, as it is called in the recently published French translation, which deals with just such persons•. as are now commencing their terrible terms of hard labour or Siberian exile, and which deseribes precisely such scenes as those- regarding which evidence was given at their trial.

The plot of Terres Vierges is exceedingly simple. We are first introduced into the lodgings occupied at St. Petersburg by Nejdanof, the hero of the story, and there we make the acquaint- ance of a little group of Socialists, submissive to the orders of a mysterious head-centre, who does not figure on the scene, but is alluded to in a manner which shows that he is intended for the- notorious Nechaef,—an arch-conspirator who, some years ago, shot a suspected member of his band, was handed over to the Russian Government as a murderer by the Swiss authorities, and is said to have shot himself when on his way to Siberia. The scene then shifts to the country-house of an official of eminence named Sipiaguine, a pseudo-Liberal, who professes to be a great friend of culture and progress, while in reality he cares for nothing but his own distinction and advancement. There Nejdanof, who fills the post of tutor, becomes attached to Sipiaguine's niece, Marianna, who may be regarded as a type of the highest class of those ladies who are now attempting to propagate Socialist ideas: in Russia. She flies with him from her uncle's house, and the- two comrades—for they are rather that than lovers—find a hiding-place in a manufactory directed by a friend named Solomine_ There they adopt the dress of the peasantry, and Nejdanof attempts to gain the ear of the common people, but most un- successfully. Gradually the truth dawns upon him that he is- without deeply-rooted convictions, that his efforts have been a mere fruitless beating of the air, that he is unworthy of the strong-minded and self-sacrificing Marianna, who, although she is. still prepared to marry him when an accommodating priest can- be found, has evidently fallen away from her first admiration. of and trust in him. He becomes aware that he ought never to have been what he is now trying to be,—a Socialist agitator. Intended by nature for a poet and an aristocrat,. he has been driven by dissatisfaction with his own position into a conspiracy in favour of those working-classes with whom he has no real sympathy. The constitutional melan- choly which, while he leads a literary life, finds a harmless, vent in verse, gnaws his heart unceasingly. The career he has entered upon no longer offers him attractions, he despairs of being loved for himself by her whom he loves, and the idea of ending all his doubts and troubles by suicide has already presented itself to him, when one of his associates is suddenly arrested by the police, and news comes that further seizures and arrests are im- minent. So he has recourse to a revolver, and brings his wasted life to a close. The poet dies, and his intended bride eventually becomes the wife of the practical man of business, Solomine.

If Russia had more Solomines among her inhabitants, it would be well for her. He is more like a Teuton than a Slav, a man physically and morally sound and vigorous, devoted to progress, but wishing it to be a steady movement onwards, not.

an intermittent series of desperate jerks or bounds. During the recent trial of the Socialists at St. Petersburg, an anonymous letter was read in Court which had been found in the possession of one of them, and the remark was made that it might have been written by Solomine, so grave and dignified was its tone, so pru- dent its advice. But such characters are scarce in all Slavonic lands, where men are apt to be either stolidly dull or unreasonably vehement. Nejdanof represents one small section of the discon- tented Russian youth of the present day. Generous, sensitive, kind-hearted, they might elsewhere pursue harmless and success- ful careers, but the discontent which in other lands might only lead to honourable competition too often drives them in Russia into a fruitless opposition to the Government. Markelof, Sipiaguine's brother-in-law, is a representative of another group of conspirators. Narrow-minded, incapable of realising the existence of what he could not comprehend, moving always straightforward towards his ends, "he might at any moment show himself pitiless and sanguinary, might earn himself the name of a monster, but he was capable also of the most complete and unhesitating self-sacrifice." Ever brooding over his own failure in life, and unconsciously ex- aggerating the sufferings of the common people, he addressed himself to the peasants with earnest, incisive words, such as he thought would make their souls burn within them. But they pro- duced no such effect. Only one day his hearers gathered round him, and then came a rush and a stunning blow, and he was down on the ground with his hands tied behind him. So he was handed over to the authorities by the very men he had longed to help, but who had no desire to be assisted in his way. For neither in fact nor in M. Tourgueneff's fiction are Russian peasants to be found in any number who care about liberty, fraternity, and equality in the abstract. They would like to see the gentry give up their lands to the village communes, they would like to be freed from taxation, but such vague words and indefinite ex- pressions as were employed on various occasions by Nejdanof are quite thrown away upon them. The Socialists of real life, those whose proceedings have lately been made public, evidently gained scarcely any proselytes among the peasants and artisans with whom they discoursed on the rights of labour and the criminality of capital. The earnest but wild little books they circulated at the risk of their liberty produced no effect upon the dull understandings of the common people, who either disre- garded them, or handed them over to the police. And so the agitators whom M. Tourgueneff brings upon the stage meet with the reverse of appreciation from the hearers whom they hope to educate into disciples. On one occasion, Nejdanof, after he has assumed the dress of a working-man, goes forth to com- mence hispropagandising operations among...the inhabitants of some neighbouring villages. He offers his little books to four peasants, two of whom refuse them, one accepts a copy for his children on account of the picture on the wrapper—most of these seditious publications being adorned outside with an engraving borrowed from somestory- book---w bile the fourth, who also accepts, has mani- festly not understood a word of what his visitor has been saying. A retired soldier gets drunk at Nejdanof's expense, and then pursues him with threats. A woman scolds him vigorously from the doorway of her hut, a dog bites him in the leg, and his heavy boots gall his feet. So he returns disappointed, his head aching from the effects of the vodka he has had to drink. Another time he goes forth in a cart to preach his new gospel of progress. Seeing a group of peasants standing by a barn, be addresses to them a rapid discourse, accompanied by sudden cries and vehe- ment gestures, the words " Liberty r " Onwards r and others of a similar nature making themselves heard from time to time above the rest. After he bas driven hastily away, the most in- telligent member of his small audience shakes his head and says, taking the orator for an official with an eye to taxes, "It isn't for nothing that he's shouted like that. Our pockets will have to pay for it !" Nejdanof drives on, and sees a number of peasants at the door of a dram-shop. To them he addresses another wild speech. One of their number, a savage young giant, makes him go inside, and insists upon his drinking with him. On Nejdanof's unaccustomed brain the fiery spirit acts rapidly. The ground seems to shake beneath his feet, all swims before his eyes, the coarse faces of drunken peasants press close to his own, rough hands seize him on all sides, hoarse voices call upon him to pro- ceed,- his own voice sounds to him unfamiliar and alien, he is stiffed by the close air of the hut, heavy with the smell of reeking sheepskins and tar and leather and spirits. Suddenly a fresh breeze cools his throbbing temples ; he finds himself by the side of his driver, who has ransomed him from his savage entertainers for a half-rouble. A little later he is brought back, pale as death, with hanging head and shaking limbs, to Marianna.

The character of that young girl is one for which it would be difficult to discover a parallel in fiction, though in the real life of the Russia of to-day it would be easy to find her counterpart.. Nejdanof is a Hamlet on a small scale, adapted to the sphere of Socialist life. But Marianna is unlike anything which English readers are likely to be acquainted with. Generous, self-sacri- ficing, pare-minded, true-hearted, full of sympathy with all who suffer and are oppressed, she is at the same time utterly devoid of religious feeling and totally deficient in respect for all existing laws. And so, in spite of her position, her beauty, her grace, and her culture, she is ready to break with society, to abandon her home and her relatives, and to give up all that women of her class most prize, for the sake of an idea. It is not easy for us to conceive the possibility of such a sacrifice being made by so attractive a lady as Marianna, though it does not seem so incredible in the case of the other female conspirator- of the story, the humble and hardworking Machourina, whose unconfessed love for Nejdanef, most delicately made mani- fest by means of a few stray hints, lends the solitary touch of romance to her homely features. A writer in the Atlantic- Monthly, who has lately questioned M. Tourgueneff's greatness in the tone of a shoemaker criticising an historical picture, finds fault with the novelist for depicting Russian men and women as they really are, not as the American critic thinks they are likely to be. He will probably consider that no such person as Marianna could ever have existed. But whoever reads the sad record of the hopeless conspiracy against Government and capital in which so many Russian ladies recently took part, will realise the possibility of many a Marianna existing in a land full of generous aspirations long repressed, of ardent designs for a nobler and a higher life frequently entertained, but scarcely ever realised. Such eager hopes and keen sympathies as actuate young women like Marianna may easily be chafed into half-delirious fantasies by daily contact with such natures as those of the re- actionary Kallomeitsef, or the pseudo-liberal Sipiaguine, or the cold-hearted coquette, his handsome wife. The Russian Socialists in London have published the photographic likenesses of the ladies who have been recently condemned to long years of hard labour or distant exile. Their faces are all those of women thoroughly in earnest, and some of them are very fair to see. For among the condemned are several ladies of position, young and handsome and cultured, against whom no charge was made of anything but such a protest against existing institutions as a strong Government might well ignore, or at most, lightly punish. One of them, the fairest of their number, is now fast fading away, her health having been altogether broken by the severity of the solitary imprisonment for nearly two years which preceded her trial. A poem written by her in prison, and now circulating widely but secretly in Russia, serves to some extent to show what are the feelings which mainly actuate such enthusiasts as M. Tourgueneff has described. The following lines contain a literal, prose translation of its verse :— " My deadly sin, my criminal design, punish, 0 Judge, but simply,. rapidly ; without pretence, without pharisaical mask, without speeches for the defence."

" Having donned peasant bonds instead of robes, and having crimi- nally' doffed shoes, I thither went where groan our brethren, where. the poor are and eternal toiL"

'• Surprised in the act,' on the scene of crime have I been brought up for judgment. To what purpose are these witnesses and depositions r All things bear witness against me!"

"Ask not, 0 Judge! useless questions. Look at me I am all proofs.. On my shoulders the dress of the people, my feet b.ire, my hands callous with toil."

" All broken am I by hard labour. But know that in my heart of hearts, deeper than all others is one proof buried : love to my native

land."

"Know this, too, that however criminal I may be, thou, 0 my Judge,, art powerless over me. No! I am inaccessible to harsh treatment, and not then wilt conquer, but L"

"During my lifetime thou mayst punish me. But my malady has already entered a protest. And over me impends, as thou &feat and knowest, only a brief arrest."

"Always holding that same love shall I die. And dropping the prison keys, above my pillow will bend my punishers with a tear stadia prayer."