is in the bush. One work of mine-a truly monstrous one for its carelessness-failed utterly-the only one that met such a fate. I was to have sixty pounds; the publisher was in despair and disgusted, but I held his signed agreement. I nobly forbore, and tore my bond. But mark, when that was long forgotten, I repaired to him with another work. He was good enough to say that I had behaved so handsomely, that he was ready to treat on satisfactory terms for the new work. So, I did not lose on the whole: nor did he. Publishers do not relish being "bested." As to "corrections" I could tell a curious thing. I am the author of a work in two volumes, numbering in all over a thousand pages, the corrections for which cost about as much as the original setting up in type! The sums were, I think, one hundred and forty and one hundred and fifty pounds. Yet the generous publisher, before paying what he had covenanted to pay, said he thought it right to put it to me whether this style of correcting" was not excessive. He goodnaturedly mulcted me only forty pounds, as my legitimate share of the cost. As for my essays, sketches, descriptions, they are simply innumerable. It is agreeable work, and so lightly done. You covet something, or are extravagant to the tune of five pounds. You sit down for a morning (having found a subject in your last walk), and the debt is paid. Indeed, during these walks, it is wonderful how agreeably profit for mind and purse can be made. Being ever of an artistic turn, I began, some time ago, to work out, as I walked along, principles of criticism as applied to the buildings, houses, etc., in the streets, and soon elaborated a pleasant series. Extending this idea, I began to think how many unnoticed curious things there were in the London streets, old houses, doorways, etc.; and this I am now working out in a more elaborate series still. All this and more goes on with the greater labors, and used to represent with me from one hundred and fifty to two hundred pounds a year-now not nearly so much. I put the sums from this source at about four thousand pounds. Adding all up, I should fix my total earnings at about fourteen thousand pounds, of which I retain, alas! but fifteen hundred duly and securely invested. On these results, can writing be called a crutch or a walkingstick? It must be remembered, however, that I really used it as the walking-stick, having originally a small income of my own, and for the last ten years a large one.-Belgravia. NIHILISM IN RUSSIA. THE apparent collapse of Russian Nihilism has given rise to a variety of premature contemporary speculations on the inherent force of the movement, and with the recent disappearance of immediate danger there is a tendency already of underestimating its influence on the future development of Russian society. It is not our purpose here to enter into these speculations, but rather to examine the movement itself; retrospectively, as a social phenomenon, and, as such, the outcome of a variety of natural and historical causes; prospectively, as a sociological problem requiring solution, with a view to insure the peaceful evolution of Russian society of the future. To suppose that the present cessation of hostilities on the part of militant Nihilism amounts to an entire suppression of the latent forces in doctrinal Nihilism, since the party of action has been temporarily repulsed, would be a grievous error. It will, therefore, be well during the present lull, after the stormy events of the last two years, to consider calmly and carefully the data and quæsita of Nihilism from a purely sociological standpoint. This will serve to show that though in its external aspects Nihilism may only present a transitory phase in the transformation process of a comparatively new society, yet, in its internal principles and theory, it remains a most powerful factor, not to be overlooked in the social politics of Russia, and the international politics of Europe.' Nihilism, though for the present eclipsed, is by no means extinguished. * Now, every movement of this kind in its ruling ideas and essential tendencies rests on some philosophical creed. There are, in the first place, the psychological data of Nihilism. As the optimistic creed of the eighteenth century became the soul and spirit of constructive socialism, so the pessimism of the nineteenth century may be regarded as the presiding genius of social Nihilism. It is the philosophy of despair which suggests the death-warrant of society, and ignores, if it does not entirely renounce, the hope of social regeneration. According to this philosophy the world's sorrow can only be removed with the extinction of conscious suffering, and the world's redemption is synonymous with the world's destruction, and hence the extinction of social evils is sought in the annihilation of society and social happiness is a social Nirvana. Crying social abuses, for which existing institutions offer no remedy, aggravate this "maladie du XIX. siècle" in Russia, and precipitate Rus * It is a notorious fact that the late war owed its origin partly to the influence of the Nihilist party. See "Russland vor und nach dem Kriege," pp. 328-330. sian would-be reformers, naturally prone to radical changes, into violent attacks, not only on the laws and institutions of the country, but also on those ethical conceptions, æsthetic aspirations, and religious convictions on which they rest. A true diagnosis of Nihilism, then, as a disorder in the social organism, will discover some of its roots in the psychological conditions of the national mind, in a temporary derangement of the regulating functions in the body politic. And so we find that the ruling classes at first intellectually dazzled by the Hegelian philosophy, then sympathetically drawn towards the pessimism of Schopenhauer, and latterly attracted towards the skeptical materialism of Moleschott and Büchner, have learned by degrees to surpass their teachers in realistic views of life, and the utter denial of an ideal world. Indeed, it has been pointed out by a profound student of Russian character," that, psychologically, Nihilism is the outcome of two opposite tendencies in the modern Russian mind-the tendency towards absolute idealism on the one hand, and that of cynical realism on the other; the former producing the wildest schemes of Utopian optimism, the latter leading through the slough of despond of materialistic pessimism, and both together, though apparently self-destructive, becoming the fruitful source of daring speculation in politics and chimerical theories in economics, compared with which the most thorough-going schemes of social improvement in Western Europe appear almost reasonable in their impractical absurdity. But it remains to be noticed that this psychological contradiction of two opposite tendencies in the Russian mind has been fostered by two concurring influences from without, the constructive socialism of France, and the destructive socialistic criticism of Germany. Both Herzen and Bakunin, the leaders of the Nihilist movement, were, like Marx and Lassalle, disciples of the Hegelian philosophy, and at the same time warm and enthusiastic supporters of socialistic movements in France. So, too, Tschernyschewsky, the "Karl Marx of Russia," and the most popular of modern exponents of Nihilism, imbibed his early lessons through his master Belinski, with the Hegelian method, whilst among the "Hommes de l'avenir" of the young Russian party, who regarded him as their prophet, the fusion between the Materialism of the modern German school and the Socialism of France has be come an accomplished fact. But whilst German Socialism readily takes hold of the Hegelian idea of the dialectic process in history, *M. Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu in Revue des deux Mondes, 15th February, 1880, pp. 777-8. For a thorough study or Russian social life and national development no better guide could be recommended. Articles by this writer have appeared in the same publication at intervals since August 15, 1873, on a variety of Russian subjects, full of profound interest and valuable information. t The work of Karl Marx, "Das Kapital," is a textbook in Russian universities, and has passed through several editions in a Russian translation. And, ending in social evolution, Russian Nihilism, owing to the tendency of the Slave mind rigidly to follow up abstract principles to their extreme logical conclusions, goes a step further, and the Socialism of evolution becomes the Nihilism of social dissolution.* similarly as Hegel's terminology became the “ 'Algebra, of Revolution" to the early promoters of Russian Nihilism, so, too, owing to the mystic intensity of the Tartar spirit still in measure immanent in the Russian mind, the positive humanitarianism of the French school of Socialists has produced an enthusiasm, energy, and selfdenying devotion with Russian disciples almost amounting to reli gious ardor, for which there is no parallel in the Socialist agitation of the West. From the psychological we pass on to the physiological data of the movement in the composition and decomposition of social forces, in the precipitate progress and retarded development of the various functions in the social organism, as far as they explain the last stage of social evolution in the Russia of to-day. Among these we must briefly notice some ethnographical peculiarities of race and the play of social forces peculiar to the soil, as well as some political influences from without, which may be regarded directly or indirectly as causes of the present social disorders. For this is the only way of arriving at an approximately true and tolerably comprehensible view of the rise and progress of Russian Nihilism. In order to this we must know something of the dynamical process of local institutions and organic laws, which have brought about the present state of things. The recent manifestations of Nihilism have taken the world by surprise, because in a great measure the conditions of Russian society were unknown. Two hundred years ago, says Count Moltke in his interesting letters "from Russia, no one in Europe knew anything about the Neva; now the Neva is famed throughout the world. The same within a much smaller compass of time may be said of Nihilism, the stream of tendency towards social revolution, which may be said to take its rise in the earliest formation of Russian society, to have run its course slowly and unobserved, except at critical intervals, until quite lately, in its turbulent rush onwards to an unknown goal, it is seen threatening to submerge Russian society in a general inundation. Its original source is to be sought partly in that natural environment which helps in forming or malforming the national character. The people of Russia, shut up in a vast plain girded by mountains, exposed to polar winds, and living in a temperature unmodified by sea breezes, have developed a corresponding temperament, being thus brought face to face with Nature in her sternest aspects. The melancholy songs of the peasantry and the plaintive lyrical moods of her poets in mod. *See A. Herzen, "Du developpment des idees revolutionaries en Russie," p. 132; and "Russland vor und nach dem Kriege," p. 104, and ante, ern literature bear witness to the fact. They reflect the sadness and solitude of the Russian steppe, the dry and dreary monotony of her plains and deserts, the colorless uniformity of vast country districts lacking the cheerful picturesqueness of country life elsewhere. Discouraged and dispirited by apparently insurmountable natural obstacles to progess the Russian inclines to a philosophy of negation and despair. Again, owing to the absence of any considerable seaboard, only in part compensated for by a network of river communication, the isolation of this "impenetrable compact mass of Eastern Europe " has produced a tendency to immobility and obstructive conservatism in the population which has given rise to the proverb that novelty is tantamount to calamity. Hence, we find the Russian peasant impenetrable to modern ideas, and stolid in his indifference to improvement. Sadly resigned to endure want and suffering arising from a stingy provision of nature, he bows his neck to the yoke with abject loyalty, almost amounting to political fetichism.* In proportion to his ignorance and superstition, he reveres the distant powers of the state, whilst experience has taught him to hate and despise the emissaries of the central government and local magnates in his own proximity, whilst he groans under their despotic rule with cringing servility. Silently he bears the yoke, seeking consolation for the absence of liberty in brutal self-indulgence and good-natured, almost jocose, indolence. But it is the patience of the slave which may at any moment be turned into the unbridled spirit of revenge in the liberated savage. Much of the meek submission is feigned, and originates in fear, and under the calm surface of stolid indifference and stupid indulgence a subtle brain is at work which readily discovers ingenious expedients to hoodwink the authorities, and a quick intelligence ready to take hold of the first opportunity of deliverance from his degraded condition. The vast numbers of Mouzhiks who joined the rising of Pugatchéf, the Jack Cade of Russia in the days of Katharine II., and other minor popular leaders of this kind since, are a proof of the readiness in the masses of the rural population to gather round the standards of agrarian revolt. Another physiological phenomenon in the plexus of Russian society is the paucity and slow growth of towns as centers of intelligence, and the absence of a powerful citizen class who aspire after * Here is an example from Ralston's "Songs of the Russian Peasantry": O thou, Father, orthodox Tzar, Judge us according to a just decision: Order to be done to us what pleaseth Thee: |