it would seem that the house, even in its moderate luxury so repellent to his ethical principles, was like the world in which he lived. He could not ignore it; he could not even reach his own cell without passing through it. But he had made an excellent working compromise in his own house, living his own life, and bating not an inch of his principles, but recognizing, first of all, the fact that he could not force others to live by them. It was the actual compromise which he had made in the wider world between ideas and actions, which, in spite of all his academic dogmatism, has made him an exception among extreme thinkers by his capacity to adjust himself in action to things as they are.

The first sight of Tolstoy confirms this view. His appearance has been so often described that it is hardly necessary to say anything about it. It is the appearance of an intellectual fanatic, but not of a dreamer. He is of middle height, and the peasant's blouse puffed out behind his shoulders produces the impression of a distinct stoop. His expression, like that of Turgenieff, has been likened to the expression of a transfigured muzhik. But there is really nothing about him resembling the Christlike peasant at his best. His face is rude; his nose broad, with dilated nostrils; his mouth coarse and determined, and his forehead high, but sloping toward the top. His eyes, small, light gray, and deeply sunken, glitter out from underneath shaggy, projecting brows. The whole expression of his face is ascetic and irritable, with a dash of Tartar ferocity coming from the eyes. Trimmed and mustached, it might be the face of a Cossack officer, but it is never that of the dreamy and benevolent peasant. The general impression one would draw from a first glance is quite in accord with the glimpses which Tolstoy has given us of his past life. It is the face of a man with the moral instincts and moral inclinations of the ordinary man, but who differs from the ordinary man in that his whole being is dominated by a fanatical intellectual earnest ness, who, therefore, in the first struggle between instinct and conviction, would surrender immediately to conviction. But it is the face of a man who, while absolutely unshakable in his convictions, sees things as they are, and is under no delusion as to his ability to change them.

But Tolstoy was not in his cell when first I entered it. In a few minutes he came in, with a copy of the Revue Blanche and a great roll of papers under his arm, and after a few words of greeting threw himself into his armchair, and, with his general assumption that every one had read everything, began to condemn severely a story which he had been reading. He spoke in English, very correctly, but with a strong Rus

sian accent, declaring that he had forgotten much from want of practice, but read as well as ever. Then he began to question me as to the purpose of my visit to Russia, and finding that I had some knowledge of his own language, he lapsed suddenly into Russian, asking innumerable questions. Indeed, my first impression of Tolstoy was that of a questioner, who asked somewhat naïve questions, such as might be expected from an Oriental whose interest in things outside his own sphere was only just awakening. His own language he seemed to speak with remarkable simplicity and purity, avoiding foreign words, and invariably employing the popular siudi and tudi (hither and thither) instead of the correct siudá and tudá. But the intonation of his voice showed very plainly his peasant associations. The ordinary educated Russian speaks rapidly. Tolstoy spoke slowly, mouthing every word with a droning intonation only a shade removed from the peasant's whine. He seemed in excellent health, and moved nervously and energetically, waving a ruler with his right hand. But in reply to my inquiry as to his health he said: "Up till now I have been very well, but I am beginning to feel old age." Then for the first time he spoke of himself, saying that he wished to get out of Moscow, and that only consideration for his wife's health kept him in town. But I afterward learned that he was in the habit of spending all his winters in Moscow, and that he regarded, therefore, the winter-time as wasted. But as, instead of tilling the land, he was engaged in revising the manuscript of "Resurrection," few will share his regret.

From Moscow he turned suddenly to the subject of the Dukhobortsi, the first and last subject of which I ever heard him speak. He told me that a number of them were emigrating from the Caucasus to Eastern Siberia, and that he was writing a letter to the captain of one of the Amur steamers, asking him to do what he could to insure their safety. He then began to speak of the condition of the Dukhobortsi in Canada, complaining that they were terribly hampered by want of ready money, and that in order to obtain capital to clear the land granted to them by the Canadian government they had been obliged to take service on the railways, thus bringing about a dispute with the regular railway employees. They had been disappointed also by the climate, finding it difficult to grow fruit, as they were accustomed to do in their former homes.

His

eldest son was then on his way home from Canada, whither he had accompanied the emigrants, and Tolstoy evidently spoke from his son's reports. During the whole of the spring of 1899, the Dukhobor movement was the one practical

subject in which he seemed keenly interested, and he invariably glowed into anger or admiration when he spoke of them. "It is a wonderful work-a wonderful work," he said. "It is a great loss that more is not known about it in Europe." But Europe could never give them any practical help. Their position in any European country would be no better than in Russia. If they had not to serve in the army, they must pay war taxes," I said. That is so," he said; but it is a great loss that so little is known about them."

Of the Dukhobor movement in general he spoke very often, and nearly always with admiration of the peasant Sutayeff, who he seemed to think was quite unknown outside his own circle. "It is the only attempt to realize Christianity that I can see, " he said, and then mentioned the Quakers, of whom he had evidently read much. But in general his conversation was desultory, and when his eye fell upon some book or paper lying near, he would take it up, drop the first subject, and begin to talk of books. He seemed

to receive large numbers of works in English, especially American works on social and theological questions, and spoke about some of them very warmly. But in regard to novels his attitude was almost invariably the same. He would begin by praising them for their literary skill, characterization, and knowledge of life, and end by saying that they lacked the only justification of art its serious interest and moral import. Of his own writings, with the exception of letters and articles upon social questions upon which he was actually engaged, he never talked; and the general belief that he regarded his former novels as worthless prevented the question being raised. Only once he mentioned his writings, and then in connection with the translations done by Mrs. Maude, which he praised highly.

Tolstoy's speech in general was witty, placid, full of aphorisms and illustrations taken from popular life, many of which are very difficult for a foreigner to understand. Only when he spoke of oppression and wrongdoing did his manner change, and the change then was into anger, not compassion, even when dealing with misfortunes for which no one could be held responsible. He seemed a man in whom sensibility was replaced by an intense and hardly defined sense of right and wrong. Though indulgent toward differences of opinion and habits in individuals, he seemed in general impatient, irritable, and almost intolerant of opposition. Opposition on general principles seemed to annoy him. His language was the language of a man of warm, masterful temperament, to whom any attempt to subject himself to abstract rules of humility and forbearance

COUNT TOLSTOY AND HIS WIFE.

must be an intolerable strain. In repose his face was rigid, severe, and prophetic. He spoke with a sarcastic contempt of things which he disliked, and his laugh, even when caused by simple merriment, sounded ironical.

Of Tolstoy's manner of life in Moscow I saw little, my visits being always in the evening. It seemed much less varied than at Yasnaya Polyana. He worked all the morning in a chaos of unintelligible manuscripts, dined late, and rode or received visitors in the evening. Of visitors there were a great many, and all, whether strangers or relatives, were treated on the same basis of simple familiarity, intimacy in regard to his work, intentions, and opinions being observed with all. My first visit was cut short by the count announcing that he was going with his sons and another visitor to the public baths, and he invited me to accompany the party as if it were the most natural thing in the world. The Banya is of course one of the great embodiments of Russian communism, all with a minimum of privacy bath

ing together in the hot air, and in the exhalations of their own bodies. The offer was a tempting one, and only fear of intrusion led me to refuse.

In Tolstoy's way of composition there is nothing very remarkable except his industry and the extraordinary care which he lavishes upon the correction and revision of his manuscripts. A corrected proof is often as difficult for the printer as the original manuscript, and the manuscript, even after copying and recopying innumerable times a work which is performed by members of his family is quite unintelligible at first glance. But in spite of all this elaboration, Tolstoy's style has none of the finish and limpidity of Turgenieff's. Letters and articles for the foreign press prohibited by the censor in Russia are reproduced by the cyclostyle process in violet ink. The Countess Tolstoy is his chief-not always an appreciative-critic. Though Tolstoy is rather impatient of objections against his teachings on general grounds, he is indulgent to criticism in detail, and he regards indiscriminate admiration with distrust. It is said that on one occasion when told of the raptures of critics over "Master and Man," he asked, "Have I written anything very stupid?" The remark is too epigrammatic to be genuine. But that the story should be told is significant of Tolstoy's deep distrust of the general tendencies of criticism in art and in life.

II.

TOLSTOY ON WAR AND PEACE.

It was inevitable that any one who visited Count Tolstoy in the winter of 1899 should hear his opinions of war and peace in general, and on the coming conference at The Hague in particular. The South African trouble had not then assumed an acute form, and the one great subject of interest in western Europe was the proposal of the Czar. In Russia, the interest was hardly as keen, for the students' riots overshadowed everything, and the Finnish trouble was growing bigger and bigger every day. But Tolstoy's interest, always acute in such matters, was greatly stimulated by appeals for his opinion from England and the Continent. At the time of my second visit, he had just completed a long letter in reply to a request for advice from some members of the Swedish Parliament. It was the first of a series of letters to societies and individuals, in all of which he condemned the Czar's proposals emphatically, and prophesied their failure. Swedish correspondents had made, among others, what seemed an excellent practical suggestion,that all persons who refused on conscientious grounds to undergo military training should pay their debt to the state by performing an equiva

His

lent amount of useful work. But the idea, which appealed to Tolstoy at first on its merits, he rejected unhesitatingly. No conference called together by governments as they existed could do anything to abolish war or lessen its evils, he declared; and he read his letter aloud in Russian in his peculiar peasant's voice, punctuating every sentence with the words, "You understand?" When he had concluded, he said, emphatically: "That is what I think of the Emperor's conference!" Adding, angrily: "It is all baseness and hypocrisy-nothing more." These were his arguments:

The first reason why governments cannot and will not abolish war is that armies and war are not accidental evils, but are symptoms and essential parts of government as it exists itself. When I say, therefore, that the conference is hypocritical, I do not mean that it is essentially so. But when you declare your intention to do something which cannot be done without changing your whole life, and when you do not intend to change your whole life, you must be a hypocrite. Thus the Czar's proposal is a hypocritical proposal, and its acceptance by other nations is a hypocritical acceptance, without any faith in its success.

You see that the governments are proposing merely to conceal the symptoms of their own disease by diminishing the opportunities for war. By such means they think to turn the minds of people from the true remedy, which is only to be found in their own consciences. Yet they cannot succeed even in this attempt. A conference summoned by governments cannot in any way lessen the dangers of war or even diminish its evils. Because there can be no trust between two armed men who imagine that their interests are in conflict. They cannot agree to limit their armaments, because they have no faith in one another's promises. If they had faith in one another's promises, they would need no armies at all. And if it is not necessary to have a million men to decide a quarrel, why is it necessary to have half a million? Why not a quarter of a million? And if they really can decide to equalize their forces at a quarter of a million, why not at ten or one? The reason is that they do not trust one another. At the siege of Sebastopol, Prince Urusov, seeing that one of the bastions had been taken and retaken several times, and that its ultimate retention rested merely on chance, proposed to the general in command that the opposing forces should select an officer to play chess for the possession of the bastion. Of course, his proposal was laughed at. Because the commander knew that while each might consent to play chess on the chance of getting the bastion without any trouble, there was nothing to prevent the loser making a fresh attempt to capture it by force of arms. The reason why killing men instead of playing chess was adopted as a means of solving disputes was that it was the ultima ratio; and when you have killed sufficient men, your enemy must keep terms with you. But making war with limited armies is not the ultima ratio, and there is nothing to prevent the beaten side raising another army to continue the killing. It is quite true that a peace conference may lay down rules against this. But since every nation that goes to war justifies itself on the ground that its enemy has not kept faith, no nation in time of

war can regard the keeping of faith with its enemy as an obligation.

You tell me that the nations have already entered into agreements as to the way in which they will carry on war. This is quite true, though the so-called rules for the humanizing of war are never kept. But no nation has ever entered into an agreement with another to limit its ability to carry on war. And governments cannot in any case limit their armaments for another reason, because each rules by force over countries whose inhabitants desire their independence. The governments distrust not only one another, but also their own subjects. But as this is a necessary function of a government, no government can bring about peace. If all men were guided by their consciences, and trusted one another, there would be no governments and no wars.

But you tell me that if governments cannot stop wars they may make them less terrible. This is a delusion in most people's minds, and a hypocritical pretense on the part of those who are interested in maintaining war. It is hypocritical pretense, because it is used with the intention of making men believe that war is less cruel than it is. Thus governments prohibit the use of explosive bullets because of the injuries they inflict, and do not prohibit ordinary bullets, which in many cases inflict just as painful injuries. They prohibit explosive bullets for the same reasons as those which prevent them killing women and children-that is to say, because it does not serve their ends, and not because it is cruel.

Therefore, I do not wish that the Czar's conference may succeed any more than I believe in its success. Even if it did what it proposed to do, it would only divert men's minds from the true solution which is possible for every one. That is, for each man to be guided by

COUNT TOLSTOY AT REST.

(From a painting by Repin.)

his conscience, which tells him that all war is murder. When every man is convinced of this, there will be no more wars, and no more governments to make them.

"But suppose," I said, "that a whole nation, or group of nations, were to be converted to this belief, and were to live together in ideal peace, it is still not to be expected that the world will be simultaneously converted. And suppose that an unconverted nation which maintained the old system were to threaten the lives and happiness of the converted nation. Would not the converted nation be forced into war again?"

"No; because if they were converted, they would be led by their consciences and by Christianity, and they would know that war is murder. They would know that Christianity did not prohibit them laying down their own lives, but that it prohibited them from taking the lives of others."

From the question of war and peace Tolstoy turned suddenly to an American book on theology which he was reading, and which he expressed great admiration for. But ten minutes later the question arose again under quite a different form. I had been reading a book just published by a well-known Russian writer, the object of which was to prove that war was an unprofitable speculation, and would no longer compensate any country for the sacrifices it involved. It was reported that this book had considerable effect upon the Czar in inducing him to call together the conference which Tolstoy condemned. On every page there was an insistence that moral and sentimental considerations had nothing to do with the abolition of war. War was a speculation, said the writer, and owing to changes in its nature and in the social composition of Europe, it could no longer pay. Therefore, no sensible power was likely to enter upon it. To support this view there was a great mass of material adduced as to military, financial, and social conditions of Europe. Upon this book I asked Count Tolstoy's opinion, although I was quite assured that he would answer that the author's point of view was immoral, that war was murder, and that those who did not murder merely because it was unprofitable were as blood-guilty as those who did. But to my surprise he answered: "It is a very interesting book. It is of great value. It will serve a great purpose if every one reads it."

It was my first revelation of Count Tolstoy's dualism as a theorist and a practical man. My subsequent talks with Count Tolstoy convinced me that while he judged all general questions from the point of view of literal Christianity, his method of dealing with individual problems was intensely practical. He was always ready to

approve or condemn any institution or project according as it approached or receded from the accepted standard of right and wrong. That all human institutions were equally immoral when tested by his own principles never prevented him from discussing them individually on their merits, and being quite willing to accept installments of human improvement, even though the improvement served but to perpetuate the general system which he condemned. But, brought back to generalities, he was always unfaltering. Governments, churches, institutions, and art were all unchristian, and no Christian could recognize them. Yet he repeatedly expressed admiration of workers and writers who, while supporting the existing system, used their powers to make its working easier for the people. He seemed a man who, had he had a wider sphere of action, would have been quite ready to postpone his personal faith to immediate necessities. In the narrow sphere of work which is open to him in Russia he actually does so to a considerable extent. Had he lived in a freer country, where intellectual revolt is not fed by repression, he might very well have been a practical statesman, or at least a practical revolutionary. That he would reject this view himself, there is no doubt. Yet Tolstoy essentially is not a dreamer, but a man who sees the world as it is, and knows very well that there is little chance of any immediate fundamental change.

As

III. WHAT WOULD TOLSTOY DO? But what would Tolstoy do were he to become as dominant in action in Russia to-morrow as he has become in Russia's thought? It is an interesting speculation, and one upon which neither his works nor his life throws any real light. a practical man he knows very well that his ethical abstractions could no more be realized in Russia to-morrow than in any other country. Yet he knows Russia, its needs and its failings, much better than any other man in his position, for he is practically the only educated man who has lived as an equal among the class which is in reality all Russia that is to say, the peasants and the workmen. And as a practical man he is quite as ready to accept installments of reform and amelioration as any Liberal in the land, though it is quite certain that no reforms which imply the maintenance of existing governments, whether in Russia or in the West, will mitigate his abstract condemnation for one moment. But while he makes his primary distinction between the present system of government by force and the ideal rule of conscience, he is quite willing to draw a secondary distinction between good governments and bad

ones. What would, then, he do to save Russia, if given supreme power, while conscious of the impossibility of carrying his own extreme Christianity into effect?

The question was of especial interest to me as giving an opportunity for learning his outlook on the various rumors current a few years ago as to the establishment in Russia of constitutional gov ernment. Tolstoy was categorical on this point, and was plainly of the Slavophile opinion that Western institutions could never be more than an excrescence upon the body politic in Russia. I had asked him how the more intelligent of the peasantry and workmen regarded those constitutional reforms which the educated non-official classes demanded with almost one voice.

"What do you mean by reforms?" he interrupted.

a parlia

Western institutions generally ment, liberty of the press, legal guarantees"What on earth have we to do with legal guarantees and Western institutions?" he interrupted, seemingly astonished that any one should ask such a question. Your mistake is always in assuming that Western institutions are a stereotyped model upon which all reforms should be based. It is this delusion that is at the bottom of half the wars and predatory aggressions carried on by Europeans against men of other races. If reforms are wanted in Russia, it is not either Western or Eastern reforms, but measures suited for the people, and not for other peoples. The assumption that reforms so called must be constructed upon Western models is a pure product of Western exclusiveness, and is opposed both to Christianity and to common sense."

"But surely the Russians do not differ more from other European races than the European races differ from one another, and a policy which suits all the other races is therefore, prima facie, applicable to Russia."

I do not admit for one moment that any European policy is more suited to European races than Russian policy is suited to Russia. Both are bad and opposed to Christianity. (Like many other Russians, Tolstoy always spoke of 'Europe' as a distinct geographical unity, of which Russia forms no part.) But every nation has its own social spirit, which is as clearly defined as its religious spirit, and all this perpetual talk of modeling and remodeling has no more practical value than a proposal to reconstruct the religion of Confucius upon the religion of Christ. And what have we to do with legal guarantees ? I answer that question by telling you that for the mass of the Russian people the law does not exist at all. They either regard the law, as I do, as a matter wholly external to them, with which they