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with a white horse harnessed to an antique wooden
plough, leading by a halter another white horse behind
him, which draws the harrow. For it is Leo Nikolayevitch
himself, this strong, broad-shouldered frame,
with the soft white hat, which protects the sunken eyes
from the sun, with the blue peasant’s-frock, open about
the neck, exposing his naked breast, and the high boots,
which sink in the rich mould. There is nothing here
which reminds one of the count, of the born aristocrat.
The thick, broad nose, the heavy jaws, are those of the
Russian peasant. But what a wonderful peasant! this
bearing, this immense force in simplicity! It is the
peasant in contemplation, as a hero, as a genius, as a
civilizer. It is the Scythian prince of Herodotus,
Kola-Xais, the Prince of the Ploughshare; it is Mikula, the
child of the village, the hero of agriculture, with the
wonderful plough, who draws his furrow rich in
blessings in the boundless Russian plain. It is the national
hero Ilia of Murom himself, risen from his death of
a thousand years to cultivate again the Russian soil and
earth, — he who, stronger than fate, went on the road to
riches and “did not become rich,” but was wholly
engrossed in the fundamental Russian idea of
community.
Thus with Tolstoï we turn back to our first impression
of Russian intellectual life and literature. He, to
whom Turgenief directed his last words written with a
pencil, and whom, when dying, he addressed as “my
friend, the great author of Russia!” he in our days is
the last great one of the group of cultivators in this
immense empire.
What is it that he cultivates? what is it that all
these, young and old, the men with good will, prepare
and cultivate?
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