only foolish boys-behold them suddenly transformed into Nihilists!"

"It appears to me that you are forgetting the sentiment of personal dignity, on which you laid so much stress just now," remarked Bazarof phlegmatically, while Arkadi's face flushed with indignation, and his eyes flashed. "Our dispute has led us too far. I think we should do well to stop here. Yet," added he, rising, "I should agree with you if you could name to me a single institution of our social, civil, or family life, which does not deserve to be swept away without mercy." "I could name a million such," exclaimed Paul Petrovitch, 'a million! Take, for instance, the commune."

A cold smile passed over Bazarof's lips.

"As for the commune," said he, "you had better talk to your brother about that. I suppose he must know by this time what to think of the commune, the solidarity of the peasants, their temperance, and similar jokes."

"And the family, the family, such as we still find it among our peasants!" exclaimed Paul Petrovitch.

"In my opinion that is another question that you would do well not to examine too closely. Come, take my advice, Paul Petrovitch, and take two days to consider the matter. Nothing else will occur to you just at present; consider all our institutions one after another, and contemplate them carefully. Meantime Arkadi and I will—”

"Turn everything to ridicule," interrupted Paul Petrovitch.

"No; dissect frogs. Come, Arkadi. gentlemen."

Good afternoon,

The two friends went out. The brothers remained alone together, and for some time could only look at each other in silence.

"So that is the youth of to-day," began Paul Petrovitch at length; "those are our successors!"

FEODOR M. DOSTOIEVSKY.

YOUNGER than Turgenieff by three years, Feodor Mikhailovitch Dostoievsky died three years before that great novelist. He was born at Moscow in 1821 and died February 9, 1881. He did not accept exile, as did Turgenieff, but remained in Russia, became implicated in the Petrashevsky Society conspiracy, and tasted the bitterness of Siberia. His life seems, indeed, to have been destined to gloom from the start. The child of a hospital surgeon, he first opened his eyes in a charity hospital. Throughout his life he was a victim of hallucinations. No wonder he was moved to become the psychological analyst of morbid and diseased characters. At first, however, he was drawn by pity to write a heart-stirring revelation of the miseries of the poor of St. Petersburg. His "Poor People," published while he was only twenty-three years old, won for him the title of "the new Gogol." Extreme wretchedness was shown in the catastrophe of the love idyl of the poor clerk Drevushkin, who loses the solace of his poverty in the marriage of his poor girl companion to a rich merchant. But the story-teller himself was to experience an even more cruel fate. Implicated indirectly in the plot against Emperor Nicholas, he was cast into prison,and condemned to death. On the morning of the day of doom he made his toilet, donned the white shirt, kissed the cross, and had the sabre broken over his head. At the last moment, however, a messenger arrived from the Czar. Dostoievsky was transported to Siberia. Being a sub-lieutenant of St. Petersburg School of Military Engineering, he was put to work in the mines. Religion alone upheld him during these terrible four years (1849-54). His memories of that burial alive were soon after given to the world in his vivid "Recollections of a Dead House," which moved all Russia. But his morbid tendencies gained the upper hand in his later novels. Heavens!" exclaimed Turgenieff, after reading one story by this doctor's son, "what a sour smell! What a vile hospital odor! What idle scandal! What a psychological mole-hole!" The pathological phase of his

romances renders them truly unwholesome, although in "Crime and Punishment" he has made an overwhelmingly impressive study of a brain diseased. Raskolnikoff, the weak hero, plans a deliberate murder and robbery through merely accidental suggestion. Ultimately he breaks through the moral fog enshrouding him, and by the sympathetic selfsacrifice of the fallen Sonia, the heroine, starts for Siberia to spend the rest of his life in repentance. Other novels by Dostoievsky are "Idiots" and "Devils," two social satires, and "The Degraded.”

THE MURDERER'S CONFESSION TO SONIA.

(From "Crime and Punishment.")

RASKOLNIKOFF wished to smile, but, do what he would, his countenance retained its sorrow-stricken look. He lowered his head, covering his face with his hands. All at once, he fancied that he was beginning to hate Sonia. Surprised, frightened even, at so strange a discovery, he suddenly raised his head and attentively considered the girl, who, in her turn, fixed on him a look of anxious love. Hatred fled from Raskolnikoff's heart. It was not that; he had only mistaken the nature of the sentiment he experienced. It signified that the fatal moment had come. Once more he hid his face in his hands and bowed his head. Suddenly he grew pale, rose, and, after looking at Sonia, he mechanically went and sat on her bed, without uttering a single word. Raskolnikoff's impression was the very same he had experienced when standing behind the old woman-he had loosened the hatchet from the loop, and said to himself: "There is not a moment to be lost!"

"What is the matter?" asked Sonia, in bewilderment.

No reply. Raskolnikoff had relied on making explanations under quite different conditions, and did not himself understand what was now at work within him. She gently approached him, sat on the bed by his side, and waited, without taking her eyes from his face. Her heart beat as if it would break. The situation was becoming unbearable; he turned towards the girl his lividly-pale face, his lips twitched with an effort to speak. Fear had seized upon Sonia.

"What is the matter with you?" she repeated, moving slightly away from him.

"Nothing, Sonia; don't be afraid. It is not worth while; it is all nonsense!" he murmured, like a man absent in mind. "Only, why can I have come to torment you?" added he all at once, looking at his interlocutress. "Yes, why? I keep on asking myself this question, Sonia."

Perhaps he had done so a quarter of an hour before, but at this moment his weakness was such that he scarcely retained consciousness; a continued trembling shook his whole frame.

"Oh! how you suffer!" said she, in a voice full of emotion, whilst looking at him.

"It is nothing! But this is the matter in question, Sonia." (For a moment or so, a pale smile hovered on his lips.) "You remember what I wished to tell you yesterday?" Sonia waited anxiously. "I told you, on parting, that I was, perhaps, bidding you farewell for ever, but that if I should come to-day, I would tell you who it was that killed Elizabeth." She began to tremble in every limb. "Well, then, that is why I have come."

"I know you told me that yesterday," she went on in a shaky voice. "How do you know that?" she added vivaciously. Sonia breathed with an effort. Her face grew more and more pale.

"I know it."

"Has he been discovered? sne asked, timidly, after a moment's silence.

"No, he has not been discovered."

For another moment she remained silent. "Then how you know it?" she at length asked, in an almost unintelligible voice.

do

He turned towards the girl, and looked at her with a singular rigidity, whilst a feeble smile fluttered on his lips. "Guess!" he said.

Sonia felt on the point of being seized with convulsions. "But you-why frighten me like this?" she asked, with a childlike smile.

"I know it, because I am very intimate with him!" went

on Raskolnikoff, whose look remained fixed on her, as if he had not strength to turn his eyes aside. "Elizabeth-he had no wish to murder her-he killed her without premeditation. He only intended to kill the old woman, when he should find her alone. He went to her house-but at the very moment Elizabeth came in-he was there-and he killed her."

A painful silence followed upon those words. For a moment both continued to look at one another. "And so you can't guess?" he asked abruptly, feeling like a man on the point of throwing himself from the top of a steeple.

"No," stammered Sonia, in a scarcely audible voice. "Try again."

At the moment he pronounced these words, Raskolnikoff experienced afresh, in his heart-of-hearts, that feeling of chilliness he knew so well. He looked at Sonia, and suddenly read on her face the same expression as on that of Elizabeth, when the wretched woman recoiled from the murderer ad

vancing towards her, hatchet in hand. In that supreme moment Elizabeth had raised her arm, as children do when they begin to be afraid, and ready to weep, fix a glaring immovable glance on the object which frightens them. In the same way Sonia's face expressed indescribable fear. She also raised her arm, and gently pushed Raskolnikoff aside, whilst touching his breast with her hand, and then gradually drew back without ceasing to look hard at him. Her fear affected the young man, who, for his part, began to gaze on her with a scared expression.

"Have you guessed?" he murmured at last.

"My God!" exclaimed Sonia.

Then she sank exhausted on the bed, and buried her face in the pillows; a moment after, however, she rose with a rapid movement, approached him, and, seizing him by both hands, which her slender fingers clutched like nippers, she fixed on him a long look. Had he made a mistake? She hoped so, but she had no sooner cast a look on Raskolnikoff's face than the suspicion which had flashed on her mind became certainty.

"Enough, Sonia! enough! Spare me!" he implored in a plaintive voice. The event upset all his calculations, for