With these words the novel of "Anna Karénine" ends. But in Levine's religious experiences Count Tolstoi was relat-bition of knowledge of human nature, ing his own, and the history is continued penetrating insight, fearless sincerity, wit, in three autobiographical works translated from him, which have within the last two or three years been published in Paris: "Ma Confession," "Ma Religion," and "Que Faire." Our author announces, further, "two great works," on which he has spent six years; one a criticism of dogmatic theology, the other a new translation of the four Gospels, with a concordance of his own arranging. The results

seems to me of high importance and value. Let us see what it amounts to.

Count Tolstoi touched, in “ Anna Karénine," on the failure of science to tell a man what his life means. Many a sharp stroke does he add in his latter writings:

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Development is going on, and there are laws which guide it. You yourself are a part of the whole. Having come to understand the whole so far as is possible, and having comprehended the law of development, you will comprehend also your place in that whole, you will understand yourself.

"In spite of all the shame the confession costs me, there was a time, I declare, when I tried to look as if I was satisfied with this sort of thing !

But the men of science may take comfort from hearing that Count Tolstoi treats the men of letters no better than them, although he is a man of letters himself:

I must be general and I must be brief; neither my limits nor my purpose permit the introduction of what is abstract. But in Count Tolstoi's religious philosophy there is very little which is abstract, arid. The idea of life is his master idea in studying and establishing religion. He speaks impatiently of St. Paul as a source, in common with the Fathers and the Reformers, of that ecclesiastical theology which misses the essential and fails to present Christ's gospel aright. Yet Paul's law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus freeing me from the law of sin and death" is the pith and ground of all Count Tolstoi's theology. Moral life is the gift of God, is God, and this true life, this union with God to which we aspire, we reach through Jesus. We reach it through union with Jesus and by adopting his life. This doctrine is proved true for us by the "The judgment which my literary comlife in God, to be acquired through Jesus, panions passed on life was to the effect being what our nature feels after and that life in general is in a state of prog moves to, by the warning of misery if we ress, and that in this development we, the are severed from it, the sanction of happi- men of letters, take the principal part. ness if we find it. Of the access for us, The vocation of us artists and poets is to at any rate, to the spirit of life, us who instruct the world; and to prevent my are born in Christendom, are in touch, coming out with the natural question, conscious or unconscious, with Christian-"What am I, and what am I to teach ?' ity, this is the true account. Questions it was explained to me that it was useless over which the Churches spend so much labor and time-questions about the Trinity, about the godhead of Christ, about the procession of the Holy Ghost, are not vital; what is vital is the doctrine of access to the spirit of life through Jesus.

to know that, and that the artist and the poet taught without perceiving how. I passed for a superb artist, a great poet, and consequently it was but natural I should appropriate this theory. I, the artist, the poet I wrote, I taught, without myself knowing what. I was paid for Sound and saving doctrine, in my opin- what I did. I had everything; splendid ion, this is. It may be gathered in a great fare and lodging, women, society; I had degree from what Count Tolstoi had alla gloire. Consequently, what I taught ready given us in the novel of "Anna Karénine." But of course it is greatly developed in the special works which have followed. Many of these developments are, I will repeat, of striking force, interest, and value. In "Anna Karénine" we "And I lived ever so long in this behad been told of the scepticism of the lief, never doubting but that it was true!" upper and educated classes in Russia. The adepts of this literary and scienBut what reality is added by such an an- tific religion are not numerous, to be sure, ecdote as the following from " Ma Confes-in comparison with the mass of the peỏsion"!

was very good. This faith in the impor tance of poetry and of the development of life was a religion, and I was one of its priests a very agreeable and advantageous office.

ple, and the mass of the people, as Levine "I remember that when I was about had remarked, find comfort still in the old eleven years old we had a visit one Sun- religion of Christendom; but of the mass day from a boy, since dead, who an- of the people our literary and scientific nounced to my brother and me, as great instructors make no account. Like Solonews, a discovery just made at his public mon and Schopenhauer, these gentlemen, school. This discovery was to the effect and "society " along with them, are, morethat God had no existence, and that every-over, apt to say that life is, after all, vanthing which we were taught about him wasity; but then they all know of no life pure invention." except their own.

"It used to appear to me that the small | Instead of complaining like the persons number of cultivated, rich, and idle men, in our world of the hardship of their lot, of whom I was one, composed the whole these poor people received sickness and of humanity, and that the millions and disappointments without any revolt, withmillions of other men who had lived and out opposition, but with a firm and tranare still living were not in reality men at quil confidence that so it was to be, that it all. Incomprehensible as it now seems could not be otherwise, and that it was all to me, that I should have gone on consid- right." ering life without seeing the life which was surrounding me on all sides, the life of humanity; strange as it is to think that I should have been so mistaken, and have fancied my life, the life of the Solomons and the Schopenhauers, to be the veritable and normal life, while the life of the masses was but a matter of no importance, — strangely odd as this seems to me now, so it was, notwithstanding."

And this pretentious minority, who call themselves "society," "the world," and to whom their own life, the life of "the world," seems the only life worth naming, are all the while miserable! Our author found it so in his own experience:

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In my life, an exceptionally happy one from a worldly point of view, I can number such a quantity of sufferings endured for the sake of the world,' that they would be enough to furnish a martyr for Jesus. All the most painful passages in my life, beginning with the orgies and duels of my student days, the wars I have been in, the illnesses, and the abnormal and unbearable conditions in which I am living now -all this is but one martyrdom endured in the name of the doctrine of the world. Yes, and I speak of my own life, exceptionally happy from the world's point of view.

"Let any sincere man pass his life in review, and he will perceive that never, not once, has he suffered through practising the doctrine of Jesus; the chief part of the miseries of his life have proceeded solely from his following, contrary to his inclination, the spell of the doctrine of the world."

On the other hand, the simple, the multitudes, outside of this spell, are comparatively contented:

"In opposition to what I saw in our circle, where life without faith is possible, and where I doubt whether one in a thousand would confess himself a believer, I conceive that among the people (in Russia) there is not one sceptic to many thousands of believers. Just contrary to what I saw in our circle, where life passes in idleness, amusements, and discontent with life, I saw that of these men of the people the whole life was passed in severe labor, and yet they were contented with life.

All this is but development, sometimes rather surprising, but always powerful and interesting, of what we have already had in the pages of "Anna Karénine." And like Levine in that novel, Count Tolstoi was driven by his inward struggle and misery very near to suicide. What is new in the recent books is the solution and cure announced. Levine had accepted a provisional solution of the difficulties oppressing him; he had lived right on, so to speak, obeying his conscience, but not asking how far all his actions hung together and were consistent:

"He advanced money to a peasant to get him out of the clutches of a moneylender, but did not give up the arrears due to himself; he punished thefts of wood strictly, but would have scrupled to impound a peasant's cattle trespassing on his fields; he did not pay the wages of a laborer whose father's death caused him to leave work in the middle of harvest, but he pensioned and maintained his old servants; he let his peasants wait while he went to give his wife a kiss after he came home, but would not have made them wait while he went to visit his bees."

Count Tolstoi has since advanced to a far more definite and stringent rule of life

the positive doctrine, he thinks, of Jesus. It is the determination and promulgation of this rule which is the novelty in our author's recent works. He extracts this essential doctrine, or rule of Jesus, from the Sermon on the Mount, and presents it in a body of commandments - Christ's commandments; the pith, he says, of the New Testament, as the Decalogue is the pith of the Old. These all-important commandments of Christ are "commandments of peace," and five in number. The first commandment is: "Live in peace with all men. Treat no one as contemptible and beneath you. Not only allow yourself no anger, but do not rest until you have dissipated even unreasonable anger in others against yourself." The second is: "No libertinage and no divorce; let every man have one wife and every woman one husband." The third: "Never on any pretext take an oath of service of any kind; all such oaths are imposed for a bad pur

pose." The fourth : "Never employ force | commandments. As I have somewhere against the evil-doer; bear whatever wrong or other said: "Christianity is a source; is done to you without opposing the wrong no one supply of water and refreshment doer or seeking to have him punished." The fifth and last: "Renounce all distinction of nationality; do not admit that men of another nation may ever be treated by you as enemies; love all men alike as alike near to you; do good to all alike."

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that comes from it can be called the sum of Christianity. It is a mistake, and may lead to much error, to exhibit any series of maxims, even those of the Sermon on the Mount, as the ultimate sum and formula into which Christianity may be run up."

And the reason mainly lies in the char. acter of the founder of Christianity and in the nature of his utterances. Not less important than the teachings given by Jesus is the temper of their giver, his temper of sweetness and reasonableness, of epieikeia. Goethe calls him a Schwärmer, a fanatic; he may much more rightly be called an opportunist. But he is an opportunist of an opposite kind from those who in politics, that "wild and dreamlike trade" of insincerity, give themselves this name. They push or slacken, press their points hard or let them be, as may best suit the interests of their self-aggrandizement and of their party. Jesus has in view simply "the rule of God, of the truth." But this is served by waiting as well as by hasting forward, and sometimes served better.

If these five commandments were generally observed, says Count Tolstoi, all men would become brothers. Certainly the actual society in which we live would be changed and dissolved. Armies and wars would be renounced; courts of justice, police, property, would be renounced also. And whatever the rest of us may do, Count Tolstoi at least will do his duty and follow Christ's commandment sincerely. He has given up rank, office, and property, and earns his bread by the labor of his own hands. "I believe in Christ's commandments," he says, "and this faith changes my whole former estimate of what is good and great, bad and low, in human life." At present, "Everything which I used to think bad and low- the rusticity of the peasant, the plainness of lodging, food, clothing, manners - all this has become good and great in my eyes. At present I can no longer contribute to any- Count Tolstoi sees rightly that whatever thing which raises me externally above the propertied and satisfied classes may others, which separates me from them. I think, the world, ever since Jesus Christ cannot, as formerly, recognize either in came, is judged; "a new earth" is in my own case or in that of others any title, prospect. It was ever in prospect with rank, or quality beyond the title and qual- Jesus, and should be ever in prospect with ity of man. I cannot seek fame and his followers. And the ideal in prospect praise; I cannot seek a culture which has to be realized. "If ye know these separates me from men. I cannot refrain things, happy are ye if ye do them." But from seeking in my whole existence in they are to be done through a great and my lodging, my food, my clothing, and widespread and long-continued change, my ways of going on with people-what- and a change of the inner man to begin ever, far from separating me from the with. The most important and fruitful mass of mankind, draws me nearer to utterances of Jesus, therefore, are not them." things which can be drawn up as a table of stiff and stark external commands, but the things which have most soul in them; because these can best sink down into our soul, work there, set up an influence, form habits of conduct, and prepare the future. The Beatitudes are on this account more helpful than the utterances from which Count Tolstoi builds up his five commandments. The very secret of Jesus, "He that loveth his life shall lose it, he that will lose his life shall save it," does not give us a command to be taken and followed in the letter, but an idea to work in our mind and soul, and of inexhaustible value there.

Whatever else we have or have not in Count Tolstoi, we have at least a great soul and a great writer. In his biblical exegesis, in the criticism by which he extracts and constructs his five commandments of Christ which are to be the rule of our lives, I find much which is questionable along with much which is ingenious and powerful. But I have neither space, nor, indeed, inclination, to criticise his exegesis here. The right moment, besides, for criticising this will come when the "two great works," which are in preparation, shall have appeared.

For the present I limit myself to a single criticism only a general one. Christianity cannot be packed into any set of

Jesus paid tribute to the government land dined with the publicans, although

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neither the empire of Rome nor the high | tance, so that there is no hope of comfinance of Judea were compatible with his municating anything new with regard to ideal and with the "new earth" which facts or opinions, yet I venture to offer that ideal must in the end create. Per- a few remarks on this colossus of compohaps Levine's provisional solution, in a sition: first, because I should be sorry to society like ours, was nearer to "the rule have such a name missing in a gallery of of God, of the truth," than the more trench- composers on whom it was my good fate ant solution which Count Tolstoi has to write a small series of essays; and also adopted for himself since. It seems cal- because I fancy that the numerous books culated to be of more use. I do not know of reference from which information on how it is in Russia, but in an English vil- the subject may be gathered are for the lage the determination of "our circle" to most part less accessible to the general earn their bread by the work of their public, being either exclusively musical hands would produce only dismay, not or published in foreign languages, each fraternal joy, amongst that "majority "nation being, as it were, jealous to conwho are so earning it already. There tribute a small share to the glorious monare plenty of us to compete as things ument of him who excited the admiration stand," the gardeners, carpenters, and of every country one might say of every smiths would say. 'Pray stick to your man and woman taking an interest in articles, your poetry, and nonsense; in music. manual labor you will interfere with us, and be taking the bread out of our mouths."

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So I arrive at the conclusion that Count Tolstoi has perhaps not done well in abandoning the work of the poet and artist, and that he might with advantage return to it. But whatever he may do in the future, the work which he has already done, and his work in religion as well as his work in imaginative literature, is more than sufficient to signalize him as one of the most marking, interesting, and sympathy-inspiring men of our time an honor, I must add, to Russia, although he forbids us to heed nationality.

From Temple Bar.

BEETHOVEN. WHOEVER Wishes to know who is the real musical giant of the nineteenth century, the overwhelmingly great genius of modern times, or the man whom we may safely call the father of the great orchestral work created in this century, the basis upon which all modern master-works are built, can receive from every honest musician only one answer- Ludwig van Beethoven. Although his life has been described most minutely and most ably by biographers of many nations, by intimate personal friends who for years had noted down every particular, every little anecdote, every word worth preserving; although these more faithful than brilliant writers more voluminous than luminous, as Sheridan says have been followed by writers much better able to appreciate the great man and his work from a safer dis

As seven towns fought for the honor of being the birthplace of Homer, so are there several houses in several streets of the good city of Bonn on the Rhine which not only claim the honor of having been the birthplace of Beethoven, but there are actually two houses provided with memorial tablets, both stating that "in this house Beethoven was born." Desirous to learn the truth on the spot with my own eyes, I thought it as well to take a little trouble and go to Bonn to see his monument and investigate the affair on the spot.

Bonn is situated on the border of the Rhine, just where that river is most charming; and although the whole journey from Mayence to Cologne may not justify its high reputation, the spot from Coblentz to Cologne certainly does ; and nobody would guess from the poetical, romantic outside of Bonn, how dirty and unpoetical is the inside, how the streets smell, how the houses are kept, and in what an uninviting state is even the Beethoven monument itself, which ought to be one of the attrac tions of the town, and an ornament, artistic and historical. I had no idea, when I arrived at the splendid railway station, that the whole place surrounding the monument would not be penetrated by that reverential air that usually fills places where marble reminiscences of great men form the pride of a town which comes in for a merit which it has done nothing to deserve. The least anybody might expect, surely, is that the monument of so great a man, in a city which has little else to boast of, might be kept decently clean. But even this modest expectation is doomed to disappointment. Imagine a dirty square with the statue in the middle;