In the third lecture on "Russian History and Literature" last evening, Prince Serge Wolkonsky sketched the course taken by Russian literature during the period between Poushkin's death in 1837 and the emancipation of the serfs in 1861. Among the numberous poets who group themselves around Poushkin, the name of Lermontov is the most celebrated. Comparing him with his great contemporary, the lecturer defined Lermontov as "the poet of romantic pessimism." An important place in Russian poetry belongs to Koltsoff for having introduced into literature elements of popula language, and especially for having made the peasant's life an object of fiction, thus giving them the place they have since held in the development of Russian literature.

The lecturer next turned his attention to the prose writers, beginning with Gogol, the founder of the Russian naturalistic school. After an interesting and sarcastic sketch of the aristocratic tendencies of the time, the speaker gave a pathetic picture of Gogol's character, illustrating his literary physiognomy by a fine fragment from his "Dead Souls." The new elements brought into literature by Gogol can be expressed in one word: he was the first who made people feel ashamed of life. With Gogol, literature in Russia ceased to be a monopoly of the drawing room, and becomes the property of the nation. It is since Gogol also that Russian literature has ceased to be the property of a country, and has been adopted by the world.

The lecturer then gave an intellectual picture of the period known in Russia as "the forties." The hearth of the philosophical and literary activity of the time was the University of Moscow. In some humorous quotations from a contemporary the lecturer showed the sort of philosophical intoxication in which the younger generation of the time lived. A prominent part in this movement which prepared the literary soil from which the great Russian novelists were to arise belongs to the critic Belinsky.

The lecturer concluded with a picture of the enthusiastic expectations which immediately preceded the emancipation of the serfs by Alexander II.

The next lecture will be devoted to the consideration of this reform, its moral significance, and its intellectual influence, in so far as they expressed themselves in the writings of Tourgenev, Dostoyevsky, and Leo Tolstoy.