September 10.
'THERE are some men who appear to have been born ascetics as naturally as others are born to be reverse. The reflexion affords a key to the life of Count Leo Tolstoy, whose eightieth birthday will be which it may be viewed, if not with perfect satisfaction, least as a coherent whole. Environment and, perhaps, his own great vitality have occasionally placed him on the side the opposite to that "of the angels." The pleasure-loving society of Kazan University (where Count Tolstoy first became acquainted with his ideal, freedom); the disappointment of his earliest over-hasty efforts as a reformer on his estates at Yasnaya Polyana; the lionizing which his Tales from Sebastopol ined him in the beau monde of Petersburg on his first return from the Crimea; these conspired to plunge him imes into all the dissipations which made up the ordinary existence of the rank to which he belonged. Tolstoy describes his life as falling broadly into three phases: the first, period of living for his own pleasures; the second even, a time of home and family delights, when he considers that the striving for the welfare of mankind was too much mingled with the striving for fe enters wholly on the search for sonal well-being.. At the last
the Divine light, the service of the highest things becoming the motive of all his actions. But to others it will seem that the third phase was already strongly antici-Folstoy's earliest years there was ed in its two precursors. In
1 contradiction between the two aspects of his nature, fierce gaiety alternating with melancholy reverie. He broke away im-' patiently from the delights of Kazan (himself then hardly more than a boy) as he afterwards broke away from St. Petersburg, to seek the simple life and meditate human reform. From a cynical point of view asceticism is easy when there is no need for it: and indeed when Tolstoy handed over all his possessions to his wife and family, in revolt against the burden' and iniquity of it must be confessed that the change made The Heol. Herald and %. ¢. & C. Gazette. little difference to him materially. But there is no doubting the absolute sincerity of his desire for simplicity in all things: and if that desire may be thought sometimes to have led him into extravagances of renunciation, his experience of the pleasures of ordinary men went' to keep his asceticism free from coldness that has marred so many general outlines Tolstoy's life has been sin, larly free from the exciting incidents which are usually associated with the reformer's path. His youth was passed first on the parental estate celebrated to-day, jat Yasnaya Polyana; then, after his father's death (which bap-pened when he was nine years old) under the charge of an aunt who lived in Kazan, at the university of which town Tolstoy was entered at the age of fifteen. His educational career was not a success, tLongh the chief fault lay with the education itself. We find fan echo of his feelings on this subject later, when he set himself to better the condition of his peasants at Yasnaya, a part of his reform scheme taking the extraordinary shape of a school in which the children were free to go and come, to learn as much or as little as they pleased. It is worth noticing that Tolstoy did not put these emancipated ideas into practice with his own children. Possibly his Countess (nee Sophia Bebrs) would not have permitted them: and a Indy who presents her husband with thirteen children has surely a right to say something about their up-bringing. But Tolstoy's marriage did not take place till 1862. Before that he bad already had time to grow disheartened with the experiment of schools in which are masters and masters At a still earlier date he had ed those charming books, Childhood, The Landlord's Morning, Boyhood and Youth, which reflect the developments. of his mind within a framework of some of the happiest episodes of his life had served in the army during the Crimea, producing his series of Tales from Sebastopol which first earned him real celebrity; and had voyaged through Europe seeking light on the progressive notions which the'accession of Alexander LI had set on foot in Russia. By the time of his return to Yasnaya from these journeys, Tolstoy's ideas had taken' definite shape. He exalted the people, their lives, their simple ideas and patient Jabour; and he poured scorn on the nobles, considering them equally wasteful in themselves and uni to the scheme of things. Of manual NE
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.