circumstances with which the man is hemmed in? In reply to this question it will be better to relate the history of this young fellow’s childhood and training.

It seemed as though everything had conspired to make something odd out of him. As a sharp-witted lad of twelve, of a thoughtful mood and somewhat sickly constitution, he entered a school managed at that time by a very remarkable man. The idol of youth, the wonderful teacher, the incomparable Alexander Petrovitch, was endowed with the gift of divining a man’s nature. How he did understand the character of the Russian man! How he understood children! How well he knew how to move them! There was not a mischief-maker who did not come to him, after playing a prank, and confess it of his own accord. But this was not all; the player of pranks did not leave the master’s presence with drooping head, but held it well in the air, with a hearty desire to atone for his fault. There was something encouraging in Alexander Petrovitch’s very reproof, something which said, “Forward! Rise as quickly as possible to your feet, without heeding your fall!” He called ambition the force which stimulates a man onward, and he endeavoured to arouse it. With him there was no question of good behaviour. He generally said, “I require brains and nothing else. He who directs his attention to acquiring knowledge will have no time for pranks, mischief will disappear of itself.”

This schoolmaster did not have many pupils, and he mostly taught in person. He understood how to give the very marrow of the subject, without pedantic accessories or pompous views or speculations, and so that it seemed plain to the youngest that the knowledge was necessary to them. Only those branches of learning were chosen by him which were adapted to make a man a good citizen. The greater part of the lessons consisted in stories about what awaited a young man in the future, and he understood so well how to sketch out a career, that the youth lived mind and soul in the service while still on his school form. The master, hiding nothing, set before the boy in all their nakedness the bitterness and the hindrances which arise in a man’s path, and all the trials and temptations which await him. He knew everything, just as though he himself had passed through every rank and calling.

Whether it was from this cause that ambition was so strongly aroused in his pupils, or because there was something in the very eyes of this extraordinary teacher, which said to the youth, “Forward!”—that word so well known to the Russian, and which works wonders on his sensitive organisation—at all events, the youths from the very outset sought out difficulties and longed to be in action, contending with the greatest hardships under circumstances in which it was necessary to display the utmost firmness of soul. Few graduated after this course of study, but those few proved men of might. They remained firm in the most insecure places; while many who were much more clever than they were, could not endure their position, but abandoned everything on account of petty personal vexations; or else having become dull and lazy, they found themselves in the hands of bribe-takers and rogues. But the others wavered not; and knowing both life and men, and possessing true wisdom, they exercised a powerful influence on the evil-disposed.

How this wonderful teacher startled Andrei Ivanovitch in his boyhood! The fiery heart of the ambitious lad for a long time leaped at the very thought of entering upon the higher course of study; and indeed, when sixteen years old, Tentyotnikoff, having distanced all the lads of his own age, was counted worthy of being transferred to the highest class as one of the best, though he did not believe it himself. What to all appearances could be better for our Tentyotnikoff than such an instructor? But fate would have it so, that at the very time when the lad was transferred to this class of the elect—a thing which he had so ardently desired—the remarkable teacher, whose words of encouragement alone threw him into a sweet confusion, fell ill, and died shortly afterwards. Oh, what a blow was this for the young fellow! How terrible was this his first loss. It seemed to him as though everything in the academy were altered.

In the place of Alexander Petrovitch there then came a certain Feodor Ivanovitch, a good painstaking man, but one who held very different views of things. In the easy unconstraint of the boys of the first class he thought that he detected intractability. He began by instituting among them certain outward forms of order; for instance he required the young fellows to preserve unbroken silence, under no circumstances were they to walk out except in pairs; and he even began to measure the distance from couple to couple