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Rh restored by M and Mme Fet. The letters which subsequently passed between them only served to fan the flame, so that even the amiable Fet was involved in the dispute and for a short time estranged from Tolstoy. Finally, after a lengthy and acrimonious correspondence, the threatened resort to arms was averted through the interposition of friends; but fourteen years were allowed to pass before a reconciliation took place. In 1878 Tolstoy, believing himself to be in a d}iing state, at length made overtures of peace to his brother author; overtures which Turgeniev met cordially in the following terms:

"Dear Leo Nikolaevitch,-I received your letter to-day which you sent to me poste restante. I was delighted and much moved by it. With the greatest pleasure I am ready to renew our former friendship and to press your proffered hand. You are quite right in thinking I harbour no feelings of enmity towards you. If they ever did exist they have long since disappeared, and no remembrance of you now remains save that of a man to whom I am sincerely devoted, and of a writer whose first step it was my great privilege to be one of the earliest to welcome; whose every new work has always aroused in me the greatest interest. I rejoice from my heart that our misunderstanding has come to an end. I hope to be in the province of Orel this summer, and then we shall meet. I send you my best wishes, and once more grasp your hand in friendship."

Meanwhile Tolstoy had pursued literary labours with relentless ardour and with ever-increasing fame. Prince Andre (the hero of War and Peace) and Anna Karenina in turn occupied all his thoughts. Several years were given to the perfecting of these remarkable character-paintings. When the publication (1864-1869) of War and Peace had been succeeded by that of Anna Karenina, he set himself to write yet another great novel, dealing with the times of Peter the Great, but after working at it for some months he suddenly abandoned the scheme. One of the few excursions made during these years of tranquillity was undertaken in 1866 to the battlefield of Borodino, the scene of the famous fight in 1812. For two days Tolstoy wandered over the plain, investigating and taking notes, and there he drew a plan of the battle, which was afterwards published as a frontispiece to War and Peace. But the continued pressure of severe nervous and mental strain was bound to affect a man of his calibre; health and spirits gradually sank, so that in 1870 Countess Tolstoy induced him once more to seek the healthful air of Samara, and subject himself to the " koumiss cure " in practice there. A strange At Samara. feature of this " treatment " lay in the avoidance of meal and vegetables, the diet being strictly confined to meat. Tolstoy pitched his tent in the village of Karalieck, where the primitive life among the Bashkir nomads exactly suited his habits and disposition. He had a faculty for making himself at home with peasant folk, and was a great favourite among them. In this district there was a large community of Molochans, a sect whose tenets differ considerably from those of the Orthodox religion of Russia. They acknowledge no guide save the Bible, and reject all the rites and ceremonies of the Greek Church. Their honesty, industry and temperance made them an example to all the country round, and caused Tolstoy to study them with special interest. So delighted was the count with this visit to Samara, that he shortly afterwards purchased an estate of over 2000 acres in the district. But his pleasure was short-lived, for not long afterwards (1872-1873) the crops failed and a serious famine broke out. He thereupon opened a subscription fund for the starving population, and went from village to village taking a quantity of grain with him, and making what provision was possible in the circumstances.

Tolstoy was now making up for lost time, learning what he had failed to learn at the university. Greek was his great attraction. " Without Greek," he exclaims, " there Studies in i s no culture." He also became enamoured of the writings of Schopenhauer, and for the greater part of a year (1869) devoted himself to the study of that philosopher. " Never," he says,. "have I experienced such spiritual joys." Enthusiastic in everything he takes up, he assures his friends that Schopenhauer is the greatest genius he has met with. He sets himself to translate his works, and tries to enrol Fet as a co-translator. Philosophy at this stage of his life went hand in hand with sport and agricultural interests. He contemplated buying an estate in the province of Penza, but on the 21st of October 1869 he writes: "The purchase of the estate in Penza has not come to anything. I have now finished the sixth volume (War and Peace), and I hope it will be published on the 1st of November. There are a lot of snipe. I have shot four brace, and to-day found two brace and killed one bird."

After a period of comparative rest and ease, the shadows of war and death once more encompassed Tolstoy. Two of his children died in 1873, and their loss was followed by that of his much-loved aunt, Mme Ergolskaya. A mental restlessness and uneasiness came over Tolstoy, and also a desire for the exercise of a wider philanthropy. The Russo-Turkish War put the crowning touch to these feelings. God and death, war and the intricacies of life were now the constant subjects of his letters. " You will not believe what joy your last letter has given me," he writes in 1877 to his dear friend Fet. "When you speak of the existence of the Deity, I agree with everything you say, and I would wish to write much, but time fails me and it is difficult in a letter. For the first time you write to me on the Divinity of God. I have been thinking about it for a long time. Don't say that we must not think about it. Not only we must, but we ought. In all ages the best people, the true people, have thought about it." Tolstoy now resumed the study of the Bible, and took special delight in the books of Ecclesiastes and Proverbs. He treats them as a new discovery, and recommends them to his friends as having much in common with the teaching of Schopenhauer ! This revived interest in religious questions was accompanied and perhaps deepened by a state of extreme depression. It was then he reconciled himself with Turgeniev, and in December 1878 we find the latter staying with him on a visit of three days' duration. Turgeniev writes that he finds him " very silent, but much developed." s The count on his side feels the same want of mutual sympathy as of old, and confesses that no real friendship seems possible between them.

Tolstoy now entered on the third phase of his life. He himself thus describes the stages of his mental growth. In the first phase he lived only for his own lusts and pleasures. This came to an end at the age of thirty-f our. Then came the interest in the wel fare of humanity, which married life cooled and obscured for a while. The striving for the welfare of mankind was mingled with the striving for personal well-being. But the third and highest phase was reached when the service of God became the motive power of his existence. All other aims grew subservient to this, and interest in the merely personal life had begun to disappear. He had passed through every imaginable grade of religious thought. As a child he had gone to church and confession unquestioningly. As a student and young man he had scorned and ridiculed religion. Later in life he became a pious and devoutly orthodox Greek Churchman, until one day during the Russo-Turkish War he was filled with a spirit of revolt at hearing the priests pray for the destruction of the enemy, beseeching the Almighty to help them to kill their hundreds and thousands. His whole being recoiled from the un-Christianity of these prayers, and he then and there renounced the orthodox faith. For three years he had exceeded the priests themselves in the regularity of his attendance. Now he felt there was something vitally amiss, and he flung it all to the winds. The novelist was rapidly being hidden in the philosopher's cloak, to the dismay of literary Europe. So early as 1859 Turgeniev had exclaimed, " If only Tolstoy would not philosophize, all might yet be well." His brilliant contemporaries, Gogol, Dostoievski and others, had all in different ways been seized in turn by what may be called the. fever of religion. Tolstoy was to suffer from it too. Like the flickering of a dying lamp, his imagination again shone out in The Death of Ivan Ilyitch and The Power of Darkness. Subsequently, with rare exceptions, his writings were overloaded with ethical reasonings. He was now fifty. While leading a life outwardly calm and