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 XII

TOLSTOY

1828-1910

The true life is the common life of all—not the life of the one. All must labor for the life of others.

Tolstoy, one of the greatest novelists and the greatest thinkers of the nineteenth century, was a Russian.

His father, Count Nicholas Tolstoy, and his mother, Princess Marie Volkonsky, were both aristocrats, whose ancestors had been well known and important people for some generations.

Yasnaya Polyana (which means "Bright Glade"), where Leo Tolstoy was born, belonged to his mother. It was a very pretty place, and consisted of a large wooden house surrounded by woods and avenues of lime-trees, and with a river and four lakes and a lot of property belonging to it.

Tolstoy's mother died when he was a year and a half old, so he could not remember her; but all he heard about her made him love her memory. He tells us that she appeared to him as "a creature so elevated, fine, and spiritual," that often, during his struggles to be good and overcome temptation, he prayed