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 no stone unturned until the conditions of the poor had been improved and justice done them.

Now, in order to learn more of the habits and customs of other countries, and principally their systems of education, Tolstoy went abroad and visited France, Germany, and England. Then, returning to his home, he settled down as a land-owner and managed his own estates.

In 1861 the serfs were liberated by the Czar Alexander II.

Tolstoy, with characteristic energy and enthusiasm, flung himself into the work of dividing out lands between nobles and peasants. He acted as a judge in his own district, and annoyed his aristocratic neighbors by being fair to the poor: he had seen too often how they had been cheated out of their rights.

It was difficult, rather discouraging work, because years of oppression had made the peasants suspicious and grasping, and Tolstoy's task was to try to remove this distrust. He became more and more socialistic, and his literary friends were very much disappointed in him, for he seemed to be giving up his writing. One wrote: "Tolstoy has grown a long beard, leaves his hair to fall in curls over his ears, holds newspapers in detestation, and has no soul for anything but his property."

Tolstoy had also started on another enterprise. This was a school after his own theories at Yasnaya and a monthly magazine which he printed and edited,