Page:The Russian Review Volume 1.djvu/294

262 national epics and the pagan divinities of the pre-Christian time in Russia. While he was speaking, a trustee of the school, the noted chemist Voskresensky, entered the room. Hearing that, according to mythology, Vladimir of the folk-songs is really the god of the sun, Voskresensky, burst out laughing, much to the discomfiture of the teachers and the professors present, and they hastened to inform him of his lack of knowledge in the field of comparative mythology. "Voskresensky's fit of laughter," says Kovalevsky, "is the only protest I can recall against the nonsense with which our heads were being stuffed."

Kovalevsky received his higher education at the University of Kharkov, in its Department of Law. He chose this department in preference to others not because his interests lay particularly in this direction, but because the faculty of this department was the best in the university. His most important work was done under Professor D. I. Kachenovsky, whose influence, no doubt, was responsible for Kovalevsky's love for English institutions and for his faith in the ultimate triumph of international law over militarism—a faith which was subjected to the severest test imaginable on the very eve of his death.

After completing his course at the university, he went abroad to prepare for a professorship. He spent five years in Western Europe, first studying at the Universities of Paris and Berlin, where he worked successively on his master's and doctor's theses. Before returning to Russia, he decided to go to England, and provided himself with letters of recommendation to the leading men of the time. The wealth of material he found in the British Museum and in other archive repositories caused him to remain in England for a considerable length of time. The work he did there and the men with whom he associated served to strengthen his friendly feelings towards England, already implanted in him during his university years.

Kovalevsky's sojourn in Western Europe had a great formative influence upon him. He had an opportunity to associate with the best men of the time, to meet the greatest specialists in the particular fields in which he was working. Karl Marx, Herbert Spencer and Frederic Harrison were among the men with whom he came in contact in his studies. During this period, too, he met Turgeniev, and the two became friends.

Soon after he returned to Russia, Kovalevsky received an offer to become a professor at the University of Moscow, and in 1878 he took the chair of civil law and comparative government at this university. This chair he occupied until 1887. This period of his life was probably the most brilliant one, from the standpoint of academic activity. His popularity at the university was almost unparalleled. One of those who, though a very young man at the time, received his share of Kovalevsky's intellectual influence, Professor V. I. Vernadsky, characterizes in the following way Kovalevsky's academic activity during this period: "In the history of the cultured life of Moscow and of the Moscow University, Kovalevsky, then young, full of life, ideas and erudition, played an extraordinary part, which, like