PRINCE WOLKONSKY'S LECTURE.

For the second of his lectures on "Russian History and Literature," Prince Wolkonsky had a closely attentive and appreciative audience. The object of the lecture was that period of Russian intellectual culture when it enters into the general stream of universal literature by the channel of sentimentalism and romanticism. After having given a picture of the literary horizon of western Europe at the opening of the nineteenth century, the lecturer spoke of the first two exponents of romanticism in Russia: the historian Karamsin Joukovsky. The former wrote the first Russian sentimental novels-among these being "Poor Lizzie," over which contemporaries have shed many tears. The latter was the real funnel through which romanticism invaded Russian poetry. He was the real precursor of Russia's greatest poet-Poushkin.

Born in 1799, Poushkin's first poem appeared in 1818. His literary career appears wonderful, when it is recalled that it was put an end to by a duel when he was thirty-seven years old, leaving him only nineteen years of literary life. In speaking of Poushkin as compared with his predecessors, the lecturer showed that in the eighteenth century poets had spoken of outside life; in the beginning of the present century they spoke of feelings and the inner life, yet with sterile aspirations into a world of dreams; Poushkin takes real life inasmuch as it is reflected in human feelings and, turning human feelings from their deviation into a world of fiction, restores them to real life.

He gave an account of one of Poushkin's most characteristic creations-a novel in verse: "Eugene Oneguin,"-with an interesting sketch of the literary aspect presented by Russian society of the first decade of our century. The chief chacteristic of Poushkin's lyric poetry was harmoniousness and many sidedness. Equally excellent, said the speaker, was the poet in picturing human sorrow or human joy. One never goes without the other, and, to express the poet's complexity, the lecturer characterizes it as "pouring rain with brilliant sunshine." He endeavored to give his hearers an impression of Poushkin's language and its charm. The whole was frequently illustrated by translations in verse.

In his concluding remarks, Prince Wolkonsky dwelt on the interesting question of Poushkin's national character-in how far he is representatively Russian; many critics finding him too universal to be called a strictly national poet.

The central point of the next lecture will be Gogol and the genesis of the Russian naturalistic school, of which Tourgenev, Dostoyevsky, and Leo Tolstoy are the chief representatives.