SOME BOOKS OF THE WEEK.
[Under this heading we notice rush Books of the week as have not been reserved for review in other forms.] How Count Tolstoi Lives. By F. A. Sergyneeko. Translated from the Russian by Isabel F. Hapgood. (Nisbet and Co. 5s.) —Most of what we read here may probably be found elsewhere; still a portrait is interesting, though it be not the first that one has seen. There is something more human about this likeness than those which some artists in ink have given us. Tolstoi is not above the weaknesses to which others are subject. Beggars and impostors prey upon him, and he has, like other celebrities, to pay the penalty of fame. And he attracts "cranks" with special force, as when "women visitors present themselves and say, Lyeff Nikolaevitch, teach us life.'" The Count is now an old man, past seventy, but unusually vigorous. The vegetarians have a right to boast of him, for he is of their way of thinking. What he drinks is not quite clear. What is "home-brewed grain"? This is not the only place where the translation fails to give a very definite meaning. But it is something, doubtless, to be able to translate Russian at all. A "facsimile of a page of Tolstoi's manuscript" would make a pretty exercise in de- ciphering.
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