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MY RELIGION.

BY

COUNT LEO TOLSTOI.

TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH.

NEW YORK:
THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO.,
13 Astor Place.

Copyright by
Thomas Y. Crowell & Co.,
1885.

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.

To one not familiar with the Russian languagethe accessible data relative to the external lifeof Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoi, the author of this book,are, to say the least, not voluminous. His name doesnot appear in that heterogeneous record of celebritiesknown as The Men of the Time, nor is it to be foundin M. Vapereau's comprehensive Dictionnaire desContemporains. And yet Count Leo Tolstoi isacknowledged by competent critics to be a man ofextraordinary genius, who, certainly in one instance,has produced a masterpiece of literature which willcontinue to rank with the great artistic productionsof this age.

Perhaps it is enough for us to know that he wasborn on his father's estate in the Russian provinceof Tula, in the year 1828; that he received a goodhome education and studied the oriental languagesat the University of Kasan; that he was for a timein the army, which he entered at the age of twenty-threeas an officer of artillery, serving later on thestaff of Prince Gortschakof; and that subsequentlyhe alternated between St. Petersburg and Moscow,leading the existence of super-refined barbarism[iv]and excessive luxury, characteristic of the Russianaristocracy. He saw life in country andcity, in camp and court. He was numbered amongthe defenders of Sebastopol in the Crimean War,and the impressions then gathered he used asmaterial for a series of War Sketches that attractedattention in the pages of the magazine wherethey first appeared; and when, a little later, theywere published in book form, their author, thentwenty-eight years of age, acquired at once a widepopularity. Popularity became fame with the publication,also in 1856, of Childhood and Youth,remarkable alike for its artless revelations concerningthe genesis and growth of ideas and emotions inthe minds of the young, for its idyllic pictures ofdomestic life, and for its graceful descriptions ofnature. This was followed by The Cossacks, awild romance of the steppes, vigorously realistic indetails, and, like all of Count Tolstoi's works,poetic in conception and inspired with a dramaticintensity. In 1860 appeared War and Peace, anhistorical romance in many volumes, dealing withthe Napoleonic invasion of 1812 and the events thatimmediately followed the retreat from Moscow.According to M. C. Courrière,[1] it was seized uponwith avidity and produced a profound sensation.

"The stage is immense and the actors are innumerable;among them three emperors with theirministers, their marshals, and their generals, andthen a countless retinue of minor officers, soldiers,[v]nobles, and peasants. We are transportedby turns from the salons of St. Petersburg to thecamps of war, from Moscow to the country. Andall these diverse and varied scenes are joinedtogether with a controlling purpose that brings everythinginto harmony. Each one of the prolongedseries of constantly changing tableaux is of remarkablebeauty and palpitating with life."

Pierre Besushkof, one of the three heroes of Warand Peace, has, rightly or wrongly, long beenregarded as in some respects an autobiographicalstudy, but the personal note is always clearly perceptiblein Count Tolsto

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