![]() As we summon our recollections of the prodigal outpouring of a careless genius, a troop of characters as lifelike as any in Scott or in Shakespeare, defile before our mental eye. We pass at a leap from a soiree to a battle-field, from a mud hovel to a palace, from an idyl to a saturnalia. "The court and camp, town and country, nobles and peasants, - all are sketched in with the same broad and sure outline. What a succession - a kaleidoscopic succession of life-views, he gives in "War and Peace!" One follows the other without confusion, naturally, with entrancing interest. And yet what a picture of a battle was ever more vivid! It is like a painting where the general impression is true, but a close analysis discovers nothing but contradictory lines! I would defy an historian to reconstruct the battle of Austerlitz from Count Tolstoy's description. He is as willing to adopt an anachronism as a medieval painter. Numberless incongruities can be pointed out. I am inclined to rank Count Tolstoy not among the realists or naturalists, but rather as an impressionist.
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