1845
Instead of remaining for a second year in the first course of Oriental Languages, Tolstoy preferred to leave that faculty, and in August 1845 he entered the faculty of Law. During the first months of this new course he hardly studied at all, throwing himself more than ever into the gay life of Kazán society. Before midwinter however he began for the first time, as he tells us, 'to study seriously, and I even found a certain pleasure in so doing.' Comparative Jurisprudence and Criminal Law interested him, and his attention was especially arrested by a discussion on Capital Punishment. Meyer, Professor of Civil Law, set him a task which quite absorbed him; it was the comparison of Montesquieu's Esprit des Lois with Catherine the Second's Great Nakaz. The conclusion to which he came was, that in Catherine's Nakaz one finds Montesquieu's Liberal ideas mixed with the expression of Catherine's own despotism and vanity, and that the Nakaz brought more fame to Catherine than good to Russia.