OPINIONS OF THE PRESS.
“A story of Russia in the time of Napoleon’s wars. It is a story of the family rather than of the field, and is charming in its delineations of quaint Russian customs. It is a novel of absorbing interest, full of action and with a well managed plot; a book well worth reading.”—Philadelphia Enquirer.
“The story of ‘War and Peace’ ranks as the greatest of Slavic historical novels. It is intensely dramatic in places and the battle scenes are marvels of picturesque description. At other points the vein is quiet and philosophical, and the reader is held by the soothing charm that is in complete contrast with the action and energy of battle.”—Observer, Utica, N.Y.
“War and Peace is a historical novel and is extremely interesting, not only in its description of the times of the great invasion eighty years ago, but in its vivid pictures of life and character in Russia.”—Journal of Commerce, New York.
“On general principles the historical novel is neither valuable as fact nor entertaining as fiction. But ‘War and Peace’ is a striking exception to this rule. It deals with the most impressive and dramatic period of European history. It reproduces a living panorama of scene, and actors, and circumstance idealized into the intense and artistic life of imaginative composition, and written with a brilliancy of style and epigrammatic play of thought, a depth of significance, that render the story one of the most fascinating and absorbing.”—Boston Evening Traveller.
Wm. S. Gottsberger, Publisher, New York.
THE COSSACKS.—A Tale of the Caucasus in 1852, by Count Leo Tolstoy, from the Russian by Eugene Schuyler. One vol. Paper, 50 cts. Cloth binding. $1.00.
“The Cossacks” forms the culmination of the period in which he photographed with miraculous realism and no definite purpose, detached pictures of life and studies of the affections, and the period in which he began to see and suggest the spiritual meaning of and the chain of ultimate purpose binding together the panorama of human existence. The book is an idyl of semi-barbarous life and yet the hero begins to struggle with the problems that puzzled Sergius, that Levin half solved, and from which Tolstoi himself escapes in a Quaker creed.