[58] Imagine the United States of America if Franklin had been murdered, if Irving had been knouted, if Bryant had been exiled, if Emerson had been imprisoned, if Longfellow had been starved, if Whittier had been hanged, if Holmes had been flogged, if Thoreau had been shot, if Whitman had been poisoned, if Hawthorne had been chained with iron, if Lowell had been kept in a secret dungeon, if Motley had spent his life in a mine, if Parkman had been tortured, etc., etc., etc.
[59] See "Russian Novelists" by Viscount Vogue. But the statements of this virulent French reactionary must be received with extreme caution as his perverted brains frequently prevent him from stating the truth. For example, in speaking of Turgenev, he says, "But, tho always ready to help others, he certainly never gave his aid to any political intriguer. Was it natural that a man of his refinement and high culture should have aided the schemes of wild and fruitless political conspiracies?" By 'political intriguer' he means an 'enemy to the empire, a revolutionist. Now the facts are that no one was of greater use to Herzen the arch-revolutionist and his thundering Kolokol, than Turgenev. Herzen was in England and often it was impossible to explain how he knew some of the events which he described. It was Turgenev who furnished him this information. All this is revealed by the published correspondence of Herzen and Turgenev. Turgenev was fully and entirely in sympathy with the Russian Revolution. He earnestly desired to meet Ippolit Mishkin, and begged Kropotkin to tell him all he knew about this defiant revolutionary orator. Turgenev deeply loved his own Bazaroff, and in explaining him says, "If the reader is not won by Bazaroff, notwithstanding his roughness, absence of heart, pitiless dryness and terseness, then the fault is with me—I have missed my aim; but to sweeten him with syrup (to use Bazaroff's own language), this I did not want to do, altho perhaps thru that I would have won Russian youth at once to my side.... When he calls himself nihilist, you must read revolutionist."
[60] This does not include obsequious authors like Derzhavin and Karamzin. Masters are usually willing to fling a few crumbs to their fawning dogs.
IN LATER LIFE
There are at this moment only two great Russians who think for the Russian people, and whose thoughts belong to mankind,—Leo Tolstoy and Peter Kropotkin.—Georg Brandes
storm careered madly over the Northern Sea, its impatient waves heaving and howling, leaping with a burning frenzy, the fuming raging billows surging and swelling, calling and crying, roaring louder and louder, vaulting higher and higher.
The steamer shook and swayed and struggled; the frightened passengers sought shelter in their state-rooms, but one of them sat for hours upon the stem of the deck, enjoying the tempest intensely, putting out his face so it could be watered by the foam of the dashing waves. This was Kropotkin. After the years he had spent in the charnel cell, no wonder every fibre in his body was trembling and throbbing to meet the force and passion of the sea-storm.