PREFACE. VII

rienne both written about 1820 at the request of some friends, and in favour of a near female relative, to whom they were given by the author.

Les Prisonniers du Caucase is a niost striking and realistie picture of customs and manners, whilst La jeune Sibérienne, for its true pathos, can only be compared to

Xavier de Maistre whose works bave been and are still popular, was not a volumnous writer. His entire works only form a single volume of some 300 pages, and his popiilarity can only be accounted for by the matehless way in which he could tell, by his wondrous simplicity of style, by his humour which, in many parts, is not unlike Stern's or Charles Lambs.

Xavier de Maistre has often been called a novelist. There could be no greater misnomer for a man who always copied with the most wonderful care, and who never allowed his imagination free career. No man was ever more true to nature and more disinclined to Eomantism. He is a realist of the purest type, but a realist endowed with taste, and in that very différent from those whose realism consists in an indiscriminate choice of subjects.

Nothing can be more realistie tham the two extracts contained in this édition, namely: Le lépreux and Les prisonniers du Caucase. In the latter work, Xavier de Maistre carries his love for realism even to audacity.

YIII PREFACE.

He paints every thing boldly and witkout the sligktesfc squeaniisliness, as for instance the scène in whicli Ivan fells witli his axe a woman and a child.

This cliaraiing writer whom the celebrated critic Sainte Beuve compares to Mérimée died at St Petersburgh in 1852, at the advanced âge of eighty-nine.