ountry. To this ideal he gave all his strength and his
money. In 1860 Nikitin went to Petersburg and Moscow to establish
connections with the leading publishing houses; from which no small
literary acquaintance arose. In the Spring of 1861 he suffered from a
throat trouble which developed into bronchial tuberculosis of which he
died on October 16, 1861. His trials with his father and those caused by
his father's extreme intemperance were considered to have greatly
hastened his lamented death.

CONSTANTINE MICHAILOWITSCH FOFANOW was born at Petersburg, May 30, 1862.
He is not a highly educated man, and is now living, after a series of
misfortunes, happily surmounted, at Gatschina.

SEMIJON JAKOLOWITSCH NADSON was born at Petersburg, December 26, 1862.
On his father's side he was of Hebrew extraction. His grandfather had
formerly embraced the orthodox faith, and his father, from whom he
inherited his musical talent, died in an asylum, in the extreme youth of
the poet. His mother, after contracting a second marriage, which ended
unhappily, died at the age of thirty-one, of consumption. The boy
learned to read and write at the age of four, from an old servant. At
nine he had read widely. In 1875 he suffered from religious doubts, and
even lost his faith in humanity, but his violin and Nature were still of
unfailing support even in this crisis. Before her death his mother had
placed him in the second Cadet Corps as a "pensionnaire." At first he
did well, but soon he began to neglect his school work for poetry. A
poem of his soon appeared in print, and that same year he fell in love
with a girl of sixteen who died with rapid consumption; the M.D.B. of
his poems. Smitten by this blow, he left the school and went to the
Pawlonische Military School. Here he contracted a lung trouble and was
sent to the Caucas. He remained there a year, but was always haunted by
thought of the military career before him, for which he was morally and
physically unfit. His dear dream of the University could not be
realized, and on his return he went again to the military school for two
years of camp life and maneuvres. In September, 1882, he was made second
lieutenant of a Caspian regiment and stationed at Kronstadt. Already the
young poet was making himself known through the journals, and in 1884 he
left off his hated military service. For a short time he was connected
with _Die Woche_, but already signs of tuberculosis had appeared and he
fo