nd indignation, when a lovely little breeze, and the wind of the night,
creeping up for a moment, kisses them. All the landscape lies in
slumber. But on high, everything is breathing with life, everything is
marvelous, everything is solemnly triumphant. And in the soul there is
something illimitable and wondrous, and throngs of silvery visions make
their way into its depths. Night divine! Enchanting night! And all of a
sudden, everything has become instinct with life; forests, pools, and
steppes. The magnificent thunder of the Ukraina nightingale becomes
audible, and one fancies that the moon, in the midst of the sky, has
paused to listen to it.... As though enchanted, the hamlet dreams upon
the heights. The mass of the cottages gleams still whiter, still more
agreeably under the light of the moon; still more dazzlingly do their
lowly walls stand out against the darkness. The songs have ceased.
Everything is still. Pious people are all asleep. Only here and there
are the small windows still a-glow. In front of the threshold of a few
cottages only is a belated family eating its late supper."

Others of the tales are more exclusively national; such as "The Lost
Document," "Sorotchinsky Fair," "The Enchanted Spot," and the like. But
they display the same fertility of invention, combined with skill in
management, and close study of every-day customs, superstitions, and
life, all of which render them invaluable, both to Russians and to
foreigners. More important are such stories as "Old-fashioned Gentry,"
"The Cloak" (from the volume of "St. Petersburg Tales"), wherein kindly
wit is tempered with the purest, deepest pathos, while characters and
customs are depicted with the greatest art and fidelity. "The Portrait,"
again, is semi-fantastic, although not legendary; and the "Diary of a
Madman" is unexcelled as an amusing but affecting study of a diseased
mind in the ranks of petty officialdom, where the tedious, insignificant
routine disperses what few wits the poor man was originally endowed with
by nature.

In Gogol's greatest work, "Dead Souls," all his qualities are developed
to the highest degree, though there is less pathos than in some of the
short stories. This must forever rank as a Russian classic. The types
are as vivid, as faithful, for those who know the Russia of to-day, as
when they were first introduced to an enthusiastic Russian public, in
1847.

In the pre-emancipation days, a "soul" signified a male serf.