a then returned to the country estate, while his elder brother
Nikolai remained in Moscow with Countess Osten-Saken and studied at the
University of Moscow. Three years later, the Countess Osten-Saken died,
and another aunt on the father's side, Madame P. I. Yushkoff, who
resided in Kazan, became their guardian. Lyeff Nikolaevitch went there
to live, and in 1843 he entered the University of Kazan in the
philological course, but remained in it only one year, because the
professor of history (who had quarreled with Tolstoy's relatives) gave
him impossibly bad marks, in addition to which he received bad marks
from the professor of German, although he was better acquainted with
that language than any other member of his course. He was compelled to
change to the law course, where he remained for two years. In 1848 he
took the examination for "candidate" in the University of St.
Petersburg. "I knew literally nothing," he says of himself, "and I
literally began to prepare myself for the examination only one week in
advance." He obtained his degree of candidate, or bachelor of arts, and
returned to Yasnaya Polyana, where he lived until 1851, when he entered
the Forty-fourth Battery of the Twentieth Brigade of Artillery as
"yunker" or supernumerary officer, with no official rank, but eligible
to receive a commission as ensign, and thence advance in the service.
This battery was stationed on the Terek River, in the Caucasus, and
there Tolstoy remained with it until the Crimean War broke out. Thus
during the first twenty-six years of his life he spent less than five
years in towns, the rest in the country; and this no doubt laid the
foundation for his deep love for country life, which has had so profound
an effect upon his writings and his views of existence in general.

The dawning of his talent came during the four years he spent in the
Caucasus, and he wrote "Childhood," "The Incursion," "Boyhood," "The
Morning of a Landed Proprietor," and "The Cossacks." During the Turkish
campaign he was ordered to the staff of Prince M. D. Gortchakoff, on the
Danube, and in 1855 received the command of a mountain battery, and took
part in the fight at Tchernaya, and the siege of Sevastopol. The
literary fruits of this experience were "Sevastopol," in December, May,
and August, three sketches.

It is convenient to finish his statistical history at this point with
the statement that in 1862 he married, having firmly resolved, two years
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