But the hand which knew how to portray the horrors of the old conscription was powerless to reproduce, except in very crude outlines, the world of political passions which was foreign to the author, and the novel remained unfinished.
[Footnote 1: See on that period Vol.

I, p.

144 et seq.] The reaction of the eighties produced no change in Bogrov's attitude.

He breathed his last in a distant Russian village, and was buried in a Russian cemetery, having embraced Christianity shortly before his death, as a result of a sad concatenation of family circumstances.
Before the young generation which entered upon active life in the eighties lay the broken tablets of Russian Jewish literature.

New tablets were needed, partly to restore the commandments of the preceding period of enlightenment, partly to correct its mistakes..