But both writers are essentially (despite Kostomaroff's not very successful attempts at historical novels) serious historians.
As we have already seen, the novels of the two Counts Tolstoy, "War and Peace" and "Prince Serebryany," stand quite apart, and far above all others.
But among the favorites of lesser rank are Grigory Petrovitch Danilevsky (born in 1829), whose best historical novel is "Mirovitch," though it takes unwarrantable liberties with the personages of the epoch depicted (that of Katherine II.) and those in the adjacent periods.

Less good, though popular, is his "Princess Tarakanoff," the history of a supposed daughter of the Empress Elizabeth.
Half-way between the historians and the portrayers of popular life, and in a measure belonging to both ranks, are several talented men.

The most famous of them was Pavel Ivanovitch Melnikoff (1819-1883), whose official duties enabled him to make an exhaustive study of the "Old Ritualists"[33] along the middle Volga.
His two novels, "In the Forests" and "On the Hills" (of the eastern and western banks of the Volga, respectively), are utterly unlike anything else in the language, and are immensely popular with Russians.

They are history in that they faithfully reproduce the manners and beliefs of a whole class of the population; they are _genre_ studies of a very valuable ethnographical character in their fidelity to nature.

Long as they are, the interest never flags for a moment, but it is not likely that they will ever appear in an English translation.