Too extensive and intimate a knowledge of national ways and beliefs (both of the State Church and the schismatics) are required to allow of their being popular with the majority of foreigners who read Russian; for the non-Russian reading foreigner an excessive amount of explanatory notes would be required, and they would resemble treatises.

But they are two of the most delightful books of the epoch, and classics in their way.

Melnikoff wrote, for a long time, under the pseudonym of "Andrei Petchersky." Nikolai Semenovitch Lyeskoff (1837-1895), who long wrote under the pseudonym of "M.

Stebnitzky," is another author famous for his portraits of a whole class of the population, his specialty being the priestly class.

He was of noble birth, and was reared in luxury, but was orphaned and ruined at a very early age, so that he was obliged to earn a hard living, first in government service, then as traveler for a private firm.