Note 45 — IVAN TURGÉNIEF.

A brilliant Russian lady, now in this country, writes to the translator as follows: “I am glad indeed that you escaped the translation of ‘Crime and Punishment.’ You would never find any readers for such a book in this country. I could never read any of Dostoyevsky’s books through. It made me sick. My nerves could not bear the strain on them. I don’t believe in pathology in literature. And yet another of my American acquaintances, who is thoroughly versed in Russian, ... tried to translate ‘Crime and Punishment,’ but had not time to do it. He says he never read, in any language, any thing so powerful as Prestuplenie i Nakazanie. Generally speaking, your countrymen have too healthy a constitution to appreciate such a novel. Let it turn heads among the pessimists in France and Russia, the natives of effete Europe.”—N. H. D.