Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press. Blue cloth. (xxxviii), (230), [4] pp. Fine in VG+ jacket. Written in 1862, by the most gifted of the "plebian novelists", it describes the brutal "education" of boys in training for the Russian Orthodox priesthood. This same training helped shape the minds of many Russian radicals (Stalin, for one) and to instill in them a hatred for the church.