ssia is a field sown thick with little communistic republics, though
at top it is a despotism. The government of Novgorod doubtless grew out
of that of the village. The republican city has long since passed away,
but the seed of democracy remains planted deeply in the village
community.

All this is preliminary to the story of the Russian lawgiver and his
laws, which we have set out to tell. This famous person was no other
than that Yaroslaf, prince of Novgorod, and son of Vladimir the Great,
whose refusal to pay tribute had caused his father to die of grief.

Yaroslaf was the fifth able ruler of the dynasty of Rurik. The story of
his young life resembles that of his father. He found his brother strong
and threatening, and designed to fly from Novgorod and join the
Varangians as a viking lord, as his father had done before him. But the
Novgorodians proved his friends, destroyed the ships that were to carry
him away, and provided him with money to raise a new army. With this he
defeated his base brother, who had already killed or driven into exile
all their other brothers. The result was that Yaroslof, like his father,
became sovereign of all Russia.

But though this new grand prince extended his dominions by the sword,
it was not as a soldier, but as a legislator, that he won fame. His
genius was not shown on the field of battle, but in the legislative
council, and Russia reveres Yaroslaf the Wise as its first maker of
laws.

The free institutions of Novgorod, of which we have spoken, were by him
sustained and strengthened. Many new cities were founded under his
beneficent rule. Schools were widely established, in one of which three
hundred of the youth of Novgorod were educated. A throng of Greek
priests were invited into the land, since there were none of Russian
birth to whom he could confide the duty of teaching the young. He gave
toleration to the idolaters who still existed, and when the people of
Suzdal were about to massacre some hapless women whom they accused of
having brought on a famine by sorcery, he stayed their hands and saved
the poor victims from death. The Russian Church owed its first national
foundation to him, for he declared that the bishops of the land should
no longer depend for appointment on the Patriarch of Constantinople.

There are no startling or dramatic stories to be told about Yaroslaf.
The heroes of peace are not the men who make the world's dramas. But it
is pleasant, after a seas