ent of the governing power was the
cause of nearly all these conflicts. A semi-idiot or a brutal ruffian
was thus often found the ruler of millions of energetic men. War and
bloodshed were, of course, the inevitable result. This absurdity was,
perhaps, a necessary consequence of the ignorance and brutality of the
times. But happy is that nation which is sufficiently enlightened to
choose its own magistrates and to appreciate the sanctity of the
ballot-box. The history of the United States thus far, with its
elective administrations, is a marvel of tranquillity, prosperity and
joy, as it is recorded amidst the bloody pages of this world's annals.

According to the ancient custom of Russia, the right of succession
transferred the crown, not to the oldest son, but to the brother or
the most aged member belonging to the family connections of the
deceased prince. The energetic Monomaque violated this law by
transferring the crown to his son, when, by custom, it should have
passed to the prince of Tchernigof. Hence, for ages, there was
implacable hatred between these two houses, and Russia was crimsoned
with the blood of a hundred battle-fields.

Nearly all the commerce of Russia, at this time, was carried on
between Kief and Constantinople by barges traversing the Dnieper and
the Black Sea. These barges went strongly armed as a protection
against the barbarians who crowded the banks of the river. The stream,
being thus the great thoroughfare of commerce, received the popular
name of _The Road to Greece_. The Russians exported rich furs in
exchange for the cloths and spices of the East. As the Russian power
extended toward the rising sun, the Volga and the Caspian Sea became
the highways of a prosperous, though an interrupted, commerce. It
makes the soul melancholy to reflect upon these long, long ages of
rapine, destruction and woe. But for this, had man been true to
himself, the whole of Russia might now have been almost a garden of
Eden, with every marsh drained, every stream bridged, every field
waving with luxuriance, every deformity changed into an object of
beauty, with roads and canals intersecting every mile of its
territory, with gorgeous cities embellishing the rivers' banks and the
mountain sides, and cottages smiling upon every plain. Man has no foe
to his happiness so virulent and deadly as his brother man. The
heaviest curse is human depravity.

We now approach, in the early part of the thirteenth century, o