The American traveling in Europe may view with delight scenes upon the beautiful Rhine; his artistic eye may be delighted by the art treasures of Italy; memories made dear to him may be recalled as he visits England; but in Switzerland he seems to fill his lungs with kindred and familiar air. This little oasis in the desert of monarchies, surrounded by worshippers at the temple of “caste,” is to the American an Alabama, “Here we rest.” Until the overthrow of the Third Napoleon and the establishment of a republic in France, nowhere else in Europe did the American feel himself so much at home as in Switzerland; and to those rugged mountaineers of the Alps is due the credit of keeping alive the spirit of liberty almost submerged beneath the flood of monarchical ideas which inundated Europe. Every republic on earth, and each republican, should feel indebted to little Switzerland that the fire of freedom was not entirely extinguished. CHAPTER XVIII. RUSSIA. At the very name of Russia a kind of horror fills the souls of those who love liberty, equality, and detest “caste” and oppression. Russia is a veritable blot upon the civilization of the nineteenth century. She furnishes an example of all that was horrible under the old monarchical governments of Europe. Russia’s social life is honeycombed with anarchy, nihilism, and hatred. Beneath the surface, made smooth by military despotism, there burns the fierce fires of inextinguishable hatred. The people are deprived of those rights and liberties enjoyed by the citizens of even those monarchical governments by which Russia is surrounded, curtailed though those privileges may appear to the free American citizen. Germany, Austria, Hungary, and Italy are almost respectable in comparison with Russia. There can be, of course, but one end to such a condition--we can hardly call it civilization--in that tremendous empire. Revolution and anarchy in its worst form will sooner or later drench the soil of Russia with blood. Unfortunately for the future welfare and happiness of the Russians, their autocratic master, the Czar, permits no existence of a vent-hole or crater of the volcano upon which the nation slumbers. An election like that of November 8th in America relieves the pressure. In Russia, the discontent of the Common People, and all expression of it, are suppressed by the iron hand that controls the vast horde of soldiers of which he is master. Russia’s history and record present not one shining spot to relieve the dark picture of crime, ignorance, oppression, intolerance, and the suffering of the Common People. Briefly, Russia contains one-sixth of the land of the entire globe and one-quarter of the inhabitants. The government is an absolute and strongly centralized monarchy. It is one of the most arbitrary and merciless despotisms on the face of the earth.