Such, indeed, may be the fate of any nation. Such was the fate of Rome. Her mighty empire, too, fell; but how different a record has she left behind from that of the short-lived monarchies of the East! Having learnt in her earliest infancy, better perhaps than any other nation, how to reconcile the conflicting theories of the household and the community, she never flagged in her study of the arts of government. Early imbued with a love of law and order, her people discovered in due time how to accommodate their rule to the various conditions of those which came under their sway. Her laws penetrated to the remotest boundaries of her state, and the rights of a Roman citizen were as clearly defined in Britain as in Rome itself. Thus the Romans have left behind them a system of law the wonder and admiration of all mankind, one which has left indelible marks on the laws and customs, the arts and civilization, of every country which once formed part of their dominions. Such were among the changes resulting from the adoption of the village community; but their influences only gradually asserted themselves, and the extent of their development was very various among different peoples. In India, the religious element in the household had always a peculiar force, and its influence continued to affect to a great extent the formation of the community. There this organization never lost sight of the patriarchal power, and has exhibited a constant tendency to revert to that more primitive social form. Among the Slavonic tribes the community seems to have found its most favourable conditions, and some of the reasons for this are not difficult to discern. The Slavs in Russia have for a long time had open to them an immense tract of thinly inhabited country, their only rivals to the possession of which were the Finnish tribes of the north. Now, the village community is a form peculiarly adapted for colonization, and this process of colonizing fresh country by sending out detachments from over-grown villages seems to have gone on for a long time in Russia; so that the communities which still exist there present a complete network; all are bound by ties of nearer or more distant relationship to each other; every village having some ‘mother-village’ from which it has sprung.[55] Having a practically boundless territory awaiting their settlement, none of those difficulties in obtaining land which led to the decay of the village in western Europe affected the Russians in their earlier history.