under the heaviest weight of prejudice from the unfortunate
circumstances of his position, it might have been 5
expected that Oubacha would have been pre-eminently
an object of detestation; for, besides his known dependence
upon the Cabinet of St. Petersburg, the direct line
of succession had been set aside, and the principle of
inheritance violently suspended, in favor of his own 10
father, so recently as nineteen years before the era of his
own accession, consequently within the lively remembrance
of the existing generation. He, therefore, almost
equally with his father, stood within the full current of
the national prejudices, and might have anticipated the 15
most pointed hostility. But it was not so: such are the
caprices in human affairs that he was even, in a moderate
sense, popular--a benefit which wore the more cheering
aspect and the promises of permanence, inasmuch as he
owed it exclusively to his personal qualities of kindness 20
and affability, as well as to the beneficence of his government.
On the other hand, to balance this unlooked-for
prosperity at the outset of his reign, he met with a rival
in popular favor--almost a competitor--in the person of
Zebek-Dorchi, a prince with considerable pretensions to 25
the throne, and, perhaps it might be said, with equal pretensions.
Zebek-Dorchi was a direct descendant of the
same royal house as himself, through a different branch.
On public grounds, his claim stood, perhaps, on a footing
equally good with that of Oubacha, whilst his personal 30
qualities, even in those aspects which seemed to a philosophical
observer most odious and repulsive, promised
the most effectual aid to the dark purposes of an intriguer
or a conspirator, and were generally fitted to win a popular
support precisely in those points where Oubacha was
most defective. He was much superior in external appearance
to his rival on the throne, and so far better
qualified to win the good opinion of a semi-barbarous
people; whilst his dark intellectual qualities of Machiavelian 5
dissimulation, profound hypocrisy, and perfidy which
knew no touch of remorse, were admirably calculated to
sustain any ground which he might win from the simple-hearted
people with whom he had to deal and from the
frank carelessness of his unconscious competitor. 10

At the very outset of his treacherous career, Z