it has become the fashion to depreciate the social and intellectual condition of Bohemia in the years that preceded the battle of the White Mountain; they perhaps endeavour thus to attenuate the sentimental feeling of regret for the great defeat which a few Bohemians still cherish. That the political results of the battle of the White Mountain, which consisted in the establishment of an absolute but orderly government, were advantageous to Bohemia, and, indeed, saved the country from anarchy, is certain. Yet it is no less certain that nobles and citizens, such as Peter of Rosenberg, Charles of Žerotin, Budovec of Budova (mentioned in the last chapter), Harant of Polžic, Bartoš Pisář, Sixt of Ottersdorf, Skála ze Zhoře (who all belong to the sixteenth or the beginning of the seventeenth century), were intellectually vastly superior to the men of similar rank and position who lived a century later, after many years of absolutist government.
It is noteworthy that among the historians of the period with which I am dealing, the majority are men who themselves played a part in the political life of their time. The Bohemians of this period were—partly, though by no means exclusively, through the influence of "humanism,"—penetrated with a blind, almost superstitious, love of learning for its own sake. They seem always to have aspired to the "tall mountain citied to the top, crowded with culture." This, indeed, applies not only to the humanists, literary men, or translators of classical works, but also to many of the practical and matter-of-fact politicians of the time. Witness Peter of Rosenberg, who died deploring "that he had not sufficiently cultivated the study of literature;" or Harant of Polžic, whose constant show of classical erudition is
