come into the hands of but few, and of none that are 'unholy' (i.e. whom the Government distrusts).[1] . . . We have pleasanter news from the East. According to a letter of Šafařik, the treaty of Akjerman between Russia and Turkey guarantees freedom to the Servian nationality; so a new epoch for that nation and its literature may begin. At four Russian universities—Petersburg, Moscow, Kazan, and Charkov—professorships of general Slavic literature will be founded, and one at Warsaw is also in contemplation. There, then, the Bohemian language will be heard and its best works published. The Englishman Povring,[2] is translating Servian songs into English, and, stimulated by Šafařik, he will also translate the MS. of Königinhof. In England very many are learning Slavic languages, particularly Russian. Whenever a learned Englishman acquires a taste for one Slavic dialect, he wishes to learn a second," &c.[3] As a last quotation from Jungmann's letters, I shall give a short extract from one written in 1837, which is curious as referring to Count Kolovrat, one of the founders of the Bohemian Museum, who was then one of the principal members of the Austrian cabinet. It proves that Jungmann was by no means hostile to the Austrian Government, except when that Government treated its
- ↑ The few Bohemian books that appeared in the eighteenth, and even at he beginning of the nineteenth century, were printed in German (Gothic) characters, and it was hoped that the Latin characters would be unintelligible to many people of the lower classes, from whom the censors wished to withhold the chronicle.
- ↑ Thus written by Jungmann. The person referred to is Sir John Bowring.
- ↑ Writing for English readers, it is scarcely necessary to mention that there was not in the year 1827 a wide-spread enthusiasm in England for learning Slavic languages. Jungmann, sanguine, like all the Bohemian patriots of his time, generalised on the strength of some statements of English philologists whom he may have met at Prague.
