carefully concealed from the people, not only the learned labours of our ancestors, but even their very names. None of what the learned and patriotic Balbin had collected and compiled about the ancient literature of Bohemia, could be published before the abolition of their order, because they took care not to communicate his manuscript to anybody.
‘The Bohemians changed then even their national dress and gradually adopted their present costume. I must also remark that since that time the history of the Bohemians ends, and that of other nations in Bohemia begins[1].’
Yet it was not the will of God to suffer the nation to perish entirely; no sooner was what seemed the deathblow given to the Czeskish language, than a reaction commenced, and the ancestral spirit began to reanimate the long prostrate corpse of the Czeskish
- ↑ Pelzel. Geschichte von Böhmen, p. 188, sqq. Quoted in Panslavism and Germanism, p. 159, sqq. Pelzel’s work was published in the latter part of the last century.It should also be observed, that at this time the greater portion of the old Bohemian aristocracy became extinct, many individuals suffering death upon the scaffold, and many families being driven into exile. Their places were supplied by Germans, Italians, and other foreigners, utterly unacquainted with and void of sympathy for the people, from the sweat of whose brows they drew their revenues.
