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INTRODUCTION
45

hand, the revival of Bohemian literature, which has made a book such as the "Labyrinth" better known, have caused the great Bohemian writer to be now judged more fairly.

Komensky's last years were very melancholy; his old friends and comrades, Gertych, Figulus (his son-in-law), and other clergymen of the Unity, died, and he became more and more solitary. He doubtlessly believed that the community to which he had devoted his whole life would perish from the earth. This was not, however, to be the case; Komensky's grandson, Figulus, or Jablonsky, as he generally called himself, consecrated as a clergyman of the Unity Count Zinzendorf, the founder of the community of Herrenhut, that has continued to the present day, and which in its principal doctrines is identical with the old community,[1] occupied to the last with pansophic studies. Komensky died at Amsterdam on November 15, 1670. An exile even in death, he was buried on November 22 in the Church of the French Protestants at Naarden, near Amsterdam.

After what has necessarily been a very slight sketch of Komensky's career, I return to the "Labyrinth." Not to give too terrifying an aspect to the title-page of this book, I have given on it

  1. The learned deacon of Herrenhut, Dr. J. Müller, has dealt with the connection of his community with the old brethren in a series of very interesting studies, published in the Casopis Musea Kralovstoi (Journal of the Bohemian Museum) for 1885. He says that though there are minor differences, the teaching of his community is on all important points identical with that of the old Unity.