own only
to his intimate friends--indeed it was only in the last year of his
life that he composed a dedication for it, and it seems never to have
been printed.

The tone of Slechta's thoughts in his later years was grave and
serious; as well it might be. The two kingdoms, then but loosely
united, were torn with internal factions and racial jealousies; while
in church towers and over city gates the bells hung ready to proclaim
to the countryside the advent of that ever-present menace, the Turk.
In the priesthood men could mark much that was amiss; and the seamless
robe of Christ was rent with schism, the candle that Hus and Jerome
had lighted a century before, still burning clearly among less sober
heresies, which drew down on it, as upon themselves, spasmodic
outbursts of retributive violence. Uneasy sat the crown on Ladislas'
head; and when Death, coming as a friend, took it from him in 1516, it
was only to thrust this sad office upon a ten-year-old boy, who after
ten more years of childish government was miserably to perish at
Mohacz. No wonder that Slechta and his friends looked anxiously upon
the future. 'The times of Hus and Wycliffe which our grandfathers
detested, seem golden beside our own' wrote Bohuslaus to Geiler of
Kaisersberg--a member of that grave circle of Strasburg humanists,
with which, it may be noted in passing, our Bohemians had much in
common. The letters of Slechta contain two disquisitions, one on the
frailties of a celibate clergy, the other on the duties of a parish
priest; advocating reforms by which he hoped to check the continuous
growth of 'those unutterable heretics, the Pyghards': by whom he meant
the Bohemian Brethren.

What moved Slechta to correspond with Erasmus we do not know; possibly
a slighting reference in one of the latter's printed letters to 'those
schismatic Bohemians, who have infected most of Europe'. Slechta's
letter is unhappily lost; but from Erasmus' reply, dated 23 April 1519
from Louvain, its general tenor may be gathered. It began, of course,
with eulogies of Erasmus and his work; and then, after some account of
the writer's life and fortunes, it proceeded to assure him that there
were persons in Bohemia who were not merely interested in good
learning but prepared to advance it. Finally it invited him to come to
Prague. Erasmus' answer to his unknown correspondent was courteous,
but firmly declined the invitation. 'What I can do at Prague I do not
see. It is cons