them more novel than history; and a great number of
similar works.[15] Some fragments of an heroic epic, entitled "The
Bohemian Alexander," have been recently found in the archives of
Budweis by Professor Kaubek, and published in the Journal of the
Museum. All the other poetical productions of this century may be
divided into fables, satires, and legends, or other allegorical pieces
of an ecclesiastico-didactic tendency, as may be seen even from
their titles; e.g. the Nine Joys of Mary, the Ten Commandments, the
Five Sources of Sin, etc. All are equally deficient in poetical merit.

With what thoughts the minds of reflecting men and of the reading
class were at this time chiefly occupied, and how well they were
prepared to receive, in the beginning of the following century, the
doctrines of Huss, Jerome, and Jacobellus, those teachers of a purer
system of divinity, is manifested in some measure in the theological
literature of the day. A treatise upon the great distress of the
church, written by a clergyman called John Miliez, before 1370;[16]
several others on the principal Christian virtues; a book of Christian
instruction written by Shtitny, a Bohemian nobleman, for his own
children; a translation of the Jewish Rabbi Samuel's book on the
coming of the Messiah; and several similar works,--all these seem to
indicate that the religious system of the day was no longer able to
satisfy reflecting minds. We find also that a great part of the Bible
was already extant in the Bohemian language in the second half of the
fourteenth century;[17] although not yet collected together. Several
translations of the Psalter from this period; also of the prophets
Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Daniel; and the Sunday lessons from the Gospels;
are preserved in manuscript in the libraries of Prague, Vienna, and
Oels in Silesia. Many others have doubtless perished in the lapse of
time.

SECOND PERIOD.

_From John Huss, A.D. 1400, to the general diffusion of the art of
printing, about A.D. 1500._

At the commencement of the fifteenth century, the university of Prague
was in the zenith of its splendour. Several celebrated German scholars
occupied the professors' chairs, and the average number of students
was twenty thousand. No department of science was neglected; each
faculty had its distinguished teachers; but it was theology which
excited decidedly the warmest national interest among the Bohemians
themselves; it was theology in which the Bo