y period we have but little to say. A dull pressure
lay upon the nation; it was as if the heavy strokes inflicted on them
had paralyzed their very limbs. Innumerable monks came to Bohemia from
Italy, Spain, and the south of Germany, who condemned and sacrificed
to the flames every Bohemian book as necessarily heretical. There were
individuals who boasted having burned with their own hands 60,000
literary works. They broke into private houses, and took away whatever
Bohemian books they could find. Those which they did not burn, were
deposited in separate chambers in the convents, provided with iron
grates, bolts, and chains, drawn before the door, on which was
written. _The Hell_. They distributed pamphlets respecting hell and
purgatory, the reading of which produced derangement of mind in many
weak persons; until, at last, the government was wise enough to lay a
severe prohibition upon these measures. The Bohemian emigrants indeed
continued to have their religious books printed in their foreign
homes; but they wrote comparatively few new works. These however they
contrived to introduce into Bohemia, where they were answered by the
Jesuits and Capuchins in thick folio volumes, written in a language
hardly intelligible. There were however some honourable exceptions
among these fathers; some persons, who, independent of religious
prejudices; continued to labour for the benefit of a beloved mother
tongue. The Jesuits Konstanz, Steyer, and Drachovsky, wrote
grammatical works, and the two first attempted to translate the Bible
anew. Plachy, ob. 1650, Libertin, and Taborsky, were distinguished
preachers; Peshina, ob. 1680, Hammerschmidt, ob. 1731, and Beckowsky,
ob. 1725, wrote meritorious historical works; Rosa, ob. 1689, composed
another grammar and a dictionary. Others wrote in Latin; and among
these must be named the Jesuit Balbin, ob. 1688, who prepared several
historical and bibliographical works of importance, part of which,
however, were not published until long after his death.[36]

We turn once more to the unfortunate emigrants, and in the midst of
the distress, privations, and sacrifices, which were the natural
accompaniments of their exiled condition, we rejoice to meet with a
name, which owes its splendour not alone to the general poverty of the
period; but which outshines even the most distinguished of the former
age, and is indeed the only one in the literary history of Bohemia,
which has acquired a _European_ f