f this institution was the sixteenth century,
yet it presented during the fifteenth to the Polish nobility a good
opportunity of studying the classics; and it is doubtless through this
preparatory familiarity with the ancient writers, that the phenomenon
to which we have alluded must be principally accounted for. It was
moreover now the epoch, when the genius of Christian Europe made the
most decided efforts to shake off the chains which had fettered the
freedom of thought. The doctrines of the German Reformers, although
the number of their professed disciples was in proportion smaller than
in Bohemia, had nevertheless a decided influence upon the general
direction of the public mind. The wild flame of false religious zeal,
which in Poland also under the sons and immediate successors of
Jagello, had kindled the faggots in which the disciples of the new
doctrines were called to seal the truth of their conviction with their
blood, was extinguished before the milder wisdom of Sigismund I;
although the early part of his reign was not free from religious
persecution. The activity of the inquisition was restrained. But the
new doctrines found a more decided support in Sigismund Augustus.
Poland became, under his administration, the seat of a toleration then
unequalled in the world. Communities of the most different religious
principles formed themselves, at first under the indulgence of the
king and the government, and finally under the protection of the law.
Even the boldest theological skeptics of the age, the two Socini,
found in Poland an asylum.[17]

The Bohemian language, which already possessed so extensive a
literature, acquired during this period a great influence upon the
Polish. The number of clerical writers, however, which in Bohemia was
so great, was comparatively only small in Poland. Indeed it is worthy
of remark, that while in other countries the diffusion of information
and general illumination proceeded from the clergy, not indeed as a
body, but from individuals among the clergy, in Poland it was always
the highest nobility who were at the head of literary enterprises or
institutions for mental cultivation. There are many princely names
among the writers of this period; and there are still so among those
of the present day. This may however be one of the causes, why
education in Poland was entirely confined to the higher classes;
while, even during this brilliant period, the peasantry remained in
the lowes