ntal
European can only be united by intermediate vowels. On the other
hand, it is just this system of letters which forms a connecting link
between the Polish language and those of western Europe; and although
most Slavic philologists regret that the Latin alphabet ever should
have been adopted for any Slavic language in preference to the
Cyrillic, yet Grimm (with whom we fully agree) thinks that "the
adoption of the former, with appropriate additions corresponding to
the peculiar sounds of each language and dialect, would have been
beneficial to all European languages."[20]

Although the art of printing was introduced into Poland as early as
1488, when the first printing office was established at Cracow, yet
printed books first became generally diffused between the years 1530
and 1540. The first work printed in Poland was a calendar for the year
1490; the first book printed in the Polish language was Bonaventura's
life of Jesus, translated for the queen of Hungary, and published in
1522. In the second half of the sixteenth century nearly every city,
which had a considerable school, had also its printing office.[21] The
schools were unfortunately confined to the cities; nothing was done
for the peasantry, who have remained even to the most recent times in
a state of physical and moral degradation, with which that of the
common people of no other country except Russia can be compared. A
peasant who could read or write, would have been considered as a
prodigy. So much the more, however, was done for the national
education of the nobility. In the year 1579 the university of Wilna
was instituted; in 1594, another university was created at Zamosc in
Little Poland, by a private nobleman, the great chancellor Zamoyski;
which however survived only a few years, and perished in the beginning
of the seventeenth century.[22] Numerous other schools of a less
elevated character were founded at Thorn, Dantzic, Lissa, etc. most of
them for Protestants.

So early as under Casimir, the son of Jagello, the Polish language
began to be employed as the language of the court. Under his grandson
Sigismund Augustus, the public laws and decrees were promulgated in
the vernacular tongue of the country. But a language which thus issued
from the court, was necessarily also dependent on the changes of the
court. The influence of the French prince, Henry of Valois, successor
of Sigismund Augustus, could not be considerable, as he occupied the
thro