s in Bohemia,
till Ferdinand I. ascended the throne. There was tranquillity, at
least, and toleration, under Ladislaus of Poland, and an anxiety
expressed everywhere, that the language of controversy might cease; and
that the cultivation of letters, which more than a century of civil
strife had interrupted, might again occupy men's minds, and soften and
humanize their spirits. But Ferdinand had no part in this virtuous
longing. Whether it was the influence of his brother, the Emperor
Charles V., or his own innate hatred of the institutions of Bohemia,
that swayed him, is a question not easily answered, if, indeed, it
were worth asking,--but it is not. The promises which he had given so
liberally when elected, were all disregarded so soon as he felt himself
secure; and Bohemia, which ought to have thrown her weight into the
scale of the Protestant princes, was kept, at the period of the league
of Smalcalde, in a state of fatal neutrality. She could not wield her
power against men to whom she was bound by all the ties of sympathy and
communion of principle; for by this time, the Lutheran doctrines were
taught in her churches, and openly maintained in her university.
Neither would the diet consent that an army should be marched into
Saxony. It was a balance of antagonist principles which proved fatal in
its results to her own liberties, both civil and religious. The battle
of Muehlberg gave to Charles and Ferdinand a superiority which they
failed not to improve. The Bloody Diet sat in Prague; and nobles, and
knights, and even cities forfeited their privileges and their property;
and the two former, at least, in many instances, their lives.

There remained now but one bulwark of the Reformed faith in
Bohemia,--the Caroline University, and against it the efforts of the
dominant faction were directed. It was a sore grievance to the court
and the popish nobility, that a weapon so powerful as education should
be exclusively in the hands of schismatics; so they resolved to
counter-work it. With this view, the aid of the Jesuits was called in;
and twelve fathers of the order of Loyola took possession, in 1555, of
the Clementinum College. At first their unpopularity was such, that
they never ventured to show themselves in the streets without being
insulted. Yet they pursued their course with unwearied assiduity; and
patience, and a mild demeanour, and an anxiety to conciliate even the
taste for shows which prevailed then, as well