ublic schools for three years, at the
least. He must bring with him also a slender stock of German,
arithmetic, mathematics, Greek, and Latin; which for six years more he
labours only to increase. Then comes a fresh distribution of the
students, who, throughout these protracted periods, have gone on
together; but, who now pass off into the schools of law, and medicine,
and divinity, according to the nature of the professions for which they
are respectively intended. The candidates for the cope and the judge's
chair complete the course in four years more. From the incipient
Esculapius six years professional study is demanded. It is worthy of
remark, that not a single lecture is delivered in the vernacular
language of the country. German is, indeed, employed, where Latin may
have grown into disrepute; but the Bohemian is a dialect of which the
use seems restricted to the very lowest and most despised of the
peasantry.

It would be idle to conceal that the extreme vigilance of the
government in these respects, and, still more, its bigoted hostility to
everything which might recall the recollection of Bohemian independence,
has given great umbrage to the thinking portion of the people. I have
conversed with persons in every rank, and I found none who spoke of it
except in bitterness. But it is not by these means alone that the house
of Austria endeavours to shield its Bohemian subjects from the infection
of liberalized opinions. I had intrusted to me, before leaving London,
an English book, which I was to forward or deliver to a gentleman of
rank in the country. He would not send for it by the hands of a common
messenger. He came in person many miles to receive it, "Because," said
he, "one does not know what may happen, and it is best to avoid
collision with the police." The book was a very harmless one,--it was
only the first volume of Lockhart's _Life of Sir Walter Scott_; but my
friend did not consider that it would be prudent to make a parade of
its reception. Again, I visited a gentleman in Prague, and found upon
his table a number of the _Foreign Quarterly Review_. There was an
article in it which bore upon the existing condition of Bohemia,--an
able paper, on the whole, though here and there inaccurate. I conversed
with him about it; and, having an hour to spare, I accepted his offer
to carry it to my hotel, and there read it. "When you send it back,"
said he, "be so good as wrap it carefully up in paper. We don't kn