Page:Adventures of Baron Wenceslas Wratislaw of Mitrowitz (1862).djvu/48

 upon as mere Government officials, and would, besides, lose the presents and contributions in kind which they at present receive in addition to their little salaries of 301, or 404, ayear. What course, therefore, remains but to endeavour to raise a fund which shall provide small endowments in aid both of young men seeking to prepare themselves for Holy Orders, and for the duties of schoolmasters, and of the miserably underpaid clergy and schoolmasters themselves. The death of Szafarzik, the Protestant archæologist and philologer last year evoked a burst of enthusiasm, and both Catholics and Protestants vied in subscribing towards the foundation of a seminary for the Protestant clergy, to be erected as a memorial of him. Next year (1863) is the 1,000th anniversary of the introduction of Christianity into these Slavonic countries, and a grand effort will be made by both Catholics and Protestants to turn this heart-stirring jubilee to their own account. It rests, under God, with foreign Protestants to leave their poor Bohemian and Moravian brethren to be overwhelmed by the wealth and numbers of their opponents, or to lend them a helping hand, and render them victorious in the contest.

And victorious they will be, if they obtain but a moderate amount of aid. They have the glorious past of their country, and all the best feelings of nationality on their side. They can say,—Our country always flourished among the first in Europe, so long as it kept the Pope and his crew at arm’s length; when once Popery and its hordes came in, the sun of Bohemia set in blood, and a death-trance succeeded the life and energy which had defied and successfully resisted the whole might of Roman Catholic Europe.

Last year I, too, visited Bohemia on a similar errand on my own account, and I can most fully testify to the accuracy of every statement made by the excellent author of the article