Page:Bohemian poems, ancient and modern (Lyra czecho-slovanska).djvu/31

Rh Pedrazzi in Tyl’s novel under similar circumstances, ‘Enough, enough of these names!’ and to wish the place supplied by information of a more practical and tangible nature. I shall therefore only just mention the impulse given to the Bohemian poetical literature by the discovery of the most ancient relics of Bohemian poetry known to be in existence, the Rukopis Kralodvorský or Queen’s-Court Manuscript, by the celebrated Vaclaw Hanka, at present Librarian of the National Museum at Prague, and pass on to an account of the wants and desires of the Bohemians, and how far they have succeeded in accomplishing and realizing their wishes.

‘We desire,’ said they a few years ago, ‘nothing else than what is our holiest possession, our dearest inheritance from our glorious forefathers, a gift—nay, command of heaven itself, and the incontrovertible right of every nation—we desire nothing else than the conservation of our language and its elevation to a position, in which it can exert itself for the earthly happiness of the nation. That is especially schools, particularly schools for that por-