Page:Guide to the Bohemian section and to the Kingdom of Bohemia - 1906.djvu/118

96 attire on holiday occasions, to sing old songs of the country, and to the music of the bagpipe perform the ancient dances as their ancestors did.

From 1880 upwards memorials and relics of national art have been collected with great care, the Ethnographic and Historic Museums in Prague and in almost all of the larger towns in Bohemia, possess great collections of embroideries, suits of national dresses from various parts of Bohemia and Moravia, of home crockery-ware, furniture, and other implements, painted Easter-eggs and toys, manucriptmanuscript [sic] prayer-books, adorned with miniatures and drawings, many of them bound in covers of chased metal, etc.

Folk-lore, national art and culture is made object of intense study by a considerable number of literary men, who publish particular journals and beautifully illustrated works. To the foreigner, the art peculiar to the Bohemian people is of undoubted interest on account of its originality and great aesthetic worth.

It would be impossible for the promoters of this Exhibition in London, to make the visitors acquainted with the beautiful national songs, and the dances full of sprightly national grace, neither is it possible to present samples of the old wooden houses of the northern districts with their striking and interesting architecture with decorated gables and handsome balconies, or to show the old cottage room with its dark beamed ceiling and gaily painted furniture, and ask our guests at Earl’s Court to seat themselves on wooden chairs with carved backs at a massive table next to a „press“ where often a family bible and the old chronicles of Bohemia have their place of honour. It is not even possible to show kinds of costume,—different in each district as worn by the country people. The limited space does not permit of more than the display of a selection of interesting garments—sartorial pages of history linking the past with the present, bringing to our minds the time when a persons apparel was also the outward sign of his national character and evidence of his social position and surroundings.