Page:History of the Thirty Years' War - Gindely - Volume 1.djvu/28

 Maximilian of Bavaria, Count Tilly, Prince Waldstein, Gustavus Adolphus, and Cardinal Richelieu.

Prof. Gindely’s portrayals of life, and especially of the formalities of intercourse in the period of which he writes, are quite remarkable, but are at the same time so unpretending that they might be passed over without attracting the attention which they deserve. No narrative of travel could convey to the reader a picture so vivid, and few one so realistic, as the half-dozen pages describing the journey of the bride of the King of Hungary from Madrid to Vienna; while a similar remark might be made of the progress of Frederic’s court from Heidelberg to Prague and the coronation which followed. Etiquette is justly regarded as a trifle, and yet it is one of those trifles which, like the straws upon an apparently smooth surface of water, show whither the current tends. So the references to etiquette which appear in the work, especially those to that which delayed the proper business of the Congress of Westphalia, yield to none in their significance as pictures of the time.

The Author states in his own preface the extent to which he has made investigation into the archives. As keeper of the state archives of Bohemia he was qualified for this work. He has been so modest in several places in his book in intimating that he has had access to original documents never before used by historical writers on this period, that the reader might overlook these intimations altogether.

II. As to the translation, I have but to observe how it arose and progressed. I was inquiring of a bookseller for so much of the Author’s great work on the Thirty Years’ War as might have appeared, in order to use this in writing a popular history of the same period, and