Page:Lectures on The Historians of Bohemia by Count Lutzow (1905).djvu/98

 incurred as being the language of heretics, Balbinus skilfully drew the attention of his readers to the period anterior to Hus, ‘when Bohemia, now so mournful, was in a happy condition.’

In the last years of his life, Balbinus (who died in 1688) began the publication of one of those colossal works in which the Bohemians of that period delighted. The book, entitled A Miscellany of Bohemian History, does full justice to its title. Beside a large amount of historical narrative, the book contains a treatise on the natural history of Bohemia, numerous pedigrees of Bohemian nobles (they fill a whole volume), numerous biographies of Bohemians, and much other matter.

In connexion with Balbinus I should next mention his friend, Canon Tomas Pešina, who has left several historical works, written in Latin, which refer to the history of Bohemia and the sister-land Moravia.

The greater number of the historians of this period wrote in German. It is in this language that Bienenberg’s historical works, and Pubička’s and Pelzl’s histories of Bohemia, were written. Though written in a foreign tongue, these works, that belong to the latter part of the eighteenth century, show traces of a revival of the ancient national feeling among the Bohemians, and, as it were, form a prelude to the revival of the Bohemian nation in the following century.

It is not my purpose to refer here to their national movement, except as far as it concerns the study of history. But as the greatest of the leaders of this movement, Francis Palacký, was a historian, it deserves mention here. This revival, largely based on historical reminiscences, in fact on what the enemies of the country would call sentimental motives, is one of the