Page:The Queens Court Manuscript with Other Ancient Bohemian Poems, 1852, Cambridge edition.djvu/14

ii which shortly afterwards, obtaining the imperial approbation (1820–1822), entered into an active and vigorous existence. This grand Institution comprehended, in the intention of its first founders, all the intellectual interests of Bohemia in the largest sense of the word; antiquities, aids to the historian, documents and other memorials were to be collected there; the language, the customs, the peculiarities of the people were to be investigated and ascertained; the natural features of the country mapped and brought together; and every successful effort in Science and Literature, Art and Manufacture, but above all things true patriotic feeling to be fostered and elevated. Thus there arose among the patriots of every condition in life the most laudable rivalry in seeking out and bringing together manuscripts and documents, which had almost marvellously escaped destruction in the wasting wars and troubles, by which Bohemia had so repeatedly and often for half-a-century at a time been devastated, and which were thus unexpectedly rescued from oblivion or concealment and incorporated in the National Museum. Among these I shall only make mention of the distinguished treasure of more than two hundred manuscripts, some of them of the tenth and eleventh centuries,