Page:The Queens Court Manuscript with Other Ancient Bohemian Poems, 1852, Cambridge edition.djvu/15

Rh which, unknown to the world, had escaped the storms of the Hussite, and thirty years’ wars, and the other troubles of the country in the quiet vaults of Brzeznice (Brzeznitzer Schloss), and were presented to the Museum by Count John Kolowrat-Krakowsky.

Among the men, who in those days of universal rivalry, busied themselves with restless zeal and rare good fortune in discovering and publishing ancient, hitherto unknown or neglected memorials of Bohemian Literature, one of the first and most honourable places is unquestionably held by the present Librarian of the National Museum, Pan Vaceslaw Hanka. This gentleman, after completing his studies and working for some time at Vienna j as co-editor of a Bohemian newspaper and magazine, was settled at Prague just at the time when the preliminaries to founding the Museum were in progress; and at that time enjoyed the especial favour of the accomplished Counts Caspar and Francis Sternberg, as well as the friendly and almost fatherly conversation and instruction of the great Philologer, the Abbé Joseph Dobrowsky, the three men who had the greatest and most beneficial influence, not only upon the foundation and formation

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