History of Bohemia

Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility. Whatever may be the success of this book, the labor expended in the preparation of it has been very great. The unhappy land whose story is here recorded had, until very recently, almost sunk out of observation, and its very name had become understood more as a metonym for literary vagabondage than as expressing the dwelling place of a once great nation. The history of Bohemia is totally unknown to the great majority of English speaking people. But the presence of a large body of Bohemians in the United States, the association of some members of that nation with the very foundation of the American colonies and their experiences in Europe identical with those of the other pioneers of our Commonwealth, render the history of Bohemia's career essential to the education of every American. Citizens will perhaps hear with incredulity the assertion that the civil constitution of Bohemia is the parent of that of England and of our own. Well may the Americans study the story of centuries' struggle to maintain and transmit an institutional system, almost identical with that of the United States, during those dark ages when almost all semblance of a recognition of popular institutions had elsewhere disappeared. To the many struggles of Bohemia we owe the perpetuation of our boasted freedom in an era when only the Bohemian arm was raised in its defense. Lovers and champions of human rights, as Americans are, they may welcome the recital of a tale of rugged heroism in defense of strictly popular principles, five, six, yes, seven centuries before the sail of the Mayflower wafted a similar body politic to our shores.