Bohemia. By C. E. Maurice. "The Story of the Nations."
(T. Fisher Unwin.)—We quite agree with the historian of Bohemia that no country has been more misunderstood by the English. Though this is partly due to the mischievous idea that gipsies and Bohemians were identical, it is also to be accounted for by the disappearance of Bohemia as a separate nationality in the seventeenth century, by its position, and by the fact that its internal convulsions prevented any rise to great power. At this distance of time it requires a singularly clear insight to pick out
the threads of policy from the maze of conflicting powers and in- terests that fascinate the student of the later Middle Ages and the rarer modern period. English statesmen of those days had a very tangled skein of policy to unravel, and travelled men as some of them were, they had but hazy ideas of the Bohemian nationality. As for the ordinary Englishman the figure of John of Bohemia at Crecy, the reign of his son (a brilliant period indeed), and the connection of Bohemia and the Reforma- tion, are the only Bohemian incidents he knows. The country, indeed, has had one of those histories which it might very well have dispensed with. Its ultimate absorption was only a matter of time, and even Mr. Maurice's able review can scarcely imbue the average reader with the faintest interest, though we hope that few Englishmen will continue to believe with Shakespeare that Bohemia is somewhere on the coast. Great names and great forces are markedly absent from Bohemian history, and the ablest historian is handicapped by the lack of congenial material. Perhaps Mr. Maurice has been almost too careful of his details.
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