During his stay at Prague, Šafařik produced his most important work, which rendered him famous in all Slav countries. I refer to the _Starožitnosti Slovanské_ ("Slavic Antiquity"), which was published in 1837. The book--written in Bohemian--is an attempt to record the history and culture of the Slavs in the earliest times. The subject, still very obscure, was then entirely unexplored. Šafařik intended the work to consist of two parts, but only the first, which is purely historical, was completed. Of the second part, only some essays on the ancient ethnography and archaeology of the Slavs were published. The historical work, which Šafařik again divided into two parts, deals, in the first, with the history of the Slav race from the time of Herodotus to the fall of the West Roman empire. The second part continues that history to the time when most Slavs were converted to Christianity--that is to say, speaking roughly, to about the year 1000. Šafařik's work entirely revolutionised the then current ideas on the origin of the Slavs and their early history. The more recent writers who, particularly in Russia, have studied these subjects, acknowledge that Šafařik's great work has been the foundation of their researches. One of his minor works requires notice, as it is connected with the much discussed question of the antiquity of the MSS. of Königinhof and Grüneberg. In 1840 Šafařik published jointly with Palacký a German work entitled _Die ältesten Denkmäler der Böhmischen Spracke_. In this book the two authors maintain the ancient origin, not only of the MS. of Königinhof, but also of that of Grüneberg, in which scarcely any Bohemian scholar now believes. Of course the question had not then--more than fifty years ago--been so thoroughly thrashed out as is now the case. Šafařik was an indefatigable worker. Besides his many published works, a large number of MSS. in his handwriting dealing with Slavic research were found. They prove that, had circumstances been more favourable, and had his health not failed him, he might have produced yet more works on the subjects to the study of which he devoted his life. The works of Jungmann, Kollar, and Šafařik will always be highly valued by Bohemians, and indeed by all Slavs. But the career of Palacký, the greatest of the Bohemian leaders, whom I mention last, has a far wider interest, as have also the contents of his greatest work. Dealing mainly with Bohemian history, it incidentally throws a great deal of light on many questions connected with the general history of Europe up to the year 1526. It is much to be regretted that English historians have as yet availed themselves so little of Palacký's monumental _History of Bohemia_.[160]