The Bohemian people then surpassed in intellectual culture all other nations of Europe.... It is now necessary that we should educate ourselves and work in accordance with the demands of culture and intellect. This is the only testament that, speaking almost as a dying man, I wish to leave to my people." Palacký's presentiment proved but too true. He died, after a very short illness, on May 26, 1876. His funeral was the occasion of general national mourning in Bohemia. Though, as already mentioned, the study of history from his early youth appealed particularly to Palacký, it was by a work of a very different character that he first became known to the small group of men who in the earlier half of the present century were interested in Bohemian literature. While still studying at Pressburg, Palacký published a translation of some of the poems of Ossian, which was enthusiastically welcomed by his friends. It was at Prague only that he decided on writing his _History of Bohemia_, which made him the foremost man of his nation, and which he has himself described as "especially the work of my whole life." Palacký's preliminary labours in the archives of his own country and then in those of Germany and Italy have already been noticed. Of the immense difficulties which Palacký's historical work encountered he has himself given an interesting account. All printed writings were then in Austria and Bohemia under the control of the "censure-office," to which I have already referred. The Government, there is no doubt, was in principle opposed to the publication of a history of Bohemia founded on the best available documents, that is to say, of a work really deserving the name of a history. They were too ignorant to know to how great an extent such a work would contradict the short accounts of the past of Bohemia--written with a strongly Romanist and anti-Bohemian tendency, and founded on Hajek's chronicle--that were then in general use; but they somehow felt that this would be the case. "The Austrian Government was convinced," Palacký writes, "that its past conduct as regards Bohemia would not obtain praise from the tribunal of history. What occurred during the Thirty Years' War and since that period in the interior of Bohemia is still one of history's secrets; it makes the few who have attempted slightly to lift the veil under which these events are hidden shudder."