Of the continental nations, Germany excepted, the French were the first to look inquiringly into the queer Austrian household. No doubt they were led to study Slavic Austria largely because of their alliance with Russia and because of their historical friendship for the Poles. Due to the labor of three pioneers, Saint-René Taillandier (1817-1879), Louis Leger (1843-) and Ernest Denis (1849-) _La Nation Tchèque_ is no longer unknown in France. Other and younger Frenchmen,--to name one, André Chéradame, the author of the widely quoted volume, _The Pangerman Plot Unmasked_,--continue the apostolary work in France; but Taillandier, Leger and Denis will always be honored as the pioneers of this propaganda. Of the trio, Ernest Denis, Professor of the Sorbonne, stands closest to the Bohemian heart. Denis’ monumental researches, _Huss et la Guerre des Hussites_, _La Bohême depuis la Montagne Blanche_, and _Fin de l’indépendance Bohême_, when published, may be said to have caused a sensation. Unhampered by the censor, Denis was able to bring out facts of Bohemia’s past which were a revelation to the Bohemians themselves. The Anglo-Saxon who visited the Hapsburg dominions thirty or forty years ago was yet unable to see anything but Teuton Austria; that is to say, he looked at Bohemia and the other Austrian states wholly from the official viewpoint of Vienna. As a sample of the notions of Bohemia and the Čechs professed in America and England a generation ago, suffice it to cite a passage or two from Bayard Taylor’s _Views A-Foot_, or _Europe seen with Knapsack and Staff_: “The very name of Bohemia is associated with wild and wonderful legends, of the rude barbaric ages. The civilized race, the Saxon race, was left behind; I saw around me the features and heard the language of one of those rude Slavonian tribes whose original home was on the vast steppes of Central Asia(!)” Again: “In passing the shrines by the wayside, the poor degraded peasants always uncovered or crossed themselves, but it appeared to be rather the effect of habit than any good impulse for the Bohemians are noted all over Germany for their dishonesty....” Taylor’s grossly distorted appraisal of Bohemia was not shared by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, as appears from the following lines by the famous American poet: “Hold your tongues! both Swabian and Saxon, A bold Bohemian cries; If there’s a heaven upon this earth, In Bohemia it lies.”