and there alone, many Protestants remained, buried in a fortunate obscurity. From the time of this catastrophe, the Bohemian language has never again been used in public business. The thirty years' war completed the devastation of this unfortunate country. In 1617, Bohemia had 732 cities and 34,700 villages; when Ferdinand II died in 1637, there remained 130 cities and 6000 villages; and its three millions of inhabitants were reduced to 780,000. FOURTH PERIOD. _From the battle at the White Mountain, A.D_. 1620, _to the Revival of Literature in A.D_. 1774-80. Of this melancholy period we have but little to say. A dull pressure lay upon the nation; it was as if the heavy strokes inflicted on them had paralyzed their very limbs. Innumerable monks came to Bohemia from Italy, Spain, and the south of Germany, who condemned and sacrificed to the flames every Bohemian book as necessarily heretical. There were individuals who boasted having burned with their own hands 60,000 literary works. They broke into private houses, and took away whatever Bohemian books they could find. Those which they did not burn, were deposited in separate chambers in the convents, provided with iron grates, bolts, and chains, drawn before the door, on which was written. _The Hell_. They distributed pamphlets respecting hell and purgatory, the reading of which produced derangement of mind in many weak persons; until, at last, the government was wise enough to lay a severe prohibition upon these measures. The Bohemian emigrants indeed continued to have their religious books printed in their foreign homes; but they wrote comparatively few new works. These however they contrived to introduce into Bohemia, where they were answered by the Jesuits and Capuchins in thick folio volumes, written in a language hardly intelligible. There were however some honourable exceptions among these fathers; some persons, who, independent of religious prejudices; continued to labour for the benefit of a beloved mother tongue. The Jesuits Konstanz, Steyer, and Drachovsky, wrote grammatical works, and the two first attempted to translate the Bible anew. Plachy, ob. 1650, Libertin, and Taborsky, were distinguished preachers; Peshina, ob. 1680, Hammerschmidt, ob. 1731, and Beckowsky, ob. 1725, wrote meritorious historical works; Rosa, ob. 1689, composed another grammar and a dictionary. Others wrote in Latin; and among these must be named the Jesuit Balbin, ob. 1688, who prepared several historical and bibliographical works of importance, part of which, however, were not published until long after his death.[36]