nationality and sank their individuality, while the country people, on the other hand, lived their own old national style of life.
But the peasants in Bohemia were even during those times of oppression the owners of the soil they tilled, and they possessed so much innate energy and creative power as to make their surroundings sufficiently artistic to raise themselves above the dreary monotony of daily drudgery and preserve their national character.
The state of civilisation above described now belongs to the past. The upper classes of the nation are once more in sympathy with the people, and powerfully aid in raising the intellectual standard of the country and recruiting from the masses the best artists and men of letters. They now regard the traditional art of the peasants with pride as their own inheritance, seeing in it also the link that binds together the various branches of the great Slavonic race.
From 1880 upwards, memorials and relics of national art have been collected with great care in the Ethnographical and Historical Museums in Prague and in almost all of the larger towns in Bohemia.
Folklore, national art, and culture are made the object of intense study by a considerable number of literary men, who publish journals and beautifully illustrated works dealing specially with these subjects.
The characteristic feature of the various national costumes in Bohemia, more especially in the dress of the olden time, is the evident aim at producing a good effect not by the use of
