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another completed it—a third began a second verse—and so they proceeded until a little poem was created. If such a production have merit, it travels from mouth to mouth, improving as it goes, till it is found worth while to print it, and it is sold on a coarse scrap of paper at a country market or fair. At Prague, on the great way to the Domo Church, many ballad-sellers and ballad-singers are daily found. M. Müller thinks the blossoms of bohemian popular poetry are fading—and no doubt they are—for the poetry of civilization—the poetry of schools and books—the poetry of cultivated intellect—is superseding, and will supersede, the more natural and artless strains which are the charm of a ruder state of society. And with the generations of older time, much of the spirit which animated them is departed, and we cannot enter fully into the intensity of their emotions, nor give to their words the energy they received from the associations which were then attached to them.
Of all the slavonian ballads, the bohemian are the most musical. They are not to be read, they must be sung. Their general character is the expression of tranquil pleasure—their decorations
