SKALA ZE ZHOkE
337
blame which others have expressed. I only state those various facts which I have found in other authors' writings (printed or in manuscript) which are conform to truth. Judgment I leave to prudent, truth-loving men, who have a more profound knowledge of these events than I, in ray exile, have been able to obtain." These statements, written to prove Skila's impartiality, are not entirely correct, or at least apply only to the years after 1620, when Skdla, an exile from Bohemia, had to rely on the authority of others. Of previous Thus, events he frequently writes as an eye-witness. when referring to the removal of the altars and paintings from the cathedral-church of St. Vitus at Prague in 1619, Skdla writes: "Though I and other officials were working in the neighbouring state offices between one and two o'clock, we heard nothing of what was happening in the royal church (St. Vitus); only next morning, when I entered the church, I saw that the pictures had been removed." SkAla gives a very able account of the ancient Bohemian constitution, of which he writes as a fervent admirer. He then states what in his opinion was the "The cause of the destruction of that constitution. Bohemian nation," he writes, "has indeed this peculiarity, that it can endure neither complete tyranny nor complete liberty unfettered by law. And as the Bohemians defended their ancient liberties with such true zeal, they might have been happier than other nations had they but at home maintained sincere concord among I doubt that any one would have been able themselves. to overcome them by force of arms if they had been bound together by the bond of patriotic mutual confidence ; but in consequence of religious differences, great
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