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are natural to all, rather than of the cultivated intellect which belongs but to a few. It may not discurse into the realms of philosophy—for the multitude cannot follow it thither—it must not introduce the personages of mythology, for they are strange and unintelligible to the unlearned—it can only revert to such facts or fragments of history as are preserved in the traditions of the many—in a word, it must approve itself to the general understanding, which will never be highly elevated, and condescend to the intellectual mediocrity of the masses of mankind.
An ingenious criticism on the popular poetry of the bohemians may be seen in the Prague Monthly Periodical (for August, 1827), written by M. Müller, the aesthetic professor in that capital. There is truth in the observation, that history and heroism have furnished few subjects for bohemian national songs: and this, he says, is the more remarkable when they are compared or contrasted with those of other slavonian races, and especially the servian and the russian. But how should such songs exist—or, if they ever existed, how should they be long preserved, in a state of so-
