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ciety where no man dares to be a bohemian? That freedom of thought and expression which opens to the poet the great expanse of space and time—the whole field of the past and the future—which allows him to revel in all that is delightful in recollection, and in all that is beautiful in anticipation—is denied to the minstrel of Bohemia. He may neither record the struggles of his ancestors for liberty, not dream of the day when self-government shall give to his country whatever of happiness she is capable of enjoying. Love, of all the passions which he is permitted to sing, is that which allows the widest scope to his imagination—and love is the ever-ruling subject of his verse. And surely their popular poets have treated this with exquisite tenderness and effect, and have given it many varied forms of sweetness and strength.
Müller says of his countrymen, that "the key to their hearts is easily found, and that the sentiments by which they are lightly and easily moved, find a swift expression in songs and proverbs. In no country is there so much of singing and dancing as in Bohemia. The bohemian sings
