the critical years of 1641. The Long Parliament readily voted money for the foundation of three colleges in which the principles of Comenius might at once be applied. However, the rapid succession of events which culminated in the Civil War, prevented Comenius from further developing his purposes in England, and he consequently left for the Continent. During his stay in England he gained many friends, and evidently his personality still further strengthened the intellectual and moral bonds between England and Bohemia.
As all political life in Bohemia had practically ceased to exist after the Battle of the White Mountain, we cannot trace any relations between the two countries during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It was only at the beginning of the nineteenth century that relations were re-established: and this time it was England who exercised direct influence on the national life of the resuscitated Czech people. As a matter of fact, the Czech national "awakeners" sought everywhere sources of culture of which they could make use in order to stimulate the Czech national thought, to regenerate the literary Czech language, to enrich the Czech literature which was in its renaissance. As they drank deep from French literature, so also did they find sustenance in English literature. James Macpherson, with his celebrated translations of the Gaelic songs of Ossian,
