The faithful fellow-labourer of Schaffarik is Francis Palacky, a scholar of great diligence and research, a few years younger in age; who however seems to have adopted an opposite course, in so far as his early works were written in Bohemian, while his later and principal ones are in German.  In 1829 he was appointed Historiographer of Bohemia by the Estates; but he was too warm a Bohemian to hope for the confirmation of the Austrian government under the emperor Francis, and it was not obtained until under his successor.  By means of the “Journal of the Bohemian National Museum,” of which he was the founder and editor, he had early gained a leading voice in all that concerned the revival of Bohemian literature; and, in that capacity, had to fight his way through a series of literary struggles and combats, sometimes conducted with personal vehemence and bitterness.  He had the satisfaction, however, of finally coming off as victor in the more essential points.  His most important work is his History of Bohemia; of which two volumes were published in the German language in 1836.  A Bohemian edition, with additions and a historiographical introduction, appeared in 1848.

The spirit which pervades this great work makes the author to a certain extent the representative of his nation.  One of the objects of the work is to point out the primitive relations of Slavism on the one hand, and of Germanism, the heir of Romanism, on the other; their contrasts and necessary conflicts; the Germans, warlike, conquering, oppressing all their neighbours, and bearing the germs of privileged castes in their earliest institutions; the Slavi, peaceful, industrious, living in patriarchal communities, and in their fundamental elements purely democratic.  Hence, the author says, the principal idea and fundamental feature of Bohemian history is the uninterrupted clashing and struggle of Slavism and Germanism; and in another place he remarks, that “the history of Bohemia consists chiefly in the combat with Germanism; or in the alternate reception and rejection by the Czekhes of German manners and institutions.” [51]

Our own days have witnessed the enthusiasm with which the thought of a total separation between Slavism and Germanism was received, when the events of the month of March 1848 seemed to open an unexpected prospect of realizing a long cherished idea.  A great congress of all the Slavic nations was convoked at Prague.  But at that very moment, at the gathering together of so many members of that wide-spread family, it became strikingly apparent that they were a family of nations; but could never again become, what for thousands of years they had not been, one nation.  In order to be understood, several of their deputies had to speak in German; and even for the journal founded as the great central organ of Slavism, the German language had to be employed.