no longer confined, as in former times, to those who intended to devote themselves to the clerical profession; it pervaded all classes, high and low.  Immediately after Wickliffe’s death, an intercourse had been opened between England and Bohemia by the marriage of a Bohemian princess, Ann, sister of king Wenceslaus, to Richard II of England.  A young Bohemian nobleman, who had finished his studies in Prague, repaired to Oxford, imbibed the sentiments and opinions of Wickliffe, and on his return put a copy of all Wickliffe’s writings into the hands of John Huss, at that time one of the professors of theology at Prague; whose mind was probably already prepared for them, and who began to study them with great zeal and devotion.  Indeed, the pretensions of the chair of Rome, and the corruption of the clergy, had been for some time since looked upon in Bohemia with private disgust and open disapprobation; and when the professors Huss, Jerome, and Jacobellus, began to declaim against monks, auricular confession, and the infallibility of the pope, they found a responding echo in the breasts of their hearers; and all that was novel in their doctrines, was the boldness with which they were pronounced, and the logical consistency with which they were justified.

Another difference of opinion, which tended greatly to augment the excitement then reigning at the university, was the contest between the two philosophical schools, viz. that of the Realists, who were defended by Huss, and the Nominalists, to which nearly all the Germans adhered.  This contest became very soon a national affair; or, more probably, had its principal origin in the unjust privileges of the Germans and the jealousy of the Bohemians.  The preference given to the former at the foundation of the university, viz. the possession of three out of the four suffrages in all matters determined by vote, became anew the subject of debate, and was more especially assailed by Huss, then rector of the university.  After a whole year of resistance, the king at length yielded.  A decree of A.D. 1409 ordained that in future the proportion should be reversed, so that the Germans should possess only one suffrage, and the Bohemians three.  For this victory of their national pride, the university, the city, nay the whole country, had to suffer severely.  Immediately after this decision, the famous literary emigration took place.  All the German professors and students left Prague at once.  The immediate consequences of this step were, the foundation of the universities of Leipzig, Rostock, and Ingolstadt; and the building up of those of Heidelberg, Erfurt, and Cracow.  Prague never again became what it had been; although it obtained a transient lustre through the victory itself, and the eminence and martyrdom of some of its national teachers.  Before we proceed, we must devote a few words to the personal merits and fortunes of these latter.