The singular states of relations between master and pupil did not prevent Hanka from labouring with great assiduity to introduce into the Bohemian language a system of orthography, based ou a plan which Dobrowsky had proposed. Many of his publications are in tended to promote this alteration; but, as others have different views, the main result of the various schemes proposed appears to have been to plunge the orthography of the language for the present into a state of confusion. Hanka has also published grammars of some of the other Slavonic languages on a method suggested by Dobrowaky. He is said in the Oesterreichische National Encyclopfidie ' to be master of eighteen languages.
The latest important work of Hanka is an edition of an ancient Slavonic version of a portion of the Gospels, from a manuscript pre served at Rheims, and formerly used in the coronation of the kings of France. This manuscript, which is written in the Glagolitic cha racter, was for a series of years a source of perplexity to the French antiquarians, who described it as written in ancient Greek or in Syriac, and to the exhibitors of the curiosities at Rheims, who occasionally described it as in Chinese. It was an English gentleman, Mr. Thomas
Ford hill, who, in the year 1789, upon being shown some Glagolitic manuscripts in tho imperial library at Vienna, first observed that the book exhibited at Rheims was in letters of the.,same alphabet, a remark which could not be verified for some time, as the book dis appeared with the holy ampulla in the storms of the French Revolu tion. It was however fortunately preserved and recovered, and since its reappearance has been the object of close study and comment by Slavonic scholars. Hanka's edition was published in 1846.
In the abortive Panelavouie revolution of 1848, which terminated in the bombardment of Prague by Windischgrfitz, Hanka does not seem to have had much share, though a very couspicuous part was taken by his friends and defenders Safarik and Palaohy. He has been an active contributor to the leading Bohemian periodicals, in particular to the 'Casepis Ceskeho Muzeuma,' or 'Magazine of the Bohemian Museum,' which is issued by the institution of which he is librarian.