Brahe, the works
of Racusani the philosopher, a gift of Sir Thomas Saville to Hajek the
sixteenth-century biologist, astronomer, professor of Prague University,
who had studied in Milan and Bologna and had visited England in 1589.
Then there are the poetical works of Elizabeth Weston of a noble
English family, who had made her home in Prague and died here in 1612. A
very learned lady this, but, it would seem, unhappy. You may see her
tomb in St. Thomas's Church in Mala Strana, just beyond that imposing
Jesuit Church of St. Nicholas, on it the following inscription:--

D. O. M. S. B. M.

Elisabethae Joannae Westonae

Nobilitate patriae Britanniae,
Seculi nostri Sulpitiae,
Cui nomen dant litterae illibati

Minervae floris
Suadae decoris
Musarum delicii
Foeminarum exempli.

Strahov Monastery has, I hope, passed through its vicissitudes and has
entered at last into an existence of undisturbed usefulness. Of its
earliest appearance there are neither record nor any traces left; the
storms that passed over Bohemia have obliterated any outward sign of the
Mount Zion which Vladislav founded and whither generations of the pious
sons of Czech went up to find peace. One of the first of these was
Vladislav himself; weary of war and worn out by internal dissensions, he
abdicated and retired to Strahov to end his days.

Strahov was entirely rebuilt in the seventeenth century, and has
withstood the enemies of Bohemia from without and within, taking no
irreparable harm from the open attack of Frederick of Prussia in the
eighteenth century or the covert attack of those hostile to the faith it
has stood for down the ages. The quaintly shaped spires of St. Mary's
Church with its three aisles, its glorious organ the largest in all
Bohemia, stand out in bold relief amidst the terraced garden and
orchards tended with fond care. The belfry is silent, its bells were
sacrificed to the cause of the Habsburgs in the Great War; you may see
plaster casts of them in the library. Here you may feast your eye on
gloriously illuminated manuscripts and wonder at the ingenious
inventions of one or other good brother who sojourned here a while on
his way to the "Abiding City." There is, for instance, a model of the
first lightning-conductor. Country folk, when they first saw it, crossed
themselves, thinking this the work of the devil. The visitors' book in
the library shows signatures of men famous in history, among them our
Nelso