ot upon the scene of other people's enjoyments, but on his
own temper or prejudices. Neither did I relish it the less from finding
that it was very little frequented by my countrymen. There had been but
one English family there before we arrived, and they, I am happy to
say, left an excellent name behind them.

The country between Toeplitz and Prague, after you have passed over the
heights of Wachholderberg is not, in a picturesque point of view, very
interesting. The chateau of Krzemusch, with its fine garden, and the
Teufelsmauer, a basaltic precipice hard by, are indeed worth the
expenditure of an hour or two to visit, while the situation of Bilin,
in the valley of Bila, is beautiful. But you soon escape from the
mountains, and then, for many miles, the eye finds little on which it
need pine to linger, more attractive, at least, than a wide extent of
cultivation. The principal towns through which you pass are Laun and
Schlan, neither of them large or very prosperous; the rest are mere
villages. By degrees, however, as you come within what may be described
as the vortex of Prague, a great change is perceptible. The country
becomes much more broken and undulating, while here and there, from the
summit of a hill, elevated above the rest, the view which you command
is both striking and extensive. At last, the White Mountain, as it is
called, lies before you, and by an easy and almost imperceptible
ascent, you arrive at its crest. There it will, indeed, be worth your
while to pause; for a finer scene of its kind you will rarely look down
upon in any country of the world.

Along the shores of the broad Moldau, and climbing, as it were, the
steep hills which girdle it in, Prague lies at your feet. The river,
flowing on with a clear and gentle current, seems to have cut it in
twain. Yet are the characters of these divisions more completely in
unison than in almost any other instance of a city so dealt with which
I remember to have seen. A thousand towers, spires, minarets, and
domes, shed over the whole an air of magnificence which in some sort
partakes of the oriental. There are hanging-gardens, too, and a noble
bridge; there are large and exquisitely wooded islands in the Moldau;
there is the Alt Stadt on the further bank, with its Thein Kirche, or
Tyne Church, celebrated in story, and its venerable Town Hall; there is
the Kleinseite nearer at hand, where streets and squares, crowded with
the residences of the nobles, ris