e one above another, till they
terminate in the Old Palace, and the unfinished cathedral of St. Vitus;
there is the Neu Stadt, the handiwork of the Emperor Charles IV.,
covering a prodigious extent of ground, and enriched with the convents,
hospitals, and other public buildings, which owe their existence to the
liberality of the Jesuits. There are these, with a background of low,
yet picturesque hills, surmounted here and there by some blackened
ruin, or other monument of times gone by, which make up altogether one
of the most striking inland panoramas on which I have any where had the
good fortune to gaze. We stopped our carriage some minutes in order to
enjoy it; and then pushed forward. At every step which we took in
advance, objects of a varying but not a lessened interest, met us. Now
we passed a monastery, an extensive pile, but evidently of modern
construction; now a convent of English nuns was pointed out to us.
By-and-by the road sank down into a sort of ravine, which shut out all
view except of the fortifications that enclose the city, and block up
the extremity of the defile. Then began signs of active and busy life
to accumulate round us. Countrymen, with their wains, were met or
overtaken; bodies of cavalry, in their stable dresses, were exercising
their horses on the level; here and there an officer in uniform rode
past us; and carriages, in which sat some of Bohemia's fairest and
noblest daughters, swept by. Next came the barrier, the demand for
passports, the drawbridge, over which our wheels rolled heavily; the
exercising ground for the artillery, where a strong brigade of guns was
manoeuvring; a momentary glimpse of the convent of St. Lawrence, and
the old towers of the oldest portion of the palace; after which we saw
nothing distinctly, till our journey, properly so called, had
terminated. For our course lay down a very steep street, and across the
bridge into the Alt Stadt, where at a hotel, rich in all the essentials
of food, and wine, and couches, though somewhat deficient in the
superfluity of cleanliness, we established our head-quarters for a
season.

Perhaps there is no city in the world which, by the air which attaches
to all its arrangements, more completely separates you from the
present, and carries you back into the past, than Prague. There is
nothing in or around it; there is no separate building, nor street, nor
square, within its walls, which is not more or less connected by the
strong