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 link of association with the mightiest and the most enduring struggle of principle in which the Christian world ever was engaged. Go where you will, your eye rests on something which speaks to you of a time when Prague was indeed a capital. Here in the Alt Stadt stands,--noble in its decay--the old palace of Koenighof, the favourite residence of Charles IV. There is the Tyne or Thein Church, within which Huss, himself but the successor of Milicius and Stiekna, and even Janovius the Parisian, denounced the corruptions of Rome; here the same town-hall, where, by the gallant burghers, the doctrines of the Reformation were first avowed, and within which, after a long and desperate effort to maintain them, they were abjured, not I suspect for ever. But it is not by looking exclusively to what may be called the great features of the city, that these and similar reminiscences are awakened. As you traverse the streets, each edifice, be it lordly or humble, presents to your gaze some record of prouder days. "Here an armorial device, there a saint, with his golden circlet or burning lamps, or a half-obliterated fresco, an arched balcony, a fortified gateway, or an ornamented shrine[1]." I heartily agree with the writer, from whose spirited Sketches the preceding extract has been taken, that this old and enduring character of the city is not without its importance. At a period when every political means is employed to efface and subdue the national character, when every act of social life, to be innocent must be Austrian, it is well that there is a power and a spirit in these unshaken walls, and perennial customs, which must needs keep the memory of their great origin and former energy fresh in the hearts of the Bohemian people. [1] See some admirable sketches of Prague, in the _Metropolitan Magazine_ for 1836.