Wherever the stranger may have taken up his abode, whether in the Alt Stadt, the Neu Stadt, the Kleinseite, or in one of the suburbs, the first objects which he is tempted to visit will naturally be the palace of the Hradschin, and the old cathedral. If, as is probable, he has established himself in the Alt Stadt, it will be necessary, in order to reach these points, that he should cross the bridge,--a magnificent structure, which like almost all the most enduring monuments of human skill in the city, owes its existence to Charles IV. It measures not less than 1780 feet in length; it is supported upon twelve noble arches; it is protected at either extremity by embattled towers,--in their day, without doubt, very efficient _tetes du pont_, and to adorn its parapets on either hand, it has the statues of many saints, with more than one crucifix and two chapels. Among these watchers over the temporal and spiritual prosperity of Bohemia, St. John of Nepomuc holds a conspicuous place. Being now in an especial manner the guardian of bridges, his position here is more honoured than that even of the Virgin herself: he occupies the very centre of the pile, and may be distinguished from the rest by the five stars which glitter in their gilding round him; yet is his canonization an event of little more than a century's growth. He was set up by the Jesuits in 1729, in opposition to St. John Huss, to whom the Bohemians, for many years after the suppression of the Protestant worship among them, continued to pay saintly honours; and he continues to this day, in the reverence with which he is everywhere greeted,--a sort of galling and vexatious, because constantly-recurring memorial, of the system of mental thraldom, under which Bohemia has long groaned.