From the bridge, you pass by a noble street, where churches and stately mansions woo you on either hand, up the steep ascent of the Hradschin; the summit of which will be most speedily, and therefore comfortably, attained, if you mount a flight of stone steps that faces you after you have made a slight turn to the right. They conduct at once to the sort of platform on which stand the old and new palaces, the cathedral, the lodgings of the canons, and the residences of some of the official personages to whose charge these buildings are committed. Of the cathedral, I have already said, that it never was completed. According to the traditions of the place, this is, indeed, the third pile which, consecrated to the worship of the true God, has graced the brow of the Hradschin; but the two first were entirely destroyed by fire, and this, begun by Charles IV., remains exactly as, in 1380, his architects, Matthew of Arras, and Peter Arlieri, left it. It is an extremely beautiful specimen of the sort of Gothic which preceded that of the date of our own Henry VII., and is surmounted by a lantern-crown, similar in its character, and not very different in its dimensions, from that which is to be seen on the tower of St. Giles's in Edinburgh. Yet is the pile, when spoken of as a cathedral, a very sorry edifice, for the choir is all, of his own noble plan, which Charles was permitted to complete, and there has arisen no king of Bohemia since his day, who has cared to bring the work to a conclusion. At the same time, both the choir, and the unfinished chapels that surround it, are strikingly beautiful. The former, emblazoned within with the shields of the house of Hapsburg, with the armorial bearings of Bohemia, Hungary, Styria, Moravia, Burgundy, Spain, and Brabant, more resembles the private chapel of a prince, than the metropolitical church of a nation; while the latter, crowded with memorials of other and earlier days, were, at least by us, regarded with still deeper and holier interest. One of these, the chapel of St. Wenceslas, the fourth Christian duke of Bohemia, has its walls inlaid with native jasper, agate, and other precious stones, and adorned with frescoes, inferior, in point of merit, to none which this century has produced. They are attributed, some to Nicholas Wurmser of Strasburg, some to Dietrich of Prague, two of the most renowned artists of their day, who with many others, received at the hands of Charles, the most liberal patronage and encouragement. Moreover, the exterior of the wall, which looks towards the palace, is richly ornamented with mosaics. Many of the old Slavonian saints are there, such as St. Sigismond, St. Procopius, St. Vitus, St. Wenceslas, and others finely grouped together; while above them is a St. Veronica head of Christ, which would not disgrace St. Mark's in Venice itself.