From the cathedral to the palace is but a step. Though called old in contradistinction to a modern edifice which confronts it, and which the emperor, when he visits his Bohemian capital, usually occupies, this building, in almost all its portions, is of a date not more ancient than the fourteenth century. The Hall of Ladislas, with two or three towers near the postern, belong, indeed, to the original building, but the remainder of the pile, with the cathedral beside it, uprose at the bidding of Charles IV. Nothing can exceed the splendour of the view which you obtain from the windows of its apartments. The whole of Prague is beneath you. There lies the Kleinseite, with the great cupola of St. Nicholas, a church of the Jesuits, in the foreground: there is Wallenstein's palace, gathered round the base of the rock, and testifying to the enormous wealth and princely expenditure of its founder;--here, on the right, is the Lobkowitz palace, with its gardens, rising step by step upon the side of the adjacent hill, over which, like a diadem, stands the Premonstratensian convent of Strahow,--an edifice imperfect in its proportions, yet as a whole strikingly effective. From these, the eye turns naturally to the Moldau, with its noble bridge and islands of perfect beauty; while beyond it are the Alt Stadt, and a vast circle of suburbs,--the former, venerable and striking from its multitudinous towers, its one great cupola, and its peaked roofs; the latter, contrasting finely with it in the simplicity of its large yet unadorned white buildings. Neither will the stranger fail to have pointed out to him, the two small obelisks, which, on a narrow terrace immediately below the palace, mark the spot where Martinitz and Slawata fell, when, at the commencement of the Thirty Years' War, they were thrown out of the windows of the Green Chamber. And it is worthy of remark, that this summary mode of dealing with obnoxious individuals, is by no means unfrequently alluded to in the annals of Bohemia. These two emissaries of a detested party escaped, indeed, unhurt; for they fell upon a bed of manure, and were carried off, and nursed, and aided in their subsequent flight by the Princess Penelope of Lobkowitz. But throughout the Hussite troubles, and in times anterior to them, the right of putting to death by casting from towers and over windows, was claimed and exercised by those in power; nay, and more curious still, it was justified before the world as a constitutional privilege.