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Then we pass under the equally picturesque bridge tower of the Altstadt, and enter narrow streets lined with good shops, and full of bustle; and after many puzzling ins and outs, we emerge into the spacious area of the Ring—a lively scene, people crossing in all directions, or sauntering under the arcades; here and there sentries pacing up and down, and small parties of soldiers, in gay uniforms, marching away to beat of drum. And above the farther houses there shoot up the two towers of the Teinkirche—one of the most famous churches in Prague—which were built by George Podiebrad. The church itself is screened by the houses; but, whenever you see those graceful towers, you recognise the site of the edifice which was one of the strongholds of Hussite preachers, and where Tycho Brahe lies buried.
More narrow streets; across the end of a market-place, and passing under the arch of the ancient Powder Tower, we enter the broad streets of the Neustadt. The Bohemian professor at Würzburg had recommended me to lodge at the Blaue Stern, so to the Blue Star I went, and asked for a room.
"Quite full," said the Kellner, at the same time surveying me inquisitively from head to foot.
Two doors off was another hotel, where the answer, accompanied by a similar inquisition, was, "Nothing empty."
A third replied, "Perhaps, to-morrow."
I began to fancy that my not having been in bed all night—boots still dusty, and a few stalks of hay clinging to my coat—might have something to do with these denials. However, hotels are thickly grouped in this quarter of the city, and not many yards farther the Schwarzes Ross, in the Kolowrat-strasse, gave me quarters as comfortable as could be wished.
CHAPTER XI
The Hausknecht—A Place to Lose Yourself—Street-Phenomena—Book-shops—Glass-wares—Cavernous Beer-houses—Signs—Czechish Names—Ugly Women—Swarms of Soldiers—A Scene on the Bridge—A Drateñik—The Ugly Passport Clerk—The Suspension-bridge—The Islands—The Slopes of the Laurenzberg—View over Prague—Schools, Palaces, and Poverty—The Rookery—The Hradschin—The Courts—The Cathedral—The Great Tomb—The Silver Shrine—Relics—A Kissed Portrait—St. Wenzel's Chapel—Big Sigmund—The Loretto Platz—The Old Towers—The Hill-top and Hill-foot.
I had not been many minutes in my room when the Hausknecht—the German boots—brought me a printed form, in which, besides the inevitable particulars, I had to state the probable duration of my stay in Prague. For three days' residence the police authorities charge nothing, but if you enter on a fourth day you must pay two florins for a permit to reside. I escaped the tax by not having more than three days to spare.
The day was all before me, and I made haste to
"go lose myself,
And wander up and down and view the city."
Losing one's-self is not difficult in Prague—easier, indeed, than in any city I have yet visited; for the Altstadt so abounds in queer nooks and corners, narrow streets and lanes all crooked and angular, running hither and thither in such unexpected directions, or coming to a sudden stop, as completely to puzzle a stranger. Even my organ of locality well-nigh failed me in the intricate maze.
Among all these zigzags you discover the leading thoroughfares only by the busy appearance, the continuous stream of citizens going and coming, straggling all across the narrow roadway, now darting aside to escape a passing carriage, or slowly giving place to a long lumbering dray that rolls past with deafening rumble, the horses clattering on shoes with tall calkins that put you in mind of pattens. Here, too, are the best shops, displaying attractive wares behind coarse and uneven panes. The booksellers' windows exhibit a good variety of standard books, of maps and engravings, denoting the existence of a wholesome love of literature; very different from what is to be seen in the southern states of the empire. Some shops display none but Czechish books, and if you glance over the title-pages, you will discover that topography of their own country, and descriptions of the beautiful city Praha—as they call Prague—are favourite subjects with the Czechs.
There is no uniformity. Next door to a cabinet-maker's, whose large-paned window exhibits a variety of tasteful furniture, you will see a cavern-like grocery without any window, and the wares all in seeming confusion. Next, beyond, is a shop resplendent with Bohemian glass, elegant forms in ruby, gold, and azure, each one a triumph of art and industry. England is a generous customer for these fragile articles, as may be seen any day in some of the best shops in London. Then comes a sullen-looking front, with grim grated window, showing no wares, and looking as if it had not cared about customers since the days of King George Podiebrad. Then a smirking coffee-house, with muslin curtains and touches of gilding. A little farther, and there is a great open arch, running far to the rear—a beer-house—the space between the street and the bar filled with tables bearing brown loaves cut in quarters, Semmel, and corpulent sausages. Turn which way you will, you find an endless diversity.
"Glück auf!" writes up a little trader. "Here are best Coals. Radnitzer Coal." People who live on the upper floors hang a small wooden cruciform sign from their windows by a long string, low enough to catch the eye and strike the heads of those walking beneath; and on these dangling crosses, when they are not spinning round in the wind, you may read that a Dentist, Shoemaker, or Teacher aloft in his garret would be happy to supply your wants on reasonable terms.
Judging from the number of queer-looking names over the doors, Prague must be the head-quarters of the Czechs, and yet one meets comparatively few examples of the fine intellectual brow and handsome features of which I had seen noble specimens in the villages. Most of the faces struck me as of a very common cast; and as for the gentle sex, never have I seen so many ugly women as in Prague. Those of the working classes are very dowdies, not to say slatterns, in many cases; and the rows of market-women squatting by their baskets resemble so many feather-beds tied round the middle, in a flimsy cotton dress, and crowned by a red or yellow kerchief pinned under the chin. Even among the graceful and gaily-dressed ladies I saw but very few pretty faces. Perhaps I expected too much, or it might be, as I was told, that all the pretty women had gone away to the watering-places!
Surprising to a stranger is the number of soldiers, sauntering among the other pedestrians, in uniforms blue, green, gray, or white; or marching in short files at a brisk pace behind a corporal. Not once did I take a walk in Prague without seeing three or four of these little troops stepping out towards one or other quarter of the compass. What is there to be kept down that can need such an imposing force? At all events, it heightens the picturesque effect of the streets.
Stand for half an hour on the bridge and you will see, while noting that scarcely any besides boys and priests take off their hats to St. John of the five stars, how great is the proportion which the army and the church bear to the rest of the inhabitants. At times the black and the coloured uniforms appear to have the best of it. All besides may be divided into two classes—the well-dressed and the shabby—for nothing appears between the two. There are, however, but few of those very miserable objects such as haunt the streets of large towns in England.
Now a man hurries past carrying a tall circular basket filled with piled-up dinners in round dishes; now another wheeling bundles of coloured glass rods; now another with a barrow-load of bread, and many a slice will you see sold for a noonday repast. Then comes a troop of lawless-looking street-musicians; then beggars grinding out squeaky music from tinkered organs; then a girl carrying a coffin, painted black and yellow, under her arm, which bears a cross on its gabled lid. And now and then, among all these, your eye is arrested by a singular, wild-looking figure, whom you will think the strangest of all. He has lank black hair hanging to his shoulders from under a fluffy, round-crowned, broad-brimmed hat—of the fashion still worn by a few old Quakers in out-of-the-way places. He disdains a shirt, and wears a tight jacket and hosen of whitey-brown serge. He goes barefoot, walking with long, stealthy strides, looking, so you guess, furtively around. On his shoulder he carries a coil of fine iron wire, and in his hand a broken red pan or stone pitcher. Wild, however, and out of place as he looks, he is only a Wallachian plying his honest calling. He is a Drateñik—or Drahtbinder (Wirebinder), as the Germans call it—going about to mend broken pans and pitchers by binding the fractures together with wire; a task which he performs with neatness and dexterity.
I went to the Polizeidirection to reclaim my passport. About a dozen persons were waiting. To some who looked poor and timid the clerk spoke roughly, assuming beforehand a something "not regular." One might fancy that his ungracious occupation had told upon his looks, for he was the ugliest man I ever saw, and, unlike the women, who gave themselves airs in the streets, he seemed to be aware of Nature's unkindness towards him. When my turn came, he asked, "Where are you going?"
"To the Riesengebirge."
"So! But we can't sign a passport for the mountains. You must tell us the name of some town."
"Make it Landeshut, if you will; or any frontier town in Silesia."
"Can't do that. We must have some town on this side the mountains."
"I don't yet know which of three routes I shall take. Say some town nearest to the mountains. Does it make any difference?"
"Schön! You can come back here when your mind is made up." And with this rejoinder, Ugly turned away to consider a timid lady's request for permission to go a journey of fifteen miles.
There was time enough, so I strolled away to the suspension-bridge—Kaiser Franzens Brücke—which, more than 1400 feet long, crosses the Moldau and the Schützen Insel, a short distance above the stone bridge. The view midway will make you linger. On the right bank, Franzens-quai, stretching from one bridge to the other, forms a spacious esplanade, in the centre of which, surrounded by gardens, rises the monument erected by the Estates of Bohemia to the honour of Francis I. Beyond and on either side the towers and palaces are seen in a new aspect, differently grouped from our early morning view. Those of the Kleinseite, backed by the leafy slopes of the Laurenzberg, while immediately beneath your eye rests on the green sward and shady groves of three or four islands. The river rushing past to the dam makes a lively ripple, imparting a sense of coolness enjoyed by the visitors who throng the islands during the summer season. The Sophien Insel, named after the Archduchess Sophie, the emperor's mother, with its pleasure-grounds, dancing-floors, orchestras, refreshment-rooms, and baths, is the chief resort, especially on Sundays. The large ball-room was the scene of noisy public meetings in '48; the Sclave Congress was held there, followed by a Sclavonic costume ball. These islands are a pleasing feature in the view, and, with their shady bowers and the noise of the water mingling with strains of music, contrast agreeably with the matter-of-fact of the city. The Schützen Insel is resorted to by rifle companies, and you may hear a brisk succession of shots from the practice that appears to be always going on.
During the outbreak of June, 1848, the floor of the bridge was taken up, and the passage across completely interrupted for some weeks by the military. And it was to Prince Windischgratz's demonstrations during the same month that the inhabitants were indebted for an extension of their handsome quay. An old water-tower, and sundry ricketty wooden mills that stood at the end of the stone bridge, were set on fire by a shell from the prince's artillery, and the space cleared by the flames was taken into the newly-formed area.
Passing from the bridge through the Aujezder Thor, you come to the pleasant slopes and gardens of the Laurenzberg, a hill that overlooks the city and country around. Winding paths agreeably shaded lead upwards, until you are stopped on the summit by massive fortifications; the great "Bread-wall," or "Hunger-wall"—for it is known by both names—which Karl IV. built all round the city five hundred years ago to give work to the citizens in a season of distress. From a buttress which projects clear of the trees, that cover all the hill-side with a broad mass of foliage, you have a wide prospect. Greater part of the city from the Jews' quarter to the Wissehrad lies beneath the eye as a panorama. The Moldau—breaking from between low hills, with here and there a Kahn floating, or a long, narrow raft drifting to the gap in the dam—flows past in a grand curve between towers and palaces, wretched hovels and stately churches, and onwards round the hills below to join the Elbe. The islands are open as a map, and you see the puffs of smoke from the rifles on the Schützen Insel. It is a striking but disappointing view, for notwithstanding the ancient gables and various towers that shoot aloft, the city has somewhat the aspect of a collection of factories, so monotonous are the long lines of white, many-windowed wall, bearing their long slopes of bright red roof. Street after street stretching away, all of the same character, and scattering on the outskirts into a tame country, cruelly disappoint your expectations of the picturesque. Here and there are large patches of green among houses, and rows of poplars shooting up. Yet, after all, there is something in the view which makes you linger. In some of its architectural forms and features it partly realizes your mental pictures of the East, and your imagination flies back to the remote days when the Czechs left their far-away home towards the sunrise, and wandered on till their leader, looking down from the hills on the valley of the Moldau, determined that here should be the seat of his empire. I sat for an hour on the rough coping of the buttress looking down on the scene, while the leaves rustled cheerfully in a cooling breeze, and the sunbeams glistened and flashed from a thousand windows, and gilded weathercocks, and the lively ripples of the muddy stream.
If inclined for a quiet stroll, you may wander among the trees and rocks on the crown of the hill, or visit the church of St. Lawrence, from whom the hill takes its name. From the highest summit, in very favourable weather, it is possible to see St. Georgsberg, near Raudnitz, and peaks of the Mittelgebirge and Riesengebirge—mountains on the Saxon and Silesian frontier.
On coming down from the hill, I prowled for awhile about the Kleinseite, where, besides the antiquities and rare old palaces, you are struck by the number of schools and institutions for education. Strange groupings indeed in this quarter of the city! Palaces as rich in treasures of art and literature as in historical associations, side by side with miserable hovels and narrow, crooked streets, where poverty lurks in rags and squalor. Little bits of architecture, that are a delight to look on, catch your eye in unexpected places, peering out in some instances from among things that delight not the eye. But the schools are close by, and innovation creeps slowly on though few perceive it.
You may mount to the Hradschin by some of these byeways, where you will see how many windows have inner gratings, and how here and there the prison-like aspect is relieved by plants and flowers that screen the iron bars; and by these signs may you know where honest poverty dwells. In the Hohler Weg and Neue Welt you have specimens of the Rookery of Prague. At length, after many ins and outs and bits of steep stair, you find yourself on the terrace in front of the Hradschin, and you will be tempted to pause on the steps and survey the view across the house-tops.
The mass of buildings here is large enough, and shelters inhabitants enough to form a town. It includes a royal fortress—the archbishop's residence—a nunnery and monastery, a penal reformatory, besides lodgings of the official functionaries.
A considerable portion of the huge pile is now used as barracks for infantry and cavalry, and things military abound within its courts. There are sentries on duty, and soldiers off duty lounging about the guard-house, while their muskets lean against a rail painted black and yellow. But you pass unchallenged, and while crossing the quadrangle may see the word SALVE in large characters in the pavement.
In the third court you come to the cathedral, an unfinished edifice dedicated to St. Vitus, still showing marks of Hussite mischief, and of the Great Frederick's cannon-balls. It covers the site of a church built in 930 in honour of the same saint by Wenzel the Holy—he who planted the first vineyard in Bohemia, on the eastern slope of the Hradschin hill. The foundation-stone of the present structure was laid by Charles IV., during the lifetime of his father John; and although the building went on for forty-two years, it was never completed. In 1673 Leopold I. made an attempt to finish it according to the original plan; but he did nothing more than build a few columns in different styles, which stood in the fore-court until 1842, when they were pulled down, as the beginning of a new effort for completing the structure. Stimulated by the zeal of Canon Pesina, a Prague Cathedral Building Union was founded, with Count Francis Thun for chief; and preparations were made for the work, and for raising a million florins to pay for it, when the troubles of 1848—fatal to so many hopes and noble purposes—put a stop to the proceedings.
If the outside disappoint you by sundry additions and contradictory ornaments, which spoil the pure effect of the original Gothic, you will find cause enough for astonishment inside. At the western end of the nave stands the richly-carved mausoleum, erected in 1589 by Kollin of Nuremberg, at the cost of Rudolf II. It is of Carrara marble, and in magnitude and beauty of sculpture may well vie with Maximilian's tomb in the Court Church at Innsbruck. Royal dust is plentiful in the vault beneath, for therein lie, besides Rudolf himself, Charles IV. and his four wives, Wenzel IV., Ladislaus Posthumus, George von Podiebrad, Ferdinand I. and his wife Anna, Maximilian II., and the Archduchess Maria Amelia, who was buried in 1804. From admiring the manifold carvings, which show the touch of the true artist, you will perhaps look next at the tomb of St. John Nepomuk, on the right near the altar. Surely no other saint, or living bishop, even in this age of testimonials, ever had such a service of plate presented to him as that! It is a small mountain of silver. On high, silver angels hold a canopy over a silver shrine, which, borne aloft by angels, life size, contains the martyr's body in a crystal coffin, set off by shining statues, glittering ornaments, bas-reliefs, and tall candlesticks, all alike made of silver. If current testimony may be relied on, there are nearly two tons of the precious metal therein dedicated to the holy Johannes. No wonder that you see the saint's statue on so many bridges in Bohemia, and even for a few miles beyond the frontiers.
The curiosities of the church are more than can be examined in a brief visit. There are twelve chapels ranged about the nave—the last fitted up as an oratory for the Imperial family. In one of them you may see the foot of a candlestick, which, according to tradition, was one of those made for Solomon's Temple, from whence it was conveyed to Rome, and afterwards to Milan, where Wladislaus I. seized the precious relic, and he brought it to Prague. At all events, the workmanship shows signs of great antiquity. And near the western end there hangs a "true image"—a head of Christ, the holy placid features showing a trace of sadness, the eyes looking at you with an earnest, though pitying expression. It is a remarkable specimen of early art; much venerated by the devout, who would soon obliterate it by kisses were it not protected by glass. A moustachioed man came up, and, taking off his hat, pressed his lips upon the sacred mouth while I was still looking at the painting.
Frescoes bordered by gems adorn the walls of St. Wenzel's chapel; and here are preserved the saint's helmet and coat of mail, a brass ring to which he clung when he fell murdered by his brother's hand, and other relics. Here also the Bohemian regalia are kept in rigorous security under seven locks: St. Wenzel's sword is among them, and with this, after his coronation, the monarch creates knights of St. Wenzel's order.
The verger gives you his cut-and-dry description; but, as he may omit to tell you a little bit of history, it would be well to remember that in this chapel the Archduke Ferdinand was chosen King of Bohemia in 1526, whereby the kingdom has ever since belonged to the house of Hapsburg.
Further concerning statues, lamps, tombs, and paintings, and the organ, with its 2831 pipes, the treasure-chamber, where, among other things, are sixteen leaves of St. Mark's Gospel in the hand of the Evangelist—the rest said to be at Venice—the trinary chapel, and the seven bells in the tower, among which "Big Sigmund" weighs thirteen tons, and the octagon chapel, and the pulpit in the fore-court, may be read in guide-books.
Go next to the Loretto Platz, and look at the palace which once belonged to Count Czernin, and at the Loretto chapel—an exact copy of the far-famed Holy House in Popedom. Or perhaps you will take more interest in remembering that in a house near this chapel Tycho Brahe made the observations from which he and Kepler produced the Tabulæ Rudolphinæ—a work well known to astronomers; perpetuating in its title the name of their munificent patron.
As old engravings testify, the Hradschin once looked picturesque when its twenty-two high-roofed towers were all standing. Of these only four remain; and in the Black Tower you may see fearsome specimens of mediæval dungeons. If those grim walls could speak, the fate would be known of some of Bohemia's worthiest, who, within a year after the battle of the White Hill, suddenly disappeared from among their families and friends, and were never more heard of.
You may end your exploration by crossing to the opposite side of the hill, and taking a view of the great range of buildings from the Staubbrücke, which crosses the Hirschgraben, and commands a prospect over the north-western environs of the city, and of the contrasts between the palace on the hill-top and the frowsy haunts at the foot.
