Page:Rambles in Germany and Italy in 1840, 1842, and 1843 - Volume 2.djvu/17

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RAMBLES

IN

GERMANY AND ITALY.



PART III.—1842.

————

LETTER I.

PRAGUE.

Thursday, 1st September, 1842.

Strange and wild legends appertain to Prague, and people the heights that overhang the city. The Bohemians are of Sclavonian race; they were in early times fire-worshippers, and offered victims to their divinity on the Laurenzi Berg, which rises behind the town. On the Hradschin, an eminence that frowns above the Moldau, was built the palace of the old Bohemian kings; and the metropolitan church of Prague stands in the palace-yard, on the highest point of the imperial hill.

The most prosperous period for Prague was the reign of the Emperor Charles IV. He appears in