Prague
"I stood before the graves of the emperors Wenceslas and Charles IV, and reflected that the days of the Golden Bull were golden, perhaps, only for a few princes, but for the rest of mankind heavy as lead."
"I stood before the graves of the emperors Wenceslas and Charles IV, and reflected that the days of the Golden Bull were golden, perhaps, only for a few princes, but for the rest of mankind heavy as lead."
The theatre here is properly regulated by the police and not without taste in its construction. The play performed was poor; the company acted badly, and the ballet went little better than the play.(1)
The subject of the latter — The Wild Girl — had been very skilfully treated by the composer, and it was a pity that in the performance neither character nor rhythm was rightly maintained.(2)
Guardasoni is the director of both branches of the theatre, the German as well as the Italian. I found the German company quite mediocre, and the Italian is said to be even a few degrees worse—though in Leipzig, under the same man, both had been well cast and well managed.(3)
Today Hamlet was given, and you can imagine I had no wish to see one of my favourites so ill-used.(4)
The library was closed, having recently been in danger of fire, and repairs are underway—repairs that will take longer than I am willing to wait. Councillor Unger, the librarian, a man of much merit in the cause of learning and enlightenment, and greatly obliging to strangers, would no doubt have had the kindness to show us those scholarly treasures, had we found him at home.(5)
It is well known how severely the library was plundered during the Thirty Years’ War by the Swedes, who, through collusion with their partisans, even discovered the underground vaults where the hidden riches had been stored.(6)
By the dissolution of the monasteries under Joseph II the library had indeed gained enormously; yet by that very accumulation the books and manuscripts have been placed in greater peril, since they all lie together in one spot. The recent incident has confirmed and increased this anxiety.(7)
It was a fortunate thing that more than forty people were reading upstairs when, through the negligence of an artist working above with fire, the heat broke through. Thus the liberal use of the institution—whose organisation is among the most exemplary—proved to be its own salvation.(8)
At Hradčany the weather was dark and unkind, and I looked out through the driving snow toward the field where Frederick fought and Schwerin fell.(9)
The cathedral has much to interest the lover of history. The tombs of the old Dukes of Bohemia offer, to one who has leisure, a peculiar kind of pleasure; and the silver monument of an archbishop is perhaps not without interest even for the artist.(10)
While Schnorr was examining it, I stood before the graves of the emperors Wenceslas and Charles IV, and reflected that the days of the Golden Bull were golden, perhaps, only for a few princes, but for the rest of mankind heavy as lead.(11)
The monument of Count Schlick, the minister, just behind the Emperor’s stone, is a piece of corrupt Gothic bombast, devoid of taste or dignity. A pyramid in the church strikes me as if someone had tried to put the Blocksberg under a nightcap.(12)
Good Saint Nepomuk on the bridge, with his venerable company, still brings much comfort to pious souls. In Prague there seems, on the whole, to be a great number of zealots—among both Catholics and Protestants; only not among the higher classes, who in this respect are tolerance itself.(13)