g_, Monday; and it has by way of embellishment a Slavonic
suffix. It was in this Montagu House that the discontented members of
the Bohemian Estates were wont to meet in 1618, and here they hit upon
the bright idea of throwing the two lieutenants, go-betweens or whatever
they were, of their Habsburg ruler, out of a window. So here on this
Mala Stranske Nam[ve]sti you may see the very spot from which the War of
Thirty Years started.

This Mala Stranske Nam[ve]sti is divided into an upper and a lower part
by the block of buildings I have already mentioned. The palaces all
round here are probably different of aspect from the burgher houses
which stood here before the _baroque_ irruption of the seventeenth
century, so Vladislav on his way to coronation would have been greeted
by a homelier sight; neither could he have seen the plague memorial. The
plague commemorated visited Prague in 1715; the man who committed this
pyramid, dedicated to Holy Trinity, was one Giovanni Battista
Alliprandi, an Italian architect, but not of the Renaissance spirit.
This peculiar group of sculpture fails to impress me; the figures, of
saints, I believe, are not convincing; they are seen holding emblems of
piety, but only for decorative purposes, not as if they in the least
knew what to do with them; one or other would have appeared much happier
with a knife and fork.

[Illustration: THE HRAD[vC]ANY FROM THE NEBOZIZEK GARDEN.]

Vladislav's farther way would take him up that steep road that leads
past Strahov out into the country. It was formerly called the Street of
Spurs, I believe; it has since been named Nerudova T[vr]ida, after John
Neruda, the father of Bohemian literature, who spent his early days
here. This street has rather a reputation for mild-mannered men of
letters and lights of learning, patrons of art and science. There was,
for instance, Baron Brettfeld, who entertained young Mozart, da Ponte
and Casanova. But all this happened well after the days of Vladislav of
Poland, King of Bohemia, who wound up by the narrow streets of Prague's
Mala Strana to his coronation on the Hrad[vs]any. The Royal Castle had
not been regularly inhabited by royalty for nearly a century, and as
Vladislav chose to make it his residence, he found much to do in putting
the place in order. The part that still shows strong traces of
Vladislav's work is beyond the view from my terrace. You may recognize
it some way off by a number of heavily mullioned window