ave vanished, castle, churches, palaces stand out in marked relief,
their features accentuated by piled-up snow on roof and gallery and
flying buttress. And seen from my terrace, Prague under snow is very
beautiful.

The winter had been erratic; spells of intense cold when ice-floes piled
up about the piers of the bridges, and even gave rise to anxiety
concerning the safety of those structures; then mild winds from the
south driving the smoke of the Smichov factories across Castle Hill.
This, too, has its beauties when reluctant rays of the setting sun try
to dispel it and cloak the Hrad[vc]any in a shroud of purple mist.

Winter lingered on into the beginning of the week of Resurrection. On
Tuesday in Holy Week wild gusts from the north drove powdered snow in
scurries across the uplands through the broad streets and into narrow
alleys, where it lingered during two breathless days until with Good
Friday came glorious sunshine, dispelling the last traces of winter
storms.

As if to attune themselves to the change from winter's bondage to
generous life, from the season of Lent to the Day of Resurrection, the
people of Prague, as is their wont, called music to their aid. On Palm
Sunday, as the last light of a grey day faded away, the church dedicated
to Saint Henry, standing austerely apart from the traffic of the
streets, was filled with the sweet sadness of Pergolesi's "Stabat
Mater." From the organ-loft came the soul-searching harmony of two
voices, a pure white soprano and a rich vibrant contralto, which spread
about the lofty building, penetrated to the secluded corners where the
scent of incense lingers, and then seemed to lose itself in the shadowy
arches of the roof, merging, as it were, into the memories of centuries
of prayer and praise.

There was that feeling of impending relief from pain, then as of a
healing touch when glorious sunshine ushered in Easter Sunday. Larks
poured out their soul into a cloudless sky over the battlefield of the
White Mountain, the pale green of larches showed up bravely among the
riot of live purple and crimson and the flashing trunks of birches, over
the wall that confines the park of the Star. The Star itself, that
singular monument, a former hunting-box of Bohemian Kings and built in
the shape of a six-pointed star, is undergoing renaissance: it is being
arranged as a museum for the Czecho-Slovak legionaries. The little brook
that makes such a long detour on its way to join t