ious.

Among other days of the week, we spent a Sunday in Prague; and a regard
to truth compels me to state that the contrast which was presented by
the mode of observing the Lord's Day there, to what we had witnessed in
Protestant Saxony and Protestant Prussia, redounded very little to the
honour of the latter countries. I need not observe that nowhere, on the
continent of Europe, are the evenings of the Lord's Day devoted to
other purposes than those of amusement. Whatever may be the national
faith, whether Romish or Reformed, this is universally the case; but
while in Saxony and Prussia the laws appear to sanction the total
desecration of that day, even to the prosecution of men's ordinary
employments, in Prague, and I am bound to add generally in popish
Bohemia, no such desecration takes place. After a given hour, all
classes put on their merriest bearing, it is true, and the clergy,--in
Prague, a curious combination of stiffness and dandyism,--may be met
every where; but till that time arrives, the offices of religion appear
to engross all thoughts, for the shops are closed, and the streets
deserted, except by persons passing to and from their several places of
worship. How much more decent, to use no stronger expression, is this,
than the sort of scenes which I had occasion to describe in a previous
chapter,--how much better calculated to keep alive among the people
some sense of religion, some respect at least for its external
observances,--not entirely, it is to be hoped, unconnected with a
regard for higher things than externals.

Why should I continue these details any further? We visited the
theatre, with the music and acting in which we were greatly delighted;
we dined on one of the islands in the Moldau, in the open air, in the
midst of a crowd, beneath the canopy of heaven, and with a well-managed
band to serenade us all the while; we spent an evening greatly to our
own satisfaction, under the shade of the trees in the Thiergarten. We
climbed the Strahow, inspected the monastery that crowns its summit,
admired the fine library, and gazed with reverence on the autograph of
Tycho Brahe; we wandered round the ramparts; we surveyed the field of
the battle of Prague; we examined more minutely the ground on which
Ziska had fought and conquered; we left nothing unexplored, in short,
which we found that it was possible to bring within the scope of
general observation; nor permitted any matter, concerning which
c