Prague.—­I feel as if out of the world, in this strange, fantastic, yet beautiful old city.  We have been rambling all morning through its winding streets, stopping sometimes at a church to see the dusty tombs and shrines, or to hear the fine music which accompanies the morning mass.  I have seen no city yet that so forcibly reminds one of the past, and makes him forget everything but the associations connected with the scenes around him.  The language adds to the illusion.  Three-fourths of the people in the streets speak Bohemian and many of the signs are written in the same tongue, which is not at all like German.  The palace of the Bohemian kings still looks down on the city from the western heights, and their tombs stand in the Cathedral of the holy Johannes.  When one has climbed up the stone steps lending to the fortress, there is a glorious prospect before him.  Prague, with its spires and towers, lies in the valley below, through which curves the Moldau with its green islands, disappearing among the hills which enclose the city on every side.  The fantastic Byzantine architecture of many of the churches and towers, gives the city a peculiar oriental appearance; it seems to have been transported from the hills of Syria.  Its streets are full of palaces, fallen and dwelt in now by the poorer classes.  Its famous University, which once boasted forty thousand students, has long since ceased to exist.  In a word, it is, like Venice, a fallen city; though as in Venice, the improving spirit of the age is beginning to give it a little life, and to send a quicker stream through its narrow and winding arteries.  The railroad, which, joining that to Brunn, shall bring it in connection with Vienna, will be finished this year; in anticipation of the increased business which will arise from this, speculators are building enormous hotels in the suburbs and tearing down the old buildings to give place to more splendid edifices.  These operations, and the chain bridge which spans the Moldau towards the southern end of the city, are the only things which look modern—­every thing else is old, strange and solemn.

Having found out first a few of the locations, we hunted our way with difficulty through its labyrinths, seeking out every place of note or interest.  Reaching the bridge at last, we concluded to cross over and ascend to the Hradschin—­the palace of the Bohemian kings.  The bridge was commenced in 1357, and was one hundred and fifty years in building.  That was the way the old Germans did their work, and they made a structure which will last a thousand years longer.  Every pier is surmounted with groups of saints and martyrs, all so worn and time-beaten, that there is little left of their beauty, if they ever had any.  The most important of them, at least to Bohemians, is that of the holy “Johannes of Nepomuck,” now considered as the patron-saint of the land.  He was a priest many centuries ago, whom one of the kings threw from the bridge into the