there is the famous one of Count Wallenstein, the
magnificence of which, may be the better guessed
from our knowing that a hundred houses were pulled
down to make room for it. Its hall is thought
one of the finest in all Europe, its gardens are
wonderfully stately, and the stables which he
built here for his horses are almost beyond description,
marble pillars parted the standing of each horse from
another. The racks were of polished steel,
and their mangers of the finest marble, and over
the head of each stand was placed the figure of
each horse, as large as the life. This famous
man who was the greatest captain of his time,
after having built this sumptuous palace, re-established
the Emperor’s power, almost utterly broken by
the Swedes, growing at last too powerful for a
subject, or as the Germans say, endeavouring to
make himself master of the Kingdom of Bohemia,
he was, if not by the command, at least by the connivance
of the Emperor Ferdinand, privately assassinated
in the city of Egra, in the year 1634, by certain
Irish officers, in whom he reposed the greatest
confidence. Since his time Prague has seen no
greater powerful persons among her countrymen;
on the contrary, the inhabitants now in general
are poor, their habits mean, the Hebrew nation
being obliged, both men and women, to wear a particular
garb. Its streets are dirty, and nothing
but the Imperial Palace preserves anything of
its ancient grandeur; the same fate hath befallen the
other Bohemian cities, and thus in a land of Paradise
the people live like slaves.
When at the age of thirteen, the unfortunate Abraham
was recalled by his father from college, at his return
home, every one was surprised at that prodigious knowledge
which he had acquired while at Prague. Those of
their nation who resided at Presburg desired Abraham’s
father that his son might, according to the custom
of the Hebrews, read in the synagogue, which accordingly
he did with great and deserved applause. His
relations, and the rich Jews of the town, loaded him
the next day with valuable presents, in order to show
their veneration for the religion and learning of
their ancestors; but these encouragements being heaped
on a vain and ambitious temper, were the ruin of a
youth hitherto virtuous in his conduct and passionately
fond of learning. For growing on a sudden conceited
with his own abilities, puffed up with the vanity
of having excelled his equals, he began to addict himself
to acquire higher accomplishments, grew fond of music,
delighted in dancing-schools, would needs be taught
fencing and riding, and from the studies preparative
to making a grave rabbi, jumped all of a sudden to
the qualities necessary to finish a Jewish fop.