We desired to see the chapel; and as we approached it by a back stair, the notes of the organ that swelled along the passage, gave indication that some service was going on. We entered a gallery, whence, from behind the shelter of a screen, we could look down upon the chapel, and those that filled it. The congregation was both numerous and devout, and in the body of the pile, all were engaged in singing a requiem for a departed soul. On a bier in the middle aisle, stood a coffin, having a skull and cross-bones laid upon the pall, and over it hung a priest, whose gestures sufficiently indicated, that for the tenant of that narrow chamber he was supplicating. "This is some recent death?" demanded I; "some person of note is gone to his account, and you are praying that his sins may be pardoned?"
"No, sir," answered the monk, "the individual whose demise we this day commemorate, gave up the ghost an hundred years ago; but we are still bound to say masses for her soul. She has bequeathed property to secure this for ever."
"And is her body in that coffin?" demanded I.
"Not at all," was the answer; "these are but representations of what you take them for. That is not a coffin, neither are these a skull and cross-bones."
I could not help smiling, when this avowal was made with such perfect simplicity; and I went away surprised, that any such awkward endeavour to work upon the sympathies of the people, should be considered judicious.
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 curiosity had been excited, to pass without investigation. The result was a tolerably accurate acquaintance with every remarkable object in the place, not excepting Count Nositz's small but excellent gallery,—one of the most creditable collections of modern growth which I have seen. Neither did we fail to form acquaintance with the people, as well of the humbler as of the more exalted stations; of which the result, in every instance, was, that the favourable impression which had been made upon me, while wandering among the mountains, suffered no diminution. I found them to be,—in the city, not less than among the villages,—a kind-hearted, industrious, and most patient race. I saw, indeed, that they were not without their grounds of discontent, and that they felt their grievances keenly. The higher orders complained because the ancient capital of their native land had sunk into a mere provincial town. They pointed to palaces deserted and falling to decay, and said, with natural bitterness, that it ill became Bohemians of the best blood to prefer the pleasures of Vienna to the duty which they owed to their father-land. They spoke, too, indignantly of the centralizing system, of the ban that had gone forth against their beloved language, of the extinction of their privileges, and the efforts that are making, to blot out the very remembrance of their nationality. "But it will not succeed," was the usual termination of such harangues. "We have no idea of shaking off the yoke. We know that in the present state of Europe, Bohemia could not exist one year as an independent monarchy; but we shall never be content till the laws are everywhere administered in a language which is intelligible to the people, and we and they be permitted to exercise some control over our own affairs." In like manner, the humbler classes,—the shop-keeper, the mechanic, and the artisan,—spoke not unintelligibly of their altered condition, since the native nobility were their best customers, and taxation scarcely reached them. "But we are no longer a people now. The stranger rules us, the shackles are on our wrists;—what can we do?" Then would follow a shrug of the shoulders, a wink of the eye, and a hasty return to the sort of manner which a careless observer might easily mistake for the external proof of content, but which is, in fact, a disguise put on to hide feelings directly the reverse.
CHAPTER XII.
QUIT PRAGUE. JOURNEY TO BRÜNN BY KÖNIGGRATZ. STATE OF THE COUNTRY. BRÜNN. ITS PUBLIC BUILDINGS. ABSENCE OF THE MORAVIAN BRETHREN.