"Yesterday," murmurs Prague, from the depths of her long summer dream of green and gold, "Yesterday I was the city of a hundred palaces. To-morrow I shall be the city of a hundred Government offices. Like the girl who became a fine lady, I hope I shall not lose in beauty what I gain in This is how it happened. Whilst Bohemia was still a part of the old patch-work Empire, Vienna would not permit Prague to own any of the forms or semblances of national government. The new Republic of echo-Slovakia, born out of the bloodless revolution of 1918, found itself possessed of a great city, but—in two senses—no capital. The tmprovization of a Czech Whitehall has been swiftly accomplished, and 80 far as one can see there are no untidy ends or loose strands anywhere. Certainly no good Czech would ever permit such atrocities as our own Government buildings in St. James's Park, A Cockyey sy Bieta.
"The most wonderful of all -the sights of Prague in the future," says the Czech jester, "will be the mansion which is neither a Ministry nor a picture palace." That joke is a Cockney by birth. It has een slowly travelling through Europe for five years. It is pleasant to meet such an old friend again!
I cannot see that the palaces are any different because they have changed their tenants. The Hradcany, the superb line of castle, cathedral, palace and church which crowns Prague, is still like a city of sunset clouds, an insubstantial pageant of architecture, too romantic ever to seem quite real. Yet in the Royal Castle, where the Emperor and his Court never came, a hard-working President and several Ministries are now installed. They have not destroyed the beautiful illusion that game day, when this dream city is steeped in the amethyst light of its summer mornings, the elfin knight will come riding' down the leafy way and wind his enchanted horn before the castle gates.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.