Page:Guide to the Bohemian section and to the Kingdom of Bohemia - 1906.djvu/19

17 But Prague is well known and renowned not only for its beauty, but also for its important position as a seat of art and culture. It was once the capital of Central Europe and in Charles IV. time the seat of the first university of Central Europe and possessed the first botanical garden. In Rudolph’s age it was famous as a town containing the most valuable collections, and for the splendour of its court and for the pleasures it offered, it was considered the Paris of Central Europe. Prague is the cradle of modern journalism: here the very first news-paper of the world was published (in the Bohemian [Czech] language). It was also here that the first systematically arranged exhibition took place (1791). In this city Mozart composed his opera of Don Juan, which in the history of music must be called an epoch-making event.

And yet Prague shares in many respects up to the present the fate of towns which live on the renown of their former better days!

Prague has ceased to be the residence of its kings therefore also ceased to be the object of the Austrian government’s solicitude. From within her walls the life and bustle of a residential town has vanished and with it the influx of foreign guests has stopped. The town began to be degraded by all sorts of malicious and unfounded aspersions and began to suffer financially and economically; it looked already as if it were to share the fate of other famous towns of Europe, such as Ravenna, Aquileia, Bruges, Ghent, Avignon, Florence and Venice.

But the reviving strength and power of a nation sound at heart and proud of its glorious past, self-reliant and conscious of what it was able to accomplish, did not allow Prague to fall so low, and by unwearied efforts raised it to a worthier position.

Nobody in the kingdom of Bohemia, much less in the empire of Austria in the sixties of the XIXth. century would have dared to anticipate or to predict the present flourishing state of Prague. But what to the most sanguine enthusiasts at home seemed to be a mere dream, did not escape the sharp eyes of the foreign observer. It is again the famous Viollet-le-Duc, who in the fifties, at the time of the fiercest persecution during Bach’s era of 2