Page:Rambles in Germany and Italy in 1840, 1842, and 1843 - Volume 2.djvu/22

 epic poem, the Nepomuceidon, was composed by the Jesuit Percicus in his honour in 1729; he was canonized, and his fame spread with amazing rapidity throughout the Catholic Church. These honours are now so intimately connected with the system in which they originated, that I once heard a distinguished Bohemian declare that no good could befal his country till St. John Nepomuk was once more thrown into the Moldau.” Meanwhile, he has become the guardian saint of bridges; his statue, surmounted by the image of the five miraculous stars, in a more or less rude form, finds a place on almost every bridge of Catholic Germany, as it does here on the Bridge of Prague—on the very spot whence he was thrown.

In the Klein Seite the nobles had their palaces, and we saw that of the princely Wallenstein: “coiled as it were round the foot of the imperial rock,” to make room for which a hundred humbler houses were rased. Wallenstein, who had arrived at mid life in comparative obscurity, first came forward in a conspicuous manner in the Bohemian war. His immense riches were principally derived from the confiscations of the expelled and exiled Hussites. When some years after his command was taken from him, he built this palace, where he lived in princely