in the girdle of her fortifications of stone, and in those fashioned for her by her economic and political barrenness.
The intellectual environment in which Czech architecture was to evolve during the first half of the nineteenth century was the outcome, on the one hand, of the counter-Reformation and especially of its Germanising tendencies, and on the other, of the absolutist system imposed by the Holy Alliance. Above the mass of the population, composed of small shopkeepers, peasants and workmen, eighty per cent of whom were of Czech origin—a mass possessing an old culture which, for all its rusticity, had not lost its freshness and colour—there were three upper strata boasting the loftier culture of Central Europe: the Germanised middle class of Prague and the leading towns, the civil and military official caste, numerous and well-disciplined, and finally the international aristocracy with its eyes turned towards Vienna. This threefold society was deeply attached to its country, cherishing the same ideal of a bilingual but geographically united fatherland; yet it was incapable of producing real works of art, unless we can give that name to medleys in the German style, after a pattern made now in Vienna, now in Berlin, now in Munich, according to the vicissitudes of literary and artistic fashion. Nor did the revivalist activity of the Czech intellectuals exert any influence on the development of the arts, being first of all limited to literary and didactic work, as well as to linguistic propaganda. Efforts towards a native art of a definitely Czech character were manifested from the middle of the nineteenth century, and at the beginning of the ’seventies denoted the achievement of the national and cultural revival.
Architectural activity, at this period of inertia, is entirely conditioned by the influence of the Empire style. We find indeed, especially in the provincial towns, some belated manifestations of the Louis XVI style and of Roman classicism
