the health would suffer from the extreme dryness of the air. Apartments are let in suites on the different floors, and all unfurnished; the furniture, if hired, being generally supplied by the Jews. The rate of apartments varies according to the situation, of which the Neu Allée, the Graben, and the Ross Markt, are the most fashionable. A superior apartment of eleven or twelve rooms with a kitchen, varies from 60l. to 90l. a year, according to their magnitude and style; in the Hradschin larger may be obtained for half the money.
Living was, before the insurrection of 1848, one-fourth cheaper than since that period, and the same may be said of servants’ wages. In Bohemia, as in most of the Germanic countries, servants are hired and paid by the month. A good footman could then be had for 14s. a month, and 22s. additional for board wages; when, as is the case with so many families on the continent, it is not the fashion to keep a table at home for the domestics, but their meals are taken at a table d’hôte kept purposely for servants at different restaurateurs, where all the lacqueys of the neighbourhood assemble—a custom attended with inconvenience, as for security during their absence the principal doors are locked, and persons calling on business or pleasure may ring without effect, till their own patience is exhausted, and the bell broken, and be reduced at last, to make their call known, to slip a card under the door, or in any crack presenting itself: this of course does not apply to the noblest and wealthiest houses, where a regular porter is kept, who is never absent from his post, any more than the sentinel from his beat. The prices are so much increased, that a servant who received formerly 1l. 16s. a month, cannot now be had under 2l. 8s., a difference which has caused an immense diminution in many establishments. In the lowest class of servants the love of fine names is truly laughable; kitchen maids are frequently called Victoria, and a female without shoes or stockings, a red and yellow cotton handkerchief bound tightly round her head, carrying bundles of wood, or buckets of water, nine times out of ten answers to the name of Apollonia!
Charitable institutions are very numerous in Prague; there are large establishments most admirably conducted for the deaf and dumb, the blind, and indeed for almost every ailment to which flesh is heir; besides convents devoted according to their several orders to every description of good works. The nuns of the order of St. Elizabeth are vowed to the care of the sick, and the ground floor of their immense establishment is an entire hospital, none ever being known to be turned from their doors who stand in need of their aid. Here they are nursed, doctored, and tended gratuitously till fit to return to their own homes and occupations. The Ursuline nuns educate and feed hundreds of poor children, who but for their care would neither be able to read or write, and most probably be idle beggars at best, if not prowling thieves about the streets. Les Dames Anglaises, so called because their foundress was an English lady, is another educational establishment, and the best female servants in Prague are those brought up from their earliest youth under the eyes of these ladies; their order is of a much less severe rule, as they may frequently be seen passing to and fro enveloped in the long black mantle and veil, rendering their person as indistinguishable as though they wore the celebrated iron mask.[1]
The Invaliden Haus, for retired soldiers, is an imperial establishment of a similar nature to Chelsea Hospital.
Protestants were not very numerous in Prague some few years ago, but they are much on the increase of late; they have a good-sized but ugly church.
Jews are very numerous, and live together in what is called the “Jews’ Town,” a part of the city appropriated to them exclusively, and within gates, which were formerly locked on them at eight o’clock in the evening; but Austrian policy has undergone great changes of late, and, among other things, “the Israelites” (as they prefer being called) have had many privileges granted them; this rule is therefore no longer enforced, and they are likewise now free to choose their own place of abode.
The love of amusement amongst all classes is very great. The theatres, of which there are two, are always full; for a Bohemian would as little like to lose his play as his dinner. It is the old story—“Panem et Circenses.” In one of the theatres the performance is entirely in the Bohemian language, in the other in German. The latter is par excellence the theatre of the beau monde. The building itself is plain and unostentatious, but the dresses and scenery are so admirable that they might compete with Vienna or London; the acting also is not to be despised, for we have seen “King Lear” as well performed on these boards as at the theatres of our own metropolis. After the opinion commonly received in Great Britain of the great musical tastes of the Bohemians, the stranger on entering society at Prague feels infinite astonishment at the absence of all music from their entertainments except as an accompaniment to dancing, and a piano is nowhere to be found in the houses of the great but in the young ladies’ own boudoirs; from the apartments devoted to society, and the rooms of the elder ladies of families, all music is chasséed as an infliction. So extraordinary are the ideas of the beau monde of Prague on this subject, that when the amiable Archduke Stephen gave a soirée, and with more enlightened taste and expansion of ideas than those by whom he was surrounded, provided eminent professional artistes for their entertainment, two ladies of the highest rank were overheard inveighing against “the impertinence of that Archduke in presuming to ask them to sit in a room with professional people;” a trait which likewise exhibits the difference of character between the imperial family and a large portion of the nobility. The only music having any charms for them are polkas and waltzes, and they are little worthy of having possessed amongst them for so many years of his life- ↑ The Barmherzichen Brudern (Brothers of Mercy) have not only a complete hospital for the sick within their convent walls, but are ever ready to attend and nurse the poor in their own homes when their services are required.
