From a Terrace in Prague - B. Granville Baker

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himself from the old-fashioned ancestral habit of just letting the rain wash away the hillside, and with it the family's prospects of green food for the season. Squatting outside his cave he had done some hard thinking which, transmitted into action, had led him to build up a wall here and there on the hillside, a wall of clumsy stones kept in place by stakes hammered into the ground, yet a wall, indeed a terrace, and an advance upon the methods of his neighbours whose struggles he could watch from the surer footing he himself had gained—a terrace and a point of view.

      It is not suggested that the wayfarer on arriving in a strange city should make a bee-line for the nearest terrace.

      There are terraces and terraces, each one with its own definable point of view, and it is this quality which should influence the traveller's choice. Prague offers considerable variety in terraces suitable to every conceivable outlook on life. You may choose a terrace that looks out over the factory quarter of Prague, over grimy Smichov for instance, and make notes on the growing industrial prosperity of the city. You will probably be smoked out of your position, for a cheap and nasty variety of brown coal is used by local industries. If you belong to the eclectic you may be privileged to look down on Prague from a terrace with a background of diplomacy, and find the outlook somewhat limited.

      Again, there are terraces where you can get beer and other refreshment. Such terraces are generally so contrived as to give you an outlook too varied to allow of concentration on the essentials of the city; the background to these terraces is generally some little building where the waiter lurks for orders. But there are other, real terraces to be found by those who search diligently and know how to discriminate, terraces with a background that has grown up with the city, that strikes no foreign note in that harmony of form and colour, of clustering red-tiled roofs surmounted by domes, towers and spires, which is Prague. Such a terrace is that from which I write. It is a real terrace, serving its original purpose in supporting a garden on a hillside. A garden carefully, fondly tended by generations of those who lived useful lives and looked out over the city from this point of view.

      It is old, very old, this terrace, and it has witnessed many terrible scenes, fire and slaughter and religious strife, but it has also seen more that is ennobling and inspiring. In its strength this terrace has supported those who passed their days upon it, imbuing them, and those who live there yet, with the serenity that comes of a faith built on a sure foundation. This terrace is a bridge to the "Abiding City." It is not my intention to disclose the locality of this terrace; let every man find one to suit his own particular outlook.

      Having found your terrace, settle down to a serious contemplation of your surroundings and of the outlook before you; absorb as much as you can of the atmosphere of the place, let it sink into you. For this purpose a guide-book is not only useless, it is a let and a hindrance. After all, what does a guide-book tell you? Either it recites dry facts in an utterly soulless voice, or else, if it make any pretence at belles-lettres, as some of them painfully do, it goes off into sentiment and rapture before you have decided whether these be suited to the occasion. Anyway, a guide-book is the expression of some one else's opinion or experience, and as such is harmful to the soul as likely to exert undue influence.

      From your terrace you take in a more or less comprehensive view of the city and its surroundings, and also form some conception of its inner meaning. Then descend from your terrace and wander at random about the streets, choosing as the more appropriate time the long twilight of a summer morning which brings the cruder modern aspect of the place into harmony with the fundamental values. Then, before she awakens to the stir and activity of everyday life, old Prague will speak to you of herself and take you into her confidence; she will tell you some startling stories, for she has a lurid past, has the city of Prague.

      I do not know what was Rodin's method of appreciating Prague, but can easily imagine him looking out over the city from the terrace of his choice, looking out over Prague and recalling memories of Rome as seen from the Pincio. There are certain obvious points of resemblance. First there are several hills on which Prague is built; they are said to be seven in number, as in the case of the Eternal City. Personally I can only make out five hills, and I have counted them carefully. It seems to be the right thing in cities of venerable antiquity to claim seven hills; to me this seems a mixture of superstition and snobbery. Prague can well afford to be original and rest content with standing on five hills. This, by the way, does not include all the suburbs which have lately been added in order to make up Greater Prague; the innovation is much too recent, and no "Terrace in Prague" can embrace a view of all the latest additions to the urban district.

      Further superficial points of resemblance to Rome are the towers and cupolas that rise above a sea of houses, and the winding river; to find yet more would be a serious strain on the imagination. But there is a deeper resemblance, and this perchance is what Rodin meant when he described Prague as "the Rome of the North." I say "perchance," because Rodin never gave any closer reason for the comparison he drew, so I can only give my own personal impression of what he may have meant. There are, to my thinking, two distinct Romes as there are two distinct Pragues. The old original Rome seems to me fundamentally, gloriously, and, indeed, unblushingly pagan. All the top-hamper even of such beauty as Michel Angelo conceived does not alter this my impression. Churches arisen out of an Emperor's bath, or resting on some pagan shrine, are superimposed on Rome. Rome and all that Rome stands for down the ages is that glorious mass of ruins which cluster about the Capitoline Hill or come upon you in unexpected places. And so it is with Prague; Prague—the real Prague—is to be found in the graceful and enduring monuments erected by Kings of Bohemia in the Middle Ages; Prague of the Luxemburg monarchs, with echoes, faint yet insistent, of remoter legendary times. Over this ancient Prague rise structures of an alien nature, baroque creations of the Jesuits, in spirit foreign to all that the capital of Bohemia stands for. Indeed, most of these buildings are imposing; some are beautiful, but despite the mellowing influence of time it seems as if they had not been completely merged into the soul of the city; they do not express its inner meaning unreservedly. And modern Prague is built up among and about the gracious relics of past ages; at first it appears detached, as it were hesitant between the serenity of a former golden age, the forcefulness of the Jesuit era and the vigour of modernity, but at heart it is one with the Prague of many centuries, is "at unity in itself" by virtue of reverence for noble tradition and hope for a glorious future.

      "Thither the tribes go up"; indeed, they have been swarming in since Prague came into her own some few years ago and became the capital of a free and independent republic. In former years, when Prague was still accounted a small provincial town of somnolent habits, there were only two or three hotels that counted at all as accommodation for foreigners; now there are many yet inadequate to the number of visitors. As to those that are drawn to Prague, their numbers may be accounted for by the fact that most of them are native Bohemians who have business in the capital as the seat of government and also as a commercial, industrial and intellectual centre; these latter qualities attract an ever swelling stream of foreigners. To account for this I will draw a comparison all my own between Prague and Paris.

      The true Parisian will probably shrug his shoulders at any idea of comparing his city with Prague; but as he is above all a logically minded, reasoning sort of person and, moreover, courteous, he will listen to my argument, and even should he not agree, is generous enough to join me in the happy auguries for Prague which my comparison suggests.

      Take a map showing the physical features of France and you will find that the capital of the country could be nowhere else but exactly on the spot where Paris stands in a fertile plain where meet a number of waterways—Seine and Marne just above the city, Oise some little way down. By these waterways and by high roads that came after, a constant stream of peoples has been swirling into France and mingling in the basin of Paris. Among these were Latins from the south coming up the valley of the Rhône and Saône, over the heights and down the Yonne to the valley of the Seine. Then came Franks through the gap of Belfort and over the hills by Nancy, down to the Marne and the Aube; Celts and Flemings from the north, and Norsemen from the west, all met and mingled with the native Gauls and eventually became Parisians. Environment acted its part, and so did the forces of Nature. The soil of the basin of Paris is fruitful, the climate equable, but neither encourage idlers; both demand a toll of strenuous labour, yet not so trying to man's strength as to leave him

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