church where Poland has laid her kings, and so recently the king of the
poets, the stars were dropping from their places, like sudden spiders,
letting themselves down into the vast by faint yellow threads that
showed a moment after the star itself was gone.

Later, as I looked from the open gallery of the train that was taking me
away, I could not help thinking that, just a hundred years ago, Wawel's
star was shining with a light bright enough for all Europe to see;
but even as the stars fell that night and left their places empty, so
Wawel's star has fallen and Poland's star has fallen too.


ON THE ROAD TO PRAGUE[19]

BY BAYARD TAYLOR

I was pleasantly disappointed on entering Bohemia. Instead of a dull,
uninteresting country, as I expected, it is a land full of the most
lovely scenery. There is everything which can gratify the eye--high blue
mountains, valleys of the sweetest pastoral look and romantic old ruins.
The very name of Bohemia is associated with wild and wonderful legends
of the rude barbaric ages. Even the chivalric tales of the feudal times
of Germany grow tame beside these earlier and darker histories. The
fallen fortresses of the Rhine or the robber-castles of the Odenwald
had not for me so exciting an interest as the shapeless ruins cumbering
these lonely mountains. The civilized Saxon race was left behind; I
saw around me the features and heard the language of one of those rude
Slavonic tribes whose original home was on the vast steppes of Central
Asia.