_St. John Nepomuc_ (Vol. ii., pp. 209. 317.).--The statues in honour of
this Saint must be familiar to every one who has visited Bohemia, as also
the spot of his martyrdom at Prague, indicated by some brass stars let into
the parapet of the _Steinerne Brücke_, on the right-hand side going from
Prague to the suburb called the _Kleinseite_. As the story goes, he was
offered the most costly bribes by _Wenzel_, king of Bohemia, to betray his
trust, and after his repeated refusal was put to the torture, and then
thrown into the Moldau, where he was drowned. The body of the saint was
embalmed, and is now preserved in a costly silver shrine of almost fabulous
worth, in the church of St. Veit, in the Kleinseite. In Weber's _Briefe
eines durch Deutschland reisende Deutschen_, the weight silver about this
shrine is said to be twenty "centener."