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LITHUANIA, my country, thou art like health; how much thou shouldst be prized only he can learn who has lost thee. To-day thy beauty in all its splendour I see and describe, for I yearn for thee. Holy Virgin, who protectest bright Czenstochowa and shinest above the Ostra Gate in Wilno!2 Thou who dost shelter the castle of Nowogrodek with its faithful folk!

Yet here again they met with strenuous resistance in the Zamczysko group of hills. The Austrian artillery shelled the heights, and the Bavarians finally took possession. The Tenth Austrian Army Corps had meanwhile conquered the Magora of Malastow and the majority of the heights in the Ostra Gora group.

I remember that even much later in life I could never pass the small palace of Prince Anthony, at the end of the Ostra Allee in Dresden, without a shudder; for it was there I had first heard the sound of a violin, a very common experience to me afterwards.

With this object in view I entered into close communication with architects and builders, and the plans were completed, according to which the scandalous buildings facing a wing of the renowned prison opposite the Ostra Allee, and consisting of a shed for the members of the theatre and a public wash-house, were to be pulled down and replaced by a beautiful building, which, besides containing a large concert-hall adapted to our requirements, would also have had other large rooms which could have been, let out on hire at a profit.

Between Biecz and Bednarka, the line of defense followed the heights of the Kobylanka, Tatarovka, Lysa Gora, and of the Rekaw; hence to the east, as the last defense of the Jaslo-Zmigrod road, lay the intrenched positions on the Ostra Gora, well within Brussilov's sector.

What deeds he then performed, what disasters he spread abroad, it were vain to sing, for none would believe the Muse: even so they did not believe the poor woman in Wilno, who, standing on the summit of the holy Ostra Gate, saw how Deyov, the Muscovite general, coming on with a regiment of Cossacks, was already opening the gate, and how a single burgher, named Czarnobacki, killed Deyov and routed a whole regiment of Cossacks.164

Thereupon, having reassured myself that everything was in the best possible order, I returned to Dresden and resumed my functions as musical conductor to the King of Saxony. We now set to work on the preparations and furnishing of a roomy and well-situated house in the Ostra Allee, with an outlook upon the Zwinger.