The River Elbe

The journey to Prague up the valley of the Elbe is an interesting route, as it takes you by Dresden, rich in art treasures and still renowned for its music.

The best time of year to travel by this route is the season when the fruit trees are in blossom. Then the valley of the Elbe is a mass of white and pale green set against a background of yellow sandstone rocks and the sombre greens and purples of pine forests.

It is not so very long ago since this district of Saxony formed part of the Kingdom of Bohemia, and many names familiar to travellers in these parts recall memories of Slavonic inhabitants—Blasewitz, Loschwitz, Pilnitz, whither the royal family of Wettin, another Slavonic name, was wont to retire for the summer months.

The Wettins have now retired from business as monarchs, and their former subjects are following the prevailing fashion of submission to democratic rule tempered by an occasional diversion in the form of an attempted local counter-revolution.

These movements are generally innocuous; they sometimes add to the gaiety of nations by the sheer imbecility of their inception and attempted execution, and they appear to be welcome rather than otherwise, as a means of distracting public attention from the universal muddle and general misguidance of European affairs, to those who consider themselves called upon and qualified to set those affairs right.