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CHAPTER II.
BOHEMIA WORTH VISITING.
NE cannot travel to Bohemia from Britain without passing many places of great interest, and one can hardly be there without feeling the attractions of places that lie beyond, and thus it too often happens that travellers neglect Bohemia altogether, or perhaps only spend a day in Prague on the way from Dresden to Vienna. At Dresden, indeed, one can find important evidences of Bohemia’s former glory, for many of the treasures of the Picture Gallery and the Green Vaults are the spoils of Prague, with which the Elector, John George, rewarded himself for his half-hearted aid to the Bohemian Protestants. Now, I hope to show that Bohemia is worth visiting. To begin with, Prague is a city of surpassing interest. I first entered it when visiting Bohemia in 1874 by the grey light of early morning, and the first impressions on my mind were connected with the social state of the country rather than with the city itself. We drove from the Station to the Blue Star Hotel, a house with many claims to historical fame; the last, and not least, being the fact that the Treaty of 1866 was concluded in it. Here, to our surprise, on alighting from the drosky, we found we were received by sentries, in the old white uniform of Austria. The hall was used as a
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