t then you simply insert an indefinite sound here and there
between the spiky consonants, and all is well; anyone who knows
Hindustani or Arabic will find it quite easy. After all, if the Czechs
prefer their language that way it is their concern, as long as they do
not expect the world outside Bohemia to learn it.

Another fine broad road leading to Prague is the Elbe, into which flows
the Vltava, some thirty miles north of the capital. No doubt the Elbe
was the road by which the Slavonic tribes poured into present-day
Germany what time all Central Europe was swarming with migrant peoples
moving westward under pressure from the East.

That a great part of Germany as we know it now was formerly inhabited by
Slavs seems beyond doubt; such names as Berlin, Stettin, Strelitz,
Rostock, have a distinct Slavonic ring.

Remains of primitive Slavonic culture have been dug up on the islands in
the Baltic Sea and even as far west as Hanover; remains of an identical
culture have been found as far east as the Volga, so the Slavs have been
widely spread out over Europe in earliest days. The expansion of Slavs
so far to westward may have been due to the fact that Wittekind, King of
the Saxons, called Slavonic tribes to his aid against the Franks.

Charlemagne and his Franks must have been rather a nuisance to their
neighbours. Charles had a mission in life, and people thus afflicted are
apt to be tiresome. We are taught to number him among the truly great
and good men, but he lived and laboured long ago; moreover, we are not
a cheery lot of heathen living happy and unwashed in the depths of
primeval forests, so our judgment is warped. As to Charles's goodness, I
heard some story about his offering to marry an Empress of the East
while his first wife was still alive, not, it appears, from any ardent
devotion to the lady--I do not believe he ever met her--but simply from
the sordid motive of adding another empire to his business. However, I
am no scandal-monger, and all the parties concerned have been dead some
time.

Charles must have been rather a prig. He was evidently, immensely
pleased with his own little bit of book-learning; he even insisted on
talking and writing Latin--pure "swank"--whereas his family would surely
have preferred their native Frankish. Worse still, Charles had an
obsession, that of a Holy Roman Empire, with himself as head and the
Pope as an "also ran," and this obsession led to endless
trouble--trouble whi