and the Thuringian Countries," says a Note-book,
sometimes useful to us, "have most likely omitted Rossbach in their
screaming railway flight eastward; and done little in Leipzig but
endeavor to eat dinner, and, still more vainly, to snatch a little
sleep in the inhuman dormitories of the Country. Next morning, screaming
Dresden-ward, they might, especially if military, pause at Oschatz, a
stage or two before Meissen, where again are objects of interest. You
can look at Hubertsburg, if given that way,--a Royal Schloss, memorable
on several grounds;--at Hubertsburg, and at other features, in the
neighborhood of Oschatz. This done, or this left not done, you strike
off leftward, that is northward, in some open vehicle, for survey of
Torgau and its vicinities and environs. Not above fifteen miles for you;
a drive singular and pleasant; time enough to return and be in Dresden
for dinner.

"Torgau is a fine solid old Town; Prussian military now abundant in it.
In ancient Heathen times, I suppose, it meant the GAU, or District,
of THOR; Capital of that Gau,--part of which, now under Christian or
quasi-Christian circumstances, you have just been traversing, with Elbe
on your right hand. Innocent rural aspects of Humanity, Boor's life,
Gentry's life, all the way, not in any holiday equipment; on the
contrary, somewhat unkempt and scraggy, but all the more honest
and inoffensive. There is sky, earth, air, and freedom for your own
reflections: a really agreeable kind of Gau; pleasant, though in part
ugly. Large tracts of it are pine-wood, with pleasant Villages and fine
arable expanses interspersed. Schilda and many Villages you leave to
right and left. Old-fashioned Villages, with their village industries
visible around; laboring each in its kind,--not too fast; probably with
extinct tobacco-pipe hanging over its chin (KALT-RAUCHEND, 'smoking
COLD,' as they phrase it).

"Schilda has an absurd celebrity among the Germans: it is the Gotham of
Teutschland; a fountain of old broad-grins and homely and hearty
rustic banter; welling up from the serious extinct Ages to our own day;
'SCHILTburger' (Inhabitant of SCHILDA) meaning still, among all the
Teutsch populations, a man of calmly obstinate whims and delusions,
of notions altogether contrary to fact, and agreeable to himself
only; resolutely pushing his way through life on those terms:
amid horse-laughter, naturally, and general wagging of beards from
surrounding mankind. Extinc