There can be no doubt—these park-like streets with the poetic names are running wild—the jungle is once more devouring them. Whether one be disposed to lament the fact or rejoice over it—it is certain that in another ten years the Goethe, Schiller, and Heine Streets will no longer be passable, and will very likely have vanished utterly. At present, to be sure, there is no cause for complaint. Surely, from a pictorial and romantic point of view, there are no lovelier streets in all the world than precisely these in precisely their present condition. Nothing could be more grateful to the soul than to ramble through this negligence, this incompleteness—that is, when one is well and sturdily shod and need not fear the coarse gravel. It is edification to the spirit to survey the manifold wild vegetation of the tract and the groves of tiny-leafed trees fettered by their soft dampness—sweet glimpses which frame and shut in these perspectives. Just such a group of trees was painted three hundred years ago by that great master of landscapes—he who came out of Lorraine. But what am I saying?—_such_ as he painted? It was this one—and none other—which he painted. He was here; he knew the region, and if that rhapsodical member of the real estate company who christened the streets in my park had not so rigidly restricted himself to literature, then one or the other of these rust-corroded signs might well cause me to guess at the name of Claude Lorraine. I have now described the region of the central wood. But the sloping land towards the east also possesses charms which are not to be despised, at least so far as Bashan and myself are concerned, and for reasons which will be revealed later. One might also call it the zone of the brook, for it is a brook which gives it an idyllic landscape quality. With the charm of its banks of forget-me-nots it forms a counterpart on the hitherside to the zone of the puissant river yonder—the roar and rushing turbulence of which one is still able to hear in this spot—but only very faintly and softly and only when the west wind is blowing. There where the first cross street, running from the avenue of poplars between the meadow ponds and the clumps of trees towards the slope, debouches at the foot of this slope, there is a path that leads towards the left. This is used in winter-time as a bob-sled run by the youth of the region, and slants towards the lower-lying levels.