A subject which he pursued keenly for a couple of years--from fifteen to seventeen--and which held him in fascinated wonder, was Astronomy, a branch of knowledge that happens to be strongly represented among my books. Often on starry nights he would be a watcher of the heavens. Many a night from yonder ivied casement, Ere he went to rest, Did he look on great Orion, sloping Slowly to the west. Many a night he saw the Pleiads, rising Thro' the mellow shade, Glitter like a swarm of fireflies, tangled In a silver braid. It has been stated that most of Paul's vacations were spent in Wales, but in 1913 he went farther afield, accompanying his mother, his brother and myself on a tour in Germany. He was enraptured with this, his first visit to the Continent. On our outward journey we halted at Brussels, in those days a bright and happy city with nothing in its cheerful, prosperous air to suggest that in less than a year there would descend upon it the baleful shadow of the Great War. Much in the old Germany appealed powerfully to our son, and even of the new Germany, with its energy and its zeal for learning, he was something of an admirer. But he hated in modern Germany its brazen materialism and boastful arrogance. He attributed the change in the spirit of the German people to the hardness of their Prussian taskmasters, whose yoke was submissively borne because of the glamour of the military victories achieved since 1866, and the rapid growth in wealth that had followed the attainment of German unity. He read and spoke German and was familiar with the literature and history of the country. Two great Germans, Goethe and Wagner, he intensely admired. It so happened that we were at Frankfort on the centenary of Goethe's death. Paul visited the Goethe house and spent a couple of hours examining its souvenirs with loving interest. He liked to see the places and the houses associated with the names or lives of great men. On our homeward journey down the Rhine he left us at Bonn to visit the house where Beethoven was born, joining-us subsequently at Cologne. This holiday in the Rhineland and the Black Forest brought deep enjoyment to him. His enthusiasm at his first sight of the Rhine was unrestrained, and the morning after our arrival he plunged into its waters for a swim. Professor Cramb, writing of the love of Germans for the Rhine, quotes a letter from Treitschke, in which that fire-eating historian said on the eve of his leaving Bonn: "To-morrow I shall see the Rhine for the last time. The memory of that noble river will keep my heart pure and save me from sad or evil thoughts throughout all the days of my life." Paul in a marginal note writes: "Wonderful attraction of the Rhine. I have felt it myself, though not a German."