gay, forthcoming, a sylvan goddess of woods and streams and meadows. “Intime” is the word which best expresses her charm. Last, but not least, Nature in the Bergische Land is a goddess of the fruits of the earth. Spring is a season of wonder and beauty in the Rhineland. The villages disappear in a cloud of pink and white blossom. White and pink too are the country roads lined with fruit trees. Beech trees abound; and has Nature in her great spectacle of the changing year any sight more beautiful than the first shy unfolding of the young beech leaves? A little later come the chestnuts, stately and self-important, carrying their white candles on broad green candlesticks and lighting up the countryside with so brave an illumination. Then follows the deep-red blossom of the thorn, mingled with the purple and yellow of lilac and laburnum. Under foot the emerald green of the meadows is flecked yellow with cowslips. Yellow too are the great fields of mustard, which in turn yield place to carmine stretches of clover. It is a riot of colour and beauty throughout the Bergische Land. The high midsummer pomps find the cottage gardens a mass of roses and other homely flowers. Finally the white promise of spring gives way to the golden fulfilment of autumn. The orchards bend low under the weight of pear and apple and plum. And winter is no harsh thing in the valleys, where the delicate tracery of the leafless woods, detached against a frosty sky, has a charm as great as the young foliage of spring. Though so little removed from the neighbourhood of industry, there is practically neither grime nor contamination about the Bergische Land. The German housewife, as I have said, is happily spared that hand-to-hand struggle with dirt which embitters existence for many an English working woman. The decentralisation of industry is much practised in Germany, and frequently isolated factories will be found in country surroundings which give employment to the immediate neighbourhood. It is perhaps for this reason that the game is not a hopeless one, that the extraordinary cleanliness of the German village is due. It is quite an experience to walk or motor through the villages on a Saturday evening when cleaning operations are in full swing. The whole population is out in the street tidying up. The oldest and the youngest inhabitant alike are hard at work with buckets and besoms. I am now able to appreciate why the Besom Binder always figures so largely in German fairy tales. As soon as a child can stagger it is provided with a besom three times the size of itself and turned out to sweep. Tiny children flourishing brooms will remain one of my permanent impressions of Germany.