The old Prince of Darmstadt, Ernst Ludwig, Landgraf of Hessen-Darmstadt, age now sixty-three, has a hoary venerable appearance, according to Pollnitz, "but sits a horse well, walks well, and seems to enjoy perfect health,"--which we are glad to hear of. What more concerns us, "he lives usually, quite retired, in a small house upon the Square," in this extremely small Metropolis of his, "and leaves his Heir-Apparent to manage all business in the Palace and elsewhere." [Pollnitz, _Memoirs and Letters,_ ii. 66.] poor old Gentleman, he has the biggest Palace almost in the world; only he could not finish it for want of funds; and it lies there, one of the biggest futilities, vexatious to look upon. No doubt the old Gentleman has had vexations, plenty of them, first and last. He is now got disgusted with the affairs of public life, and addicts himself very much to "turning ivory," as the more eligible employment. He lives in that small house of his, among his turning-lathes and ivory shavings; dines in said small house, "at a table for four persons:" only on Sunday, and above all on this Sunday, puts off his apron; goes across to the Palace; dines there in state, with his Heir and the Grandees. He has a kinship by affinity to Friedrich Wilhelm; his Wife (dead long years since), Mother of this Heir-Apparent, was an Anspach Princess, Aunt to the now Queen Caroline of England. Poor old fellow, these insignificancies, and that he descends direct from Philip the Magnanimous of Hessen (Luther's Philip, who insisted on the supplementary Wife), are all I know of him; and he is somewhat tragic to me there, turning ivory in this extremely anarchic world. What the passages between him and Friedrich Wilhelm were, on this occasion, shall remain conjectural to all creatures. Friedrich Wilhelm said, this Sunday evening at Darmstadt to his own Prince: "Still here, then? I thought you would have been in Paris by this time!"--To which the Prince, with artificial firmness, answered, He could certainly, if he had wished; [Seckendorf (in Forster, iii.), p. 3.] and being familiar with reproaches, perhaps hoped it was nothing.