Among the central towns of Germany, few are more pleasing, and, perhaps, none at all more utterly neglected, than Darmstadt. The capital of a duchy, it contains a harmless, quiet little court, to which are attached a court-church and a court-theatre, alternately attracting the attention of the courtiers. The palace is a quaint old affair, on one side as precise and finished as a modern Italian villa, but taking its revenge by indulging on the opposite side in a series of wild irregularities as incomprehensible as they are picturesque,--old towers, romantic gateways, broken battlements, running ivies, and gay, green foliage, uniting, in charming confusion, to form the most pleasing picture in the dear, lazy old town. A year or two ago, the quiet, neglected little Darmstadt came temporarily to the surface, and was seen of men. The Princess Alice of England married the heir to the Duchy, and the event aroused (in England especially) a natural curiosity as to the young lady's future home,--a curiosity which has since quite died away. Darmstadt, about twenty years ago, was also somewhat talked of in a distant Northern land; for from the dull old Ducal palace went forth a pretty, delicate-looking girl, who is now the wife of Alexander II, and the Empress of all the Russias. In the Darmstadt picture-gallery is an old painting of the city as it was just one century ago,--in 1764. It was a very little and a very shabby city then. People dressed in the most ridiculous of costumes, and the picture shows His Serene Highness, arrayed in scarlet and yellow, getting out of a very clumsy, gilded carriage, amid the adulation of bowing and wigged courtiers. When Meyerbeer was there, however, Darmstadt was much as it is to-day,--a city so quiet that you might almost pitch your tent in the middle of the principal street, and sleep undisturbed for a week at least. The Abbe Vogler was organist of the cathedral, an ugly, clumsy old building, darkened by wide wooden galleries. Meyerbeer was a Jew, but his parents were liberal enough to send him to the fireside of a Christian, and the boy became an inmate of Vogler's house. For two years he studied faithfully, and by that time was initiated, as he had never been before, into the mysteries of counterpoint. For several years after this he remained with Vogler, studying, working, composing, and enjoying.