and also subjecting the two compositions to a severe and logical
criticism, which only proved the superiority of the masterly hand over
the inexperienced.

Little Jacob was less mortified by this incident than was his poor
teacher, Weber. He took the manuscript, and, after a faithful study of
its contents, wrote another eight-part fugue, which he sent himself to
Vogler. The result was precisely as he desired: he became a pupil of the
old musician.

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