For a capital, Darmstadt is small, and its palace infinitely too large of the latter the Emperor Joseph sarcas→ tically observed, that it was big enough to accommodate himself and the nine electors. However, very little of the internal part is finished, and most of the windows are boarded up. The Grand Duke and his family reside in a part of a new palace, projecting from the old one, looking towards the gardens. That immense structure is built in imitation of the Thuilleries, and surrounded by a broad deep dry ditch. The hereditary Prince, who married the youngest daughter of the House of Baden, and whose sisters share the thrones of Russia and Sweden, has a large and handsome house at a little distance from the old palace; exclusive of this prince, his Royal Highness the Grand Duke, Louis the Tenth, has several other children. is turned of fifty years of age, is an enlightened, brave, and amiable prince, and a celebrated engineer. He was the last of the German princes who in the last war sheathed the sword he had drawn against the French; a power which the preservation of his dignity and his dominion compelled him to coalesce with. Bonaparte, when he was digesting the Rhenish Confederation, wished to invest him with the kingly dignity, but the Grand Duke declined the offer. Darmstadt has produced many valiant and distinguished officers. At the parade I had the pleasure of seeing General Von Werner, the governor of the city,

He

who at the head of the chevaux legers, or light horse, performed prodigies of valour in the Netherlands in the last war, where in one battle he was surrounded by seven French chasseurs, from whom he received the most desperate wounds in various parts of his body before he surrendered. The late General Von Düring, a name, on account of the heroic courage of the person to whom it belonged, for ever embalmed in the memory of the English who served in the last war in the Low Countries, in the years 1793, 4, 5, was born in this duchy. The troops were good looking men, and presented a very soldier-like appearance: the uniform of the officers of the infantry is a blue coat faced with scarlet, a large cocked hat, richly trimmed with deep silver lace, and has a very handsome appearance. The dragoons wear a casket, a light green jacket, and are well mounted. The pay of a soldier is about the value of twopence a day. Several captains in the army are princes (princes appanages), or princes of a distant branch, who have but little property.

The principal object to attract the attention of a traveller is the Exercierhaus, or house for maneuvering the troops in the winter: it forms one side of the space of ground alloted for the parade, is three hundred and fourteen feet long, and one hundred and fifty-two broad, and has been erected about thirty-five years. The ceiling of

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THE PUBLIC GARDENS.

this enormous room is self-supported by a vast and most ingenious wooden frame-work, without the assistance of either pillar or arch below. Above this ceiling are a great number of apartments. In a part of the room below, the artillery of the Grand Duke is deposited, which is kept in high military order. About four thousand troops can be manoeuvred in this room with ease. The gardens adjoining to the exercise-house are laid out in the English style, are very spacious, and would be very beautiful if the ground undulated a little more; much taste has been displayed in their arrangement, and the house of the chief gardener is very pretty. These gardens are liberally opened to the public, form the principal promenade, and were embellished on the day I visited them with several lovely and elegantly dressed women. In one part is a neat but simple mausoleum, erected by the order of Frederic the Great to the memory of one of the landgravines of Darmstadt, a princess remarkable for the powers of her mind and the beauty of her person: upon which is the following elegant inscription, composed by that great Prince :

"Hic jacet Ludovica Henricæ, Landgrafia Hessiæ, "sexu fœmina, ingenio vir."

Here lies Louisa Henrietta, Landgravine of Hesse, " a woman in form, in mind a man."