coxe’s TRAVELS IN RUSSIA.

677

A winter and fummer garden, comprifed within the fite of the building, are Angulareuriofities, and fuch as do not perhaps occur in any other palace in Europe . The fum-iner garden, in the true Afiatic ftyle, occupies the whole level rool of trie edifice: butat this feafon of the year was buried under the fnow. The winter garden is roofed andfurrounded with glafs frames; it is a high and fpacious hot houfe, laid out in gravelwalks, ornamented with parterres of flowers, orange trees, and other fhrubs, and peopledwith feverai birds of fundry forts and various climates, which flitted from tree to tree.The whole exhibited a pleafing effeCt, and was more delightful as being contrafted withthe dreary feafon of the year.

A magnificent range of buildings has been recently added to the Imperial palace ; itjoins the Hermitage, and is fo extenfive that it may be called another palace. A fuperbfuite of apartments, chiefly occupied by the Emprefs, contains the cabinet of pictures,principally compofed of the following collections : ’

1. The celebrated collection of Crozat, at Paris, which vied with that of the Dukeof Orleans; it confided of more than three hundred and feventy pieces, includingvarious Iketches.

2. The fmall but well chofen collection of counfellor Tronchin, of Geneva ; in whichmay be noticed feverai by Teniers , and a Chrift bearing the crofs, by Ludovico Caracci,half length, of the natural fize ; the countenance expreffive of that meek dignity bywhich the founder of the Bolognefe fchool peculiarly charaCterifed the Saviour ofmankind.

3. The collection of Count Bruhl , remarkable for twelve Woverman’s; a Holy-Family, by Watteau ; an Ecce Homo, by Caravagio ; a painter who fucceeded indelineating fimple nature and low life, but was extremely deficient in treating dignifiedfubjeCts.

4. Part of the collection of the Chevalier'Bardouin, purchafed at Paris ; the pofleflbrreferring to himfelf feverai landfcapes by the Dutch mailers, and Vernet. Among thepictures which came to the Emprefs, I obferved fome excellent paintings by Rubensand Vandyke, particularly an ineflimable head of Henry the Fourth, by Rubens, aStudy after Nature, for the Luxemburgh gallery, greatly expreffive of that vivacity andbon-hommie which charaCterifed that amiable monarch ; two, by Ferdinand Bol ; feverai,by Rembrandt , in his ftrong but uncouth manner, and two lovely groupes of children’sheads, in the characters of angels, by the inimitable Corregio.

5. The collection of Houghton-houfe, the lofs of which all lovers of the arts muftfmcerely regret, and upon which I need not enlarge, as the pictures are well known,from the catalogue publiffied by Horace Walpole , and from the engravings by BoydeL

6. A collection from Venice, containing feverai, by old Palma, Titian , Paul Veronefe,and the Baffans; many of which are, perhaps, not originals.

Of the Roman fchool the Emprefs poffeffes three capital pictures, by Raphael , whichbelonged to the cabinet of Crozat: a Holy Family, in that great mafter’s belt manner,and in the highell prefervation ; a Portrait of Cardinal Pole, alfo in his bell manner ;and a St. George, of which there is an engraving by Vbfterman._ I mull not omit anold and excellent copy of the School of Athens, of which the original frefco painting inthe Vatican , for compofition, correCtnefs of defign, and juft delineation of character, isUnrivalled.

Several fine landfcapes by Claude Lorraine, the painter of nature, and two by Gaf-par Pouffin, in which that poetical painter, fo remarkable for his piCturefque pencil, hasdelineated towers and battlements,

“ Bofom’d high in tufted trees;’’

and