Reichard, who also mentions the expense of building them at Vienna, where they are made for one fourth of the money required by the London coach makers; and they answer every purpose of travelling, full as well as those made in England. This carriage is nothing more than an English chariot with a dormeuse, which advances in front, and which should be made sufficiently high to furnish a commodious seat for two persons on the outside, upon the springs. We made the driver always sit upon the trunk, in front; but it would be better to provide for him a little chair, raised for that purpose. The door of the dormeuse, within the earriage, lets down upon the seat; and it contains leather cushions, and a pillow covered with thin leather. The carriage has besides, an imperial, a well, a swordcase, which may be converted into a small library; and, instead of a window behind, a large lamp, so constructed as to throw a strong light without dazzling the eyes of those within. Thus provided, a person may travel night and day, fearless of want of accommodation or houses of repose. His carriage is his home, which accompanies him every where; and if he chooses to halt, or accidents oblige him to stop in the midst of a forest, or a desert, he may sleep, eat, drink, read, write, or amuse himself with any portable, musical instrument, careless of the frosts of the north, or the dews, the mosquitoes, and vermin of the south. Over snowy regions, he places his house upon a sledge, and, when the snow melts, upon its wheels; being always careful, where wheels are used for long journeys through hot countries, to soak them in water, whenever he stops for the night.

Setting out from Petersburgh for the south of Russia, the traveller bids adieu to all thoughts of inns, or even houses with the common necessaries of bread and water. He will not even find clean straw, if he should speculate upon the chance of a bed. Every thing he may want, must, therefore, be taken with him. A pewter teapot will become of more importance than a chest of plate, and more so than one of silver, because it will not be stolen, and may be kept equally clean and entire. To this he will add, a kettle, a saucepan, the top of which may be used for a dish; tea, sugar, and a large cheese, with several loaves of bread, made into rusks, and as much fresh bread as he thinks will keep till he has a chance of procuring more. Then, while the frost continues,

* Guide de Voyageurs en Europe, tom. ii. planche 1.

he may carry frozen food, such as game, or fish, which, being congealed, and as hard as flints, may jolt about among his kettles, in the well of the carriage, without any chance of injury. Wine may be used in a cold country, but never in a hot, nor even in a temperate climate, while upon the road. In hot countries, if a cask of good vinegar can be procured, the traveller will often bless the means by which it was obtained. When, with a parched tongue, a dry and feverish skin, they bring him bad or good water to assuage his burning thirst, the addition of a little vinegar will make the draught delicious. Care must be taken not to use it to excess, for it is sometimes so tempting a remedy against somnolency, that it is hardly possible to resist using the vinegar without any adulteration of water.

The palace of Tsarskoselo is twenty-two versts from Petersburgh, and the only object worth notice between that city and Novorogood. It is built of brick, plastered over. Before the edifice is a large court, surrounded by low buildings for the kitchens, and other outhouses. The front of the palace occupies an extent of near eight hundred feet; and it is entirely covered, in a most barbarous taste, with columns, and pilasters, and cariatides, stuck between the windows; all of which, in the true style of Dutch gingerbread, are gilded. The whole of the building is a compound of what an architect ought to avoid rather than to imitate. Yet, so much money has been spent upon it, and particularly on the interiour, that it cannot be passed without notice. It was built by the empress Elizabeth; and was much the residence of Catharine, in the latter part of her life, when her favourites, no longer the objects of a licentious passion, were chosen more as adopted children than as lovers.

In the gardens of this palace, persons, who wished to gain an audience of the empress, used to place themselves when she descended for her daily walk. A complaint, from which she suffered in her legs, made her introduce the very expensive alteration of converting the staircase of the Hermitage, at Petersburgh, into an inclined plane, which offered a more commodious and more easy descent. A similar alteration was introduced at Tsarskoselo, which conducted her from the apartments of the palace into the garden. It was in one of those walks, as professor Pallas afterwards informed me, that commodore Billings obtained, by a stratagem, her final order for his expedition to the north

west coast of America. Bezborodko, the minister, although he had received the empress's order, put him off from time to time, not choosing to advance the money requisite for the different preparations; and Billings began to fear the plan would never be put in execution. In the midst of his despondency, professor Pallas undertook to make the matter known to the empress, and advised commodore Billings to accompany him to Tsarskoselo. As soon as they arrived, Pallas conducted him to a part of the garden which he knew the empress would frequent at her usual hour; and placing themselves in one of the walks, they had not waited long before she made her appearance. With her usual affability, she entered into conversation with professor Pallas; and, after inquiries respecting his health, asked the name of the young officer, his companion. The professor informed her, and added, he is the person whom your majesty was pleased to appoint, in consequence of my recommendation, to the command of the expedition destined for the northwest coast of America. "And what," said the empress," has delayed his departure ?"" He waits, at this moment, your majesty's orders," replied the professor. At this the empress, without any reply, and evidently somewhat ruffled, quickened her pace towards the palace. The next morning the necessary supplies came from the minister, with orders that he should set out immediately.

That the expedition might have been confided to better hands, the publick have been since informed, by the secretary Sauer.* This professor Pallas lamented to have discovered, when it was too late. But the loss sustained by any incapacity in the persons employed to conduct that expedition, is not equal to that which the publick suffered by the sudden recall of the unfortunate Ledyard; which, it is said, would never have happened but through the jealousy of his own countrymen, whom he chanced to encounter as he was upon the point of quitting the eastern continent for America, and who caused the information to be sent to Petersburgh which occasioned the order for his arrest.

The gardens of Tsarskoselo are laid out in the English taste, and, therefore, the only novelty belonging to them is their situation; so far removed from the nation whose ideas they pretend to represent.

*See Accouut of an Expedition to the Northern Parts of Russia, &e. by Martin Sauer, Secretary to the Expedition. 4to. London. 1802.

The interiour of the building presents a number of spacious and gaudy rooms, fitted up in a style combining a mixture of barbarity and magnificence which will hardly be eredited. The walls of one of the rooms are entirely covered with fine pictures, by the best of the Flemish, and by other masters. They are fitted together, without frames, so as to cover, on each side, the whole of the wall, without the smallest attention to disposition or general effect. But, to consummate the Vandalism of those who directed the work, when they found a place they could not conveniently fill, the pictures were cut, in order to adapt them to the accidental spaces left vacant. The soldiers of Mummius, at the sacking of Corinth, would have been puzzled to contrive more ingenious destruction of the fine arts. Some of Ostades' best works were among the number of those thus ruined. I was also assured, by authority I shall not venture to name, that a profusion of pictures of the Flemish school were then lying in a cellar of the palace. But the most extraordinary apartment, and that which usually attracts the notice of strangers, more than any other, is a room, about thirty feet square, entirely covered on all sides, from top to bottom, with amber; a lamentable waste of innumerable specimens of a substance, which could nowhere have been so ill employed. The effect produces neither beauty nor magnificence. It would have been better employed even in ornamenting the heads of Turkish pipes; a custom which consumes the greatest quantity of this beautiful mineral. The appearance made by it on the walls is dull and heavy. It was a present from the king of Prussia. In an apartment prepared for prince Potemkin, the floor was covered with different sorts of exotick wood, interlaid; the expense of which amounted to a hundred roubles for every squared archine. A profusion of gilding appears in many of the other rooms. The ballroom is a hundred and forty feet long, by fifty two feet wide, and two stories high. The walls and pilasters of another apartment were ornamented with lapis lazuli, as well as the tables it contained. The Cabinet of Mirrors is a small room, lined with large pier glasses, looking upon a terrace, near which is a covered gallery, above two hundred and sixty feet long. There are various statues about the house and gardens, in marble and in bronze, all without merit. The chapel is entirely of gilded wood, and very richly ornamented.

A small flower garden leads to the bath, which is ornamented with jasper, agates, and statues and columns of marble. The grotto is also adorned in the same way with a number of beautiful products of the mineral kingdom, wrought into columns, busts, has reliefs, vases, &c. among others, a vase composed of the precious stones of Siberia. From this grotto is seen a lake, où which appears the rostral column to Orlof, which the empress erected in honour of the naval victory he obtained over the Turks at Tchesmé. After we left Tsarskoselo, the snow diminished very fast, and our fears of reaching Moscow on sledges increased.* But, during the night, and part of the morning of the 4th of April, it fell in such abundance, that all trace of the roads disappeared, and we lost our way once or twice before we arrived at

NOVOGOROD.

The place was half buried in snow; but we managed to get to the cathedral, curious to see the collection of pictures, idols of the Greek church, which that ancient building contains; and which, with many others dispersed in the cities and towns of Russia, were introduced long before the art of painting was practised in Italy. The knowledge of this circumstance, led me to hope that I should make some very curious acquisitions in the country; and, upon my first arrival from the Swedish frontier, I had given a few pounds to a Russian officer for his god; which consisted of an oval plate of copper, on which the figure of a warriour was beautifully painted, on a gold ground. This warriour proved afterwards to be St. Alexander Nevski. And as I advanced through the country to Petersburgh, there was hardly a hut, or a post house, that did not contain one or more paintings, upon small pannels of wood; the figures of which were represented, after the manner of the earliest specimens of the art, upon a gold ground, and sometimes protected in front by a silver coat of mail, which left only the faces and hands of the images visible. A small attention to the history and character of the Russians will explain the cause.

*The carriage road from Petersburgh to Moscow, a distance of near 500 miles, in the summer season, consists of the trunks of trees laid across. In consequence of the jolting these occasion, it is then one of the most painful and tedious journies in Europe.