1$6 LETTERS FROM A TRAVELLER AT BERLIN. 



parallel with them as by that means, this beautiful 

 edifice is entered by a little door, not at all in corre- 

 fpondence with it. The palace of prince Henry, over 

 againft the opera-houfe, is likewife one of the fineft 

 buildings in Berlin, of a becoming amplitude, and 

 without the abpvementioned defects ; but is perhaps too 

 naked of ornament. The front of the roman catholic 

 church is alfo beautiful, and well copied from the an- 

 tique ; its cupola is however too high, and not of a 

 handfome form, and the inlide of the church is not 

 fufriciently ornamented. The library, from its mife- 

 rable decorations, the bad difpofition of it, and the in- 

 terfered crooked line of its facade, muft be clafTed 

 among the moil wretched of the public edifices of Ber- 

 lin. The royal palace, old as it is, has. no bad appear- 

 ance : its court, however, is not to be entered : and it 

 is very ill-judged to leave that lide next the Spree to, 

 Hand as it does, it not prefenting an object confiderable 

 enough for the. great open view of it from the water. 

 The arfenal is fpacious, and of a regular and fuitable 

 architecture ; it clearly evinces that its deligner was not 

 deficient in tafte and imagination. He has introduced 

 a great diverfification in the helmets placed over the 

 outer windows. But he has fhewn frill greater in the. 

 larves over the windows in the inner court, all of them 

 finely imagined, all indicate the extremes of- pain, but 

 always with a different expreffion'. The fentiment that 

 arifes on feeing a place erected for a magazine of inftru- 

 ments for the deftruction of the human race ; and the 

 recollection of the miferies pccafioned by the paflions 

 of mankind, which frequently are the fole caufes of 

 wars, could not have been more juftly conceived, nor 



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