TSARSKOSELO. 
22 
chap. America, and who caused the information to 
he sent to Petersburg which occasioned the 
order for his arrest. 
Barbarous 
Decoration 
of the 
Apart- 
ments, 
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 customs they 
pretend to represent. 
The interior of the building presents a number 
of spacious and gaudy rooms, fitted up in a 
style combining a mixture of barbarism and 
magnificence hardly to be credited. The walls 
of one of the rooms are entirely covered with 
fine pictures, by the best of the Flemish, and 
by other masters. These 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 ac- 
cidental 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 Ostade's 
best works were among the number of those 
