The road hither is all a heavy sand, cut through vast forests of ever-green timber, but not beautiful like those of Bavaria, rather tedious, flat, and tristful: to encrease which sensations, and make them more grievous to us, our servants complained bitterly of the last long frosty night, which we spent wholly in the carriage till it brought us here, where the man of the house, a bad one enough indeed, speaks as good English as I do, and has lived long in London. I am not much enchanted with this place however. Dean Swift said, that a good style was only proper words in proper places; and if a good city is to be judged of in the same way, perhaps Berlin may obtain the first place, which one would not on an immediate glance think it likely to deserve; as a mere residence however, it will be difficult to find a finer.
He who sighs for the happy union of situation, climate, fertility, and grandeur, will think Genoa transcends all that even a warm imagination can wish. If with a very, very little less degree of positive beauty, he feels himself chiefly affected by a number of Nature’s most interesting features, finely, and even philosophically arranged; Naples is the town that can afford him most matter both of solemn and pleasing speculation.
If ruins of pristine splendour, solid proofs of universal dominion, once, nay twice enjoyed: with the view of temporal power crushed by its own weight, solicits his curiosity.—It will be amply gratified at Rome; where all that modern magnificence can perform, is added to all that ancient empire has left behind. Romantic ideas of Armida’s palace, fancied scenes of perennial pleasure, and magical images of ever varying delight, will be best realized at smiling Venice of any place; but if a city may be called perfect in proportion to its external convenience, if making many houses to hold many people, keeping infection away by cleanliness, and ensuring security against fire by a nice separation of almost every building from almost every other; if uniformity of appearance can compensate for elegance of architecture, and space make amends for beauty, Berlin certainly deserves to be seen, and he who planned it, to be highly commended. The whole looks at its worst now; all the churches are in mourning, so are the coaches: no theatre is open, and no music heard, except now and then a melancholy German organ droning its dull round of tunes under one’s window, without even the London accompaniment of a hoarse voice crying Woolfleet oysters. Come! Berlin can boast an arsenal capable of containing arms for two hundred and fifty thousand men. The contempt of decoration for a place destined to real use seemed respectable in itself, and characteristic of its founder. No columns of guns or capitals of pistols, neatly placed, are to be seen here. A vast, large, clean, cold-looking room, with swords and muskets laid up only that they may be taken down, is all one has to look at in Frederick’s preparations for attack or defence.
In accumulation of ornaments one hopes to find elegance, and in rejection of superfluity there is dignity of sentiment; but nothing can excuse a sovereign prince for keeping as curiosities worthy a traveller’s attention, a heap of trumpery fit to furnish out the shop of a Westminster pawnbroker. Our cabinet of rarities here is literally no better than twenty old country gentlemen’s seats, situated in the distant provinces of England, shew to the servants of a neighbouring family upon a Christmas visit, when the housekeeper is in good humour, and, gently wiping the dust off my late lady’s mother’s amber-boxes, produces forth the wax figures of my lord John and my lord Robert when babies. For this pitiable exhibition, ships cut in paper, and saints carved in wood, we paid half a guinea each; not gratuity to the person who has them in charge, but tax imposed by the government. Every house here is obliged to maintain so many soldiers, excepting such and such only who have the word free written over their doors; here seem to be no people in the town almost except soldiers though; so they naturally command whatever is to be had. Most nations begin and end with a military dominion, as red is commonly the first and last colour obtained by the chymist in his various experiments upon artificial tints. This state is yet young, and many things in it not quite come to their full growth, so we must not be rigorous in our judgments. I have seen the library, in which we were for the first time shewn what is confidently said to be an Æthiopian manuscript, and such it certainly may be for aught I know. What interested me much more was our Tonson’s CÆsar, a book remarkable for having been written by the first hero and general in the world perhaps, dedicated to the second, and possessed by the third. Here is an exceeding perfect collection of all Hogarth’s prints.
This city appears to be a very wholesome one; the houses are not high to confine the air between them, or drive it forward in currents upon the principle of Paris or Vienna; the streets are few, but long, straight, and wide; ground has not been spared in its construction, which seems a most judicious one; and with this well-earned praise I am most willing to quit it. It is the first place of any consequence I have felt in a hurry to run away from; for till now there have been some attractions in every town; something that commanded veneration or invited fondness; something pleasing in its society, or instructive in its history. It would however be sullen enough to feel no agreeable sensation in seeing this child of the present century come to age so: the tomb of its author is the object of our present curiosity, which will be gratified to-morrow.
