very moderate portion of taste would have avoided. It frequently happens, that apartments which would grace the mansion of a prince, have no other, views from their windows than the dead walls of a warehouse, used for the vilest purposes of trade, as a magazine for stock-fish, skins, tobacco, and the like. I met with a striking instance of this at the house of Mr. ———, a gentleman whose collection of paintings does equal honour to his liberality and taste. An apartment of almost regal magnificence looks immediately into his warehouse, and the eye turns with horror from the works of Titian, and Rubens, to cranes, bales, casks, &c. the appendages of commerce. In the collection of this gentleman, a Holy Family by Rubens, a Venus couchant by Titian, and a St. John by Rembrant, are pieces of exquisite merit. That they should be placed in a room so unfortunately situated is the more to be censured, as the front of his house, commands a noble view of the Maese, and an uninterrupted prospect of the country on the opposite side of the river.
