"Our Prince is a sincere and unaffected lover of the arts and sciences. Therefore, every good artist, and every man of real learning, is welcome to him; for, as to rank in life, he lays on that no stress whatever. He considers only the degree of intellectual acquirements which a stranger actually does or does not possess; and accordingly shews or withdraws his favourable countenance. "But even in the accomplishments of our Prince, it is impossible to deny, that something of an alloy of pedantry has crept in, which is partly owing to errors in his early education, and which expresses itself in his improvements, by an overstrained and slavish adherence to this or that particular school or fashion. He himself drew out, with the most laborious minuteness, the plans for every building in the park; and even the slightest departure of the workmen from the given models, which he had searched out and put together from an hundred antiquarian repositories, vexed him in the highest degree. Every pillar, portico, tower, and cupola, must have its representative, however ludicrous the imitation in point of height and dimensions must of necessity be. "By the same disposition to carry one or other favourite system to an _extreme_, our theatre now suffers, where the principles that he has once laid down, must on no account be departed from, although, in order to retain them, sometimes the most heterogeneous incongruities are forced together. In short, the Prince has a boundless variety of _hobbies_, which (to keep up the metaphor) he rides alternately; yet not one of them is of a description calculated to give offence, or do any real injury to his subjects. When this park was laid out, then he was architect and gardener _à la folie_. After that, some new fantasies about music wholly absorbed his attention; to which inspiration, however, we owe the fitting up of a most admirable and unrivalled choir and opera. Then painting took the _pas_, and occupied him so entirely, that, as an artist, he is no mean proficient. "Even in the daily amusements of the Court, he shews the same disposition to extremes, and the same variability. Formerly, dancing was kept up almost every evening; _now_, there is on company-days a Pharo-Bank, and the Prince, without being in the least what is properly called a gamester, delights in watching and calculating all the intricacies of chance. But the pharo-table has continued already long enough; and there is wanting only some very trifling occurrence or impulse to bring something altogether new again on the carpet.