DECORATIVE GARDENING. 



209 





-Tlie Fuuntain of Hi. Peler-s. 



ing scene, is all in artistic harmony ■with 

 them. 



Ver^' few good fountains have been as ^^ct 

 constructed in England ; the two in Trafal- 

 gar S(|uare — which our national Charivari 

 {Pufich) very aptly and cleverly compared to 

 " iivo saucers surmounted hy a bottle of gin- 

 ger beer'''' — being signal failures ; and the one 

 recently erected at Brighton, though on a 

 more ambitious scale, almost eriually unsuc- 

 cessful. Into the region of "cr^" in the 

 treatment of fountains, we have not yet pene- 

 trated ; but in simpler forms of fountains — 

 that of a simple jet issuing at once from the 

 level of the main water — greater success has 

 been attained, as mere "dimension" is the 

 great cjuality in this unadorned natural effect. 

 The scale is, in fiict, everything ; and so far, 

 the jet at Chatsworth is highly successful — 

 indeed, magnificent; but all the other at- 

 tempts at fonntain-work, all the minor squirt- 

 ings, including the too celebrated "water- 

 tree," are beneath notice ; and still more 

 worthless, in point of art, are all the fantastic 

 failures called fountains at Alton towers. 



Modern Italy is the classic land of foun- 

 tains. Long before Le Notre and his cotem- 

 poraries and collaborateurs constructed the 

 celebrated water-works of Versailles, the mag- 



nificent fountains of the Villa d'Este, and 

 those of the Villa Aldobraudiui, were well 

 known and justly celebrated works, especially 

 the building called the " Saloon of the Winds," 

 where water is made to produce rushing sounds 

 characteristic of the four winds, tlic personify- 

 ing deities of which form sculptural groups, 

 among which the play of waters has a very 

 grand effect. Still more elaborate is the work 

 of Giacomo della Porta, the celebrated Mount 

 Parnassus, with the deities playing on differ- 

 ent musical instruments, the sounds of which 

 are imitated by the water in a manner, which, 

 if not entirely successful, is yet sufficiently 

 approaching the desired effect to be very as- 

 tonishing. These wonders of the villas of the 

 Sabine hills, in the region of Tivoli and Fras- 

 cati, are, however, among the over-wrought 

 effects of hydraulic science and art. More 

 simple, and more artistically grand, are some 

 of the fountains of Rome ; that, for instance, 

 which introduces the acqua Paola to Rome — 

 a supply named after Pope Paul V., the 

 founder of the Borghesi family, who repaired 

 one of the ancient aqueducts, and so united a 

 magnificent stream of water once more to 

 Rome, after centuries of severation, in conse- 

 quence of ruinous portions of the aqueduct 

 allowing the stream to waste itself uselessly 



