Iborace Walpole 271 



in fashion, without interfering with the pic- 

 ture, they will find satisfaction on those days 

 that do not invite strangers to come and see 

 their improvements. 



Fountains have with great reason been ban- 

 ished from gardens as unnatural ; but it sur- 

 prises me that they have not been allotted to 

 their proper position to cities, towns, and the 

 courts of great houses, as proper accompani- 

 ments to architecture, and as works of grandeur 

 in themselves. Their decorations admit the 

 utmost invention ; and when the waters are 

 thrown up to different stages, and tumble over 

 their border, nothing has a more imposing or a 

 more refreshing sound. A palace demands its 

 external graces and attributes, as much as a 

 garden. Fountains and cypresses peculiarly 

 become buildings ; and no man can have been 

 at Rome, and seen the vast basins of marble 

 dashed with perpetual cascades in the area of 

 St. Peter's, without retaining an idea of taste and 

 splendor. Those in the Piazza Navona are as 

 useful as sublimely conceived. 



Grottos in this climate are recesses only 

 to be looked at transiently. When they are 

 regularly composed within of symmetry and 

 architecture, as in Italy, they are only splendid 

 improprieties. The most judiciously, indeed 

 most fortunately, placed grotto, is that at Stour- 



