fountains 



One of the greatest ornaments to a garden is a 

 fountain, but many fountains are curiously ineffective. 



A fountain is most beautiful when it leaps high 

 into the air, and you can see it against a background 

 of green foliage. To place a fountain among low 

 flower-beds, and then to substitute small fancy jets 

 that take the shape of a cup, or trickle over into a 

 basin of gold-fish, or toy with a gilded ball, is to do 

 all that is possible to degrade it. The real charm of 

 a fountain is, when you come upon it in some little 

 grassy glade of the "pleasaunce" where it seems as 

 though it sought, in the strong rush of its waters, to 

 vie with the tall boles of the forest-trees that sur- 

 round it. 



Such was the fountain in Leigh Hunt's Story of 

 Rimini, which shot up " beneath a shade of darksome 

 pines" — 



"And 'twixt their shafts you saw the water bright. 

 Which through the tops glimmered with show' ring light." 



Henry A. Bright. 



For Fountains, they are a Great Beauty and Re- 

 freshment, but Pools mar all and make the Garden 

 unwholesome, and full of Flies and Frogs. Fountains 

 I intend to be of two Natures : the one that sprinkleth 

 or spouteth water, the other a fair Receipt of Water, 

 of some thirty or forty foot square, but without Fish, 



or Slime, or Mud. 



Francis Baton {Lord Verulani). 



It stood as the garden god of Christian gardens. 

 "Why is it almost everywhere banished? If its busi- 

 ness use be suspended by more elaborate inventions. 



