504 LETTERS FROM ENGLAND. 



you almost expect it, with its next leap, to reacli the sky ; and yet, 

 with all this va^t power aiid volume; it is so light, and airy, and beau- 

 tiful, and it bursts at the top, and falls in such a superb storm of 

 diamonds, that you will not be convinced that it is not a produc- 

 tion of nature, like Niagara. This is the Emperor Fountain— the 

 highest in the world ; about the height, I should say, of Trinity 

 Church spire.* It is only suffei-ed to play on calm days, as the 

 weight of the falling water, if blown aside, by a high wind, would 

 seriously damage the pleasUre-grounds. 



As the eye turns to the left, the' wooded hill, which forms the 

 rich forest back-ground to this scene, seems to have run mad with 

 cataracts. Far oflF among the precipices, near its fop,' you see water- 

 falls bursting out among the rooks, — ^now disappearing amid the 

 thick foliage of the wood, and then reappearing lower down, foam- 

 ing with velocity, and plunging again into the dark woods. To- 

 wards the 'base of the hill stands a circular water-temple, out of 

 which the water rises: It gushes out as if from the hydrant of the 

 water g'ods, and, running down a slope, falls at the back of -the gar- 

 dens down a long flight of very broad marble steps, that lead from 

 the water-tertiple to the edge of the pleasure-grounds, so as to give 

 the effect of a waterfall of a hundred or more feet high. This 

 wealth of water, as if some rive? at the back of >the mountain had 

 broke loose, and, after wild praiiks in the hills, had been forced, into 

 order and symmetry in the pleasure-grounds, gives almost the 

 tumult and excitement of a freshet in the wildetness ,to this most 

 exquisite combination of garden and natural scenery'. 



Leaving the point — ^where yo& take in, without moving, all this 

 magical landscape — you wander through flower gardens, and amid 

 pleasure-grounds, till you reach a more wooded and natural looking 

 paymge. The fountains, the carefully polished Italian gardens, are 

 no longer in view. The path becomes wild, and, after a turn, you 

 enter upon a scene the very opposite to all that I have been describ- 

 ing. You take it for a rocky wilderness. The rocks are of vast 

 size, and indeed of all sizes ; with thickets of laurels, rhododen- 



* The height of the Emperor Fountain is 267 feet lie next highest 

 fountains in the world, are one^at Hesse Gassel, 190 feet; one at St. Cloud, 

 160 feet; and the great jet at Versailles; 90 feet. 



