Garden Furnishings 
3 8 9 
climate men had not thought to build piazzas sur- 
rounding the house and shadowing all the ground 
floor rooms. We are beginning to think anew of 
the value of sunlight in the parlors and dining rooms 
of our summer homes, which for the past thirty or 
forty years have been so darkened by our wide 
piazzas. Now we have fewer piazzas and more 
peristyles, and soon we shall have summer-houses 
and garden houses also. 
There are preserved in the South, in spite of war 
and earthquake, a number of fine examples of old 
wrought-iron garden gates. King William of Eng- 
land introduced these artistic gates into England, 
and they were the height of garden fashion. Among 
them were the beautiful gates still at Hampton 
Court, and those of Bulwich, Northamptonshire. 
They were called clair-voyees on account of the unin- 
terrupted view they permitted to those without and 
within the walls. These were often painted blue; 
but in America they were more sober of tint, though 
portions were gilded. One of the old gates at West- 
over-on-James is here shown, and on page 390 the 
rich wrought-iron work in the courtyard at the home 
of Colonel Colt in Bristol, Rhode Island. This is 
as fine as the house, and that is a splendid example 
of the best work of the first years of the nineteenth 
century. 
Fountains were seen usually in handsome gardens 
in the South ; simple water jets falling in a handsome 
basin of marble or stone. Statuary of marble or lead 
was never common in old American gardens, though 
pretentious gardens had examples. To-day, in our 
