YMS 
:Z^ 
NOTES ON DECOE.ATIVE GARDENING. 
277 
I 
No. 1. — NATUIiAL JET P'EAtT, 
arcliitects and sculptors, like Bernini, says Sir U. Price, would not think of inquiring what were the i-> 
precise forms of natural water-spouts ; but knowing that water forced into the air must necessarily 
assume a great variety of beautiful effects, which, added to its native clearness and brilliancy, would 
admirably accord with the forms and coloiu-s of statues and architecture, would use it accordingly. 
Nature and art are more closely allied than appears at a first glance ; for all art is founded upon 
the development of some natural law, which Shakespeare perceived when he makes Polixenes, in the 
" Winter's Tale," say, 
" This is an art 
Which does mend nature — change it rather ; hut 
The art is nature^s self." 
Under ordinary circumstances, the scenic featm-es that sm-round garden fountains are such that 
the impression one receives on seeing water forced into the air is, that art has been employed to 
produce the effect. There- 
fore, while still water finds — _ 
its more appropriate loc- - ^— ~ 
ality in the lower portion 
of the grounds, fountains 
may be more properly 
placed in the higher levels 
of a garden, as their evi- 
dently artificial character 
seems to find its appropri- 
ate situation in a position 
where water would be 
highly desirable and or- 
namental, but where it 
could only be brought by 
scientific and artistic 
means. Here, then, the 
display of art, even to a 
degree of ostentation, be- 
comes legitimate; and foun- 
tains, of elaborate charac- 
ter and complicated architectural design, find their most imposing station at the extremities, or 
centres, of elevated terraces, and places of similar character, where the gai'denesque, and semi-archi- 
tectural character of the surrounding scene, is all in artistic harmony with them. 
Very few good fountains have been as yet constructed in England ; the two in Trafalgar Square — 
which our national Charivari (Punch) very aptly and cleverly compared to " Uoo saucers surmmtntecl 
hy a bottle of ginr/er heer" — being signal failures; and the one recently erected at Brighton, though on 
a more ambitious scale, almost equally unsuccessful. Into the region of " art," in the treatment of 
fountains, we have not yet penetrated; but in sunpler 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 quality in this unadorned natural effect. The scale is, in fact, everything ; and so far, the 
jet at Chatsworth is highly successful — indeed, magnificent ; but all the other attempts at fountain- 
work, all the minor squirtings, 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 fountains. Long before Le Notre and his cotemporaries and 
collahorateurs constructed the celebrated water-works of Versailles, the magnificent fountains of the 
Villa d'Este, and those of the Villa Aldobrandini, 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- vrinds, the personifying deities of which form sculptural groups, 
among which the play of waters has a very grand effect. StUl more elaborate is the work of Giacomo 
della Porta, the celebrated Mount Par?iassus, with the deities playing on different musical instruments, 
the sounds of which are imitated by the water in a manner, which, if not entirely successful, is yet 
sufficiently approaching the desu-ed effect to be very astonishing. These wonders of the villas of the 
Sabine hills, in the region of Tivoli and Frascati, 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 
