The Italian Formal Garden 
At Tivoli, where there is too much water rather than not 
enough, and where the upper grades are very steep an id the lower 
ones very gradual, the upper terraces of the Villa d’E^ste abound 
in monumental fountains and cascades, as well as iin the ruins 
of innumerable trick fountains and aquatic eccentricities orig¬ 
inally designed to be set in operation by the unwiitting steps 
of the visitor. Among them was formerly a celebrrated water 
organ, now ruined and silent. The central cascade,, or line of 
cascades, was of great volume, proportioned to the large scale 
of the whole villa, while on the lower, easy gradients*, the water 
flowed quietly into and through great basins, borcdered with 
vases, shaded with trees, and emptying by little casccades from 
one to the other, till the water finally disappeared uncderground. 
Carlo Fontana, rightly named, was the artificer of tfhese water¬ 
works. Several of the villas at Frascati, like the Mionclragone 
and the Aldobrandini, illustrate the same principles.,. 
At Caserta we have the one example of the colcossal in the 
scale of the water works of an Italian garden. Thesse grounds 
were laid out by Van Vitelli in 1753, after a sojourrn at Paris 
and Versailles, where he had studied the vast landsccape-works 
and fountains of Le Notre. In the Caserta grounds*, if he did 
not better the instruction, he at least showed consurmmate skill 
in the adaptation of its teachings to his special (conditions, 
wholly different from those at Versailles; for tlhe Caserta 
grounds are but one thousand feet wide, extending,'- back two 
miles, first with a gentle grade and then by a stceep ascent 
reaching the summit of the thickly-wooded hill far Ibehind the 
palace. The water tumbles for nearly a mile over a channel 
filled with broken rocks, which churn it white, sco that it is 
visible and effective even when seen from the palace two miles 
away. It then passes through a succession of immemse basins, 
from each of which it issues by a cascade twenty orr thirty feet 
high, each differing essentially from the others, and! several of 
them adorned with statuary not always in the best ttaste. The 
architectural treatment of the successive cascades is iingeniously 
varied, and in several of them is conspicuously successful. A 
strip of grass two hundred feet wide on either si(de, planted 
with occasional flower-beds and flanked by wonderfiully beauti¬ 
ful ilex avenues next the side walls of the grounds,, completes 
the simple but effective plan of the gardens. Here the water 
is purposely handled on a colossal scale, suited tco the great 
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