House and Garden 
Here, once more, an aqueous surprise 
awaited us; the great fountain whose peer 
is not to be found in Europe, a single huge 
jet rising to the height of 130 feet, fed and 
sustained by the great reservoir in the hills 
above. One must have traveled for some 
days through the dusty, sterile, treeless plains 
and mountains of Central Spain to appre¬ 
ciate the full joy of the lavish profusion with 
which water is cast abroad here, as if what 
might elsewhere be the restriction of prudent 
not wanting, the baths of Diana seemed to 
have been conceived in sport. One trick 
fountain attracted spectators to its brimming 
basin, only to scatter them occasionally by 
its unexpected and irregular overflows. 
As we next began to climb through the 
gardens we came soon to realize the altitude 
at which the waters are gathered, which 
furnish so many and so various delights to the 
royal pleasure grounds, and the course of 
the cataract brought us to El Mar , “the 
THE PALACE FROM THE PARTERRE 
use, would be in the presence of an exhaustless 
supply, but a causeless parsimony. 
Having sated our wonder and admiration, 
we sauntered on through shadowed roads. 
How gay all seemed,-—a fountain here, a foun¬ 
tain there, the formality of architecture of 
the well-cut stone of the pool margins and 
cascades changed to rural simplicity; shaded 
paths crossing small brooks by rustic bridges, 
with ]ust here and there a formal bit to remind 
us that we were traversing the pleasure 
grounds of earthly royalty, and not a pure 
dream of Nature. Fantastic features were 
sea,” as the dwellers in these arid lands were 
pleased to name it. 
Our afternoon reverie was concerned not 
so much with the interesting bits of history 
which have been enacted here as with the 
character and the tastes of the designers and 
builders to whose skill and labor we owed 
the present enjoyment. The minds that saw 
such wondrous possibilities in the then wilder¬ 
ness of mountains, forests and springs, and 
brought out so much of sweet and healthful 
beauty, seemed worthy of admiration and 
emulation, as well as of study, if perchance 
