Garden Marbles froyn Abroad 
sometimes not 
over particular 
about what he 
orders into his 
domain. Car¬ 
ing less tor 
sculptured fig¬ 
ures than his 
Continental 
prototype, he 
is also less dis¬ 
criminating at 
first, as well as 
more inge¬ 
nious in adapt¬ 
ing whatever 
he can buy, 
into acceptable 
decorative fac¬ 
tors. Here, 
for example, 
one finds an¬ 
tique sarcophagi, mounted on a pair of old 
capitals inverted, serving as a receptacle for 
a row of plants or shrubs. 
H ere, too, may be seen fonts and holy 
water basins torn from their original places 
in bygone churches of Italy or Spain, 
turned into tree tubs, or flower bowls, or 
put to other secular and picturesque uses. 
Old well-heads, made originally by hollow¬ 
ing out fallen or disused column capitals, 
are turned 
into palm jars, 
or filled with 
miscellaneous 
plants. The 
bowls of an¬ 
cient fountains, 
detached from 
crumbling set¬ 
tings in Italy 
or middle 
France, begin 
life over again 
in the new 
world, under 
rich if not al¬ 
ways judicious 
auspices, as re¬ 
ceptacles for 
growing flow¬ 
ers or for swim¬ 
ming gold fish. 
Emigration is the order of the day in Italy. 
Besides marble objects not intended, when 
made, to be employed in gardens, American 
importers have had a keen eye for the more 
usual things. Fountains, benches, sun-dials, 
round stone tree-tubs, with relief carving, a 
numerous family of urns and vases, often of 
monumental character, and other specimens 
that hallow'ed the gardens of seventeenth- 
century Italy and France, have been levied 
AN ITALIAN RENAISSANCE FISH BASIN 
From Baron de Hirsch's Garden near P.aris 
No-iu in the Glaen^er Garden 
From the Tiffany Studios 
OLD WELL-CURBS FOR GARDEN ORNAMENT 
From the Glaenxer Garden 
70 
