Chap. 7.]
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The taste of old landscape gardeners for fountains and cascades, Ser-pentine streams, and other “ pieces of water-works” although derivedfrom the East, had its origin in nature. “ Even as Paradise itself (saysSwitzer) must have beeil deemed an immodelled and imperfect plan, hadit not been watered by the same Omnicient hand which first made it, soour gardens and fields, the nearest epitomy and resemblance to that happyplace which is to be met with here below, cannot be said to be any wayperfect, or capable of subsisting without it.” These men contemplatingthe World as a garden endeavored to copy it in miniature. They con-structed lawns for deer and reared diminutive forests for game—theyformed lakes and stocked them with fish—walks were made on the marginof brooks, torrents feil from artificial mountains, and tiny streams woundtheir way through labyrinths of reeds and of sedge. Springs were seenbursting out of rocks rudely piled up, as if thrown together by nature,while aquatic birds sported in basins below. But they went furtber, forascending jets were thrown up so as to resemble bundles of reeds, otherswere crested like wheat sheaf's, or branched out like trees. Sometimesthe streams were directed so as to form avenues and alcoves, as of chrystal,which when the sun shone produced a magical effect. Even hedges andborders of gardens were imitated. “ The hedge of water (says Evelyn)in forme of lattice-worke which the fontanier caused to ascend out of theearth by degrees exceedingly pleased and surprised me.”
Giving the reins still more to their imaginations, these artists were hur-ried into singulär puerilities. They made the fluid to spout from the sidesof ships, the mouths of birds, and other incongruous figures. Swarms ofheathen deities were also pressed into their Service ; and not content witha Triton blowing water through his shell, or Neptune pouring it from anurn, figures of the latter were made to rise from the bottom of deep basins,and drawn by spouting dolphins and accompanied with Amphitrite and alegion of sea nymphs, sailed over his fluid domains to allay the tempestthat called him up !
Old treatises on water-works are full of such things. In “ Art andNature,” Neptune is figured “ riding on a whale, out of whose nostrils, asalso out of Neptune’s trident the water may bee made to spin thorow smallpin holes.” Other devices consisted of “ divers forms and shapes of birds,beasts, or fishes; dragons, swans, whales, flowers, and -such like prettyconceits, having very small pin holes thorow them for the water to spinout at.” The 15th and 16th plates of Decaus’ Forcible Movementsrepresent the mechanism of “ an engin by which Galatea is drawn uponthe water by two dolphins, going in a right line and returning of herseif,while a Cyclopq, plaies upon a flajolet.” And the 17th and 18th platesshew Neptune drawn by sea horses, preceded and followed by Tritons ,sailing round a rock on which Amphitrite is reposing, and from whichwater is gushing forth.
Fountains for supplying the inhabitants of towns and cities are frequentlymentioned in scripture, but it is difficult to discriminate between artificialones and those that were natural. In the early history of Rome some arementioned. The news of the victory obtained over the Tarquins and thepeople of Latium was conveyed in an incredibly short time by two youngmen, said to have been Castor and Pollux , who were met “ at the fountainin the marhet-place,” at which their horses foaming with sweat were drink-ing. (Plutarch in Paulus ASmilius.) Statues of Jupiter Pluvius, of theEgyptian god Canopus and others, were erected over fountains, the liquidissuing from different and sometimes from all parts of the bodies. On theday Julius Caesar was assassinated, he was implored by Calphurnia in