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Fountains in Theatres and Churches recommended. [Book V.

audience. This was accomplished by making them hollow, drilling inthem an infinite number of small holes, and connecting them by secrettubes to reservoirs of scented waters. The practice is alluded to by severalauthors, and among others by Lucan in the following passage :—

As when mighty ßome’s spectators meetIn the full theatre’s capacious seat;

At once by secret pipes and channels fedRieh tinctures gush from every antique head ;

At once, ten thousand saffron currents flow,

And rain their odors on the crowd below.

Sometimes rieh people left by their wills sums of money to furnishthese perfumes and the apparatus for dispersing them. An example isgiven by MafFei in his ‘ History of Ancient Amphitheatres.’ (Lond. 1730,p. 168.) A Roman lady bequeathed funds to celebrate a hunting of wildbeasts in the amphitheatre, and she ordered that salientes should be made.This term Maffei ünderstood to mean “ those hidden channels or pipes bywhich with wonderful artifice, [as is twice mentioned by Seneca,] theycaused odoriferous liquid to spring up from the bottom to the top of theamphitheatre, which then jetted and spread itself in the air like a veryfine shower of rain.”

The custom might be adopted with advantage in modern theatres : itwould render visits to these crowded places more agreeable and less in-jurious to health. Why can’t the managers announce it in their “ bills,”among other inducements, just as their predecessors did eighteen centuriessince 'l One of the notices of a public entertainment in Pompeii bas beenfound written on the walls of a bath in that city. It is in these words :—“ On occasion of the dedication of the baths, at the expense of CnseusAlleius Nigidius Maius, there will be the chase of wild beasts, athleticcontests, sprinkling of perfumes, and an awning.”—(Pompeii , vol. i, 148.)

Fountains for cooling the air should constitute part of the ordinary ap -pendages to churches, as much as apparatus for heating and lighting them.They should be considered by us, as they were by the ancients, essential tothe health as well.as comfort of large assemblies of people. They certainlyare as necessary here, especially in the Southern States, as they were inSouthern Europe . Their construction is so simple, their modifications sovarious, their application so universal, and their effects so beneficial andcheap, that it is surprising they have not been introduced. We don’t seewhy a person might not be as innocently employed in pumping waterduring worship to supply a fountain or jet d’eau, as in pumping air into thepipes of an organ. But it is unnecessary, for where the fluid would notrise sufficiently high from public reservoirs or pipes that pass through thestreets, it might be elevated into a reservoir in the roof the day previousto the sabbath. In this use of fountains ancient architects were clearlyin advance of ours.

The custom of cooling the air in private apartments is of great antiquityin Asia , and is still kept up in the dwellings of princes. See a platein Generale Histoire, tome xiii, p. 311, representing a private apartmentin the seraglio of one of the generals of Aurengzebe. An octagon basinwith a handsome jet is in the centre of the room, with images of birdsfloating in the water. On the borders of the basin are trays with refresh-ments, and the Company reclining around on carpets, much in the samemanner in which Pliny represents himself and friends feasting around afountain in his garden.

Henry Blount describing one of the palaces at Cairo in 1624, observes,“ In the chiefe dining chamber, according to the capacitie of the roome, is