Fig. 1.

In his Classical Tour, Eustace states, if oar memory does not deceive us, that Rome had fifty-two rivers flowing through her proud streets in the period of her greatest prosperity, sop-plying fountains of every variety and model, and dispensing health. Many of these rivers most have been small, as little as what we call creeks, but the evidences of the fondness of her people for pure water are still extant in her broken aqueducts, or those which now supply the gushing streams still more numerous than in any other city.

The beautiful custom of erecting ornamental fountains has extended of late years among ourselves, and we give an illustration of one made in this city, of cast iron, by Mr. Robert Wood, Fig. 1.

Fountains #1

Who ever said anything about fountains half so clever as this: There is no subject of street ornament half so wisely chosen as the fountain, where it is a fountain of use; for it is just there that the happiest pause takes place in the labor of the day, when the pitcher is rested on the edge of it, and the breath of the bearer is drawn deeply, and the hair swept from the forehead, and the uprightness of the form declined against the marble ledge, and the sound of the kind word or light laugh mixes with the trickling of the falling water, heard shriller and shriller as the pitcher fills. What pause is so sweet as that - so full of the depth of ancient days, so softened with the calm of pastoral solitude!