Mrs. Charles MacVeagh

“ There are few squares, even in the Rome of to-day, where, at least in the silence of the night, the sound of splashing water may not be heard. The tiny fountain, often fern-fringed, with its ceaseless, slender stream of water, is the one priceless possession in hundreds of old courtyards, where it fills a damp and lonely silence with charm, or redeems by its indestructible quality of beauty the meanness of the squalid life about it. It is impossible to think of Rome without her fountains. ”

“ The octagonal basin which receives this copious stream is sunk into the ground and its shadowed waters have all the unobtrusive beauty of a quiet and sequestered pool There is no sculpture, no decoration. With unerring taste, the artist has made his appeal to the eye through fundamental and universal elements of beauty. Grace of line and of proportion, contrast of solid rock and flowing water, the impression of abundance and perpetuity, symmetry, contrast, suggestion these are the simple qualities out of which he composed his Fountain of the Brimming Bowl. ”

“ Spain had the riches of the New World; France and England were breeding the manhood of Europe; but Italy held the keys to the past — to the culture for which men's souls longed. The time was not yet — in 1540 — although it was close at hand, when Italy's deliberate choice of evil rather than good finally made her, by weakening and corrupting her, a captive to Spain. Time was not yet; and in that last lingering glow of her greatness and freedom the old Pope, Paul III, moves as her incarnate spirit. ”

“ Romans of the eighteenth century often saw Alfieri, the tragic dramatist, crouched beside the fountain, lost in a day-dream evoked by the tumult and beauty of the water; and it is recorded that the day after Michelangelo's death there was found in his house no wine whatever, but five jars of water, presumably the Trevi, as it was the only pure drinkable water in Rome. The Trevi fountain has become a feature in the city's life. It is the chief fountain of the one water which modern Rome inherits directly from her great past. ”

“ He must fancy the fitful music of stringed instruments, the perfume from the orange groves drifting over the garden walls where sat the monkeys and brilliant tropical birds. He must feel the languid stir or deep repose of long, indolent, luxurious summer days, and through it all, he must be conscious of the water* Only so will he be able to form some adequate conception of what the "secret fountain" must have been in the days of Pope Julius III. The highest charm of the beautiful creation lay in its presentation of contrast translated into a medium suitable to every sense. ”

“ The soft Roman sunshine then filters through the ilex branches only upon groups of little children and their nurses, solitary old men who have become as little children, and bands of seminarists or theological students wearing black or scarlet gowns and speaking divers tongues. The little company occupy the benches, or walk demurely in small groups beneath the trees, or play the endless plays of babyhood, in and out of the warm shadows; all of them living in a dreamland as old as life itself, and finding in this quiet garden of the Eternal City a background full of sympathy and significance. ”

“ Bernini's extravaganzas, in which the Egyptian symbol of the mystery of life becomes the meaningless centrepiece for a banal fountain, have long ceased to give pleasure. It is doubtful whether the obelisk was altogether pleasing to the ancient Romans. They could not fail to admire its austere dignity and strength, and they regarded it as the insignia of supreme power, human or divine. Roman Emperors from Augustus onward constantly imported them to Rome to celebrate a victory, to adorn a circus, or to place in pairs, one on either side of the entrance to a tomb. ”

“ Triton has suffered from a sculptor's point of view, but as a work of imaginative art it is, perhaps, all the better for Nature's modelling. The shapeless head and shoulders have in them something of the formlessness and blurred masses of the elements, and the water-creature becomes more real to the imagination in proportion as he suggests but does not entirely resemble a man. The entire design is on a colossal scale and has a dignity and harmony rarely to be found in Bernini's creations. ”

“ The moss-grown stone-work of the basin, and the light and shade of the great ilex trees about it give this little fountain a peculiar charm. It seems to belong quite consciously to other days than ours.
There are fountains everywhere in the gardens. They are as common as the trees and the marbles and the violets. The water seems to play at will among the lights and shadows, for during three centuries this has been a Roman pleasure-ground; and to the Roman no pleasure-ground is worthy the name without the sound and sight of water. ”