No Fountain Can Be Quite Ugly,
But Some Fountains Can Be Quite Stupid, Like, For Instance, Those Which
Give Its
Pretty name to the Street of the Four Fountains and which
consist of two extremely plain Virtues and two very
Dull old Rivers,
diagonally dozing at each other over their urns in niches of the four
converging edifices. They are not quite so idiotic under their
disproportionate foliage as the conventional Egyptian lions of the
Fountain of Moses, with manes like the wigs of so many lord chancellors,
and with thin streams of water drooling from the tubes between their
lips. But these are the exceptional fountains; there are few sculptured
or architectural designs which the showering or spouting water does not
retrieve from error; and in Rome the water (deliciously potable) is so
abundant that it has force to do almost anything for beauty, even where,
as in the Fontana Paolina, it is merely a torrent tumbling over a
facade. It is lavished everywhere; in the Piazza Navona alone there are
three fountains, but then the Piazza Navona is very long, and three
fountains are few enough for it, even though one is that famous Fountain
of Bernini, in which he has made one of the usual rivers - the Nile, I
believe - holding his hand before his eyes in mock terror of the ungainly
facade of a rival architect's church opposite, lest it shall fall and
crush him. That, however, is the least merit of the fountain; and
without any fountain the Piazza Navona would be charming; it is such a
vast lake of sunshine and is so wide as well as long, and is so mellowed
with such rich browns and golden grays in the noble edifices.
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