The Pope
Resides Here During The Whole Year, With The Exception Of Three Or Four
Months In The Hot Season, When He Repairs To Castel Gandolfo Near La
Riccia.
Of the fountains the grandest and most striking is that of Trevi, which
lies at the foot of Quirinal Hill.
Here is a magnificent group in marble of
Neptune, in his car in the shape of a mussel-shell drawn by Sea-horses and
surrounded by Nymphs and Tritons. An immense basin of white marble, as
large as a moderate sized pond, receives the water which gushes from the
nostrils of the Sea-horses and from the mouths of the Tritons. There is a
very good and just remark made on the subject of this group by Stolberg,
viz. the attention of Neptune seems too much directed towards one of his
horses, a piece of minutiae more worthy of a charioteer endeavouring to
turn a difficult corner, than of the God who at a word could control the
winds and tranquillize the Ocean.
The fountain Termina, so called from its vicinity to the Thermes of
Diocletian, is the next remarkable fountain. Here is a colossal statue of
Moses striking the rock and causing the water to gush forth. The grandeur
and majesty of this statue would be more striking but for the incongruity
of the arcades on each side of the rock, and the two lions in black basalt
who spout water. Moses and the rock would have been sufficient. Simplicity
is, in my opinion, the soul of architecture, and where is there in all
history a subject more peculiarly adapted to a fountain than this part of
the history of Moses?
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