[Illustration: A jetting fountain in the garden of Halil Edhem Bey] Almost every Turkish garden contains visible water of some sort, which at its simplest is nothing but a shallow marble pool. In the centre of the pool is sometimes a fountain which I always think of with regret when there is pointed out for my admiration a too fat marble infant struggling with a too large marble fish, or a dwarf holding an umbrella over its head. This fountain consists of nothing but a series of jets, generally on varying levels, set in a circle of those marble stalactites—here should one call them stalagmites?—which are so familiar in Oriental architecture. Nothing could be simpler, apparently, but nothing could combine more perfectly all the essentials of a jetting fountain. There is another fountain which deals even more delicately with the sound of water. This is a dripping fountain, set always against a wall or a bank. It is a tall marble tablet, decorated, perhaps, with low reliefs of fruit and flowers, on the face of which a series of tiny basins are carved. I have seen one where water started at the top from the eyes of two doves and trickled into the first little basin, from which it overflowed into two below, then back into one, and so on till it came into three widening semi-circular pools at the bottom. _Selsebil_ is the name of this fountain in Turkish, which is the name of a fountain in Paradise; and a fountain of Paradise it may be indeed with all its little streams atinkle. A more delightful ornament for a garden does not exist, being equally adapted for the end of a vista or for a narrow space; and it requires the smallest supply of water. [Illustration: A _selsebil_ at Kandilli] [Illustration: A _selsebil_ of Halil Edhem Bey] The Turkish architects have not scorned more imposing effects when they had the means, as did Ahmed III at Kiat Haneh. The marble cascades into which he turned the Barbyses are called _chaghleyan_—something which resounds. I have seen a smaller _chaghleyan_ in a garden on the Asiatic shore of the Bosphorus. This is a series of descending pools, one emptying into another till the water finally runs into a large round marble basin. The water starts, between two curved flights of stone steps, from three marble shells in the retaining wall of a terrace; and from the terrace an arbour looks down the perspective of mirroring pools to an alley that leads from the last basin away between arching trees. This beautiful old garden belongs to the Turkish painter Ressam-Halil Pasha, who studied in Paris at a time when the plastic arts were still anathema among the Turks. In his studio are figure studies, made during his student days, which even now he could scarcely exhibit in Constantinople; and it would be thought a scandalous thing if he tried to get Turkish models to sit for such pictures. When he heard where I came from he asked if there were in America a painter called Mr. Cox, who had studied with him under Gérôme.