_Pope Alexander the eighth, Ottoboni, of Venice, in protection of the beneficent work of that most far-sighted pontiff, Paul the fifth, recleaned the channel, admitted water from new sources, and constructed a single capacious reservoir for the common reception of the several streams which had formerly been strictly confined each to its own channel. To prevent the wearing away of the hill, he paved the surrounding area, surrounding and beautifying it with a marble coping. In the year of Salvation 1690, and of Alexander’s pontificate the second._ * * * * * The Borghese griffins and eagles compose the decoration of the mostra, and the whole structure is surmounted by the papal insignia and the arms of Paul V, the escutcheon being guarded by two angels. In Maggi’s book on the fountains of Rome, printed in 1618, there is an engraving of this fountain. It is represented as having four griffins and two eagles spouting water into the basins as do the lions in Sixtus V’s Fountain of the Moses. This device is not shown in Falda’s engraving a generation later, nor does Piranesi show it. It is probable that this feature existed only on paper in the original design for the fountain. Under the two side niches of the actual fountain the water spouts from lions’ mouths. From the three centre niches it simply pours in three cascades, equal in size, and of really magnificent force and volume. The effect of this water in full sunshine is dazzling in the extreme, and both in sight and sound the fountain must have been as conspicuous as Paul V could have wished it to be. Paul V never saw it completed, for he died in 1621, ten years after the fountain was begun. It was finished by Alexander VIII in 1690, eight pontificates later. It was, therefore, seventy-eight years in building, whereas Domenico Fontana built and unveiled the Fountain of the Moses for Sixtus V within that Pope’s own pontificate, which lasted only five years! The Fontana Paola is--to translate sight into sound--an echo of the Fountain of the Moses. It has the characteristics of an echo--it is magnified and meaningless. Giovanni Fontana and Maderno could not free themselves from the taste and traditions of the greater and more forceful Domenico. They did not mar the effect of their great fountain by an absurd colossus, like the Moses, but they made a mistake of another kind; they left the central niche above the cascade absolutely empty, yet failed to secure an adequate background for the eye to rest upon, so that the structure, for all its size and magnificence, gives a disagreeable sense of vacancy and incompleteness. However, as one studies the Fontanone, as this fountain is commonly called, it becomes apparent that its mostra must be regarded not as a façade, nor as a screen, but as a great water-gate. It is a triumphal arch through which the water of the Pauline Aqueduct makes its formal entry on the Janiculum in the sight of all Rome. It is also built to