_Pope Sixtus V, of the Marches, conducted this water from a junction of several streams in the neighborhood of Colonna, at the left of the Prænestine road, by a winding route, twenty miles from its reservoir and twenty-two from its source, and called it Felix, after the name he himself bore before his pontificate. He commenced the work in the first year of his pontificate, and finished it in the third, 1587._ THE LATERAN [Illustration] THE LATERAN Modern photographs can still be found of the original fountain of the Lateran. It was the work of Fontana and was placed in this spot after he had erected the obelisk for Sixtus V. The present fountain is quite new and most inadequately replaces the old one which had stood there for over three hundred years. By the close of the nineteenth century the upper basin of Fontana’s fountain was badly broken, while the lower one had been held together for some time by iron clamps. The carving was so worn and defaced that the dolphins and eagle were quite shapeless, and the figure of St. John writing in a scroll upon his knee and looking to Heaven for inspiration had long since disappeared. Maggi’s engraving of this fountain made in 1618 shows it to have been one of the richest ever designed by Fontana. A curious feature in this old fountain was the blending of the insignia of three popes. The pears of Sixtus V were carved in heavy festoons under the huge supporting scrolls of the mostra (which was a screen made low so as to bring the figure of St. John in simple and high relief against one of the square sides of the pedestal), the Borghese eagle poured the water into the shell-shaped upper basin; and finally the Aldobrandini bar of continuous Maltese crosses was used as frieze.