fountain is of travertine, the natural mellow tone of which has been rendered even more lovely by centuries of soft Italian weather. It does not stand out conspicuously in the vista; it detaches itself from the surrounding trees gently, as if it had grown there among them. [Illustration: The Fountain of the Sea-Horses.] On either side of this fountain the ground falls away sharply into groves of ilex, traversed by natural footpaths. In the gloom of these wooded spaces there are two other fountains. Great basins catching the water from tiers of smaller ones in the centre and each surrounded by a broken circle of curved stone benches. They are the work of Antonio Vansantio; and, according to drawings by Letarouilly, the back of each semicircular bench was originally decorated at regular intervals with statues. Behind these stood a formally clipped box hedge rising some three feet above the benches, while the larger trees growing behind the hedge made by their branches a green canopy to this truly charming bit of garden architecture. Vansantio’s basins and benches are now in a half-ruined condition, but they are still extremely lovely and suggest pictures of eighteenth-century garden-parties, where groups of Watteau’s figures idle away the hours. The fountains are hardly visible, even at close range. They betray themselves by the sound of their falling water, which gives to the scene, like the song of the hermit-thrush, a poignant sense of remoteness and solitude. The deep shadows and half-hidden waters of Vansantio’s fountains form a well-conceived contrast to Bernini’s sunlit basins on the slope above. There are many other fountains in this villa. A large round pool decorated with a central figure of a nymph, and set about with huge cactus-filled vases of a shape peculiar to the Villa Borghese, stands behind the Casino, while at the other end of the gardens the so-called Fountain of Esculapius fills a shady place with the sound and beauty of abundant water. This is a beautiful fountain, not because of any special charm or originality of design in the fountain itself, but because of its splendid jet of water and the composition of it and its surroundings. The arch containing the statue of Esculapius stands on a slight eminence surrounded with tall trees and shadowy foliage. Beneath and before it, the ground slopes in masses of broken rock and bowlders, and the fountain, a single round and shallow vase of finished travertine, stands in the midst of them. The jet of water almost tops the Arch above the statue, and it falls in great abundance upon the rocks at its base.