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FOUNTAIN OF ANDROMEDA.

a part of the warm season at this Versailles of the Peninsula.

The site of the palace is a valley closely surrounded by high and naked mountains of an aspect at once sublime and melancholy. The general appearance of the chateau, surrounded as it is by a crowd of out-houses, villas, and other private residences, with which it appears mingled, is not exteriorly the most satisfactory. It is so slightly distinguished from its varied surroundings that in the distance it might

readily be called a set of barracks, or a manufactory rising above the lower roofs of an industrial community.

The steeples and bell turrets of the chapel lack character, and their rectangular shafts, capped with slate roofs, recall the most miserable style of religious architecture at the commencement of the last century. But the principal façade toward the garden is fine, and without being able to aspire to a work of art, it is still worthy of some eminent consideration in the monumental history of Europe. On the other hand, works of art abound within, and form a gallery of the highest interest.

Around the palace are grouped in large numbers the summer residences of some of the noblest families of Madrid. The officers of state are also transferred hither during the stay of the sovereign, and they occupy the out-houses erected by Philip V. The manufacture of mirrors, some of which are so large as to measure seventy-two by one hundred and thirty inches, adds very much to the liveliness and interest of this august residence.

But it is especially the gardens and the water-works upon which is expended the magnificence of the melancholy heir of the unfortunate Charles II. The fountains, or cascades, mostly imitating those at Versailles, number from fifteen to twenty, of which several are of the first order, and produce the finest and most brilliant effect. Their hydronamic is faultless; perhaps some of them are, in this respect, in advance of the prodigies of Versailles. They are all fed from the reservoir that

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we have already mentioned, and which, situated in an elevated portion of the gardens, is itself supplied by the rivers or torrents flowing from the Carpathians We will give designs and descriptions of

a few of these fountains.

THE FOUNTAIN OF FAME.

"WHO is this enormous goddess, or rather this deformed monster, covered with ears and eyes, with a voice resembling thunder, who hides her head in the clouds while her feet touch the earth?" This is Fame, who,

CASCADE OF AMPHITRITE AND THE THREE however, in this case, with all due defer

GRACES.

THIS piece, in which three graces at bath occupy the lower part, is located precisely before the façade of the palace. It is very fine, as the reader must be convinced by the engraving given of it on the first page.

ence to Jean Baptiste, has nothing about her deformed or enormous, unless it be the jet which her epic clarion throws to the height of a hundred and sixty feet. This circular piece is bordered with greensward. The horse who prances on the summit of the rock is Pegasus, who appears to sup

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port uneasily his noble and inconstant burden. The trumpet of Fame has a force of thirty feet per second. She is represented as having for her tributaries the four principal rivers of Spain, the Gaudiana, the Tagus, the Ebro, and the Gaudalquiver, which are so devised as to appear to justify the superabundance of the jet. At her feet are unfortunate poets, lyric, satiric, and epic.

THE PLACE OF THE EIGHT CROSSWAYS.

THIS is a circular space crossed by eight avenues, and surrounded by sixteen fountains, all alike, each sending up three jets

of water, which fall back into white marble basins. The center of this beautiful crossway is marked by a group representing the abduction of Proserpine, which is also the subject of a beautiful water-piece at Versailles, the Porticoes, of which this is a happy imitation.

THE FOUNTAIN OF THE WINDS OF ÆOLUS. AN evident imitation of the piece Latona, at Versailles. This fountain is surrounded

by a grove. It is of a circular form, edged by green sward, in the midst of which eight masks throw out as many jets upon a rocky island. In the middle of

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this island stands the god Eolus, who governs sixteen heads of winds, which throw the water around in all directions. In the midst of this harmonious confusion, a dragon, which the god treads under his feet, throws up to heaven a jet of seventy odd feet. These figures are all in bronzed lead.

THE FOUNTAIN OF FAME.

THE FOUNTAIN OF AN-
DROMEDA

Is circular, and scatters its jets in different directions from two white marble basins. In the center of the piece is Andromeda, chained to a rock, who receives her deliverance from the hands of a Cupid, which hovers near, and swiftly flies to break her chains. Below, the prostrate sea-monster, with his fins spread and his head raised, expires beneath the blows of Perseus, who in one hand holds his sword, and in the other the head of Medusa. While the hero is preparing to strike again, the vile monster is represented as shedding his blood by sixty wounds, with which his body is riddled, and through which he sends out so many jets in all directions, while from his open throat one rises vertically to the height of one hundred feet.

THE BATHS OF DIANA. THIS fine fountain is ingeniously and happily arranged on a stone frontispiece about fifty feet high. Three vases crown the portico, the second one rising above the others, and in the midst of these there are two lions attacking two dragons, and all of them are throwing jets with a very fine effect.

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In the center, and above the steps that descend to the fountain, Acteon, the hunter, may be seen in a grotto, giving a concert to Diana. Below the steps is the goddess herself bathing, and surrounded by the nymphs, who wait upon her, the piece being diversified by other nymphs at bath playing with dolphins and

swans.

THE FOUNTAIN OF THE BASKET

Has no analogous piece in the park at Versailles. The basin is round, and in the middle a large basket of fruits and flowers is supported by four swans. Surrounding these are four naiads supporting a crown. The disposition is simple, and the jets of water in this piece have the finest effect. They number forty-one, thirty-two of which are oblique; three of them rise to the height of ninety feet.

The other less important fountains (although they are quite worthy of being seen)

which fill up the grounds of the Granja, are Latona, the Frogs, the Fan of Neptune, the Dragons, the Cups, and Pomona.

but

This is, without contradiction, the finest counterfeit of Versailles which has been undertaken and carried out anywhere, it is a counterfeit. It is never best for any people to adopt foreign costumes, manners, or fashions. We utter this as a general truth. The French taste passed into Spain with the princes of the house of Bourbon, not only in arrangements and in trifles, but in architecture and in style. The Peninsula, in that, lost its originality, and gained little on the side of art.

In landscape and in location the Granja boasts little that any one would care to see. M. Gautier does not speak of it in his "Travels in Spain," and M. de Custine, in his "Spain under Ferdinand VII.," merely remarks "The Chateau of St. Ildefonso resembles Versailles as Philip V. resembled Louis XIV."

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66

"W

THE LAND OF THE MAGYARS.

O reisen Sie hin ?" (which way are you traveling?) inquired a small, mustached, weasel-faced German of me, as our black steamer plowed her way down the Danube.

"Nach Ungarn," (to Hungary.) I replied, eyeing the stranger more closely, and revolving in my mind the probability of his being an Austrian spy.

ness.

Such, however, my companion was not, but a medical student from the University of Vienna, coming down to Pesth on busiHe had recognized me, and having friends in America, (a part of every German family seems to be settled in the United States,) began the conversation as described. Seated beneath the awning, and aside from the other passengers, so as not to be overheard, we conversed long about University times, and especially about life in Vienna during the revolution of 1848-9. The student soldiers, the reader will remember, fairly overthrew the imperial government, and compelled the emperor to seek safety in flight. Though unaccustomed to arms, they followed their professors into the combat with the coolness of veterans, and thought no more of

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shedding blood than they now do of shedding ink under the same leaders. My companion had walked into the Arsenal of Vienna over piles of the dead, and, notwithstanding his youth, presided at the trial of a distinguished Austrian general, who had been so unfortunate as to fall into the hands of the student-soldiers. Many were the curious stories he told me of boys becoming lieutenants and majors; how the recitation rooms of the old University were converted into council-chambers, where, over lager bier and the vilest penny cigars, the affairs of State were noisily discussed; how they paraded in the great hall of the Auditorium, and what magnificent times those were compared with the dull, dead present, when the heel of Austrian despotism crushes every free and noble aspiration into the dust. The old university halls have been converted into barracks for the soldiery of Francis Joseph. I have often wandered around them, attempting to conjure up the strange scenes enacted there, but always saddened by the remembrance of the noble thoughts vainly cherished within their antiquated walls.

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