July 29.
St. Martha V. Sts. Simplicius and Faustinus, brothers, and Beatrice, their sister, A.D. 303. St. William, Bp. A.D. 1234. St. Olaus, or Olave, king of Norway, A.D. 1030. St. Olaus, kind of Sweden.
WATER IN WARM WEATHER.
Fountains and Pumps.
By the process of boring, springs may be reached more expeditiously and economically than by the old method of well digging. The expense of boring from one to two hundred feet deep is little more than one-fourth of digging, seventy feet is less than a fourth, thirty feet is less than a fifth, and from ten to twenty feet is is not so much as a sixth. In 1821, the water for the fountain at Tottenham High Cross, represented in the engraving, was obtained by boring to a depth of one hundred and five feet, at the expense of the parish, for public accommodation. The water rises six feet above the surface, and flowing over a vase at the top of the column into a basin, as represented in the engraving, it pours from beneath. The boring for this spring and the fountain were suggested by Mr. Mathew, who first obtained water in Tottenham, by that method, and introduced the practice there. The pillar was designed by Messrs. Mathew and Chaplin, and executed by Mr. Turner of Dorset-street, Fleet-street, the well known manufacturer of the cast iron pumps; and not to withhold from him any of "his blushing honours," be it noted that he was till lately a common-councilman of the ward of Farringdon Without, where he still maintains his reputation as a "cunning workman in iron," and his good name as a good pump-maker, and as a worthy and repectable man. Public spirit should rise to the height of giving him, and others of the worshipful company of pump-makers, more orders. Many places are sadly deficient of pumps for raising spring-water where it is most wanted. Every body cries out for it in hot weather, but in cool weather they all forget their former want; and hot weather comes again and they call out for it again in vain, and again forget to put up a public pump. At Pentonville, a place abounding in springs, and formerly abounding in conduits, all the conduits are destroyed, and the pumps there, in the midst of that healthy and largely growing suburb, during the hot days of July, 1825, were not equal to supply a tenth of the demand for water; they were mostly dry and chained up during the half of each day without notice, and persons who came perhaps a mile, went back with empty vessels. So it was in other neighbourhoods. Well may we acount for ill. Mischievous liquors sold, in large quantities, at some places, for soda water and ginger beer were drank to the great comfort of the unprincipled manufacturers, the great discomfort of the consumers' bowels, and the great gain of the apothecary.
Were the doings in the New River during the summer, or one half of the wholesale nuisances permitted in the Thames described, the inhabitants of London would give up their tea-kettles. Health requires that these practices should be abated, and, above all, a good supply of spring-water. The water from pumps and fountains would not only adorn our public streets and squares, but cool the heated atmosphere, by the surplus water being diverted into the gutters and open channels. Besides, if we are to have dogs, and a beast-market in the heart of the metropolis, the poor overheated animals might by such means slake their thirst from pure and refreshing streams. The condition wherein sheep and cattle are driven for many miles before they reach the metropolis, is a disgrace to the appellation assumed by men who see the cruelty, and have power to remedy it; "a merciful man is merciful to his beast," and he is not a really merciful man who is not merciful to his neighbours' beasts.
May these wants be quickly supplied. Give us spring water in summer; and no more let
"Maids with bottles cry aloud for pumps."
London has but one fountain; it is in the Temple: you pass it on the way from Essex-street, or "the Grecian" to Garden-court. It is in the space at the bottom of the first flight of stone steps, within the railings enclosing a small, and sometimes "smooth shaven green," the middle whereof it adorns, surrounded, not too thickly, by goodly trees and pleasant shrubs. The jet proceeds from a copper pipe in the middle of a stone-edged basin, and rises to its full hieght of at least nine feet, if water from the cock by the hall with which it communicates is not drawing; when that process is going on the jet droops, and seems dying away till the drawing ceases, and then the "Temple Fountain" goes up again "famously."
There was a fountain in the great square of Lincolns Inn, but it had ceased to play "in my time." I only remember the column itself standing there
"For ornament, not use,"
with its four boys blowing through shells.
In the Kent-road, on the left hand from the Elephant and Castle towards the Bricklayers Arms, there is a fountain in a piece of water opposite a recently built terrace. A kneeling figure, the size of life, blows water through a shell; it is well conceived, and would be a good ornament were it kept clean and relieved by trees.
A "professional" gentleman who to the "delightful task" of improving country residences by laying out grounds in beautiful forms, has added the less "cheerful labour" of embodying others' theories and practice in an "Encyclopædia of Gardening," views a fountain as an essential decoration where the "ancient" style of landscape is introduced in any degree of perfection.*[1] As the first requisite, he directs attention to the obtaining a sufficiently elevated source or reservoir of supply for the jets, or projected spouts, or threads of water. Some are contrived to throw the water in the form of sheaves, fans, and showers, or to support balls; others to throw it horizontally or in curved lines, but the most usual form is a simple opening to throw the jet or spout upright. Mr. L. judiciously rejects a jet from a naked tube falling from the middle of a basin or canal on a smooth surface as unnatural, without being artificially grand. Grandeur was the aim of the "ancient" gardener, and hence he made a garden "after nature," look as a garden of nature never did look. Mr. L. suggests that "the grandest jet of any is a prependicular column, issuing from a rocky base on which the water falling produces a double effect both of sound and visual display.
In the "Century of Inventions of the Marquis of Worcester," explained and illustrated by Mr. Partington, there is mention by the marquis of "an artificial fountain, to be turned like an hour glass by a child, in the twinkling of an eye, it yet holding great quantities of water, and of force sufficient to make snow, ice, and thunder, with the chirping and singing of birds, and showing of several shapes and effects usual to fountains of pleasure." Mr. Partington observes on this, that "how a fountain of water can produce snow, ice, thunder, and the singing of birds, is not easy to comprehend."
Sir Henry Wotton discoursing on architecture remarks thus:—"Fountains are figured, or only plain watered works; of either of which I will describe a matchless pattern. The first, done by the famous hand of Michael Angelo da Buonaroti, is the figure of a sturdy woman, washing and winding linen clothes; in which act she wrings out the water that made the fountain; which was a graceful and natural conceit in the artificer, implying this rule, that all designs of this kind should be proper.*[2] The other doth merit some larger expression: there went a long, straight, mossie walk of competent breadth, green and soft under foot, listed on both sides with an aqueduct of white stone, breast-high, which had a hollow channel on the top, where ran a pretty trickling stream; on the edge whereof were couched very thick, all along, certain small pipes of lead, in little holes; so neatly, that they could not be well perceived, till by the turning of a cock, they did sprout over interchangeably, from side to side, above man's height, in forms of arches, without any intersection or meeting aloft, because the pipes were not exactly opposite; so as the beholder, besides that which was fluent in the aqueduct on both hands in his view, did walk as it were under a continual bower and hemisphere of water, without any drop falling on him; an invention for refreshment, surely far excelling all the Alexandrian delicacies, and pnuematicks of Hero."*[3] An invention of greater solace could not have been desired in the canicular days, by those who sought shelter from the heat; nor more coveted by any than by him, who is constrained to supply the "every-day" demand of "warm" friends for this little work—no "cool" task!
FLORAL DIRECTORY.
Red Chironia. Chironia Centaureum.
Dedicated to St. Martha.
