es passing out of the garden, though the space on
each side of the broad alley in which they were walking was bordered
with so many walls, palisades, terraces, statues, and columns, and the
gateway which led out from the garden into the square was so broad, and
was so filled up, moreover, with the people who were going and coming,
that it was difficult to tell where the garden ended and the great
square began. At length, however, it began to be plain that they were
out of the garden; for the view, instead of being shut in by trees,
became very widely extended on either hand. It was terminated on one
side by ranges of magnificent buildings, and on the other by bridges
leading across the river, with various grand and imposing edifices
beyond. In the centre of the square the tall form of the obelisk towered
high into the air, gently tapering as it ascended, and terminating
suddenly at its apex in a point.

The square, though open, was not empty. Besides the obelisk, which stood
in the centre of it, on its lofty pedestal, there were two great
fountains and colossal statues of marble; and lofty columns of bronze
and gilt, for the gaslights; and raised sidewalks, smooth as a floor,
formed of a sort of artificial stone, which was continuous over the
whole surface, which was covered by it, without fissure or seam. There
were roadways, also, crossing the place in various directions, with
carriages and horsemen upon them continually coming and going. The great
fountains were very curiously contrived. The constructions were thirty
or forty feet high. They consisted of three great basins, one above the
other. The smallest was at the top, and was, of course, high in the air.
A column of water was spouting out from the middle of it, and, after
rising a little way into the air, the water fell back into the basin,
and, filling it full, it ran over the edge of it into the basin below.

This was the middle basin, and, besides the water which fell into it
from the basin above, it received also a great supply from streams that
came from the great basin below, like the jets from the hose of a fire
engine when a house is on fire. There was a row of bronze figures,
shaped like men, in the water of the lowest basin of all, each holding a
fish in his arms; and the jets of water which were thrown up to the
middle basin from the lower one came out of the mouths of these fishes.
The fishes were very large, and they were shaped precisely like real