he first of a
series of nine whose overflows in successive steps form the cascade
technically known as a "chateau d'eau," the finest of which
description of ornamental waterworks is at the Chateau St. Cloud, one
of the mementos of the fatal luxury which precipitated the Revolution
of 1789. The cascade of St. Cloud plays once a month for half an
hour--that at the Exposition during the whole day. From one jet at
St. Cloud issue five thousand gallons per minute: the supply at the
Exposition is twenty-four thousand cubic feet per hour. Most of
this water runs over the edge of the balcony-pool, and the fall of
fifty-six cubic feet per second a distance of twenty feet creates no
mean roar and mist in the archway beneath the balcony, where visitors
walk behind the falls and look through the sheet of water. It is not
fair to compare at all points the cascades of the Exposition and St.
Cloud. The amount of water may probably not be greatly different, but
the fantastic profusion of spiratory objects and long succession of
overflow basins and urns in the works at the chateau has no
parallel in those of the Trocadero. The cascades of St. Cloud are
disappointing: the object should be to add to landscape effect by
water in motion, and the principle is entirely missed when the
water is made a mere accessory to a series of stone steps, jars
and monsters. Steps are made to walk upon, jars to hold water. An
interminable series of either with water poured over them is not the
work of a genius. If the first suggestion to the mind be that a thing
is a stairway, the fact that it is made too wet to walk upon does not
constitute it a beautiful cascade. A row of jars on pedestals around a
grass-plat has a pretty effect, because they do or may hold flowers,
but to set several rows of them on a hillside and turn on the water is
not art. As an admirable illustration of fantasy well wrought out the
Fountain of Latona at Versailles may be cited. There Latona, having
appealed to Jupiter against the inhabitants of Argos, who had deprived
her of water, is deluged by jets from the unfortunates, who appear in
various degrees of transformation into frogs.

[Illustration: THE ENGLISH QUARTER, ON INTERNATIONAL AVENUE.]

The cascade of the Trocadero has nothing meretricious about it. It is,
like the building of which it is the finest ornament, of Jura marble,
while much of the adjacent work is of artificial stone so admirably
made that one cannot tell the