soon after slew himself in despair. Vanda, in the mean time, mourned the victory she had gained; for, having beheld Rithogar, she had become enamoured of him; but her nobles prevented their union. Upon learning the fate of her lover, Vanda threw herself into the Vistula, and her name was given to the country afterward called Vandalia.

FOUNTAINS.

Not only rivers, but FOUNTAINS, have been held sacred by almost every nation; and equally beloved are they by the poets. Who has not read with delight Sannazaro's ode to the fountain of Mergillini; that of Fracastorius to the spring near the Lake di Garda; and that of Horace to the fountain of Blundusium? When Petrarch first beheld that of Vaucluse, in company with his father and his uncle Settimo, he was, though a boy, so enchanted with it, that he exclaimed, "Were I master of this fountain, I would prefer it to the finest of cities."

There is something venerable in the very name of fountain. We say "the fountain of life" and "the fountain of knowledge ;" and the image of Truth (the daughter of Time and the mother of Virtue) is fabled to have been first discovered at the bottom of a fountain, clad in a white robe, of a symmetrical form, and of a mild, modest, diffident, and attractive countenance. Truth! "Of all the divinities that nature has discovered to the mind of man," says Polybius," the most beautiful is Truth. Her power is as great as her beauty. For, notwithstanding all conspire to overwhelm her, and notwithstanding every artifice is employed by her adversaries, espousing the cause of Error to effect a conquest over her, yet, I know not how it is, she never fails by her own native force to make her

way into the human mind. Sometimes she displays her power immediately, sometimes only after having been a long time enveloped in darkness. She nevertheless surmounts every opposition, and triumphs over every error by her own essential energy. She is, as a Hebrew writer sublimely expresses it, "the strength, kingdom, power, and majesty of all ages."

Poets and other writers have the most agreeable associations in respect to fountains. Homer compares Agamemnon shedding tears to a fountain trickling from a solid rock. Love has been called a spring perennially flowing with delight; Marcus Aurelius desires us to look within, as there is the fountain of good; and Akenside, alluding to the faculties of the mind, exclaims,

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Mind, mind alone: bear witness earth and heaven!
The living fountains in itself contains

Of beauteous and sublime."

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Lucretius associates fountains with his splendid exordium, and Aristotle called those of the Greek Archipelago cements of society;" for there the young women were accustomed to meet every evening, and, while one drew water, another sung, and a third accompanied: then all the maids of the village followed in chorus, and the evening frequently closed with a dance.

De Pagès assures us, that the most beautiful subject for a painter in the East is that of a young female on her way from a fountain; and one of the best pictures of Raphael is that which represents the servant of Abraham meeting Rebecca at the well. Berghem has a picture representing peasants driving their cattle to a fountain at the first glow of evening, and Gaspar de Witt has a beautiful landscape animated by hunters halting at a well. But the most celebrated painter of fountains was Dubois, of Bois-le-Duc.

One of the most remarkable fountains in ancient times was that of which Herodotus has given an account. It was called "the Fountain of the Sun," and was situated near the temple of Jupiter Ammon. At the dawn of day this fountain was warm; as the day advanced, it became progressively cool; at noon it was at the extremity of cold; and at this time the Ammonians made use of it to water their gardens and shrubberies. At the setting of the sun it again became warm, and its temperature continued to rise till midnight, when it reached the extremity of heat; while, as the morning advanced, it gradually cooled. This fountain is also described by Quintus Curtius, Diodorus Siculus, Arrian, and Solinus: Silius Italicus likewise alludes to it.

There was a fountain equally curious in the forest of Dodona. It is said to have had the power of lighting a torch: at noon it was dry; at midnight full; and from this time it decreased till the succeeding noon. A similar one is mentioned as being near Grenoble.

The celebrated Castalian fountain rushes from two precipitate rocks, and forms several romantic cascades; and Cashmere is said to abound in fountains, which the natives call "miraculous." Pliny the younger describes one near the Larian Lake, which increased and decreased three times every day: it still exists.

Properties ascribed to Fountains.-The ancients were never weary of attaching peculiar properties to fountains. That of Arethusa was supposed to have the power of forming youth to beauty, and that at Colophon of enabling the priest of the Clavian Apollo to foretel future events. This oracle was visited by Germanicus in his progress through Ionia. The priest inquired his name; then, descending into a cavern in which the secret spring was, he drank of it; and, returning to Germanicus, recited two or three verses predicting the premature

death of that illustrious prince. Pliny mentions this spring, and asserts that whoever drank of it died soon after.

Of medicinal and detrimental fountains we have many instances vouched for by writers modern as well as ancient. Philostratus mentions one that occasioned leprosy. Vitruvius speaks of another, near Zama in Numidia, that gave unwonted loudness to the voice; while the Macrobian Ethiopians, living, it was said, to the age of 120, their longevity was ascribed to their bathing in a fountain, which perfumed them with an oil which had the odour of violets. We read of some that caused immediate death, some the loss of memory, and others that restored it. Plutarch relates that there was one called Ciffusa, which being of a bright colour and of an exceedingly pleasant taste, the inhabitants of the neighbourhood believed that Bacchus had been washed in it immediately after his birth. It had something of the flavour of wine. Many of these have doubtless a fabulous origin, yet it would be too presuming to discredit all that is related of them. Marcellinus, however, takes no little latitude in describing a fountain called the water of oaths. "Its source," says he, "is cold; and yet it bubbles like boiling water, and possesses a faculty of ordeal in respect to truth and falsehood."

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In Epirus was a fountain, which at the last quarter of the moon was so much impregnated with sulphur that it kindled a piece of wood when put into it; and in the palatinate of Cracow there is a spring, which, upon applying a torch, burns like spirits of wine the flame dances on the water, but it does not heat it. Pliny also speaks of two, one in Judea, the other in Ethiopia, which, being impregnated with sulphur, had the property of oil in respect to burning. Some writers mention a fountain rising in Mount Socrates, the waters of which boiled at the rising of the sun. In Greenland most of the springs

and fountains rise and fall with the tide. Many in Spain, in England, and in Wales have similar periodical returns; and under the rocks of Giggleswick, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, there is a well that ebbs and flows several times in the course of an hour: when the weather is very wet or very dry, it ceases to flow.

Naming of Fountains-Among the Romans, no person was permitted to bathe near the head of a stream, as the body was supposed to pollute consecrated waters. In the middle ages, the common people, where fountains and wells were situated in retired places, were accustomed to honour them with the titles of saints and martyrs. Some were called Jacob's Well, St. John's, St. Mary's, St. Winifred's, and St. Agnes': some were named after Mary Magdalen, and others derived their appellations from beautiful and pious virgins. Though this custom was forbidden by the canons of St. Anselm, many pilgrimages continued to be made to them; and the Romans long retained a custom of throwing nosegays into fountains, and chaplets into wells. From which practice originated the ceremony of sprinkling the Severn with flowers, so elegantly described by Dyer, and so beautifully alluded to by Milton:

"The shepherds at their festivals

Carol her good deeds loud in rustic lays,

And throw sweet garland-wreaths into her stream,
Of pansies, pinks, and gaudy daffodils."

The Hindus frequently sprinkle flowers on the surface of those streams in which they perform their ablutions; while on the Lake Masanawara, north of the Himalaya Mountains, the Tartar shepherds scatter upon its surface the ashes of their relatives.