The grounds are truly beautiful and most
carefully attended to. The elaborate waterworks are perhaps not in the
severest taste. Some of them are but costly puerilities. There is a
water-work in the form of a tree that sends a shower from every branch
on the unwary visitor, and there are snakes that spit forth jets upon
him as he retires. This is silly trifling: but ill adapted to interest
those who have passed their teens; and not at all an agreeable sort of
hospitality in a climate like that of England. It is in the style of the
water-works at Versailles, where wooden soldiers shoot from their
muskets vollies of water at the spectators.[032]
It was an old English custom on certain occasions to sprinkle water over
the company at a grand entertainment. Bacon, in his Essay on Masques,
seems to object to getting drenched, when he observes that "some sweet
odours suddenly coming forth, _without any drops falling_, are in such
a company as there is steam and heat, things of great pleasure and
refreshment." It was a custom also of the ancient Greeks and Romans to
sprinkle their guests with fragrant waters. The Gascons had once the
same taste: "At times," says Montaigne, "from the bottom of the stage,
they caused sweet-scented waters to spout upwards and dart their thread
to such a prodigious height, as to sprinkle and perfume the vast
multitudes of spectators.
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