In all these fountains the broad shadow from
the roof, however vertical the sun may be,
generally covers half the wall under it with a
deep shade that no heat can pierce: the great
lapping sheet of grey lead above, receiving all the
gilding rain of fire, and bearing it with a stupid
patience worthy of that dull metal. It is, therefore,
lower down in the marble panel above the
fountain grating, and in the sections of surface
over the arch where the tank is, and under the
dedicatory inscription, that you must look for
the beautiful ornament that filigrees the whole
surface with honeysuckle wreaths, trails of wild
vines, rose branches, and tendrils of jasmine
and pomegranates, in the purest Persian taste:
never deep-cut, or shadow-producing, or
mysterious, like Gothic work: never quaint or
massy: but floral, playful, cheerful, and full of
a sense of unceasing sunshine and a deep
enjoyment of life. Human figures the Koran forbids,
so, as the Turks have no painters, they have
no sculptors, and their ornaments are pots of
roses, lilies, bunches of grapes, dishes of pears,
and all sorts of fanciful conventionalisms, blue
and gilt if the building is stone, but nearly plain
if it be coated with marble. Then, there are
fan-like ornaments that look like peacocks' tails,
pierced bosses punctured as if with needles so
fine is the work, delicious wildernesses of
arabesque, covering every inch of marble with a
thicket trellis-work of leafy stem, the product
of skilful eyes and hands now resting under the
tall trees of darkness in the great cemetery of
Scutari.

Here you see in these panels of the fountain
walls, an epitome of all the Oriental mind
has produced in art, whether Turkish, Moorish,
or Arab. Here, are thoughts from Persepolis and
the Alhambra, Ispahan and Delhi, worked with
the rarest care in honeycomb niche, and rounded
boss and border. There is not a street in
Stamboul but you find one of these fountains;
perhaps new, and surrounded by its votaries, porters,
and water-carriers, drinking or resting; perhaps
defaced and disused, the marble tank full of
dust and melon rind: its poems with the gilding
faded off, the water dried up, and the name
of the Turk who erected it, forgotten. They
are of all ages, from those raised by men who
stormed in at the gate when the last Constantine
fell, to that of the pasha who died but yesterday.
They are in all places: in the courtyards
of mosques, by the water's edge, in the
open places where boatmen and horse-boys
congregate, by the bazaar's dark entrances, by
the khans where laden pack-horses go in and
out all day, beyond the city walls, where the
country opens into gardens and broad sandy
tracts, or where the split figs, looking like red
flowers, hang over the wall, and the
watermelon-sellers lie and sleep, dreaming of
customers.

The fountain in the mosque of the Sultan
Mahmoud at Tophana, is a kind of conical
tent-cover, crowned with a gilt star, and supported
by slender pillars, within which is a font-like
well, caged over with wire. Here, on the low
stone seats, you always see some red-sashed
Greek servant in a white jacket, watching the
water filling his copper vessel. The brim of the
roof of this fountain is remarkable for being
painted with a rude landscape that runs all
round. Just outside the red-striped walls of
St. Sophia, there is one with a broad Tartar
roof, near which you always find some sherbet-seller,
resting his wickered bottles, or some
bare-armed hammals (porters) squatting, while
they smoke their chibouks, under the stump
of a mulberry-tree, and just under the port-holes
of the mighty dome itself. In the Sultan
Achmet mosque-yard, is one specially effective
and simple, with little ornament but a
pierced lattice above the water-cups, with
inscriptions and tracery half hidden by the
shade of a mountainous plane-tree. Ten to
one but you will find something worth looking
at in the fountain shadow: either some laughing
negresses nursing children, some old
white-turbaned Turk, resting his head on his hand,
and thinking of past times with a lazy dreaminess
unknown to the people of almost any other
nation: always at the grating of iron flower-stalks
some Greek talking through the bars to
the fountain-keeper, whose face you can scarcely
see in the dim inner coolness of the fountain
chamber.

In the court-yard, by some mosque, the tent-like
roof of the fountain, high and peaked, often
rises to a level with the cloister arches, and the
low domes that cover the arcading that runs
round each side of the quadrangle; and it is
spotted and trellised with leaf shadows from a
vine that, linking together a plane and a
cypress— gloomy husband and playful wife —
throw a green darkness all round the fountain-cage,
where the white turbans sit, and mildly,
blandly, gossip after their manner.

Then there is the modernised fountain, as at
Tophana, where the domes have been removed
and a vulgar compo parapet and cast-iron railing
substituted, and where the inscriptions stand
out black against very white walls: the whole
building being surrounded by heavy stone posts
and loops of iron chains. But azure, and
gilding, and bran-new marble do not make up for
beauty of form, and I never gave my affection
to these new tinselled beauties, but kept my
love for that exquisite fountain of old Sultan
Achmet, with its strong pillars and beautiful
pierced marble screen: admiring it so much
that I was ready to chase away the dull-eyed
vendor of almond-cake who always kept his
stall close to this masterpiece of Turkish art.

Two things are always seen about a Turkish
fountain: the first, pigeons; the second,
street boys. Always pigeons on the lead roof,
cooing, spreading their purple necks to the
light, fondling, pecking, or fluttering; always
street boys, watchful and mischievous, who sit
in the niches, with their dirty backs against
the gilding and carving, idle, and (because
idle) happy. Over them lies the broad
shadow, and they lie under it as in a shady wood,
defying the heat which makes the paving-stones