Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 1.djvu/228

 the graceful softness of the cursive script. In the literary picture, the rocks assume fantastic shapes; the cliffs marshal themselves in strange, unnatural phalanxes; the trees, gnarled and distorted, grow in perplexing places, and the whole scene suggests rigid irregularity and conventional quaintness. Something of that was visible in the gardens of the Heian time. The general design had only one orthodox type. A lake, not ungracefully shaped, occupied the centre, surrounding an artificial island to which wooden bridges gave access. Trees of various kinds, notably pines, trained with infinite patience into strange curves of stem and wayward disposition of branch, overhung the lake, presenting strong contrasts of foliage. A waterfall, or the semblance of one if the reality could not be achieved, fed the lake from the south, and on its eastern and western shores, respectively, stood an "angling grotto" and a "hermitage of spring waters," whither the family and their friends repaired on summer evenings, gaining access to these buildings by corridors which formed the boundaries of the garden and were recessed at intervals by waiting-rooms for domestics and guards. In the most orthodox park a limpid stream flowed, with ribbon-like windings, from the row of buildings to the eastern and western sides of the lake, and was spanned here and there by bridges of varied form. Round the margin of the lake and at the feet of the "angling grotto" lay rocks of many hues, beaten into fantastic