Page:Japanese Gardens (Taylor).djvu/224

146 as mirrors enlarge little rooms, as the sea beneath a sunset intensifies the glory of the western sky, so water in a garden doubles the interest, the beauty, and the apparent size of the place in which it is put. But, more than all, it makes a point on which the idea of the composition rests, forms a road for the mind and the imagination to travel by, beyond the little enclosure into mystic realms.

Japan is not a hot country, except on the coast during the months of July and August, but, nevertheless, the idea everywhere prevails that a garden must look, even if it is not, cool. Running water, then, or rather moving water, suggests coolness, but not coldness. In the depths of winter, when the rest of the world is hushed in white, deathlike sleep, the water pulses still with life. If a little lake is the garden’s heart it must be one whose source can be seen, whether a stream, a cascade, or a spring; for ‘dead water,’ as they call any without a visible supply or motion, is both practically and æsthetically taboo.

It is remarkable, indeed, how much common sense enters into all Japanese artistic and ethical ideas. The notions at which foreigners are at first inclined to laugh, as ‘superstitions,’ if analysed are almost always found to have had their origin in cold, hard reason. So the objection to deep pools, to gloomy, mud-bottomed ponds, to stagnant waters which may harbour