Page:Japanese Gardens (Taylor).djvu/71

Rh angles in attractive groups; for even the tyro knows that a curved road seems—and is—longer than a straight one.

As so much of the foundation of this art is to get the effect of natural scenery, it is essential to work always towards the object of making the garden appear larger than it really is; for most gardens are small, and even the big ones want to look bigger, and to suggest stretches of scenery. To attain this, other rules of art enter: horizontal objects are placed in front of standing ones—as a ‘Recumbent Stone’ beside a ‘Statue Rock,’ or a Standard lantern; a smooth stretch of turf (if it is used) set off by a group of trees; or a lake nestling beneath a rocky hill.

Japanese artists declare that it is far easier to design a big than a small garden; and one can see that the balance of value in the microscopic garden becomes so delicate that apothecary’s scale would, figuratively, have to be used. The large garden can afford big open spaces, the relief of plainness to the eye tired by a complexity of objects of interest, but small ones must, by infinite detail, give the effect of size; just as a little woman in a dress with a big floral pattern upon it seems fatter and larger, while a big woman in a plain dark colour seems to reduce her dimensions, so the least scrap of a garden, by a multiplicity of points of interest, carrying attention from one spot to another,