Page:Japanese Gardens (Taylor).djvu/84

46 finished products of the two systems, the sweet reasonableness of the Eastern method becomes apparent. In no other particular do our home gardens suffer so much by contrast as in the arrangement of rocks. Ours are clumsy, hideously artificial, futile, altogether acts of supererogation itself, compared with theirs. In a very few points we can teach the Japanese something in gardening—but not in this. I think (apologies for the implied pun) rocks are the very strongest features of their gardens.

Our methods in this line, although perhaps governed by that inscrutable thing called the law of chance, which we are assured is a deep but definite science, give, instead of the unstudied and casual effect desired, only one of laboured ignorance and haphazard ugliness. Their ways, governed by rules which are based on careful and exact observation of Nature herself, give an effect at once beautiful and, as it were, inevitable. We feel as if only a happy accident has made their stony beds for water, that by good luck they have stumbled on their felicitous combinations of trees and shrubs; and, with a self-accusing excuse, we pretend to believe that since Nature has really made the garden for them, anyone, even we ourselves, must have had the sense to leave it so!

The high monetary as well as æsthetic value with which Japanese gardens are adorned would probably amaze the average foreigner