CHAPTER II
JAPANESE GARDENING HISTORY
“The stranger who has wandered far,
The friend with welcome smile,
All sorts of men who come and go,
Meet at this mountain stile—
They meet and rest awhile.”
A Hundred Verses from old Japan
The history of Japanese landscape art, like that of its country, is one of the most interesting parts of an interesting subject, because so much myth, so much poetry is intermingled with its facts and its never dull prose. It is a very human art, and it is pleasant to think that priest and prince and pauper alike have all had a hand in the making of it. In the case of the pauper, this perhaps has been by the obedient following of the dictates of the masters, so hardening the rules; but, however this may be, all classes have, sooner or later, been concerned in it, and, if the next greatest man to him who utters a wise or beautiful thought is that one who repeats it, then these others have shown their greatness by appre-
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