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JAPANESE GARDENING HISTORY
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did not reign any more than it does now. The palace to which I refer was that used for Imperial receptions, but unfortunately Mr. Conder, my authority, does not mention where it was situated.

The next great impulse to gardening, as well as to other arts, was during the Kamakura Period (from the middle of the twelfth to the beginning of the fourteenth century), when the Buddhist priests cultivated and refined it. To them, and not to the Chinese (although the names are of Chinese origin), belongs the credit of designating stones by fanciful names, and attributing sentiments and moral qualities to them. If thinking a thing so makes it so, then this charming and poetic idea well deserves its long-continued perpetuation. I cannot but prefer—even in this materialistic age when we are only just beginning to turn towards the influences of spiritual notions on hard, everyday things—a rock which rejoices in the name of the ‘Guardian Stone,’ and has its place and functions all prescribed for it, to an ordinary stone without a name or associations of any sort. To know something of geology, of botany, of any natural science, helps to interest the most casual walker or stroller in a garden: the artist is never bored by the quietest country life where he can find a picture (and he is not an artist if he cannot); and so, when it is remembered that, in addition to all these