guide-books, through the arrangement of its important stones, to form the Chinese character or ideograph for ‘heart’ (心). Another, Mr. Conder tells us, is meant to suggest in miniature the Garden of Paradise; but each might be that.
While these temple and palace grounds are stately and rather formal, and of the highly finished style of composition, tea-gardens, which have most affected the artistic impulses of other gardens, have, as a rule, been kept wild, and more or less rough in character. Here is what the three greatest exponents of the art of landscape gardens and Tea Ceremonial have bequeathed to us as their ideals for a tea garden. Sen-no-Rikiu’s was: “The lovely precincts of a secluded mountain shrine, with the red leaves of autumn scattered around.” Enshiu’s was: “The sweet solitude of a landscape in clouded moonlight, with a half gloom between the trees.” Ogari Sotau’s was: “A grassy wilderness in autumn, with plenty of wild flowers.” All are different, but all are for Nature. Contrast these ideals (which are most assuredly put into practice by even modern garden makers in the Flowery Kingdom) with the gardens for tea that one sees in England—earwiggy places of toppling arbour and untidy formality, often enough: or with German, or German-American beer gardens or picnic grounds, with their noise, and plank tables, and smell of beer (and
