The trees, like the shrubs, have their curious poetry and legends. Like
the stones, each tree has its special landscape name according to its
position and purpose in the composition. Just as rocks and stones form
the skeleton of the ground-plan of a garden, so pines form the framework
of its foliage design. They give body to the whole. In this garden there
are five pines,--not pines tormented into fantasticalities, but pines
made wondrously picturesque by long and tireless care and judicious
trimming. The object of the gardener has been to develop to the utmost
possible degree their natural tendency to rugged line and massings of
foliage--that spiny sombre-green foliage which Japanese art is never
weary of imitating in metal inlay or golden lacquer. The pine is a
symbolic tree in this land of symbolism. Ever green, it is at once the
emblem of unflinching purpose and of vigorous old age; and its needle-
shaped leaves are credited with the power of driving demons away.

There are two sakuranoki, [11] Japanese cherry-trees--those trees whose
blossoms, as Professor Chamberlain so justly observes, are 'beyond
comparison more lovely than anything Europe has to show.' Many varieties
are cultivated and loved; those in my garden bear blossoms of the most
ethereal pink, a flushed white. When, in spring, the trees flower, it is
as though fleeciest masses of cloud faintly tinged by sunset had floated
down from the highest sky to fold themselves about the branches. This
comparison is no poetical exaggeration; neither is it original: it is an
ancient Japanese description of the most marvellous floral exhibition
which nature is capable of making. The reader who has never seen a
cherry-tree blossoming in Japan cannot possibly imagine the delight of
the spectacle. There are no green leaves; these come later: there is
only one glorious burst of blossoms, veiling every twig and bough in
their delicate mist; and the soil beneath each tree is covered deep out