ignorant displays of what wealth can accomplish in the creation of
incongruities that violate nature.

Now a Japanese garden is not a flower garden; neither is it made for the
purpose of cultivating plants. In nine cases out of ten there is nothing
in it resembling a flower-bed. Some gardens may contain scarcely a sprig
of green; some have nothing green at all, and consist entirely of rocks
and pebbles and sand, although these are exceptional. [1] As a rule, a
Japanese garden is a landscape garden, yet its existence does not depend
upon any fixed allowances of space. It may cover one acre or many acres.
It may also be only ten feet square. It may, in extreme cases, be much
less; for a certain kind of Japanese garden can be contrived small
enough to put in a tokonoma. Such a garden, in a vessel no larger than a
fruit-dish, is called koniwa or toko-niwa, and may occasionally be seen
in the tokonoma of humble little dwellings so closely squeezed between
other structures as to possess no ground in which to cultivate an
outdoor garden. (I say 'an outdoor garden,' because there are indoor
gardens, both upstairs and downstairs, in some large Japanese houses.)
The toko-niwa is usually made in some curious bowl, or shallow carved
box or quaintly shaped vessel impossible to describe by any English
word. Therein are created minuscule hills with minuscule houses upon
them, and microscopic ponds and rivulets spanned by tiny humped bridges;
and queer wee plants do duty for trees, and curiously formed pebbles
stand for rocks, and there are tiny toro perhaps a tiny torii as well--
in short, a charming and living model of a Japanese landscape.

Another fact of prime importance to remember is that, in order to
comprehend the beauty of a Japanese garden, it is necessary to
understand--or at least to learn to understand--the beauty of stones.
Not of stones quarried by the hand of man, but of stones shaped by