But I have come to the conclusion that the real charm of ancient Yeddo must have lain more in nature than in art, in its bright suburbs, evergreen groves, wistaria-covered arbours, and chrysanthemum gardens; nature in her exuberance, in her spring bloom, or the varied tints of autumn intermingled with arched bridges, carved balustrades, and flights of steps, relieved by art. Monuments in Japan seem to serve above all as a foreground to a fine view: the most conspicuous towers, ex-voto lanterns, or finest "tories," acquire an artistic value more from their surroundings than from their intrinsic worth. The way in which the monuments are placed, the effect they give to the landscape, and especially the view to be seen from them, are the main points of interest. I am sorry that books written on Japanese art generally fail to perceive its real value, and point out merits it does not possess. It is particularly the imagination that ought to be dwelt on; not merely the handiwork, but the conception of the brain. Shrines, kiosks, pagodas, may sometimes be very primitive, but in the imagination of the artist they represented fairy buildings. It is the same with their tiny little gardens, or dwarf woods. Though they are in reality minute, they grow in the owners' minds to veritable parks or virgin forests. Some of the so-called Imperial palaces around Nikko are most humble abodes, surrounded by a little strip of land. Katsura-no-Rikyu Palace, for instance, consists simply of a few planks nailed together, forming a kind of log house of one storey, a few feet square, and divided in the interior by partitions or the so-called sliding screens. Certainly it is no palace; it can scarcely be called a house. It is literally a shed roofed with bamboo and thatch,--nothing more. And yet the followers of the imaginative school of aesthetics saw it with different eyes. To them it represented what their fancy imagined, not what they saw in reality, and the little open space before the building, which, with the best will in the world, can only be called a gravel yard, dotted with unhewn stones, was to them the illimitable surface of the ocean, the scattered blocks so many islands and continents. In the corner stands a little estrade of bamboo, where the Mikado and his chosen friends used to sit in deep contemplation before the elaborate world of their fancy, and enjoy the passive happiness of the Zen doctrine.