As we leave this beguiling haunt the air is suddenly bewitched with entrancing perfume, and our fancy lit with luminous visions of the Orient from the great golden doorway which glows through the branches from the opposite brink and floods the water with its liquid replica. Attar of roses! One such inviting whiff is sufficient. Leaving the water’s edge we return toward the interior of the island, and are soon confronted by the wonderful rose-garden wherein are assembled all the roses of the world, with their thousands of varieties. Roses single and double, pink roses, white roses, roses yellow, crimson, orange, and saffron, and, indeed, of every hue but blue, mingling their beauty and their fragrance in an acre of bloom, and sprinkling the ground in showers of petals with every breeze. [Illustration: THE EDGE OF THE ROSE GARDEN, WOODED ISLAND.] The now famous rose-garden lies in the southern end of the island, approached through winding walks, garlanded with flowery shrubs of every habit and hue, of graceful blossom-burdened spiræas, drooping as with a weight of snow, or varied with rare foliaged plants which vie with the flowers in the endless play of their brilliant colors. Through the skilful foresight and planning of Mr. John Thorpe, the custodian of this realm dedicated to Flora, the fair goddess has crowned him with a new decoration of wreath or laurel for every week, from the earliest yellow glow of May to the brilliant maples and the final autumnal glory of the chrysanthemum. [Illustration: JAPANESE BUILDING ON WOODED ISLAND.] Japonica! Japonica! How continually does the spirit of the flowery land hover here! It is, indeed, scarcely a surprise that the actual, familiar outlines of its quaint massive gables suddenly confronts us, looking down above a mass of the Mikado’s own chrysanthemum, and we suddenly find ourselves transported to Tokio or Yokohama, surrounded by a veritable epitome of Japan, embracing all the actual features, floral, ornamental, and utilitarian, with which, through the educational influence of painted fan and screen and household gods of vase and kakemono, we have become so pleasantly familiar.