CHAPTER VII
GARDEN ARCHITECTURE (GATES, SUMMER-HOUSES, AND BRIDGES)
“He thought he saw a Garden Door
That opened with a key.
He looked again, and found it was
The Double Rule of Three.
‘And all its mystery,’ he said,
‘Is clear as day to me.’ ”
As the Double Rule of Three will never, I fear, be anything but a mystery to me, I can only hope that the bearing of the verse upon Gates may not be too strictly insisted upon. Many parts of a Japanese garden are mysterious and hard to understand; some comprehension of the sentiments which underlie them one can only come at by glimpses of insight into the national character, by moments of clairvoyance that illuminate the subject like flashes of lightning. The key is not in the lock, but in the mind of the garden viewer, in the heart of the garden lover.
But it should not be inferred that Japanese garden gates are dull and uninteresting; that,
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