All this is a preamble to the statement that, except where the debasing art standards of the West has affected them (for it is the poor and pernicious, not the best foreign works that they see), the landscape artists have continued in the fair, firm paths of the past, and Hachi Niwa are good reproductions on a small scale of the best gardens.
The idea of these miniature models of scenery came, of course, from China. I could not but be struck, only the other day, when I saw into what degenerate lines the art had fallen, in Chinese hands, compared with the examples I had known in Japan. The makers, in this case, were native watch-keepers at the lighthouses which Himself had asked me to go with him to inspect. The Trinity House man in charge, an unusually clever and intelligent Englishman, encouraged his native staff to fads of the sort, to keep them out of mischief when they were off duty. There were, perhaps, half a dozen of these toy models of mountainous scenery shown me, and some were still in course of construction, while yet others had been shipped home. Big lumps of coral rock, worn by the action of the sea into natural hills, valleys, and caves formed the basis of them, and, after a promising piece had been chosen, a jack-knife helped on the good work, until a mountain, cleft by a ravine arched with bridges, appeared. Then the little heights were crowned with porcelain models of
