88 DUTCH BULBS AND GARDENS 



tulip-growing has gone ; it is wonderful how often 

 Romance is announced as dead and gone, a many- 

 lived thing one must think it to need so many 

 death-knells. Tulip-growing now, it is said, is a 

 mere commercial enterprise, a growing without 

 interest of hundreds of thousands of the cheapest 

 sorts and selling them for the best price obtainable ; 

 no longer any interest or individuality in it, no one 

 thinking or caring for new sorts or history, or any- 

 thing but price per hundred. It may be ; romance 

 is a strange thing; whether the term is applied 

 to flower or adventure, callings or institutions, it 

 does not really refer to the concerned actors and 

 doers, but to the sentiments and opinions of the 

 unconcerned lookers-on. These unconcerned at 

 one time had a craze for tulips, then tulips were 

 romantic ; now they are not, and romance is gone. 

 Now these folk merely order, or let their gardeners 

 order, so many red and so many white, so many 

 double, single, striped, or plain. There is no more 

 romance now to them in tulip producing and buy- 

 ing than in grocery producing and buying : that 

 is to say, they talk little more about the one than 

 the other, their horticultural conversation is now 

 centred on hybrid teas and herbaceous borders. 

 It was not so a hundred years ago, tulips were 



