The Tqlip Tree. 



plants will no more come from those bits of dry, rubbishy 

 bark than they would come out of saw-dust, and that he will 

 be " bound to eat all the timber that ever comes out of 

 them if he will persist in believing this, as I might have 

 done if I had listened to a botanist of this description ; if 

 he will be guided by his servant and not by his senses, he 

 cannot have the trees, that is all. Every gardener thinks 

 that every one who employs him, is, as far as relates to 

 gardening, a natural-born fool. He will allow him to be, 

 and indeed he will boast of his being, the greatest of 

 orators, the greatest of generals, the most valiant of admi- 

 rals, the most profoundly wise of lawgivers, the most 

 heavenly of all heaven-born ministers, the most pious and 

 learned of bishops, the most learned of all learned lawyers, 

 and, if a physician, capable, almost, of raising the dead to 

 life ; but that, in matters of gardening, he will insist that 

 he is essentially a fool, and that he does not know, and 

 ought not to know, any more about the raising of a tree, 

 than he, the gardener, knows of any of the learned pro- 

 fessions, a profound knowledge in which he is ready 

 (with or without cause) to ascribe to his master. One 

 of the consequences of this way of thinking is, that gar- 

 deners, if the master be of a character that makes it perilous 

 to flatly contradict him, hear, with very little interruption, 

 all that he has to say, and all that he relates to them as 

 having been said by others. They receive his directions 

 very quietly, then go away, and pay no more attention to 

 them than to the w^histling of the winds ; and as to hooks 

 that may be put into their hands, if not written by a pro- 

 fessed gardener by trade, they would laugh at the idea of 

 any one supposing it possible that they can contain any 

 thing worth looking at. If, therefore, those who wish to 

 have Tulip Trees will not look to the sowing and to the 

 subsequent work with their own eyes, their best way is to 

 content themselves with the wish, and leave the grati- 



