Here is one of Madame du Pompadour's, boldly tooled in the fearless but perfect style which Padeloup always employed, and here is one which Louis XIV. himself owned covered with the double L's and bearing his coat of arms, while next to it is one of Louis XV.

This book, whose binding seems to call out that it was once the property of the Great Napoleon, makes us take a short half-breath, and that it was read by its first owner is much more likely than that those of the Louis ever entertained their owner with anything but their beautiful covers.

But see this which bears the coat of arms of the great Francis I., whose reign left such strong impress on the world's architecture. And the prize of all the librarya splendid copy of Grolier with its "I. Grolier et Amicorum," and its well known Grolieresque design which Grolier brought from Italy, and had applied by his own bookbinders to his best-loved books.

As the lover of books is never happy at leaving them, so the writer of the book-lover's hobby gives way too slowly to other and to him much less delightful subjects. But it is an intoxicating fad.

Only second to the bibliophile is the collector of those most wonderful of all plant life, the orchids. It is easy to see how and why men risk their lives in miasmic swamps, in mountain gorges, in unknown wildernesses to gather them, for orchids seem as nearly human as any plant can be. The rare and wonderful plant of Central America, or of the frontiers of Brazil; or another species which live in the cold clear air far up on the Andes Mountains; the oddly shaped, almost animal plants which grow down and not up, whose buds burst into bloom with a small explosion; the weird flowers which have the odour of the apothecary's shop; the orchids of the Malay Peninsula from which all orchids take that name; the strange little plants which may be found only in some tiny end of some particular island of the Pacific; the orchid which looks like a butterfly and

is so named, or like the Chinese baby, or like the great white moth, or the interesting orchid of Madagascar which proved to Mr. Darwin that a moth must exist in that island with a proboscis eighteen inches long, and which was years after discovered, because without a moth with such an exaggerated proboscis the plant could not be fertilized.

Oh! these are to the lover of orchids things to own. All other interests seem small compared with the beloved orchids. Money must be found and spent for them they are almost one's children. One becomes infatuated, drunk with the love of them. And such are fads.

Commerce is organized to gratify the wishes and demands of the faddist as well as the matter-of-fact man. Commerce adds its charm, but the disease is dangerous, infectious, and he who enters the chase with all determination to trade in them as mere merchandise, often finds himself carried away from his original purpose and as crazily in love with them as is he whose wants he sought to gratify.

To the man whose mind is active fads are a delightful rest, and the busier the man the more desirable are hobbies to which he can turn. Healthy fads are heartily to be commended, but fads carried to too great an extreme too often lead to sorrow.

There are a few instances of almost universal faddism, and so far reaching have been the ill effects of such that they have precipitated almost a continent into financial chaos. Perhaps a short chapter on one or two of them will not be uninteresting, as showing the almost fanatical lengths to which the Romance of Trade may be carried when the element of good judgment is eliminated and its place taken by a momentary craze.

II

THE TULIP CRAZE

As long ago as the sixteenth century the tulip-a name taken from the Turkish word signifying a Turban -was introduced into Western Europe. Plants bearing this flower were first seen in the garden of a learned man of Augsburg, Counsellor Herwart, who had already acquired a local reputation as a collector of rare exotics. The bulbs had been sent to him by a friend from Constantinople, and either Herwart's fame as a connoisseur of rare plants, or the erratic condition of the public mind at this period of the world's history, when it seemed to crave a new sensation, or both, within a few years caused this single little flower to turn everything topsy-turvy, to make and unmake fortunes, and to leave several nations much worse off than before its appearance.

Herwart's plants were seen by his neighbours, who at once desired some of their own-their blooms became their pride, and others were infected with the desire to possess them. Money will nearly always procure material things which are wanted, and as the numbers of envious ones increased the value of the plants rose. "Ten times one is ten" with collectors as truly as with mathematicians, and more and more of Augsburg's citizens caught the fever.

Pickmann in his History of Inventions says: "There are few plants which acquire through accident, weakness, or disease so many variegations as the tulip. When uncultivated and in its natural state it is almost of one colour, has large leaves, and an extraordinarily long stem. When it has been weakened by cultivation it becomes more agreeable in the eyes of the florist. The petals are then paler and smaller and more diversified in hue, and the leaves acquire a softer green colour. Thus this masterpiece of culture the more beautiful it becomes grows so much the weaker, so that with the greatest of

skill and most careful attention it can scarcely be transplanted or even kept alive."

At all events the cultivated tulip profoundly pleased Europe's entire public. It gradually found its way into many gardens, at first of the wealthy and then of those whose means were limited, and it is not surprising that in Holland, which in the seventeenth century was one of the richest countries of Europe, it became the horticultural pet of the merchant princes.

About the year 1600 we find the owners of the fine gardens of Amsterdam sending to Constantinople for more plants, and each year until 1634 the tulip increased. in reputation. It became almost a requisite of polite society that one should possess a collection of these flowers, and it was looked upon as extremely bad form for a man of means to be without his share of them. It was a short and easy step from the wealthy to those of moderate fortune, and from them to the less well off, and each class in turn became imbued with the desire to own at least a few of these flowers of fashion-these tulips.

As the financial scale descended so the number became larger and competition grew fiercer. Not to be outdone by his neighbour, we read of the trader of Haarlem who gave half of his entire fortune for a single bulb, not with the thought of selling again at a profit but to keep in his conservatory-to admire-to have and to show with pride to his visitors. And as the mania developed, prices of course went up and up. We read that in 1634 100,000 florins were paid for forty bulbs. But selling by the plant became too commonplace. Collectors, traders and speculators began to quote them by their weight in perits, a small weight of less than a grain. A tulip named Admiral Liepkin weighing 400 perits was quoted as worth 4400 florins, and the Admiral Van der Eyck weighing 446 perits 1260 florins; a Childer of 106 perits 1615 florins, a Viceroy of 400 perits 3000 florins; a Semper Augustus, which was esteemed as most precious

of all, weighing 200 perits, was considered a bargain at 5500 florins. Of this last named there were very few, and an enthusiast offered a dealer in Haarlem for a specimen plant twelve acres of valuable building ground.

A volume of 1000 pages upon the tulip mania by a Mr. Munting gives the following list of various articles which were paid over for a single bulb of the Viceroy :

which shows that the buyer had pretty well ransacked his house for trading merchandise, and also that beer and wine were cheap as compared with other commodities.

The demand for rare species of tulips increased, so that by 1636 regular markets for their sale had been established, and they were daily quoted in the Stock Exchange. This, however, must seem hardly surprising to us, because on the Stock Exchanges in every capital in the world are quoted in this twentieth century shares of companies which have more doubtful value and less raison d'être than had those beloved but over-valued tulips of Amsterdam and Haarlem.

Stock jobbers made the most of the mania. Few kept their heads and fewer kept aloof from the mania. At first-and it was at this immediate period that the disease