CHAPTER IX.
Haarlem Tulip culture--Early speculation--The song of the tulip--Dutch gardening new and old--A horticultural pilgrimage--The Haarlem dunes--Gardens without secrets--Zaandvoort--_Through Noord-Holland_ and its charms--The church of St.Bavo--Whitewash _v_.

Mystery--The true father of the Reformation--Printing paves the way--The Hout--Laocooen and his sons--The siege of Haarlem--Dutch fortitude--The real Dutch courage--The implacable Alva--Broken promises--A tonic for Philip--The women of Haarlem--A pledge to mothers--The great organ--Three curious inhabitants--The Teyler Museum--Frans Hals--A king of abundance--Regent pieces--The secondary pictures in the Museum--Dirck Hals--Van der Helst--Adrian Brouwer--Nicolas Berchem--Ruisdael--The lost mastery--Echoes of the past.
Haarlem being the capital of the tulip country, the time to visit it is the spring.

To travel from Leyden to Haarlem by rail in April is to pass through floods of colour, reaching their finest quality about Hillegom.

The beds are too formal, too exactly parallel, to be beautiful, except as sheets of scarlet or yellow; for careless beauty one must look to the heaps of blossoms piled up in the corners (later to be used on the beds as a fertiliser), which are always beautiful, and doubly so when reflected in a canal.

From a balloon, in the flowering season, the tulip gardens must look like patchwork quilts.
Tulip Sunday, which represents the height of the season (corresponding to Chestnut Sunday at Bushey Park) is about the third Sunday in April.