122 THE FLORIST. 



Those who are conversant in the writings of polite authors receive an addi- 

 tional entertainment from the country, as it revives in their memories those 

 charming descriptions with which such authors do frequently abound. 



" I was thinking of the foregoing beautiful description in Milton, and apply- 

 ing it to myself, when I observed to the windward of me a black cloud falling 

 to the earth in long trails of rain, which made me betake myself for shelter 

 to a house which I saw at a little distance from the place where I was walking. 

 As I sat in the porch I heard the voices of two or three persons, who seemed 

 very earnest in discourse. My curiosity was raised when I heard the names of 

 Alexander the Great and Artaxerxes ; and, as their talk seemed to run on 

 ancient heroes, I concluded there could not be any secret in it j for which 

 reason I thought I might very fairly listen to what they said. 



" After several parallels between great men, which appeared to me alto- 

 gether groundless and chimerical, I was surprised to hear one say, that he valued 

 the Black Prince more than the Duke of Vendome. How the Duke of Ven- 

 dome should become a rival of the Black Prince, I could not conceive ; and 

 was more startled when I heard a second affirm, with great vehemence, that if 

 the Emperor of Germany was not going off, he should like him better than 

 either of them. He added, that though the season was so changeable, the 

 Duke of Marlborough was in blooming beauty. I was wondering to myself 

 from whence they had received this odd intelligence ; especially when I heard 

 them mention the names of several other great generals, as the Prince of Hesse 

 and the King of Sweden, who, they said, were both running away; to which 

 they added, what I entirely agreed with them in, that the crown of France was 

 very weak, but that the Marshal Villars still kept his colours. At last, one of 

 them told the company, if they would go along with him, he would shew them 

 a Chimney-Sweeper and a Painted Lady in the same bed, which he was sure 

 would very much please them. The shower, which had driven them, as myself, 

 into the house, was now over; and as they were passing by me into the garden, 

 I asked them to let me be one of their company. 



" The gentleman of the house told me, if I delighted in flowers, it would be 

 worth my while ; for that he believed he could shew me such a blow of Tulips 

 as was not to be matched in the whole country. 



" I accepted the offer, and immediately found that they had been speaking 

 in terms of gardening, and that the kings and generals they had mentioned were 

 only so many Tulips, to which the gardeners, according to their usual custom, 

 had given such high titles and appellations of honour. 



" I was very much pleased and astonished at the glorious show of these gay 

 vegetables, that arose in great profusion on all the banks about us. Sometimes 

 I considered them, with the eye of an ordinary spectator, as so many beautiful 

 objects varnished over with a natural gloss, and stained with such a variety of 

 colours as are not to be equalled in any artificial dyes and tinctures. Some- 

 times I considered every leaf as an elaborate piece of tissue, in which the threads 

 and fibres were woven together into different configurations, which give a dif- 

 ferent colouring to the light as it glanced on the several parts of the surface. 

 Sometimes I considered the whole bed of Tulips, according to the notion of the 

 greatest mathematician and philosopher that ever lived, as a multitude of optic 

 instruments designed for the separating light into all those various colours of 

 which it is composed. 



" I was awakened out of these my philosophical speculations by observing 

 the company often seemed to laugh at me. I accidentally praised a Tulip as 

 one of the finest I ever saw ; upon which they told me it was a common Fool's 

 Coat. Upon that I praised a second, which it seems was but another kind of 

 Fool's Coat. I had the same fate with two or three more; for which reason I 

 desired the owner of the garden to let me know which were the finest of the 

 flowers ; for that T was so unskilful in the art, that I thought the most beautiful 

 were the most valuable, and that those which had the gayest colours were the 

 most esteemed. The gentleman smiled at my ignorance. He seemed a very 

 plain honest man, and a person of good sense, had not his head been touched 

 with that distemper, which Hippocrates calls Tulippomania ; insomuch that he 

 would talk very rationally on any subject in the world but a Tulip. 



" He told me that he valued the bed of flowers which lay before us, and 



