3o8 MORE POT-POURRI 



this dazzling dream the Sultan and his harem, and 

 whoever else was great and mighty at the Court of Con- 

 stantinople, worshipped at the shrine of the Tulip, and 

 the whole of the East echoed the praise of the thouliban, 

 or turban flower, the corruption of which term has 

 become our name for the flower. 



' The West at that period knew nothing of the Tulip, 

 though it had been great in the East for more years 

 than men remembered. India, Persia, and the Levant 

 had, in the course of ages, woven around it countless 

 legends of love and life and death ; great poets sang its 

 praises ; the heathen laid it at the feet of his gods, and 

 the early Christian of the East pointed to it as the 

 "Lily of the field" which afforded to Christ the subject 

 of a divine sermon to which the world has clung, and 

 still is clinging, as to a never -failing help when the 

 burden of life grows heavy. 



'In the sixteenth century an ambassador of the 

 Emperor of Germany to the Sublime Porte, going from 

 Adrianople to Constantinople shortly after midwinter, 

 came upon a wondrous sight. On the roadside, among 

 the weeds and grasses, there rose in glorious beauty 

 clump after clump, bed after bed, of tall, goblet -shaped 

 flowers. As the sun shone upon them they blazed with 

 the colour of fire and sunlight, and the smooth, broad 

 petals formed a deep cup classically simple and perfect, 

 closing over a heart of gold. 



1 Before long a few Tulip bulbs reached Germany, 

 and thence in 1577 came to England.' 



We all know how Tulips were then taken up by 

 Dutchmen. The article says that for the three years 

 from 1634 to 1637 Holland was but a large asylumful of 

 tulipomaniacs. I have just been told how that in one 

 vineyard in Alsace, and in one alone, the pretty wild 

 tulip Tulipa reflexa flourishes abundantly. I think more 



