THE SWEET O’ THE YEAR 
43 
ties in the combination of this orange and flame-hued 
flower with its proper peers. Monticelli would have 
known how to deal with it aright; and I am by no 
means sure that thereby does not hang an illuminating 
suggestion. Why not a Monticelli plot for next May ? 
There might be a very pretty holiday task in the plan¬ 
ning. 
Gone where the old moons go is that first brilliant 
host of Paynims, but it has left us such successors as 
take the suns of May with beauty: beauty so strange, 
so various, so alluring to the imagination, that I find 
myself straying towards the plots that enthrone my tall 
May-flowering tulips a dozen times a day. Like the 
Lily of the Enchanted Sea, they wave their illumined 
heads to the breeze, this wonderful trinity of turban 
flowers, and which is fairest I could not for the life of 
me tell you. The names that classify them seem singu¬ 
larly unsuggestive, but then that is a characteristic of so 
many names. The Cottage, the Darwin, and the 
English Florist’s tulip, these are the three arbitrary divi¬ 
sions of this Arabian Nights’ treasure, which, buried 
once, reduplicates itself and increases year by year. 
The limitations of time and space conjointly forbid 
aught but a meagre tale of their majestic loveliness. 
Some are translucent, some semi-opaque. Some (and 
these the English Florist claims) are all freaked and 
marbled with diverse rare dyes—white, with deep rose ; 
purple, bronze, and amber; primrose, orange, and 
russet, mix and mingle in such barbaric splendour as 
you might think to find in the robes of the African 
magician. 
