Tulip. 
(A DECLARATION OF LOVE.) 
T HE gaudy Tulip has gathered round its vividly gay petals 
quite a galaxy of anecdotes, more or less reliable. It is 
sometimes marked in the English language of flowers as indi¬ 
cative of vanity , but more generally under its Oriental signifi¬ 
cation of a declaration of love. Its original home is presumed 
to be Persia, and its name is considered a corruption of the 
Persian word for turban, to which article of attire it bears no 
little similitude ; a resemblance of which Moore, more than 
once, has availed himself in his poem of “ Lalla Rookh.” 
Busbeck, the Emperor of Germany’s ambassador to the 
Sultan, in the middle of the sixteenth century, was greatly 
attracted by the gay colours of this flower, and on his return 
to his native land, carried some of the bulbs with him. They 
soon became great favourites with the florists. They were 
imported into Italy, in 1577 into England, some few years 
later into France, and ere long were domiciled in nearly every 
European climate. 
Beckman, in his “ History of Inventions,” gives an account 
of how, in 1634, one of the most singular manias that has ever 
deranged the human mind broke forth in Holland. All classes 
were infected with an extraordinary desire to possess rare spe¬ 
cimens of the tulip: not, indeed, in most instances, for love 
of the flower, but rather with a view to participate in the pe¬ 
cuniary speculations to which it gave rise. For a single bulb, 
which the Dutch florists had grandiloquently styled Semper 
Augustus, £400, a handsome carriage and pair of horses, with 
harness complete, is recorded to have been given ; it is said 
that ;£ 1,200 was the purchase-money of another; while engage- 
