The Leicester New Monthly Magazine (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Jarva. The succession settled, he was returning to his country with his daughter, the incomparable Tulipia. Her father wished that his loveliest daughter should bear the name of the most beautiful of flowers. She justified the name most completely, for if her fresh and sparkling colour, her majestic carriage, excited admiration, she wanted that vivacity, that ardour of mind and body which forms the most seductive grace of youth : the Tulip has no scent. While smoking his pipe, Van Clipp reviewed all the delights which awaited him in Holland. First, improvements to be made to his green-house, his collection of tulips to augment? for that no sacrifice was too great; then, profiting by his licence, he would finish his great work upon Tulips, being their history from the creation to the present day. The theme was a fruitful one, and Van Clipp had already written a part of it. He first told how they give to the tulip all the colours of the rainbow, then the more piercing colour and the faintest tint; how spots are obtainable on them; how some are pinked, striped and bordered; others are clouded, veined, feathered and covered with eyes:? Passing then to History, Van Clipp related the severe measures adopted by the States general, interdicting all Dutchmen, on pain of exile and confiscation of goods, from trading in tulips:? It is true that the taste for tulips had become a perfect mania. All the cash in the country was swallowed up in pots of flowers. The Vice-Roi had cost thirty-six sacks of corn, seventy-two sacks of rice, four prize bulls, twelve sheep, eight pigs, two hogsheads of wine, four tons of beer, two tons of salt butter, one hundred pounds of cheese, and a great silver vase. Ten tulip roots sold by public auction had fetched eighty thousand francs. An amateur of...