What crouds the rich Divan to-day
With turbaned heads, of every hue
Bowing before that veiled and awful face
Like Tulip-beds of different shapes and dyes,
Bending beneath the invisible west wind's sighs?
_Moore_.
The reader has probably heard of the Tulipomania once carried to so
great an excess in Holland.
With all his phlegm, it broke a Dutchman's heart,
At a vast price, with one loved root to part.
_Crabbe_.
About the middle of the 17th century the city of Haarlem realized in
three years ten millions sterling by the sale of tulips. A single tulip
(the _Semper Augustus_) was sold for one thousand pounds. Twelve acres
of land were given for a single root and engagements to the amount of
L5,000 were made for a first-class tulip when the mania was at its
height. A gentleman, who possessed a tulip of great value, hearing that
some one was in possession of a second root of the same kind, eagerly
secured it at a most extravagant price. The moment he got possession of
it, he crushed it under his foot. "Now," he exclaimed, "my tulip is
unique!"
A Dutch Merchant gave a sailor a herring for his breakfast. Jack seeing
on the Merchant's counter what he supposed to be a heap of onions, took
up a handful of them and ate them with his fish. The supposed onions
were tulip bulbs of such value that they would have paid the cost of a
thousand Royal feasts.
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