than either of them. He added, That though the season was so changeable, the duke of Marlborough was in blom∣ing beauty. I was wondering to myself from whence they had received this odd intelligence, especially when I heard them mention the names of several other great generals, as the prince of Hesse, and the king of Sweden, who, they said, were both running away. To which they added, what I entirely agreed with them in, that the crown of France was very weak, but that the mareschal Villars still kept his colours. At last one of them told the company, if they would go along with him, he would shew them a chimney-sweeper and a painted lady in the same bed, which he was sure would very much please them. The shower which had driven them, as well as myself, into the house, was now over: and as they were passing by me into the garden, I asked them to let me be one of their company.
The gentleman of the house told me, If I delighted in flowers, it would be worth my while, for that he believ∣ed he could shew me such a blow of tulips as was not to be matched in the whole country.
I accepted the offer, and immediately found that they had been talking in terms of gardening, and that the kings and generals they had mentioned were only so many tulips, to which the gardeners, according to their usual custom, had given such high titles and appellations of honour.
I was very much pleased and astonished at the glorious show of these gay vegetables, that arose in great profusion on all the banks about us. Sometimes I considered them with the eye of an ordinary spectator as so many beauti∣ful objects, varnished over with a natural gloss, and stained with such a variety of colours, as are not to be equalled in any artificial dyes or tinctures. Sometimes I considered every leaf as an elaborate piece of tissue, in which the threads and fibres were woven together into different configurations, which gave a different colouring to the light as it glanced on the several parts of the sur∣face.