Nor were these negotiations confined to the great central emporiums. Every village had its market-place for tulips; festive meetings were held when sales were effected; and the universal favourite--a tulip, was the constant decorator of such festivities. The learned and the ignorant, the cautious and the eager, men of all classes and all temperaments, were infected; it seemed as if the commerce of the world were henceforth to run in one exclusive channel--the sale and the purchase of tulips. The eagerness with which men embarked in these wild speculations may be best explained by a statement of simple facts.[22] Property to the value of 100,000 florins[23] was invested in the purchase of a few roots. One kind of tulip, the /Admiral Leifken/, was reckoned worth 4,400 florins. A /Semper Augustus/ was deemed cheap, if purchased for 5,500 florins. At one period there were only two roots of that rare species in Holland; and so intense was the passion to possess them, that a merchant offered twelve acres of building lots for one of them, which was at Haarlem, while its neighbour of Amsterdam was purchased for 4,600 florins, a carriage, a span of grey horses,[24] and a complete suit of harness. A /Viceroy/ was worth 3000 florins. An /Admiral Vonder Eyk/ was rated at 1,260 florins; and the whole were sold by weight as carefully as jewel merchants weigh the diamond. But to name no more, there was a single root which cost two lasts[*10] of wheat, and four of rye; four fat oxen, eight fat swine, and twelve fat sheep; two hogsheads of wine, and four tuns of beer; two tons of butter, one thousand pounds of cheese, a complete bed, a suit of clothes, and a silver drinking cup, valued in all at 2,560 florins. Such is a glimpse of the tulip mania--such the effect of man's extraordinary haste to be rich--such the condition into which men proverbial for their sobriety of judgment were precipitated, when they pushed their speculations beyond their legitimate channels. THE SUBSTANCE THROWN AWAY.