NOVEMBEE. 519 



by BEENAED BAETON, in his lines on Leiston Abbey, 

 Suffolk, among the vegetable tracery overspreading 

 that edifice, though, as before adverted to, confounded 

 with mosses, in thus apostrophizing the ruins : 

 "The mantling ivy's ever verdant wreath 

 She gave thee as her livery to wear ; 

 Thy wall-flowers, waving at the gentlest breath, 



And scattering perfume on the summer air, 

 Wooing the bee to come and labour there ; 



The clinging moss, whose hue of sober grey, 

 Makes beautiful what else were bleak and bare ; 



These she has given thee as a fit array, 

 For thy declining pomp, and her delightful sway." 

 CEABBE, who, from having studied botany in his 

 younger days, when a village pill-compounder, has 

 often enriched his compositions with agreeable floral 

 gems, manifesting the acute eye with which he sur- 

 veyed the face of nature, has thus alluded to the 

 effect produced by the lichens in harmonizing to the 

 eye of the painter, those bald roughnesses which so 

 offend correct taste in most new buildings, while at 

 the same time he very correctly alludes to their mode 



of growth : 



" Yon bold tower survey, 



Tall and entire, and venerably grey, 

 For time has softened what was harsh when new, 

 And now the stains are all of sober hue : 

 The living -stains which Nature's hand alone 

 Profuse of life, pours forth upon the stone : 

 For ever growing ; where the common eye 

 Can but the bare and rocky bed descry ; 

 There science loves to trace her tribes minute, 

 The juiceless foliage and the tasteless fruit; 

 There she perceives them round the surface creep, 

 And while they meet, their due distinction keep ; 

 Mix'd, but not blended ; each its name retains, 

 And these are Nature's ever-during stains." 



