86 ARALIAUE^— IVY TRIBE 



speaking of the love of the people of that nation for flowers, says, " They 

 decorate their houses with them, and nurse them throughout the winter with 

 the greatest solicitude. Ivy is made to serve a pretty and ornamental pur- 

 pose in their drawing-rooms. They contrive a little frame of light lattice- 

 work on wheels, over which the Ivy is made to twine, forming a pleasant and 

 refreshing-looking arbour, under which the lady of the house ensconces her- 

 self in a kind of rural retirement." 



But it is in Germany chiefly that the Ivy is used as a most lovely and 

 graceful decoration to dwellings. In England, we consider it enough to let 

 its wreaths hang about our walls ; but in Germany, where in its wild state it 

 is far less luxuriant than in our countiy, it is trained also about the walls of 

 the interior of the house. Anna Mary Howitt, in her "Art-Student in 

 Munich," mentions that, from the palace to the cottage, there is scarcely a 

 room to be found which does not possess its Ivy-tree, and hardly a window 

 to be seen in the street which is not rendered a bower by the festoons of Ivy. 

 It trails around the bars of the window, makes a verdant background to 

 bouquets of flowers placed in vases or flower-pots, and often wreaths its 

 picturesque leaves around a small statue of the Madonna. 



" A very pleasant little paper, I have often thought," says this writer, 

 " might be written descriptive of the windows in a German street ; and the 

 mode in which the cherished Ivy was trained would play a conspicuous part 

 in it. You may read much of the character of the inmates of the dwelling 

 by the Ivy. Sometimes its leaves are dusty, and its growth is ungraceful, 

 and its sprays untastefully trained ; sometimes it grows in a gaudy flower-pot, 

 or swings from the centre of a window in a hideously-shaped Blumsn-lamp— 

 flower-lamp, as it is called — a kind of swinging-vessel for plants, very much 

 in vogue here ; but, as a rule, the Ivy is gracefully, nay, most poetically 

 trained ; its Blumen-lamp, if it be planted in one, is often of a graceful rustic 

 character, perhaps of red terra-cotta, with delicately moulded foliage of 

 yellowish-white clay meandering over it, 



" But it is not alone in windows that you see the Ivy trained. Ivy often 

 forms a green and fresh screen across a room, being planted in boxes, and its 

 sprays trained over rustic framework. Ivy often casts its pleasant shadows 

 over a piano, so that the musician may sit before his instrument as within a 

 little bower. Ivy may be seen adorning the shrine which hangs upon the 

 wall, or dropping its sprays above the lady's work-table. 



" The staircase in the house of a great painter here is a complete little 

 bit of fairy-land, thanks to his love of Ivy, which festoons the balustrade of 

 the polished oak stairs, and strews forth its kindly leaves among the rarer 

 beauties of palms and myrtles, which rise grove-like upon the landings ! I 

 know an apothecary's shop which is rather like a bit of wild wood, from its 

 growth of Ivy, than a shop of physic. I was told the other day of a studio 

 here equally sylvan ; and I know an old cobbler who could not mend his 

 shoes without seeing his Ivy-bush daily before him as he works." 



The Ivy does not grow wild either in America or Australia, though 

 common in some parts of Asia. In the Channel Islands it is an exceedingly 

 luxuriant and beautiful plant, the trunks of the trees in Jersey being, almost 

 without exception, covered with its wreaths, which not only add to their 



