

II. HISTOEICAL AND LITEEAEY MEMOEANDA. 



' Here stood a shatter'd arcliway plumed with fern ; 

 And here had fallen a great part of a tower, 

 Whole, like a crag that tumbles from the cliff, 

 And like a crag was gay with wilding flowers : 

 And high above a piece of turret stair, 

 Worn by the feet that now were silent, wound 

 Bare to the sun, and monstrous ivy stems 

 Claspt the grey walls with hairy-fibred arms, 

 And suck'd the joining of the stones, and look'd 

 A knot, beneath, of snakes ; aloft, a grove." 



TENNYSON'S " GERAINT AND ENID." 



the earliest days of civilisation, the 

 Ivy acquired renown by its association 

 with religious rites and social usages. 

 Though of small value in the arts, it 

 would attract attention by its beauty, 

 and its evident fitness to serve as an 

 emblem of the earth's productiveness, 

 and of the health and length of days 

 that men desire. The wild ivy of our 

 woods, though one of the most beautiful 

 of sylvan plants, is so much inferior 

 in beauty to the ivies of Egypt and 

 Greece, that it is impossible to connect 

 the plant with its history in a way to 

 satisfy the mind unless we take into 

 account that the ivy of classic lore is a 

 more lordly plant than ours a repre- 

 sentative of power as well as of beauty, presenting a wondrous wealth of highly- 

 polished leafage, and crowned with gracious corymbs of golden berries. 



The most renowned of all the ancient usages in which the Ivy bore a con- 







