66 IVIED RUINS. 



such interest as it should do. It is a bare reality. A 

 ruin in the West of England once interested me greatly. 

 The design of revisiting and drawing it was expressed 

 at the time. A few days only elapsed ; but the inhab- 

 itant of a neighboring cottage had most kindly labored 

 hard in the interval, and pulled down " all the nasty 

 ivy, that the gentleman might see the ruin." He did 

 see it, but every charm had departed. These two in- 

 stances, from many that might be advanced, manifest 

 that ivy most frequently gives to these ancient edifices 

 the idea of beauty, and contributes chiefly to influence 

 our feelings when viewing them. The ruins of a for- 

 tress, or warlike tower, may often historically interest 

 us from the renown of its founder or its possessor, some 

 scene transacted, some villain punished, hero triumphant, 

 or cause promoted, to which we wished success : but 

 the quiet, secluded, monastic cell, or chapel, has no tale 

 to tell ; history hardly stays to note even its founder's 

 name ; and all the rest is doubt and darkness ; yet, 

 shrouded in its ivied folds, we reverence the remains, 

 we call it picturesque, we draw, we engrave, we litho- 

 graph the ruin. We do not regard this ivy as a relic 

 of ancient days ; as having shadowed the religious re- 

 cluse, and with it often, doubtless, piety and faith ; for 

 it did not hang around the building in old time, but is 

 comparatively a modern upstart, a sharer of monastic 

 spoils, a usurper of that which has been abandoned by 

 another. The tendril pendent from the orient window, 

 lightly defined in the ray which it excludes, twining 

 with graceful ease round some slender shaft, or woven 

 amid the tracery of the florid arch, is elegantly orna- 

 mental, and gives embellishment to beauty ; but the 

 main body of the ivy is dark, sombre, massy ; yet, strip 

 it from the pile, and we call it sacrilege, the interest of 

 the whole is at an end, the effect ceases, 



"Onp moment seen, then lost for ever." 



Yet what did the ivy effect? what has departed with it? 

 This evanescent charm perhaps consists in the obscu- 

 rity, in the sobriety of light it occasioned, in hiding the 



