88 IVIED EUINS. 



many it fails to excite 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 revisit- 

 ing and drawing it was expressed at the time. A 

 few days only elapsed ; but the inhabitant of a 

 neighbouring cottage had most kindly laboured 

 hard in the interval, and pulled down " all the 

 nasty ivy, that the gentleman might see the ruin.' 1 

 He did see it, but every charm had departed. 

 These two instances, from many that might be ad- 

 vanced, manifest that ivy most frequently gives to 

 these ancient edifices the idea of beauty,, and con- 

 tributes chiefly to influence our feelings when view- 

 ing them. The ruins of a fortress, 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 lithograph the ruin. We do 

 not regard this ivy as a relic of ancient days ; as 

 having shadowed the religious recluse, and with it 

 often, doubtless, piety and faith ; for it did not 

 hang around the building in old time, but is com- 

 paratively, a modern upstart^ a sharer of monastic 



