IVIED RUINS. 87 



might be advanced, manifest that ivy most fre- 

 quently 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 inte- 

 rest us, from the renown of its founder or its pos- 

 sessor, 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 reel use, 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 pendant from the orient 

 window, lightly defined in the ray which it ex- 

 cludes, twining with graceful ease round some 

 slender shaft, or woven amid the tracery of the 

 florid arch, is elegantly ornamental, and gives em- 

 bellishment 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, 

 A moment seen, then lost for ever. 



Yet what did the ivy effect ? what has departed 



