RUINS. 209 



the ancient Grecian temples, and to those Gothic Castles 

 that add a romantic character to certain European land- 

 scapes. 



Some of the interesting accompaniments of a ruined 

 building are the plants which are found clustering around 

 its old roof and walls. Nature always decorates what 

 time has destroyed, and when the ornaments of art have 

 crumbled, she rears in their place garlands from her own 

 wilds, and the building, no longer beautiful, is adorned 

 with the greenness of vegetation. Hence certain plants 

 have become intimately allied with ruins, and derive from 

 this alliance a peculiarly romantic interest. Such are the 

 mosses and lichens, the evergreen ferns, the creeper, and 

 the most of the saxatile plants in America ; in Europe, 

 the yellow wall-flower, the chenopody, and the ivy. 



In every ruin, therefore, we see the commencement of 

 a new and beautiful creation. When a tree has fallen 

 and has begun to decay, an infinite host of curious and 

 delicate plants, of the simplest vegetable forms, are nur- 

 tured upon the surface of its trunk. Mushrooms of every 

 description spring out from the inner bark, and lichens 

 and mosses, as various in their hues as they are delicate 

 in their forms, decorate all the outside. Insects which, 

 under the magnifying-glass, exhibit the various plumes 

 and glittering ornaments of the most brilliant birds and 

 butterflies, live under the protection of these minute 

 plants, as the larger animals find shelter in a forest of 

 trees. When the tree has entirely perished, and has 

 become assimilated with the soil, other hosts of plants 

 of a higher order take the place of the former, until new 

 forests have reared their branches over the ruins of those 

 of a preceding age. Eocks, continents, and worlds are 

 subject to the same decay and the same ultimate reno- 

 vation. Thus the whole system of the universe is but 

 an infinite series of permutations and combinations, all 



