94 HORTICULTURE. 



tain effects by any thing else that will grow out of doors in our cli- 

 mate. You must remember, however, that, as they are wedded for 

 life to whatever they cling to, they must not be planted by the sides 

 of wooden cottages, which are to be kept in order by a fresh coat 

 of paint now and then. Other climbers may be taken down, and 

 afterwards tied back to their places ; but constant, indissoluble inti- 

 macies like these must be let alone. You will therefore always take 

 care to plant them where they can fix themselves permanently on a 

 wall of some kind, or else upon some rough wooden building, where 

 they will not be likely to be disturbed. 



Certainly the finest of all this class of climbers is the European 

 Ivy. Such rich masses of glossy, deep green foliage, such fine con- 

 trasts of light and shade, and such a wealth of associations, is pos- 

 sessed by no other plant ; the Ivy, to which the ghost of all the 

 storied past alone tells its tale of departed greatness ; the confidant 

 of old ruined castles and abbeys ; the bosom companion of solitude 

 itself, 



" Deep in your most sequestered bower 



Let me at last recline, 

 Where solitude, mild, modest flower, 

 Leans on her ivy'd shrine." 



True to these instincts, the Ivy does not seem to be naturalized 

 so easily in America as most other foreign vines. We are yet too 

 young this country of a great future, and a little past. 



The richest and most perfect specimen of it that we have seen, 

 in the northern States, is upon the cottage of Washington Irving, 

 on the Hudson, near Tarry town. He, who as you all know, lingers 

 over the past with a reverence as fond and poetical as that of a pious 

 Crusader for the walls of Jerusalem yes, he has completely won the 

 sympathies of the Ivy, even on our own soil, and it has garlanded 

 and decked his antique and quaint cottage, " Sunnyside," till its 

 windows peep out from amid the wealth of its foliage, like the dark 

 eyes of a Spanish Senora from a shadowy canopy of dark lace and 

 darker tresses. 



The Ivy is the finest of climbers, too, because it is so perfectly 

 evergreen. North of New-York it is a little tender, and needs to be 



