IVY. 



But here on kindly errand am I sent : 



To thee I come a messenger from Jove, 



Who from on high looks down on thee with eyes 



Of pitying love ; he bids thee ransom home 



The godlike Hector's corpse ; and with thee take 



Such presents as may melt Achilles' heart. 



{Homer, Lord Derby's Trans.) 



and straightway he does her bidding with success. 



IVY (Hedera helix). — FRIENDSHIP. 



" Friendship, peculiar boon of heaven, 

 The noble mind's delight and pride, 

 To men and angels only given, 

 To all the lower world denied." 



Friendship is represented by a device in which Ivy is 

 growing round a fallen tree, with the motto, " Nothing can 

 detach me froni it," In Greece the hymeneal altar was hung 

 with Ivy, and a branch was presented to a newly-wedded 

 husband, symbolizing the indissoluble union he had just 

 formed. " Nothing," says a popular writer, " can separate the 

 Ivy from the tree which it once embraces ; it adorns it with 

 its foliage in the harsh season when its branches bear only 

 the hoar-frost ; the companion of its destinies, it falls when 

 the tree is overthrown ; death even does not work separation, 

 and it decorates with its perpetual verdure the withered trunk 

 of its past supporter," These words are true. The Ivy is 

 held to the soil by its own roots, and derives nothing from 

 the substance of the tree which it embraces. The protector 



ii8 



