ages, dug out of a
wheat-field, with its fragments of men's work--its pottery and tiles and
stones--this is a part, too, even as the small birds, with their little
motives and passions, so like man's, are a part. I thought with self
shame of my own sins in this connection; then, considering the lesser
faults on the other side, I wished that Mr. St. John Hope would
experience a like softening mood and regret that he had abused the ivy.
It grieves me to hear it called a "noxious weed." That perished people,
whose remains in this land so deeply interest him, were the
mightiest "builders of ruins" the world has known; but who except
the archaeologist would wish to see these piled stones in their naked
harshness, striking the mind with dismay at the thought of Time and
its perpetual desolations! I like better the old Spanish poet who says,
"What of Rome; its world-conquering power, and majesty and glory--what
has it come to?" The ivy on the wall, the yellow wallflower, tell it. A
"deadly parasite" quotha! Is it not well that this plant, this evergreen
tapestry of innumerable leaves, should cover and partly hide and partly
reveal the "strange defeatures" the centuries have set on man's greatest
works? I would have no ruin nor no old and noble building without it;
for not only does it beautify decay, but from long association it has
come to be in the mind a very part of such scenes and so interwoven
with the human tragedy, that, like the churchyard yew, it seems the most
human of green things.

Here in September great masses of the plant are already showing a
greenish cream-colour of the opening blossoms, which will be at their
perfection in October. Then, when the sun shines, there will be no
lingering red admiral, nor blue fly or fly of any colour, nor yellow
wasp, nor any honey-eating or late honey-gathering insect that will
not be here to feed on the ivy's sweetness. And behind the blossoming
curtain, alive with the minute, multitudinous, swift-moving, glittering
forms, some nobler form will be hidden in a hole or fissure in the wall.
Here on many a night I have listened to the sibilant screech of the
white owl and the brown owl's clear, long-drawn, quavering lamentation:

"Good Ivy, what byrdys hast thou?"
"Non but the Howlet, that How! How!"

Chapter Nine: Rural Rides

"A-birding on a Broncho" is the title of a charming little book
published some years ago, and probably better kno