This dust of past
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.
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