highly improbable that
anything like a complete analysis of mingled water and wine can be
effected by it.

It may interest the literary critic, should he be ignorant of the fact,
to know that the golden-berried Ivy--worn by Apollo ere he adopted the
Daphnean laurel--is the plant consecrated to his calling. Witness Pope:

'Immortal Vida, on whose honored brow
The poet's bays and critic's Ivy grow.'

Perhaps it is given to the critics to remind them that they should be
kindly sheltering and warmly protecting to poor poets and others, who
may be greatly cheered by a little kindness. For there is an old legend
that the Druids decorated dwelling places with Ivy and holly during the
winter, 'that the sylvan spirits might repair to them, and remain
unnipped with frost and cold winds, until a milder season had renewed
the foliage of their darling abodes. (DR. CHANDLER, _Travels in
Greece_.) Think of this when ye ink your pens for the onslaught!

It is worth noting that in two or three 'Dream Books' the Ivy is set
down as indicating 'long-continued health, and new friendships'--an
explanation quite in keeping with its ancient symbolism, and still more
with its most literal and apparent meaning of _attachment_. This latter
sense has given poet and artist many a fine figure and image. 'Nothing,'
says ST. PIERRE in his _Studies of Nature_, 'can separate the Ivy from
the tree which it has once embraced: it clothes it with its own leaves
in that inclement season when its dark boughs are covered with hoar
frost. The faithful companion of its destiny, it falls when the tree is
cut down: death itself does not relax its grasp; and it continues to
adorn with its verdure the dry trunk that once supported it.'

And of the golden-berried Ivy, Spenser sings:

'Emongst the rest, the clamb'ring Ivy grew,
Knitting his wanton arms with grasping hold,
Lest that the poplar happely should rew
Her brother's strokes, whose boughs she doth enfold
With her lythe twigs, till they the top survew
And paint with pallid green her buds of gold.'

Madame DE GENLIS tells us of a true-hearted friend, who clung to a
fallen minister of state, through good and ill fortune, and followed him
into exile, that he adopted for a 'device' a fallen oak tree thickly
wound with Ivy, and with the motto: 'His fall cannot free me from him.'
An 'emblem' of the later middle age expresses undying conjugal love in a
like manner, by a fallen t