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 tree wound around with Ivy, beneath which, is the inscription in Spanish: '_Se no la vida porque la muerte._' (RADOWITZ, _Gesammelte Schriften_.) A not uncommon seal gives us the Ivy with the motto; 'I die where I attach myself;' while yet another of the ivied fallen trees declares that 'Even ruin cannot separate us.' Ivy is the badge of the clan Gordon, and of all who bear that name. In conclusion, lest my readers should object that the subject, though eminently suggestive, has been treated entirely without a jest, I will cite a quaint repartee, shockingly destructive of the sentiment just cited: 'Woman,' said a lovelorn youth, 'is like Ivy--the more you are ruined, the closer she clings to you.' 'And the closer she clings to you, the sooner you are ruined,' replied an old cynic of a bachelor. Poor man! He had never realized the truth of the French saying, that to enjoy life, there is nothing like being ruined a little. FOOTNOTES: [1] _New Curiosities of Literature, and Book of the Months._ BY GEORGE SOANE, B.A. London, 1849, Vol. i., p. 57. [2] _The Poetical History._ By P. GALTRUCHIUS. London 1678. [3] Galtruchuis, c. 7. [4] 'Hedera quo que vel laurus et hujusmodi, quae semper servant virorem, in sarcophago corpori substernantur, ad significandum, quod qui moriuntur in Christo, vivere non desinant; nam licet mundo moriantur secundum corpus, tamen secundum animam vivunt et reviviscunt in Deo.'--DURANDUS, _Ration. Div. Offic._, lib. vii., cap 35. [5] BERTY, _Dictionnaire de l'Architecture du Moyen Age_. Paris, 1845. [6] 'Ye myrtles brown, and ivy never sere.' MILTON'S _Lycidas_. [7] 'Poculum ex hedera, cissybium dictum, ratione duplici conviviis summe est accomodum: imprimis, quod hedera vini temulantiam, arcere fertur: deinde quod cauponum fraudes, qui vinum aqua miscent, eo poculo deprehenduntur.'--_Memorabilium, Utilium ac Jucundorum Centuriae Novem, &c._ Paris, 1566. THE MISHAPS OF MISS HOBBS. 'New beauties push her from the stage; She trembles at the approach of age; And starts, to view the altered face That wrinkles at her in her glass.' TRUMBULL'S _Progress of Dulness_. CHAPTER I.