There are likewise very large
and aged trees within the castle, there being no roof nor pavement
anywhere, except in some dungeon-like nooks; so that the trees having
soil and air enough, and being sheltered from unfriendly blasts, can grow
as if in a nursery. Hawthorn, however, next to ivy, is the great
ornament and comforter of these desolate ruins. I have not seen so much
nor such thriving hawthorn anywhere else,--in the court, high up on
crumbly heights, on the sod that carpets roofless rooms,--everywhere,
indeed, and now rejoicing in plentiful crops of red berries. The ivy is
even more wonderfully luxuriant; its trunks being, in some places, two or
three feet in diameter, and forming real buttresses against the walls,
which are actually supported and vastly strengthened by this parasite,
that clung to them at first only for its own convenience, and now holds
them up, lest it should be ruined by their fall. Thus an abuse has
strangely grown into a use, and I think we may sometimes see the same
fact, morally, in English matters. There is something very curious in
the close, firm grip which the ivy fixes upon the wall, closer and closer
for centuries. Neither is it at all nice as to what it clutches, in its
necessity for support. I saw in the outer court an old hawthorn-tree, to
which a plant of ivy had married itself, and the ivy trunk and the
hawthorn trunk were now absolutely incorporated, and in their close
embrace you could not tell which was which.
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