a colossal statue, stands in the grounds, studied law, and "My Grave Lord Keeper" of Elizabeth's days, Sir Christopher Hatton," led the brawls." No poet ever had a more suitable resting-place than the quiet churchyard in which reposes the dust of Gray. Near at hand is Stoke Park, which stands on the site of the Manor House that furnished the subject for the opening of the "Long Story." To the south is seen the lordly keep of Windsor Castle, and beyond, Cooper's Hill, of which Pope says, in his "Windsor Forest:

'Here his first lays majestic Denham sung;
There the last numbers flowed from Cowley's tongue.
Oh, early lost!* what tears the river shed,
When the sad pomp along his banks was led !
His drooping waves on every note expire,
And on his willows hung each muse's lyre.

Since Fate, relentless, stopp'd their heavenly voice,
No more the forests ring, or groves rejoice;
Who now shall charm the shades where Cowley strung
His living harp, and lofty Denham sung."

Gray's remains repose in a large sarcophagus, supported on a square pedestal, with inscriptions in marble on each side. One of these tells us that the monument was erected A.D. 1799, in honour of Thomas Gray, "among the scenery celebrated by that great lyrical and elegiac poet." On the other parts of the monument, which was erected by Mr. Granville Penn, owner of Stoke Park, and a descendant of the founder of Pennsylvania, are verses from the "Elegy and the opening lines of his "Ode on Eton College," regarding which ancient foundation we would incidentally observe that the best description of it is to be found in Lord Beaconsfield's "Conningsby," though his lordship had no personal experience of Eton or any public school, his education having been conducted at Blackheath.

The grave of the poet, a plain tomb erected by himself for his mother and aunt, is immediately in front of the chancel window. The sides are built up with red brick, and, on the top is a slab, bearing this inscription," In the vault beneath are deposited, in hope of a joyful resurrection, the remains of Mary Antrobus. She died unmarried, on November 5th, 1749,

* Abraham Cowley died at the age of 49. He was born in 1618, in London, of humble parentage, like Pope and Gray, being the posthumous son of a grocer. At the age of 17, when a King's Scholar at Westminster, he published a volume of verse, called "Poetical Blossoms," and earned distinction at Trinity College, Cambridge, whence he was expelled in 1643 for his royalist proclivities. On the Restoration he received a competency, through the influence of the Duke of Buckingham, and died in 1667.

aged 66. In the same pious confidence, beside her friend and sister, here sleep the remains of Dorothy Gray, widow, the careful, tender mother of many children, one of whom alone had the misfortune to survive her. She died March 11th, 1753, aged 67." A vicar of Stoke, who died in 1780, and doubtless, read the funeral service over the poet, close to whom he now lies, inserted a tablet at the foot of the chancel window, with the following inscription :-"Opposite to this stone, in the same tomb upon which he has so feelingly recorded his grief at the loss of a beloved parent, are deposited the remains of Thomas Gray, the author of the "Elegy written in a Country Churchyard," &c. He was buried August 6th, 1771.

Gray's love for his mother, whose name he never mentioned without a sigh, was a beautiful trait in his character. His father was a harsh, bad man, who left his family to starve, but the poet's mother maintained herself and children with her sister, in a millinery business, from the profits of which she paid for the education of her son at Eton, and afterwards at the University of Cambridge. Gray, we are told, owed his life, in his infancy, to the courage of his mother, who gave him relief in a fit of convulsions by opening a vein with her own hand. Her attention was unremitting, and her sacrifices great on his behalf, and she lived to see her son a finished scholar and gentleman, and author of the immortal "Elegy." While some assert that this poem relates to Stoke, others, and with more reason, assign it to the village of Granchester, two miles from Cambridge. It is certain that Gray commenced the poem at Cambridge, and his evening walk was often extended to Granchester, where the great bell of St. Mary's would have formed the curfew of his imagination. There are no "rugged elms " in the churchyard of Stoke, and scarcely a stone with "uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture decked," of the requisite age, though his poetic license would justify him in introducing it. At Stoke, however, the poem was finished, and received the last corrections of the author. Writing to Walpole,

June 10th, 1750, he says, "I have been here at Stoke a few days (where I shall continue a good part of the summer) and having put an end to a thing whose beginning you have seen long ago, I immediately send it to you." That great literary critic, we are told, handed about the manuscript with great applause among the higher circles of society; it was printed by Dodsley, and soon circulated with a rapidity that astonished the timid and sensitive poet. But, perhaps, the most striking and interesting proof of the popularity the poem so quickly attained, is afforded by an incident related in Playfair's "Life of Professor Robinson." When employed as an engineer in the army serving in Canada under

General Wolfe, Robinson happened to be on duty in the boat in which the General went to visit some of his posts the night before the battle which was expected to be decisive of the fate of the campaign. The evening was fine, and as they rowed along, the General, with much feeling, repeated nearly the whole of Gray's "Elegy" to an officer who sat with him in the stern sheet of the boat, adding, as he concluded, that, "He would prefer being the author of that poem to the glory of beating the French to-morrow." It is not recorded if this incident was related to Gray; but to a man of his sensitive and imaginative mind, the knowledge that the great soldier whom England mourned, and to whose memory a sumptuous monument has been raised in Westminster Abbey, paid such a tribute to his genius, in his last hours upon earth, must have

afforded a satisfaction such as no commendation or honours could have conferred.

Since the time of the conqueror of Quebec many great men, statesmen and soldiers, have passed pleasant moments in the enjoyment of the poetic inspirations of one of England's sweetest, if least prolific, bards, of whom it may be said:

"Call it not vain; they do not err
Who say that when the poet dies,
Mute Nature mourns her worshipper,
And celebrates his obsequies;
Who say tall cliff and cavern lone
For the departed bard make moan;
That fountains weep in crystal rill,
That flowers in tears of balm distil,
Through his loved groves that breezes sigh,
And oaks in deeper groan reply;
And rivers teach their rushing wave
To murmur dirges round his grave."

BELLS AND

CHAPTER I.

EARLY HISTORY OF BELLS.

EW inventions of human ingenuity and skill can vie, either in point of age, of interest, or of noteworthy association, with that of bells. To ask who was the first bell-maker is to carry the mind back at once into the years when the world was young. Hear the injunction of the Mosaic ritual, given us, touching the High Priest's robe, in Exodus xxviii. 33-34: "And beneath, upon the hem of it, thou shalt make pomegranates of blue, and of purple, and of scarlet, round about the hem thereof; and bells of gold between them round about a golden bell and a pomegranate, a golden bell and a pomegranate, upon the hem of the robe round about : an early instance of small bells used as decorations. And we have it on the authority of Calmet that in a precisely similar manner the kings of Persia employed them. The literature of bells, their varied sorts and sizes, their many uses, and the romantic memories that cluster around them, is very extensive. Let us, so far as our space will allow, run over in brief review that which is most striking.

:

In Egypt bells were known, for it is certain that the feast of Osiris was publicly announced by the ringing of them. Hand instruments, as well as the tiny, ornamental bells just mentioned, are of ancient date. The old Greeks used them in the routine work of the army, their patrol

BELL LORE.

carrying one as he went on his rounds from sentinel to sentinel. Plutarch refers to one, also, employed in the Grecian fish-market. The Romans were not behind. They made known their bathing hour by a bell, and hung others as emblems upon their triumphal cars.

But the church bell-what an honoured and familiar institution that has become ! How poets have sung it, and painters written its name at the bottom of their pictures! How the traveller in distant solitudes longs for its peaceful music, and on some still Sabbath morn

111

- Almost fancies that he hears

The chiming from his native village church!" The history of church bells is a highly interesting one. They have undergone very many changes, and the regard for them has had its own vicissitudes. They have not always been made of the same shape or of the same material as at the present day. Let us start from the beginning.

The use of large bells in churches is supposed (there is in reality no evidence) to be owing, in the first instance, to Paulinus, Bishop of Nola, in Campania. The date of their invention is fixed at about A.D. 400; before that time rattles were used-not very melodious instruments one would fancy. To the locality of their origin the Latin word for a bell, campana, and our own word campanile are both traced. It is believed that the new invention was not long in finding its way into England; but the earliest actual mention of them is by the Venerable Bede, who records bells as definitely established over here in the seventh century. Into the adjacent kingdom of

France they were introduced about 550; sixty years later the chronicles tell us that the army of King Clothaire was actually frightened away from the town of Sens by the ringing of them. There were valiant soldiers in those days!

Benedict, Abbot of Wearmouth, brought one from Italy for his own northern church in (or about) A.D. 680; but it was not until nearly three hundred more years had elapsed that the first peal of bells was hung in England, this being (A.D. 960) at Croyland Abbey, county Lincoln. Bells in these early times had strange functions to perform. Superstition seized the new invention, and made it her own. In Italy,

workmanship grew better and still better. If the early bells were weakly supposed to guard against fire, the Norman Conqueror hit on a plan of making the later ones really useful to that end. Every schoolboy is aware that William I. instituted the couvre feu, or curfew, in the land his troops overran. This was a bellsignal to put out all lights and fires, given at sunset in summer and at eight o'clock in winter. An opinion is very current, and has been fostered by some historians, that this custom was enforced as an arbitrary bond on liberty-a mark of the conquered people's servitude. There seems very little reason for this belief. The

during a storm the church bells were violently rung to avert a disaster; and over here, in the sober north, men were equally foolish. The bells were blessed, and then were popularly considered as so many powerful protectors against the rage of both elements and devils. Many an ancient inscription on their sides-as witness that on "Roland of Ghent "-proves the strength of the wide spread delusion. As in the case of "Roland," they frequently received the names of human beings. The casting of bells in these days of beginnings was naturally a work of great difficulty, requiring vast care. The art of the founder was slowly but surely developed, however, and the

houses at that day, and for long after, were chiefly of wood. Conflagrations once set going quickly spread and worked much devastationthe Great Fire of London, at a much later date, is a notable example. On the continent the custom had been in vogue for long, and it is probable that the new king's main idea in transplanting it to English soil was the safety and not the degradation of his subjects. The regulation of ringing the curfew was strictly enforced, and the custom lingered long, perhaps even yet existing in some rural spots.

The origin of a "passing" or soul bell is partly to be traced to the crude idea of the efficacy of

ringing to keep at bay evil spirits.

Demons were supposed to lurk around the dying ready to pounce upon the soul as it crossed the mysterious line of division between the seen and the unseen worlds; the sound of the bell was believed to scare them away. Another object was to appeal to those who listened for their prayers on the sinking person's behalf. An old writer puts it in this way" When anyone is dying, bells must be tolled, that the people may put up their prayers-twice for a woman, and thrice for a man; if for a clergyman, as many times as he had orders, and at the conclusion a peal on the bells to distinguish the quality of the person for whom the people are to put up their prayers." In connection with the evil spirit part of the business, it is very curious to observe that the Athenians had a custom of beating brazen kettles on the occasion of a decease to frighten away the Furies. Verily, even in its follies and superstitions, age is wonderfully linked to age.

Another kind of bell was the sanctus, hung high up in as good a position for spreading its notes as possible. This was sounded during the celebration of the mass, whenever the priest came to the words that gave it its title the Sancti, Sancte, &c. ; so that, at home or abroad, people might hear the bell and fall on their knees and worship at exactly the right moment. According to the "Book of Days," at Over, in Cambridgeshire, a Sancte bell may still be seen in position. The early bell-founders were mostly monks, they possessing practically a monopoly both of scientific knowledge and of spare time for the task.

At

The older the bell is, usually the better is its tone; but to what cause this superiority should be attributed seems still matter for dispute. one period it was believed to be in consequence of the presence of large quantities of silver in the more ancient instruments, it being matter of history that high-born ladies, in the depth of their devotion, used frequently to throw into the metal of the caster their treasured gold and silver But repeated experiments have vitiated this conclusion. Silver is found rather to mar than improve the bell as a sound instrument. Perhaps the real reason for the difference in value is a difference in shape; the older bells widen out more gradually and steadily than do the ordinary modern ones.

ornaments.

Metropolitan societies—or “guilds "—of bellringers appear to be of considerable antiquity, for record has been preserved of one organised and working in the far-off reign of Edward the Confessor. It is also reported that Henry III. put them in order a bit, and gave directions that the "Ringers' Guild" should be annually paid out of the Exchequer 100 shillings.

But a time was coming when kingly reverence and favour for bells would prove a broken reed.

Henry VIII. cared for little except his own will and his own pleasures. After his irreconcilable feud had broken out with the Romish Church, he found many opportunities both of wreaking his vengeance and of replenishing his coffers by the seizure of Church property. He suppressed the monasteries and sequestered their revenues. He closed religious house after religious house with cool determination, and always with an eye to the so-called main chance. The bells did not escape. They were metal, and could easily be melted down and sold. Numbers all over the land were so treated. The popular respect for these instruments-or, as perhaps it ought to be written, the popular superstition concerning them-received, however, some curious support

from events that followed. Near to St. Paul's School, in London, a clochier stood containing four bells, called "Jesus's," and having the repute of being the largest in the country. One Sir Miles Partridge staked against these a hundred pounds and won them at a cast of the dice from Henry VIII. He was afterwards beheaded on Tower Hill. Ships with bells on board foundered in Lynn, Yarmouth, and other havens. One, with fourteen from Jersey on her cargo list, was wrecked off St. Malo. A bishop of Bangor, who sold his bells, was stricken blind as he went to see them away. And so on.

An amusing reference to Henry VIII.'s conduct was scribbled on a bell taken down from the Little Sanctuary at Westminster, where King Edward III. had put it up. The original inscription read thus :—

campanology in modern times is Belgium. Only of late years have tourists to the Netherlands become aware of the rich mine of interest to be explored by investigating the bells belonging to the quaint old towns they visit. But the study, once intelligently started, is sure to be continued. The fame of the Belgian bell-foundries of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries has rung into many lands. The names of Hemony, Van den Gheyns, and Dumery will live for long. To the first-mentioned of these are attributed the famous chimes of Mechlin and the larger number of the bells of Antwerp.

The bells of Antwerp! Here we have mentioned a collection which is indeed worthy to rank amongst the wonders of the world. Antwerp Cathedral is celebrated for its magnificent spire, but the bells are deserving of yet greater admiration. They are ninety-nine in number, and on them the finest and most difficult music is performed at intervals of half-an-hour. The number of changes that it is possible to ring on these bells is an arithmetical problem worthy of the genius of a Cocker to solve. Overtures are played through on them, and choice selections from elaborate operas are also given.

The great carolus there was presented by the Emperor Charles the Fifth, and is so huge that it takes sixteen strong men to pull it. It is, however, rung but seldom-one authority says only twice a-year. This was a noteworthy bell likewise in regard to its cost. It is composed of

a mixture of gold, silver, and copper, and its value is given as £20,000.

Looking from the belfry of Notre Dame, at Antwerp, over the fertile, peaceful plains around, no fewer than 126 steeples can be counted, and from nearly every one the musical, familiar tinkle goes up heavenward in due course. The ringing of bells is an essential feature in the national life. Many of these bells have had their own part, too, to bear in civic turmoil. From the belfry, in troublous times (which have not been seldom in Belgium), it has always been the custom to summon together the townsfolk, either for council or to take up arms. For this cause, whenever a town was built, or newly fortified, it was usual to put up a tower and bells at the very outset. Not that now the carillon, as it rings out to the delight of the tourist on the still summer air, awakens thoughts of old struggles. Far from it. Peace-infinite peace-seems to be its message. In bygone years the clavecin, or key-board, was extensively used. Van den Gheyns, for one worthy, was extremely fond of performing on it.

Before leaving the bells of the Netherlands, a brief note must be made of the rocking belfry at Tournay. This vibrates strongly and threateningly to every storm. It contains forty bells. The carillon at Bruges, consisting of forty and one, the work of Dumery, is also very famous. W. J. LACEY.

THE BELLS

R