Exhibition was due to the tumultuous reverberations of the deep, filling, quivering tones of the many bells.

In monkish medieval times, church-bells enjoyed peculiar esteem. They were treated in great measure as voices, and were inscribed with Latin ejaculations and prayers, such as-Hail, Mary, full of grace, pray for us; St Peter, pray for us; St Paul, pray for us; St Katharine, pray for us; Jesus of Nazareth, have mercy upon us; their tones, swung out into the air, would, ecstatically, appear to give utterence to the supplication with which they were inscribed. A bell in St Michael's church, Alnwick, says, in quaint letters on a belt that is diapered with studs, 'Archangel Michael, come to the help of the people of God. A bell at Compton Basset, which has two shields upon it, each bearing a chevron between three trefoils, says, 'Blessed be the name of the Lord.' Many bells are found to have identical inscriptions; there is, however, great variety, and further search would bring much more to light.

In those old times, pious queens and gentlewomen threw into the mass of metal that was to be cast into a bell their gold and silver ornaments; and a feeling of reverence for the interceding voices was common to gentle and simple. At Sudeley Castle, in the chapel, there is a bell, dated 1573, that tells us of the concern which the gentle dames of the olden time would take in this manufacture. It says, 'St George, pray for us. The Ladie Doratie Chandos, Widdowe, made this.' They were sometimes cast in monasteries under the superintendence of ecclesiastics of rank. It is written that Sir William Corvehill, 'priest of the service of our Lady,' was a 'good bell-founder and maker of frames; and on a bell at Sealton, in Yorkshire, we may read that it was made by John, archbishop of Graf. One of the ancient windows on the north side of the nave of York minster is filled with stained-glass, which is divided into subjects representing the various processes of bell-casting, bellcleaning, and bell-tuning, and has for a border a series of bells, one below another; proving that the associations with which bells were regarded rendered them both ecclesiastical and pictorial in the eyes of the artists of old.

The inscriptions on ancient bells were generally placed immediately below the haunch or shoulder, although they are sometimes found nearer the sound bow. The legends are, with few exceptions, preceded by crosses. Coats of arms are also of frequent occurrence, probably indicating the donors. The tones of ancient bells are incomparably richer and softer, more dulcet, mellow, and sufficing to the ear than those of the present iron age.

King Henry VIII., however, looked upon churchbells only as so much metal that could be melted down and sold. Hence, in the general destruction and distribution of church-property in his reign, countless bells disappeared, to be sold as mere metal. Many curious coincidences attended this wholesale appropriation. Ships attempting to carry bells across the seas, foundered in several havens, as at Lynn, and at Yarmouth; and, fourteen of the Jersey bells being wrecked at the entrance of the harbour of St Malo, a saying arose to the effect, that when the wind blows the drowned bells are

ringing. A certain bishop of Bangor, too, who sold the bells of his cathedral, was stricken with blindness

BELL LEGENDS.

when he went to see them shipped; and Sir Miles Partridge, who won the Jesus bells of St Paul's, London, from King Henry, at dice, was, not long afterwards hanged on Tower Hill. Notwithstanding the regal and archiepiscopal disregard of bells, they did not, altogether, pass from popular esteem. Within the last half century, at Brenckburne, in Northumberland, old people pointed out a tree beneath which, they had been told when they were young, a treasure was buried. And when this treasure was sought and found, it turned out to be nothing more than fragments of the bell of the ruined priory church close by. Tradition recounts that a foraging-party of moss-trooping Scots once sought far and near for this secluded priory, counting upon the contents of the larders of the canons. But not a sign or a track revealed its position, for it stands in a cleft between the wooded banks of the Coquet, and is invisible from the high lands around. The enraged and hungry marauders says the legend had given up the search in despair, and were leaving the locality, when the monks, believing their danger past, bethought themselves to offer up thanksgivings for their escape.

Unfortunately, the sound of the bell, rung to call them to this ceremony, reached the ears of the receding Scots in the forest above, and made known to them the situation of the priory. They retraced their steps, pillaged it, and then set it on fire.

After the Reformation, the inscriptions on bells were addressed to man, not to Heaven; and were rendered in English. There is an exception to this rule, however, at Sherborne, where there is a fire-bell, 1652, addressed conjointly to Heaven and man: Lord, quench this furious flame; Arise, run, help, put out the same.' Many of the legends on seventeenth-century bells reflect the quaint times of George Herbert :

'When I ring, God's prayses sing;

When I toule, pray heart and soule;'

and, O man be meeke, and lyve in rest;' 'Geve thanks to God;'

'I, sweetly tolling, men do call

To taste on meate that feeds the soule,' are specimens of this period. More vulgar sentiments subsequently found place. I am the first, although but small, I will be heard above you all,' say many bells coarsely. A bell at Alvechurch says still more uncouthly, 'If you would know when we was run, it was March the twenty-second 1701. God save the queen,' occurs on an Elizabethan bell at Bury, Sussex, bearing date 1599; and on several others of the reign of Queen Anne, in Devonshire, and on one in Magdalen College, Oxford. God save our king,' is found first written on a bell at Stanford-upon-Soar, at the date of the accession of James I., 1603; it is of frequent occurrence on later bells; and the same sentiment is found produced in other forms, one of which is 'Feare God and honner the king, for obedience is a vertuous thing.'

We have one bell that is dedicated to a particular service. It is the great bell of St Paul's, London, which is only tolled on the death of sovereigns, The ordinary passing bell, now commonly called the dead-bell, used to be rung when the dying person was receiving the sacrament, so that those who wished to do so could pray for him at this

moment; but it is now only rung after death, simply to inform the neighbourhood of the fact. In the same way the sanctus-bell used to be rung in the performance of mass, when the priest came to the words 'Sancte, Sancte, Sancte, Deus Sabaoth,' so that those persons unable to attend, might yet be able to bow down and worship at this particular moment. For this reason, the bell was always placed in a position where it might be heard as far as possible. In the gables of the chancel arches of ancient churches, are seen small square apertures, whose use few people can divine. It was through these that the ringers watched the services below, so as to be able to ring at the right time.

The great bell of Bow owes its reputation to the nursery legend of 'Oranges and lemons, said the bells of St Clement's;' not to any superior characteristics, for it is exceeded in size and weight by many others. English bells, generally, are smaller than those of foreign countries; perhaps for the reason that scientific ringing is not practised abroad; and all effect must be produced by the bells themselves, not by the mode in which they are handled. The more polite the nation, it is argued, the smaller their bells. The Italians have few bells, and those that they have are small. The Flemish and Germans, on the other hand, have great numbers of large bells. The Chinese once boasted of possessing the largest bells in the world; but Russia has since borne off the palm, or in others, carried away the bell, by hanging one in Moscow Cathedral, measuring 19 feet in height, and 63 feet 11 inches round the rim. By the side of these proportions our Big Bens and Big Toms are diminutive. The great bell of St Paul's is but 9 feet in diameter, and weighs but 12,000 lbs. The largest bell in Exeter Cathedral weighs 17,470 lbs.; the famous Bow Bell but 5800 lbs. York, Gloucester, Canterbury, Lincoln, and Oxford, can also eclipse our familiar friend.

France possesses a few ancient bells; some of them are ornamented with small bas-relievos of the Crucifixion, of the descent from the Cross, fleursde-lis, seals of abbeys and donors; and others have inscriptions of the same character as our own, each letter being raised on a small tablet more or less decorated. There was a bell in the abbey-church of Moissac (unfortunately recast in 1845), which was of a very rare and early date. An inscription on it, preceded by a cross, read, Salve Regina misericordie. Between the two last words was a basrelief of the Virgin, and after them three seals; then followed a line in much smaller characters, 'Anno Domini millesimo cc° LXX. tercio Gofridus me fecit et socios meos. Paulus vocor.' French bells were sometimes the gifts of kings and abbots; and were in every way held in as great esteem as those of our own country. In the accounts of the building of Troyes Cathedral, there is mention of two men coming to cast the bells, and of the canons visiting them at their work and stimulating them to perform it well, by harangues and by chanting the Te Deum. The canons finally assisted at the

consecration of the bells.

Bells have their literature as well as legends. Their histories are written in many russet-coloured volumes, in Latin, in French, and in Italian. These have been published in different parts of Europe, in Paris, in Leipsic, in Geneva, in Rome, in Frankfort,

BELL LEGENDS.

in Pisa, in Dresden, in Naples, in the fifteenth, sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. They take the forms of dissertations, treatises, descriptions, and notes. Early English writers confined themselves more especially to elucidating the art of ringing in essays bewilderingly technical. The names of the different permutations read like the reverie of a lunatic-single bob, plain bob, grandsire bob, single bob minor, grandsire treble, bob major, caters, bob royal, and bob maximus; and the names of the parts of a bell are quite as puzzling to the uninitiated. There are the canons, called also ansa, the haunch, otherwise cerebrum vel caput, the waist, latus, the sound-bow, the mouth, or labium, the brim, and the clapper. There is a manuscript in the British Museum of the Orders of the Company of ringers in Cheapside, 1603,' the year of Queen Elizabeth's death. And a work published in 1684, the last year of the reign of Charles II., called The School of Recreation, or Gentleman's Tutor, gives ringing as one of the exercises in vogue. There are, besides these, True Guides for Ringers, and Plain Hints for Ringers, a poem in praise of ringing, written in 1761, by the author of Shrubs of Parnassus, and other curious tracts of no value beyond their quaintness. Schiller has sung the song of the bell in vigorous_verse; and in our own day the subject has received much literary care at the hands of more than one country clergyman.

There is another bell legend to be told. On the eve of the feast of Corpus Christi, to this day, the choristers of Durham Cathedral ascend the tower, and in their fluttering white robes sing the Te Deum. This ceremony is in commemoration of the miraculous extinguishing of a conflagration on that night, A.D. 1429. The monks were at midnight prayer when the belfry was struck by lightning and set on fire; but though the flames raged all that night and till the middle of the next day, the tower escaped serious damage and the bells were uninjured-an escape that was imputed to the special interference of the incorruptible St Cuthbert, enshrined in the cathedral. These bells, thus spared, are not those that now reverberate among the house-tops on the steep banks of the Wear. The registry of the church of St Mary le Bow, Durham, tells of the burial of Thomas Bartlet, February 3, 1632, and adds, this man did cast the abbey bells the summer before he dyed.'

The great bell in Glasgow Cathedral, tells its own history, mournfully, in the following inscription: 'In the year of grace, 1583, Marcus Knox, a merchant in Glasgow, zealous for the interest of the Reformed Religion, caused me to be fabricated in Holland, for the use of his fellow-citizens of Glasgow, and placed me with solemnity in the Tower of their Cathedral. My function was announced by the impress on my bosom: ME AUDITO, VENIAS, DOCTRINAM SANCTAM UT DISCAS, and I was taught to proclaim the hours of unheeded time. One hundred and ninety-five years had I sounded these awful warnings, when I was broken by the hands of inconsiderate and unskilful men. In the year 1790, I was cast into the furnace, refounded at London, and returned to my sacred vocation. Reader! thou also shalt know a resurrection; may it be to eternal life! Thomas Mears fecit, London, 1790.

The history of the invention and improvement of the manifold appliances for comfort and convenience in a modern house of the better class, would not only be very curious and instructive, but would also teach us to be grateful for much that has become cheap to our use, though it would have been troublesome and costly to our ancestors, and looked on by them as luxurious. We turn a tap, and pure water flows from a distant river into our dressing-room; we turn another, and gas for lighting or firing is at our immediate command. We pull a handle in one apartment, and the bell rings in a far-distant one. We can even, by directing our mouth to a small opening beside the parlour fireplace, send a whisper along a tube to the servants' hall or kitchen, and thus obtain what we want still more readily. We can now scarcely appreciate the time and trouble thus saved. Handbells or whistles were the only signals used in a house a century and a half ago. In an old comedy of the reign of Charles II, the company supposed to be assembled at a country-house of the better class, are summoned to dinner by the cook knocking on the dresser with a rolling-pin! It was usual to call servants by ringing hand-bells; which, thus becoming table-ornaments, were frequently enriched by chasing. Walpole possessed a very fine one, which he believed to be the work of Cellini, and made for Pope Clement VII.* He also had a pair of very curious silver owls, seated on perches formed into whistles, which were blown when servants were wanted. They were curious and quaint specimens of the workmanship of the early part of the seventeenth century; and one of them is here engraved for the first time, from a

sketch made during the celebrated sale at Strawberry Hill in 1842. It may be worth noting, as a curious instance of the value attached by connoisseurs to rare curiosities, that these owls were

*See cut of this article at p. 324, vol. i.

FESTIVAL OF THE MIRACLES.

bought at prices considerably above their weight in gold; and the taste for collecting has so much increased, that there is little doubt they would now realise even higher prices.

Festibal of the Miracles.

This day (July 13), if Sunday, or the first Sunday after the 13th, begins the festival of the Miracles at Brussels, which lasts for fifteen days. The first day, Sunday, however, is the grand day of celebration; for on this takes place the public procession of the Holy Sacrament of the Miracles. We had an opportunity of witnessing this locally celebrated affair on Sunday, July 15, 1860, and next day procured from one of the ecclesiastical officials a historical account of the festival, of which we offer an abridgment.

In the year 1369, there lived at Enghein, in Hainault, a rich Jew, named Jonathan, who, for purposes of profanation, desired to procure some consecrated wafers. In this object he was assisted by another Jew, named Jean de Louvain, who resided in Brussels, and had hypocritically renounced Judaism. Jean was poor, and in the hope of reward gladly undertook to steal some of the wafers from one of the churches. After examination, he found that the church of St Catherine, at Brussels, offered the best opportunity for the theft. Gaining access by a window on a dark night in October, he secured and carried off the pix containing the consecrated wafers; and the whole were handed to Jonathan, who gave his appointed reward. Jonathan did not long survive this act of sacrilege. He was assassinated in his garden, and his murderers remained unknown. After his death, his widow gave the pix, with the wafers, to a body of Jews in Brussels, who, in hatred of Christianity, were anxious to do the utmost indignity to the wafers. The day they selected for the purpose was Good Friday, 1370. On that day, meeting in their synagogue, they spread the holy wafers, sixteen in number, on a table, and with horrid imprecations proceeded to stab them with poniards. To their amazement, the wounded wafers spouted out blood, and in consternation they fled from the spot! Anxious to rid themselves of objects on which so very extraordinary a miracle had been wrought, these wicked Jews engaged a woman, named Catherine, to carry the wafers to Cologne, though what she was to do with them there is not mentioned. Catherine fulfilled her engagement, but with an oppressed conscience she, on her return, went and revealed all to the rector of the parish church. The Jews concerned in the sacrilege were forthwith brought to justice. They were condemned to be burned, and their execution took place May 22, 1370. Three of the wafers were restored to the clergy of St Guduli, where they have ever since remained as objects of extreme veneration. On several occasions they have done

good service to the inhabitants of Brussels, in the way of stopping epidemics. On being appealed to by a solemn procession in 1529, a grievous epidemic at once ceased. From 1579 to 1585, during certain political troubles in the Netherlands, there were no processions in their honour; and they were similarly neglected for some years after the great revolution of 1789-92. But since Sunday, July 14, 1804, the annual procession has been resumed, and the three wafers shewing the miraculous marks of blood, have been exposed to the adoration of the faithful in the church of St Guduli. It is added in the authoritative account, that certain indulgences are granted by order of Pius VI. to all who take part in the procession, and repeat daily throughout the year, praises and thanks for the most holy sacrament of the Miracles. In the openings of the pillars along both sides of the choir of St Guduli, is suspended a series of Gobelin tapestries, vividly representing the chief incidents in the history of the Miracles, including the scene of stabbing the wafers.

Born-Regnier de Graaf, 1641, Schoenhaven, in Holland; Richard Cumberland, bishop of Peterborough,

1632.

Died.-Pope John III., 573; Emperor Henry II., 1024; Du Guesclin, constable of France, illustrious Warrior, 1380, Châteauneuf-Randon; Sir William Berkley, 1677, Twickenham; Richard Cromwell, exProtector of the three kingdoms, 1712, Cheshunt; Elijah Fenton, poet, 1730, Easthampstead; Bishop John Conybeare, 1758, Bristol; Dr James Bradley, astronomer, 1762; Jean Paul Marat, French Revolutionary leader and writer, 1793, Paris; Rev. John Lingard, author of a History of England, 1851, Hornby, near Lancaster.

BERTRAND DU GUESCLIN.

This flower of French chivalry was of a noble but poor family in Brittany. Never was there so bad a boy in the world,' said his mother, 'he is always wounded, his face disfigured, fighting or being fought; his father and I wish he were peaceably underground. All the masters engaged to teach him, gave up the task in despair, and to the end of his life he could neither read nor write. A tournay was held one day at Rennes, to which his father went; his son, then about fourteen, secretly followed him, riding on a miserable pony: the first knight who retired from the lists found the young hero in his hostelry, who, throwing himself at his knees, besought him to lend him his horse and arms. The request was granted, and Du Guesclin, preparing in all haste, flew to the combat, and overthrew fifteen adversaries with such address and good grace as to surprise all the spectators. His father presented himself to run a course with him, but Bertrand threw down his lance. When persuaded to raise his visor, the paternal joy knew no bounds; he kissed him tenderly, and henceforward took every means to insure his advancement.

His first campaign with the French army was made in 1359, where he gave full proof of his rare valour, and from that time he was the much-feared eneny of the English army, until taken prisoner by the Black Prince at the battle of Navarete, in Spain, in 1367. In spite of the repeated entreaties of both French and English nobles, the prince kept him more than a year at Bordeaux, until it

BERTRAND DU GUESCLIN.

was whispered that he feared his rival too much to set him free. Hearing this, Edward sent for Du Guesclin and said: Messire Bertrand, they pretend that I dare not give you your liberty, because I am afraid of you. There are those who say so,' replied the knight, and I feel myself much honoured by it.' The prince coloured, and desired him to name his own ransom. 'A hundred thousand florins,' was the reply. But where can you get so much money?' The king of France and Castile, the pope, and the Duke of Anjou will lend it to me, and were I in my own country, the women would earn it with their distaffs. All were charmed with his frankness, and the Princess of Wales invited him to dinner, and offered to pay twenty thousand francs towards the ransom. Du Guesclin, kneeling before her, said: 'Madame, I believed myself to be the ugliest knight in the world, but now I need not be so displeased with myself. Many of the English forced their purses on him, and he set off to raise the sum; but on the way he gave with such profusion to the soldiers he met that all disappeared. On reaching home, he asked his wife for a hundred thousand francs he had left with her, but she also had disposed of them to needy soldiers; this her husband approved of, and returning to the Duke of Anjou and the pope, he received from them forty thousand francs, but on his way to Bordeaux these were all disposed of, and the Prince of Wales asking if he had he had not a doubloon.' 'You do the magnificent!' brought the ransom, he carelessly replied: "That said the prince. You give to everybody, and have not what will support yourself; you must go back to prison.' Du Guesclin withdrew, but at the same time a gentleman arrived from the French king prepared to pay the sum required. He was raised to the highest post in the kingdom, that of Connétable de France, in 1370, amidst the acclamations and joy of the whole nation; yet, strange to say, after all his services, he lost the confidence of the king a few years after, who listened to his traducers, and wrote a letter most offensive to the hero's fidelity. Du Guesclin immediately sent back the sword belonging to his office of Connétable; but the cry of the whole nation was in his favour. The superiority of his military talents, his generosity and modesty had extinguished the feelings of jealousy which his promotion might have created. Charles acknowledged that he had been deceived, and sent the Dukes of Anjou and Bourbon to restore the sword, and appoint him to the command of the army in Auvergne, where his old enemies the English were pillaging. He besieged the castle of Randan, and was there attacked with mortal disease, which he met with the intrepid firmness which characterised him, and with the sincere piety of a Christian. At the news of his death, the camp resounded with groans, his enemies even paying homage to his memory; for they had promised to surrender on a certain day if not relieved, and the commander marched out, followed by his garrison, and kneeling beside the bier, laid the keys upon it.

The king ordered him to be buried at St Denis, at the foot of the mausoleum prepared for himself. The funeral cortège passed through France amidst the lamentations of the people, followed by the princes of the blood, and crowds of the nobility. This modest epitaph was placed on his grave: 'Ici

gist noble homme, Messire Bertrand du Guesclin, Comte de Longueville et Connétable de France, qui trépassa au Chastel neuf de Randan le 13me Jour de Juillet 1380. Priez Dieu pour lui.'

A very rare phenomenon was seen after his death-the chief place in the state was vacant, and no one would take it. The king offered it to the Sire de Couci; he excused himself, recommending Du Guesclin's brother-in-arms, De Clisson; but he and Sancerre both declared that after the grand deeds that had been wrought, they could not satisfy the king, and it was only filled up at the beginning of the following reign by Clisson accepting the dignity.

RICHARD CROMWELL.

This day, 1712, died Richard Cromwell, eldest son of Oliver, and who, for a short time after his father (between September 3, 1658, and May 25, 1659), was acknowledged Protector of these realms. He had lived in peaceful obscurity for fifty-three years after giving up the government, and was ninety when he died. The ex-Protector, Richard, has usually been spoken of lightly for resigning without any decisive effort to maintain himself in

SUPERSTITIONS CONCERNING DEATH.

his place; but, perhaps, it is rather to the credit of his good sense, that he retired as he did, for the spirit in which the restoration of Charles II. was soon after effected, may be regarded as tolerable proof that any obstinate attempt to keep up the Cromwellian rule, would have been attended with great hazard. While it never has been, and cannot be, pretended that Richard was aught of a great man, one cannot but admit that his perfect negativeness after the Restoration, had in it something of dignity. That he could scarcely ever be induced to speak of politics, was fitting in one who had been at the summit of state, and found all vanity and instability. There was, moreover, a profound humour under his external negativeness. His conduct in respect of the addresses which had come to him during his short rule, was not that of a common-place character. When obliged to leave Whitehall, he carried these documents with him in a large hair-covered trunk, of which he requested his servants to take particular care.

'Why so much care of an old trunk?' inquired some one; what on earth is in it?'

'Nothing less,' quoth Richard, than the lives and fortunes of all the good people of England.' Long after, he kept up the same joke, and even

made it a standing subject of mirth among his friends. Two new neighbours, being introduced to his house, were very hospitably entertained in the usual manner, along with some others, till the company having become merry, Richard started up with a candle in his hand, desiring all the rest to follow him. The party proceeded with bottles and glasses in hand, to the garret, where, somewhat to the surprise of the new guests, who alone were uninitiated, the ex-Protector pulled out an old hairy trunk to the middle of the floor, and seating himself on it, proposed as a toast, Prosperity to Old England.' Each man in succession seated himself on the trunk, and drank the toast; one of the new guests coming last, to whom Mr Cromwell called out: 'Now, sit light, for you have the lives

and fortunes of all the good people of England under you.' Finally, he explained the freak by taking out the addresses, and reading some of them, amidst the laughter of the company.

SUPERSTITIONS, SAYINGS, &C., CONCERNING

DEATH.

If a grave is open on Sunday, there will be another dug in the week.

This I believe to be a very narrowly limited superstition, as Sunday is generally a favourite day for funerals among the poor. I have, however, met with it in one parish, where Sunday funerals are the excep tion, and I recollect one instance in particular. A woman coming down from church, and observing an