willed acts of defiance and sacrilege, the nation might remain in religious communion with Rome; and the statutes against the papal power which were enacted when that expectation was given up, are to be viewed as dictated by a roused spirit of national independence and a jealousy of foreign jurisdiction, rather than by any altered convictions of Englishmen on the score of doctrine. How soon the result foreseen by Wolsey came to pass, we have no present occasion to show; and having intended to confine the present article to that part of Mr. Froude's work in which he treats of the suppression of the monasteries, we need not trace the history of the early Reformation statutes, or of their victims, who formed a large proportion of the two thousand people who (on an average) were hung yearly in England during Henry's detested reign. ESSAY ON CHURCH BELLS. [Quarterly Review, Sept. 1854.] [The substance of this Essay was previously read as a Lecture to the Gateshead Mechanics' Institution.] Hourly, calmly on she swings, Fann'd by the fleeting wings of Time : No pulse, no heart, no feeling, hers, And still companions, while she stirs THERE is abundance of literary evidence to show that in bygone times the history and office of the bell engaged the attention of the learned. Mr. Ellacombe* enumerates nearly forty distinct treatises of foreign origin, ranging from 1495 to the present century. Of these the best known is the work of Magius "De Tintinnabulis." The author, an Italian, was a civil judge in the Venetian service at Candia, when besieged in 1571 by the Turks. He was taken prisoner, and amused his captivity by writing the treatise which has preserved his name. His occupation could gain him no favour in a land where the bell was considered the symbol of sinful infidelity, and he was finally beheaded by order of a pasha. The productions of our native pens are mostly confined to the art of ringing, which is peculiarly an English accomplishment. In other countries there is no attempt at a musical peal, and the only object is to produce the utmost possible noise by a chance, irregular clanging. Such was formerly among ourselves the enthusiasm of the educated classes on the subject, that, in the reign of Queen Mary, Dr. Tresham thought there was no surer method of enticing the * Paper on Bells, with Illustrations. By the Rev. H. T. Ellacombe, in Report of Bristol Architectural Society. 1850. students at Oxford to mass than by promising to make the University peal the finest in England. The revived interest in all ecclesiastical studies has extended itself to bells; and the agreeable brochure of Mr. Gatty,* and the researches of Mr. Ellacombe, are worthy fruits of this newly-awakened spirit. We are accustomed at all times and in every country "to hear the bell speak for itself." From youth to age the sound is sent forth through crowded streets, or floats with sweetest melody above the quiet fields. It gives a tongue to time, which would otherwise pass over our heads as silently as the clouds, and lends a warning to its perpetual flight. From every church-tower it summons the faithful of distant valleys to the house of God; How sweet to hear the soothing chime, And by thanksgiving measure time ! It is the voice of rejoicing at festivals, at christenings, and at marriages, and of mourning at the departure of the soul; and when life is ended we leave the remains of those we loved to rest within the bell's deep sound. Its tone, therefore, comes to be fraught with memorial associations, and we know what a throng of mental images of the past can be aroused by the music of a peal of bells : O, what a preacher is the time-worn tower, The bell has had a continuous existence amongst civilised people from a very early time. For nearly fourteen centuries it has been employed by the Church, and it was known to ancient nations for perhaps as many centuries before our era. Consecrated to Christian purposes, its sound has travelled with the light that has lighted the Gentiles; and, now that the Gospel has penetrated to the most distant regions of the globe, there is not perhaps a minute of time in which the melody of bells is not somewhere rising towards Heaven, as Earth with her thousand voices praises God. * The Bell: its Origin, History, and Uses. By the Rev. Alfred Gatty. London, 1848. For ages before the bell from its airy height in the old churchtower announced its cognizance of human events, diminutive bells were in common use. An eastern patriarch in the twelfth century quotes a writer who gravely avers that Tubal Cain, the artificer in brass and iron, formed the sounding metal into a rude kind of bell, and that Noah employed it to summon his ship-carpenters to their work. Less theoretical historians may be well contented to begin with the golden bells mentioned in the Book of Exodus as attached to the vestment of the high priest in the Sanctuary, in the same way that they were appended to the royal costume amongst the ancient Persians; or with those small bronze bells, apparently intended for horse and chariot furniture, of which a great number were found by Mr. Layard in a chamber of the palace of Nimroud. On being analysed, the curious fact was discovered that they contain one part of tin to ten parts of copper; and if, as Mr. Layard remarks, the tin was obtained, as probably was the case, from Phoenicia, it may actually have been exported nearly three thousand years ago from the British isles. Amongst the Greeks hand-bells were employed in camps and garrisons, were hung on triumphal cars, sounded in the fishmarket of Athens, summoned guests to feasts, preceded funeral processions, and were sometimes used in religious rites in the temples. Another purpose to which they were put was to hang them about the necks of malefactors on their way to execution, "lest," says Zonaras, "innocent persons should be defiled by touching them." It is more likely that it was to draw the gaze of the people upon the criminal, and thus aggravate his punishment. From this Greek custom was derived (we are told) the Roman one of fixing a bell and a scourge to the emperor's chariot, that in the height of his power he might be admonished against pride, and be mindful of human misery. It is needless to recapitulate all the less doubtful applications of bells among the Romans. The hour of bathing and of business at public places was announced by it, and, with the imperfect means possessed by the ancients of measuring time, it must have been a far more important signal than at present. The little household bells of Pompeii are yet musical with their old domestic tones. The wealthier Romans had them in domestic use to assemble their families, "just," says Magius, writing about 1570, "as the households of nobles and cardinals at Rome are summoned to dinner and supper by a bell hung in the highest part of the building, so that it may not only be heard by the inmates, but by those who are without." Something larger than the hand-bell would appear to have been common about the same period in English mansions, to judge from the expression of Macbeth— Go bid thy mistress, when my drink is ready, She strike upon the bell. But in the reign of Elizabeth the horn still hung outside the gate, and did much of the duty which afterwards devolved upon bells. In the court at Penshurst there is a bell of considerable size, suspended from a wooden frame, with the inscription, "Robert, Earl of Leicester, at Penshurst, 1649." The horn had by this time been quite superseded. This disuse of the hand-bell was one of the many visible signs of the downfall of the old aristocratic system-an indication that the troop of servants had ceased to be "in waiting." Few persons are aware how modern is the present practice of domestic bell-hanging; for no trace of it has been discovered in the old mansions of our nobility, even so late as the reign of Queen Anne. A correspondent of the "Builder" states that when he was taken over Belton Hall by Lord Brownlow, about forty years ago, his lordship pointed out two large bells, one suspended over the landing on the stairs at the north end of the hall, and the other at the south end, remarking that they were the only means his predecessors had of commanding the services of the domestics; "but, as it is getting into fashion," he added, " to have bells hung from the rooms in houses, I must have them also." The late duke was the first Northumberland who allowed the walls of Alnwick to be pierced. Each room had its lackey instead of its bell. The palatial mansion of Holkham, which was commenced in 1734 and completed in 1760, had no such conveniences till the present earl provided them a few years ago-so many centuries did it take to conduct mankind to the simple invention of ringing a bell in a horizontal direction by means of a crank and a piece of wire. This simple contrivance has at length found its way to Jerusalem, and in the |