proudly up. Yet although the Titmar shian view of life is desponding and gloomy, it is so on the surface, for the most part. Thackeray knows, as well as any man, although he does not always choose to exhibit them, the nobilities that lie deep down beneath the outer crust. There is at times a strain of most sad, serious wisdom in him. "A smile on the lip and a tear in the eye," and that proud reticence of his, that noble shame of emotion, that stern crushing down of all weak and unmanly tears, makes his pathos, when it does force its way through mockery or satire, quite overwhelming. In Mr. Dickens' pathetic passages-and they are legion-there are too many tears, and all too great a display of them. He weeps because he likes to weep. He believes in the "luxury of grief," and indulges himself pretty frequently in the luxury. Mr. Thackeray in his books displays some capacity for thinking; Mr. Dickens never does. No opinion of his carries the slightest weight with it. He can not argue, he can only call nicknames, stinging and sticking. His opinions are as extravagant as his characters. More over he learns nothing. Experience passes by him like the idle wind. The literary errors of his youth are the literary errors of his manhood. In his first works he attacked professors of religion, representing them as gluttons and wine-bibbers, and persons careful only of their own advancement; and in his later books the same representation is continued. Time has taught him no temperance, increased knowledge of mankind no charity. He still believes as in the days of his hot youth, when he wrote Pickwick, that the synonym of Christian is-Stiggins. It is only the resolutely shut eye that is competent to such a feat. Professor Masson considers that the novel is not likely soon to lose its popularity; on the contrary, he expects that it will rise into greater importance, and that the greatest minds will yet peer into its service and accept it as one of the noblest forms of literature. He wishes its capabilities to be increased, its range widened, and that greater attention should be paid by novelists to "real life and epic breadth of interest." TRADITIONS. The feelings so touchingly expressed were echoed by the tender sentiments breathed by Moore in his charming melody of Those Evening Bells, and responded to by many a sigh from a full heart. Often, while Napoleon wandered through the beautiful grounds of Malmaison, when any wish, if not already gratified, seemed within his grasp, and when she who loved him best was by his side, he would stay his steps to hearken to the sound of the neighboring village bells, and say, with a sigh: "How they remind me of Brienné!" In all the vicissitudes of his eventful life, how often may their music have seemed to float the air, when far away from the scenes of former triumph and of splendor! When, as was his custom in the still hour of upon night, he has stood alone, contemplating | all within hearing of the convent bells are the skies, may not imagination have safe from storms, and from the evil beings wafted back the sounds to which, in boy- by whom they were promoted. hood, he had so often listened? The sound of the bell, announcing joy and sorrow, may well be associated with all our recollections. It proclaims the principal events of life-birth, marriages, and deaths. The effect of the funeral toll has been well described by William Howitt in his Visit to Remarkable Places. "The bell," he says, "calling over hill and dale, with its solemn voice, the dead to his place." The green sward, which he has so often trod, shall know his steps no more. The passing - bell falls with a mournful cadence on the ear: we know that it gives notice of the departure of a fellow-creature who is lying at the point of death. We have often listened to it as its melancholy tone seemed to keep pace with the gradual parting of the soul from the body. A belief prevailed in Huntingdonshire and elsewhere, that the soul never left the body till the church-bell rang, so that to shorten the pangs of the death-struggle the passing-bell may have been introduced. But there are still more urgent reasons for it. According to old superstition, it was believed to have the power of scaring away the evil spirits that were hovering about to seize the spirit the moment it left the body. It was customary, too, to set the bells a-ringing when tempests or thunder and lightning were impending, as they were supposed to be under the direction of evil spirits, who could only be compelled to desist from their fell purpose of destruction by the sound of holy bells. So strong was the impression that bells should be used on every awful occasion, that we find that a person of the name of Dow granted fifty pounds to the parish. in which the great prison of Chester is situated, on condition that forever after, on the night before an execution a man should go at the dead hour of night, and strike, with a hand-bell, twelve tolls with double strokes, as near the cells of the condemned criminals as possible, and then exhort them to repentance. The great bell of the church was to toll as they were passing by on their way to execution, and the bell-man was to look over the wall, and exhort all good people to pray to God for the poor sinner who was going to suffer death. Southey takes notice of this in his Letters of Espriella. Money was also bequeathed to insure the ringing of the curfew bell in Kidderminster, on one particular night in the year, to cele brate a thanksgiving to God, for the preservation of the life of a person, who, on his way from Bridgenorth fair, was on the point of being precipitated from a great hight, when he was saved by the sound of the Kidderminster curfew, which enabled him to return by the right direction, and to reach his home in safety. Such sanctity has been ascribed to bells, that we find that, in some countries, they are baptized and given the name of some saint. The pious Dionysius Barsalabi wrote a dissertation on bells, in which he ascribes their invention to Noah, as he has found it mentioned in several histories, that a command was given to him Ovid, Livy, and Lucan allude to the that the workmen employed in building customs which prevailed in their days of the ark should be summoned to their having bronze instruments sounded dur- work by strokes of wood on a bell. The ing an eclipse, to avert the disaster which direction given through Moses that the it was believed to betoken. Durandus priest should have bells attached to his says the church rings the bells when a robe, by which his approach to the sancstorm is coming on, that the devils, when tuary would be announced to the people, they hear the trumpets of the Holy King shows the antiquity of their use. Small as the bells were considered-might bells were employed by the Greeks and take fight, and so the tempest subside. Romans for civil and military purposes, Latimer alludes to this custom in one of and were sometimes sounded from temhis sermons, which is an additional con- ples to summon the people to their refirmation of its having prevailed in Eng-ligious duties; it is said that their first land before the Reformation. Though use in Christian churches was in the fourth now discontinued in Protestant churches, century, by Paulinus, Bishop of Nola, in it still prevails in Malta and Sicily, in Sar- Campania. dinia, Tuscany, and many parts of France. The belief was held in many places that Bells have been long used or occasions less sad and solemn than those to which sound increased till he thought all the bells of Heaven were ringing him into Paradise, and he felt the most delightful, soothing sensation; and he added, that in the district where this happened, there was not a bell within six miles. we have alluded. They ring forth a joyous peal to welcome the married pair, who tread the aisle on their way to the altar to join their hands and plight their VOWS. The merry chimes of the joy-bells proclaim good news, or announce a royal visit. The castanets, which tinkle like There is no end to the traditions conpuny bells, had a simple origin: as the nected with bells. Sir John Sinclair, in his merry peasants danced beneath the spread-account of Scotland, tells of a bell belonging branches of the chestnut trees, they ing to the old church of St. Fillan, in the picked up the fallen chestnuts, and rattled parish of Killin, in Perthshire; it usually them in their hands in time to the music lay upon a gravestone in the churchyard: of their voices and their graceful move-it was supposed to possess the miraculous ments in the dance. The castanets in use power of restoring the insane to their with our public dancers are an imitation senses; the maniac was to be dipped in of the chestnut, the name being evidently the Saint's pool, after which he was to be derived from Castanea, chestnut. The bound with ropes, and confined all night cap and bells given to fools may have in the chapel, and in the morning the bell originated from the pleasure which that was placed upon his head, with great unfortunate class of beings may have solemnity; if this remedy failed, his case taken in the jingling of bells; this strikes was considered incurable. Other marus the more as we remember to have seen velous powers were attributed to this one to whom the light of reason and the bell; if stolen, it was asserted it had the blessed sun was denied, who took infinite power of extricating itself from the hands delight in the sound of the triangles with of the robber, and would then return to which he was furnished for his amuse- its original place, while it continued ringment; though so much was withheld, an ing the whole way. exquisite sense of hearing gave charms to the continuous sound of the triangles, to which his own voice kept time in the monotonous chant of "Ullah, Ullah," the only articulate sounds he could utter. It is not strange that sounds, which are the prelude to communion with the unseen world, should produce an effect upon the imagination. All who have felt the effect of the Sabbath bells borne on the wind to a remote spot, may conceive how the recollection may float upon the imagination of one who is far away. In describing traveling through the desert, Eothen mentions having been awakened by the sound of a peal of bells. "My native bells, the innocent bells of Mallin, that never before sent forth their music beyond the Blaggon hills, and for upwards of two miles the sound continued, and then gradually died away." said that sailors often hear their native bells, when far out upon the seas; and there is many a tale of the mariner, who heard his funeral knell not long before his death, the foam of the surge, too, having assumed the appearance of his windingsheet. An old man, who had with difficulty been saved from drowning, described the sensations which he had experienced: he fancied he heard the ringing of bells, and, as consciousness became less, the VOL. LXIX-No. 1. It is The belief in subterranean bells has been, from time immemorial, a common superstition in Berkshire, as stated in Christmas, its History and Antiquity, published in London, in 1850, where if any one watches on Christmas eve, he will hear subterranean bells. And throughout the mining districts the workmen declare that at the holy season, the mine which contains the most precious ore is supernaturally illuminated in the most brilliant manner, and high mass performed with the greatest solemnity, the whole service chanted by the unseen choristers in the most devout and impressive manner. Lord Lindsay gives a translation of a stanza from the poet Upland, founded on the tradition of the Sinaitic peninsula: "Oft in the forest far, one hears A passing sound of distant bells: Can tell us whence the music swells. But no one now the way can find." Though the chapel which in former days stood by the Lake of Crassmere, near Ellesmere, has been swept away by Time, its bells are said to be still heard 9 whenever the waters are ruffled by the wind. Bells, it is told, have frequently rung of their own accord. It is so assert ed to have happened when Thomas à Becket was murdered. The death of the King of Spain was said to have been always announced at the moment of its occurrence by the tolling of the great bell of the Cathedral of Saragossa. Collins made this the subject of some beautiful lines, beginning thus: "The bell of Arragon, they say, Spontaneous speaks the fatal day." the interminable waves, is not strange; for then the imagination has nothing to interrupt its action, and the attention is alive to the faintest sound. The great wilderness which stretches almost uninterruptedly from the Euphrates to the western shores of Africa is said to present sights and sounds that can be traced only to causes that are supernatural. In that portion of the desert between Palestine and the Red Sea, it is told that matin and vesper-bells are heard every day from some phantom convent, which has never yet been discovered to human sight. These bells are believed to have sounded ever since the Crusades. The advance and attack of armies, with their trumpets, are thought to be distinguished. The travelers who pass along in the caravans through the wide-spreading sands, are so impressed by the awful solitude, that they fancy sounds and sights to people the vast loneliness. In the last stanza he turns, pathetically, to his own death, and " some simple knell" which calls him to the grave. At Raleigh, they say that, at Christmas-time, the old church bells are heard to ring deep in the earth. It was customary for the people of that locality to go into the valley on Christmas morning, and, bending to the ground, to listen to the mysterious sound. It has been observed by one who passed After Port Royal, in the West-Indies, through the dreary waste, that if, by unwas submerged, at the close of the seven-lucky chance, one has lingered behind his teenth century, sailors told many marvelous stories of their having anchored on the chimneys and the steeples, and having heard the church bells ringing in the water, touched by no human hands. Among the legends of bells, it is told that, many years since, the twelve parish churches in Jersey each possessed a valuable peal of bells. A long civil war had so impoverished the state, that it was judged to be expedient that those bells should be sold, to help to defray the heavy expenses which had been incurred. The bells were accordingly taken down, packed, and shipped for France for this purpose. As it were to wreak vengeance on those who had proposed such desecration, the vessel in which they were being conveyed foundered on the passage, and every thing on board was lost. Since that fatal time, the story goes, at the approach of a storm, the bells are heard to ring from the bottom of the deeps. To this day the fishwomen of Simeon's Bay go to the edge of the water before they trust their boats to the waves, that they may ascertain whether the bells are ringing. If the warning chimes are heard, nothing can induce them to leave the shore. If all is still, they fearlessly pursue their craft. That sounds should seem to float upon the air in desolate regions, and pass along party, not only will earthly sounds and forms be presented to his fancy, but fearful outcries and hideous shapes, which do not belong to this world. Walker, in his Irish Bards, mentions that some of the ancient poets of Ireland tell of supernatural sounds, often heard by the Irish peasantry; sometimes in loud shrieks or plaintive cries, that burst from the depth of the forest, or steal along the valley: they seem as the voices of departed bards or fallen heroes, who are, perhaps, sailing along the clouds of heaven or gliding through the mists. Many a poet and minstrel may have been indebted to those imaginary voices for the sublimest conceptions. Mozart was accustomed to compose in the open air, imagination and the music of Nature prompting his first passages, and seeming to him as the commissioned inspirers from heaven. Tourists who visit Cornwall are sure to find their way to Minster Vale, celebrated for its loneliness. The deep valley is clothed with grass soft as velvet, and of the most vivid green, enameled with wild flowers of various hues and delicate perfume. The hills rise to a considerable hight; the furze, in the season of its bloom, shining along their sides like burnished gold. The stream, which runs through the whole length of the vale, gives the most delightful sensation of freshness and coolness, even in the hottest day in summer. From this valley a window can be discerned through the thick foliage; it belongs to Minster church, the approach to which is in another direction. Every one who enters the romantic and secluded church-yard which leads to it, is struck by its lonely solemnity. The venerable trees cast their shadows over the grave-stones. A picturesque winding path reaches the church. The carved oak tracing in the interior is but little injured by time. The remains of painted glass in the windows show that it once formed a principal ornament. The church has a peculiar interest besides its romantic situation, from a tradition connected with it, which runs thus: It is told that when it was being built, the Earl of Batheceaux, who inhabited a splendid castle in the neighborhood, in the hope of benefiting his soul, ordered a fine peal of six bells to be cast for it. As soon as they were ready, they were embarked in a large vessel for Boscastle, the neighboring village. Forgetful that the sounds of bells on the sea was considered ominous of disaster, the sailors, before nearing the shore, set them going. The concourse of persons who were waiting on the shore for their arrival, saw the ship instantly give one lurch and sink, with its precious cargo, to the bottom of the sea. The bells were never recovered, but are often heard at midnight from the deep blue waters, pealing a mournful air. The tower where they were to have been hung has been left unfinished ever since. We recollect to have seen one of the most interesting legends connected with bells, with which we ever met, in the Dublin Penny Journal for the year 1832. It told of a chime of bells, which were manufactured by a young Italian, who labored at them incessantly for many years. They were so sweet that his chief delight was in listening to them; they were, in fact, the charm and the pride of his life. He was, however, induced by the prior of a neighboring convent to part with them. With the profits of their sale he purchased for himself a little villa, where he could hear his bells from the cliff on which the convent stood. Their music was quite necessary to his happiness. His days passed cheerfully on, surrounded by the objects of his love, and within hearing of his precious bells. But a time of trouble came, and he lost every thing he was alone in the wide world, bereft of family, friends, and home. The convent, too, was razed to the ground; and the bells-the bells that he had loved so well- were taken to another country. For years he wandered from land to land, seeking for the place to which they had been removed. He was a sorrowful old man when he sailed up the Shannon. The vessel in which he was a passenger anchored in the Pool, near Limerick. He hired a small boat for the purpose of landing. It was an evening so lovely, that he might have fancied himself in his native home. The water was clear as glass, and the little boat glided smoothly on. The city was near; and as the Italian sat in the stern, his eyes were fondly fixed upon it. Suddenly, amidst the stillness of the hour, a peal burst forth from the cathedral bells upon the air. The rowers rested on their oars; the Italian leaned back; he crossed his arms upon his breast; the well-remembered, fondlyloved chime was heard once more. closed his eyes; the boatmen landed him, but he was dead! He We need no legends to tell us how dear bells have ever been to our people, and what gentle feelings they inspire. In Southey's Book of the Church it is found that "Somerset pretended that one bell in a steeple was sufficient for summoning the people to prayer, and the country was thus in danger of losing its best music-a music hallowed by all circumstances, which, according equally with social, exalted, and with solitary pensiveness, though it falls upon many an unheeding ear, never fails to find some hearts which it exhilarates, and some which it softens." The sound of the bell which summons to prayer, as the congregation pass along the pleasant green lanes and fields, is music which fits them for devotion. The funeral-toll and the passing-bell turn their thoughts to the only circumstance of life on which we can calculate with certainty -our death; but the bells which break joyously through the stillness of night to celebrate the advent of Our Lord, seem as glad messengers proclaiming life and immortality! |