thedral, which he called Dunstan, Paulinus, Ithamar, and Lanfranc. Edward III., about 1347, built for S. Stephen's Chapel in the Sanctuary, a strong clochard of stone and timber, covered with lead, and placed therein three bells, since usually rung at coronations, triumphs, funerals of princes, and their obits. Of those bells some fabled that their ringing soured all the drink in the town; more, that about the biggest bell was written

"At

And we have the following curious account of the once celebrated bells at Osney, in Fox's Monks and Monasteries. the first foundation there were but three bells, beside the Saint and Litany bells; but by Abbot Leech they were increased to the number of seven. The bells were christened, and called by the names of Hauteclare, Doucement, Austyn, Marie, Gabriel, and John. All which, for the most part, towards the suppression, being before broken and recast, had gotten new names; which by tradition we have thus: Mary and Jesus, Meribus and Lucas, New Bell and Thomas, Conger and Godston; which Thomas, now commonly called, Great Tom of Christechurch,' had this inscription not long since remaining upon it, ' In Thoma laude resono BIм ВOм sine fraude:' and was accounted six feet in diameter, which is eighteen feet in compass."

To these mere matter-of-fact materials, we might add a great deal about the consecration of bells and their supposed virtue; but we will turn to a more practical matter, the antiquity and use of the campanile, or bell-tower. The use of the bell-tower was recognised in the ancient Saxon law, which gave the title of Thane to any one who had a Church with a bell-tower on his estate. Of the equally ancient application of towers to the purpose of hanging the bells, we have an elaborate and most interesting account in Mr. Petrie's work on the Round Towers of Ireland. In England, the campanile is generally attached to the Church; or, at most, stands a few yards from it. There are several round towers in Norfolk and Suffolk, which owe their shape, in all probability, to the peculiar building materials of those counties; but it is worthy of remark, that in two of our most interesting Saxon Churches, Brixworth and Brigstock, both in Northamptonshire, we have a semicircular tower rising together with the bell-tower, and forming a staircase to it. There are detached bell-towers at Chichester, East Dereham in Norfolk, Glastonbury and Bruton in Somersetshire, Evesham in Worcestershire, and several other places; and many have

*Stow's Survey of London.

doubtless been destroyed, as those in Old S. Paul's Churchyard, and at Salisbury; the latter was taken down at the close of the last century; the bells of the former contribute a chapter to the history and fate of sacrilege.

"In the reign of King Henry VIII. there was a clockier or bell-house adjoining to S. Paul's Church in London, with four very great bells in it, called Jesus bells. Sir Miles Partridge, a courtier, once played at dice with the king for these bells, staking a hundred pounds against them, and won them, and then melted and sold them to a very great gain. But in the fifth year of King Edward VI. this gamester had worse fortune when he lost his life, being executed on Tower-hill, for matters concerning the Duke of Somerset."*

Since we can hardly claim for clocks, as separate from bells, sufficient interest, as connected with architecture, to occupy a place by themselves, I shall briefly allude to their introduction in this place.

Sundials were used by the Saxons, and by them placed upon Churches; but Dante is the first who mentions an horologe which strikes the hour, i. e., a clock as opposed to a dial. Dante died in 1321, and before that time we have a curious record of a clock in England. Radulphus de Hengham, who was then chief justice of the King's Bench, was fined eight hundred marks, (16 Edward I.) A.D. 1288, for having altered a record, whereby a poor defendant was made to pay six shillings and eightpence instead of thirteen shillings and fourpence. Out of this fine a clock was placed in the clock-house near Westminster Hall, which might be heard by the courts of law. An inscription was added commemorating the event, and conveying a lesson to all future judges: "DISCITE JUSTITIAM MONITI."† Be warned and learn justice. And this clock was considered, in the reign of Henry VI., of such consequence, that the king gave the keeping of it with the appurtenances, to William Walsby, Dean of S. Stephen's, with the pay of sixpence per diem, to be received at the exchequer. The clock-house stood in a ruined state till 1715, but the clock had given place to a dial, the inscription still remaining.

We also find a notice of a Church clock at Canterbury, and from the price it can hardly have been a dial. "Anno 1292, novum Orologium magnum in Ecclesia pretium £30."‡

* Stow's Survey.

"This case Justice Southcote remembered, when Catlyn, Chief Justice of the King's Bench, in the reign of Elizabeth, would have ordered the razure of a roll in the like case, which Southcote utterly denied to assent unto, and said openly, that he meant not to build a clock-house.""-Anecdotes from Camden Society.

Dart's Canterbury, quoted from Daines Barrington's Observation on Clocks, in the fifth volume of the Archæologia, to which I am indebted for what is here adduced on the subject of clocks.

In Rymers Fædera there is a protection of Edward III. (1368) to three Dutchmen, under the title, "De Horologiorum Artificio exercendo." And Chaucer (who died in 1400) writes, "Full sikerer was his crowing in his loge,

As is a clock, or any abbey orloge."

The clock being in all probability a bell, but the orloge being certainly a clock, and that too one that struck the hours.

I shall mention one other instance. Richard of Wallingford was the son of a smith, and from his learning became Abbot of S. Alban's in the reign of Richard II. When his fortune had now become considerable, he was desirous of displaying in some work, the greatness not only of his genius, but also of his learning and of his marvellous skill. And to this end he constructed, with great labour, at greater cost, but with art far surpassing both, a clock, the like of which is not to be found in all Europe, for the exactness with which it points out the course of the sun and of the moon, the rising of the fixed stars, and the ebb and flow of the sea. And lest this marvellous piece of machinery should be spoiled by the clumsiness of monks, or by their ignorance of its construction, Richard himself wrote a treatise upon it. This clock continued to go in Leland's time, who was born towards the close of the reign of Henry VII., and who gives the above account of it and of its artificer.

it

This notice of bells and clocks is not disproportioned to the influence which their introduction has had on ecclesiastical architecture. It is to the use of Church bells that we are indebted for the most prominent feature of almost every ecclesiastical fabric, and that which serves most to harmonize all the parts of a whole, sometimes so vast and almost always so various, as a Gothic Church. From the low central tower of a Norman abbey, but just rising above the roof, at the intersection of the cross, to the lofty towers or spires of Boston, Gloucester, Salisbury, Coventry, Louth, or Whittlesea, in whatever part of the Church may be placed, the steeple still gives an inexpressible grace and dignity to the whole outline, correcting immoderate length, reducing all minor parts to proportion, giving variety to sameness, and harmony to the most licentious irregularity. judicious use of the tower or spire is a great part of the secret of the characteristic boldness in minor details of the mediæval architects. The little excrescences of such a building as York Minster, which are now lost in the grand whole, would at once become deformities, if the towers were removed. The Cathedral of Milan is in some respects one of the most splendid buildings in the world; but for want of a steeple of proportionate elevation, it is but a gigantic grove of pinnacles, in which statutes

T

The

seem to have lost their way, and to be wandering without aim and without end. If, as is most probable, the central tower of Fountains had perished before the present northern tower was erected, what a heavy mass of irregularities must that splendid pile have seemed? The tower reduces all to proportion, and makes it once again a whole. Bolton Abbey had also suffered the loss of its tower, and that at the west end was never raised above the level of the nave; and though it is far smaller and less irregular than Fountains, what a long unrelieved length it presents to the eye! What is it which gives such vastness and importance to the Cathedral, such grace and beauty to the parish Church at a distance, but the tower or spire? Nay, what is it but the bell-gable which in mere outline often distinguishes the retired chapel from some neighbouring barn? And for all this we are indebted to the introduction of bells; or if not for the existence of these or the like additions to the beauty of outline in our Churches, yet at least for what is a part of their beauty,— their having a use, and being exactly adapted to their use, as well as to the production of a certain pictorial effect. The dome may relieve the horizontal line as well as the tower, but what other purpose does it serve? If the eye gave expression to the human face without seeing, or performing some important function, would it not lose half its beauty as well as all its value? And just so it is with the dome of S. Paul's, as compared with the tower of Gloucester or of Hereford.

G. A. P.

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.

THERE is just now a comparative lull in the political tempest. At least we do not hear of a new revolution every day. It cannot indeed be said that the political earthquake has yet subsided. Its vibrations are still felt in every part of Europe: and every day we may expect a new shock of it in France. Let us, however, look round and consider the devastation which it has already caused in that devoted country.

What meets the eye at the first glance is a flourishing and wealthy nation turned upside down from its very foundation, a powerful monarchy laid prostrate, a monarchy the destinies of which had been guided for many years by one to whom credit was given for much political sagacity; fenced in, as it was supposed, by a numerous army, supported by enormous revenues— this we see in one day crumbled to the dust-the king, the royal family, the members of the government dispersed in all directions, the helm seized by a knot of men, who were before of little

account as politicians, some scarcely heard of-these men undertaking the task of reconstructing society on a new basis, never before tried in the world, while two hundred thousand citizens with muskets in their hands, and many of them without a sou in their pockets, are watching the Government as a cat watches a mouse, letting them go on for a little while, but ready to pounce on them the instant they go beyond the bounds, which her majesty the mob has prescribed. Meanwhile credit is hopelessly ruined all persons who have anything to lose are rapidly leaving Paris, in anticipation of a terrible conflict of classes: the funds of the poor lodged in Savings' Banks appropriated by the Government: the mass of the workmen, labourers, artisans, and servants, thrown out of employment, or employed at the public expense, by means of heavy taxes laid on the middle and upper classes, who are rapidly becoming insolvent; and what is perhaps the most formidable thing of all, a number of revolutionary clubs assembling night by night, to listen to the speeches of enthusiasts and fanatics, who already speak of community of goods, and threaten a general scramble for property already cry out, "A bas les riches," "Mort aux proprietaires :" (Down with the rich, death to proprietors or owners of property.) In short, the spectacle we behold is an eminently prosperous and powerful nation reduced in a few weeks to a state of poverty and internal discord, with the probability of going through the same scenes, which have rendered the first French Revolution synonymous with everything that is most calamitous and horrible in human history.

It may be safely said that there is not a sensible man of any class in France, be he rich or poor, who does not say, in the bitterness of his heart, What enormous fools, what dolts and idiots, what cowards we have been, to suffer this state of things to arise! But it is now too late: the thing is done: the mob will not yield up their arms: they are, in fact, the ruling power: a pure democracy, and something more, must be tried.

We can compare France in her present state to nothing more fitly, than to a strong man in robust health who should deliver up his living body to a set of experimental quacks, and allow them to try on him some new system of treatment, before unheard of in this world, in order that the rest of mankind might benefit by the trial.

If the English people are as wise as they are reputed to be, they will look well to all the circumstances of this famous revolution, that they may prevent the possibility of anything like it happening here. We are perhaps too apt to think that the circumstances of our own country are so different from those of France, and the temper of our people so contrary, that we have