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deck, and were joined by all the old hands, and about twenty barbers, who submitted their razors, brushes, and suds to inspection; the first were made from old iron hoops jagged, the second from tar brushes, and the shaving suds from tar, grease, and something from the pigsty; they had also boxes of Tropical Pills procured from the sheep pen. Large tubs full of stale suds, with a moveable board across each, were ranged round the pumps and engine, and plenty of buckets filled with water. Thus prepared, they divided themselves into gangs of a dozen each, dashed off in different directions, and soon returned with their subjects. The proceedings with each unlucky wight were as follows:Being seated on a board across a tub of water, his eyes were quickly bandaged, his face lathered with the delightful composition; then a couple of scrapes on each side of the chin, followed by a question asked, or some pretended compassionate inquiry made, to get his mouth open, into which the barber either dashed the shaving brush, or a pill, which was the signal for slipping the board from under the poor devil, who was then left to flounder his way out of the tub, and perhaps half drowned in attempting to recover his feet, by buckets of water being dashed over him from all quarters; being thus thoroughly drenched and initiated, I have often observed spirited fellows join their former persecutors in the remainder of their work. After an hour or two spent in this rough fun, which all seem to enjoy, Neptune disappears somewhere in the hold to unrobe, the decks are washed and dried, and those that have undergone the shaving business, oil or grease their chins and whiskers to get rid of the tar. This custom does not accord with the usual discipline of a Man of War; but, as the old seamen look on it as their privilege, and it is only about an hour's relaxation, I have never heard of any captain refusing them his permission.

"E. H."

November 6. St. Leonard Hermit. St. Winoc.
St. Iltutus Abbot.

St. Leonard was a French nobleman of great reputation in the court of Clovis I.; he was instructed in divinity by Remigius, Bishop of Rheims, and was afterwards made Bishop of Limosin. Several miraculous stories are told of him by the monks. He died about the year 559, after having for some time led an eremital life in solitude in the Forest, four leagues from Limoges.

CHRONOLOGY.-The Princess Charlotte died in 1817.

On the Antiquity of Bells. - We resume the subject of the origin of Bells from November 2d, which see.

The precise date at which Bells were used is not known, for small Bells made of Silver, and other sonorous metals, appear to have been in use long before those larger ones which are used in our churches. The French distinguish the former by the word Sonnette, and only allow to the latter the grander appellation of Cloche. As wind blowing into reeds suggested Flutes, so the sound of earthen and metallic vessels suggested Bells.

Small Bells, called in Latin Tintinnabula, are mentioned by very early Roman writers, as Ovid, Tibullus, Martial, Statius, Manlius, and the Greek authors. The terms Aeramentum, Crotalum, Signum, and Petalum, were given them by Josephus, Suetonius, Dion, Strabo, and Polybius. But all these seem to allude to Small Bells. We know nothing of the antiquity of the large Bells which hang on the Gates of the Chinese Cities; but in Europe we cannot place the date of large Bells further back than the second or third age of Christianity. Paulinus, Bishop of Nola in Campania, seems to have introduced them into use in the Cathedrals, Churches, and Monasteries of Europe about the end of the fourth century. They hence received the name of Nolae and of Campana. Pope Sabinian, successor to St. Gregory, shortly afterwards appointed the canonical hours to be indicated by the tolling of Bells. And they began from this time to be used in all the Churches, Abbeys, and Religious Houses of Christendom. The Greek

Church is, by some writers, said to have been taught the use of them by a Venetian in the ninth century; but this is evidently a mistake. It is more probable, as Leo Allatius thinks, that after the taking of Constantinople by the Turks, the Mahommedan laws forbad the use of Bells to the Greeks, and that the latter revived the use of them again at a subsequent period. The very large and ponderous Bells, such as Tom at Oxford, the Great Bell of St. Paul's, that at Exeter, Tom of Lincoln, and some others, were of still more modern invention. Hieronymus Magius, who wrote, when in chains, a curious dissertation called Campanalogia sive de Tintinnabulis, thinks that very great Bells began to be made in Europe about the beginning of the seventh century; and towards the close of that century their introduction and use in Britain is mentioned by Bede.

Baronius informs us, that Pope John the Thirteenth, A. D. 968, consecrated a very large new cast Bell in the

Lateran Church, and gave it the name of John. This is the first instance we meet with of what has been since called the Baptizing of Bells, a superstition which the reader may find ridiculed in the Romish Beehive. The vestiges of this custom may be yet traced in England, in Tom of Lincoln, and the mighty Tom at Christ Church in Oxford.

Egelrick, Abbot of Croyland, about the time of King Edgar, cast a Ring of six Bells, to all which he gave names, as Bartholomew, Bethhelm, Turketul, and so on.

Durand tells us, "In festis quae ad gratiam pertinent, Campanae tumultuosius tinniunt et prolixius concrepant." Rationale, lib. i. cap. 4. 12.

In the account we have of the Gifts made by St. Dunstan to Malmesbury Abbey, it appears that Bells were not very common in that age, for he says the liberality of that Prelate consisted chiefly in such things as were then wonderful and strange in England, among which he reckons the large Bells and Organs he gave them. An old Bell at Canterbury took twentyfour men to ring it; another required thirtytwo men ad sonandum. The noblest peal of ten Bells, without exception, in England, whether tone or tune be considered, is said to be in St. Margaret's Church, Leicester. When a full Peal was rung, the Ringers were said pulsare Classicum.

Hospinian and Naogeorgus give various accounts of the superstitions practised about Bells, of which the following paraphrase by Barnaby Googe of one of these passages, may suffice as an example:

Belles.

When that the thunder chaunce to rore and stormie tempest shake,
A wonder is it for to see the Wretches how they quake,
Howe that no fayth at all they have, nor trust in any thing,

The clarke doth all the belles forthwith at once in steeple ring:

With wonderous sound and deeper farre, than he was wont before,

Till in the loftie heavens darke, the thunder bray no more.

For in these christned belles, they thinke, doth lie such powre and might
As able is the tempest great and storme to vanquish quight.
I sawe myself at Nurnburg once, a towne in Toring coast,
A Bell that with this title bolde hirself did proudly boast:

By name I Mary called am, with Sound I put to flight

The Thundercrackes and hurtfull Stormes, and every wicked Spright.

In a prodigiously ancient Bell at the church of Quendon in Essex, was the inscription

ORA PRO NOBIS:

when it was taken down in 1805, one was put up with this inscription:-

ADESTE FIDELES.

The useful custom of ringing one of the church bells at four, five, or six o'clock, or some other early hour in the morning, and at eight in the evening, which is still practised all over England, is said, by antiquarians, to be a remnant of the memorable Curfew, ordained by William the Conqueror. We have, however, our doubts about this; for we have observed that the same custom prevails on the Continent. It may, however, have been imitated from the English, from its utility as a means of informing labourers and mechanics of the time. We noticed this custom at Thun in Switzerland, on the 2d of August, 1822; and we have found it prevail more or less everywhere. Benighted travellers have been led into the right pathway, and brought to the village after having been long lost, by the sound of the evening bell.

Similar customs, with some varieties, are used at our Universities. The Bell at the Church of our Lady at Cambridge rings every night at nine, for college gates to close, and the great bell, called Tom, at Christ Church, Oxford, tolls for the same purpose. The Gates in the morning too are opened at the sound of these bells. On the bells of Christ Church, alluded to above, a very popular and merry Catch, beginning Hark the bonnie Christ Church Bells, has been composed.

These customs are possibly the curfew continued to our days on account of its utility, and, probably for the same reason adopted in other countries, where the thatched towns are more frequently burned than in Britain.

Henry, in his History of Britain, 4to, vol. iii. p. 567, tells us :-"The custom of covering up their fires about sunset in Summer, and about eight at night in Winter, at the ringing of a Bell called the Couvre feu or Curfew Bell, is supposed by some to have been introduced by William I. and imposed upon the English as a badge of servitude. But this opinion doth not seem to be well founded: for there is sufficient evidence that the same custom prevailed in France, Spain, Italy, Scotland, and probably in all the countries of Europe, in this period, and was intended as a precaution against fires, which were then very frequent and very fatal, when so many houses were built of wood."

We find the Couvre feu mentioned as a common and approved regulation. It was used in most of the monasteries and towns of the North of Europe, the intent being merely to prevent the accidents of fires. All the common houses consisted at this time of timber. Moscow, therefore, being built with this material, generally suffers once in twenty years. That this happened equally in London, Fitzstephen

proves : "Solae pestes Lundoniae sunt stultorum immodica potatio, et frequens incendium." The Saxon Chronicle also makes frequent mention of towns being burned.

The Merry Devil of Edmonton, 4to, 1631, says that the Curfew was sometimes rung at nine o'clock. Thus, the

:

Sexton says:

Well, 'tis nine a clocke, 'tis time to ring Curfew. Shakespeare, in King Lear, Act iii. Sc. 4, has fixed the Curfew at a different time:

Edgar. This is the foul fiend Flibbertigibbet: he begins at Curfew, and walks till the first Cock.

See Grey's Notes on Shakespeare, vol. ii.

Thomson has inimitably described

p.

281.

The shivering wretches, at the Curfew's sound,
Dejected sunk into their sordid beds,

And, through the mournful gloom of ancient times,
Mused sad, or dreamt of better.

For more particulars of Bells, see Campanologia by Hieronymus Magius, 12mo; Brand's Pop. Antiq. edit. Ellis, vol. ii. p. 122 to 138; Campanology, or the Art of Ringing, London, 1753; and our January 29th and November 2d.

If the reader be desirous to read about the philosophy of sound in bells, we can refer him to a curious Memoir by M. Reaumur, in the Memoirs of the Paris Academy, relating to the best shape for bells.

November 7. St. Willibrord Bishop and Confessor. St. Werenfrid Priest and Confessor. St. Prosdecimus Bishop and Confessor.

St. Willibrord was born in Northumberland about the year 658, and placed early in the Monastery of Rippon under the care of its founder, St. Wilfrid. His father himself retired, and in his old age lived the life of a Hermit, somewhere between the Humber and the Ocean. St. Willibrord eventually settled at Utrecht in the Low Countries, where he became the first Bishop. He built there the Church of Our Saviour, and restored that of St. Martin which had been destroyed.

St. Prosdecimus was one of the very early Christians, being appointed Bishop of Padua by St. Peter. He was sacrificed for his opinions in the reign of Nero.

CHRONOLOGY. Battle of Prague in 1660.

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