Thunder-storms. 287 



There Is but a single step from the opinion we have just been 

 discussing, and according to which, the noise of artillery may 

 break up the clouds, may separate them into small groups, 

 may, in fact, dissipate them, and rapidly transform the most 

 threatening and darkest firmament into an azure sky, and the 

 supposition that the same effects should result from the long- 

 continued sounding of a great bell. But is it truly by this 

 chain of ideas that mankind have been led to put the bells in 

 noisy requisition, with the hope of thus dissipating an expected 

 storm ? I would the less venture to affirm this, since some anti- 

 quarian might perhaps discover that the practice of ringing these 

 church bells is anterior to the invention of powder ; and we shall 

 be nearer the trujth, I believe, if we look for the origin of this 

 practice in various superstitious religious considerations. 



The bells connected with the Roman Catholic Church are al- 

 ways consecrated with much pomp when they are hung up. 

 We shall here give a specimen of the prayers, which, according 

 to the ritual of Paris, are offered on such occasions. " Grant, 

 O God ! tliat whenever this bell rings, it may drive far from us 

 the evil influences of tempting spirits, the dark agency of their 

 apparitions, the visits of the whirlwind, the strokes of the Ught' 

 ning, the destruction of thunder, tJte calamities of hurricanes y 

 and all the wild spirits of the tempest.'''' Again, " May thus, O 

 our God, be repelled far from us, the wiles of our enemy, the 

 pelting ofhaily the whirlwind'' s tempest, and the hurricane'' s fury ^ 

 and may all disastrous thunders lose their power r And once 

 more, " O, Eternal God, grant that the sound of this bell may 

 put to flight the fire strokes of the enemy of man, the thunder- 

 holt^ the rapid Jail of stones, as well as all disasters and tem- 

 pests,'''' 



This cause, wholly superstitious, which we have just assigned 

 for the custom of ringing the bells during the time of a thunder- 

 storm, is not perhaps the only orfe we might assign. I might 

 also mention a second, scarcely less powerful, by recalling to re- 

 collection how many individuals have always been compelled to 

 have recourse to noise, when suffering from fear. The coward 

 sings in the dark, and when a town becomes a prey to civil war, 

 the alarm bell is sounded for a much longer time than is ne- 

 cessary as a mere signal of the event. Savages, also, in all parts 



