1879.] Bev. H. It. Hmvcis on Bells. 99 



and as the demand for any particular quality in art, as well as in other 

 nianufiictures, generally precedes the supply, perhaps one of the steps 

 towards a renewed life in architecture may have been made if I have 

 been able to persuade a non-professional but cultivated audience that 

 it is worth their while to give a little consideration to the logic of 

 architectural design. 



[H. H. S.] 



WEEKLY EVENING MEETING, 



Friday, February 7, 1879. 



Sir W. Frederick Pollock, Bart. M.A. Vice-President, in the Chair. 



Eev. H. E. Haweis, M.A. 



Bells.'' 



[In commenting on tlie dignity of hells, the speaker referred to the long 

 green bell in the leaning tower of Pisa, said to date back to the 

 thirteenth century ; the great Carolus at Antwerp, which first rung 

 in 1467, when Charles the Bold entered the city ; the storm-bell in 

 Strasburg Cathedral, which still warns the traveller of the tempest 

 seen from afar, sweeping over the Vosges ; the small bell Horrida, the 

 tocsin of 1316, covered with mildew, which hangs high up in Notre- 

 Dame at Antwerp, and is never rung, by reason of its age and 

 infirmities ; the gate bell in many an old fortified town, that still 

 sounds at the shutting and opening of the city portals ; the curfew, 

 which, from time immemorial, has rung over the flats of Cambridge, 

 and the fens of Ely ; . . . . the old Tournay bells, which from 

 their city belfry greet the silent, colossal five towers of the grandest 

 church in Belgium, and strike the ears of the traveller as he hurries 

 along the high road from Lille, almost before the beacon light on the 

 summit of the belfry salutes his eyes.] 



We can hardly realize what the bells were to the people in the 

 Low Countries struggling with Spain for independence. In those old 

 towns of Bruges, Malines, Ghent, Louvain, Antwerp, he who con- 

 trolled the bells ruled the town, for he possessed the one means of 

 summoning and directing by their call the movements of his followers 



— hence the jealousy of the citizens over their bells The 



first thing a conqueror did was to melt down the bells, as a token 

 that the citizens had lost the power and right of defending them- 

 selves. The cannons of the conquered, after a successful revolt, were 



* Extracts from the full discourse given from the shorthand report in 'Good 

 Words ' for April and May, 1879. 



