44 



On Church Bells. 



you suddenly come upon a huge heap of sticks, straw, feathers, 

 bits of cloth, and other rubbish, the patient and laborious work 

 of indefatigable jackdaws. When the towers have no stone stair- 

 case, the bells have to be reached by a succession of crazy ladders, 

 planted on equally crazy floors. 



How very shameful that any part of God's house should be so 

 neglected ! Why should towers be so desecrated ? Are they not 

 as much a portion of the church as any other part ? Why should 

 they be left to the sole occupation of unclean birds, and profane 

 and irreverent ringers ? Why, the very jackdaws, starlings, and 

 owls used to stare at me, and linger among the bells before they 

 took flight, wondering perhaps what kind of evil bird I was, and 

 with what possible object I had intruded unbidden into the territory 

 to which generations of parishioners had given them a prescriptive 

 right. 



We may, I think, attribute this state of things to two causes, 

 first, to a want of interest in the art of bell-ringing ; and secondly, 

 to the difficulty which is experienced by the clergy in managing 

 the generally most unruly set of men in a parish — the ringers. 

 If gentlemen in a parish really loved bell-ringing for itself, they 

 would not long endure the abominations that so frequently exist. 

 However, there has been a salutary reform effected of late years 

 among another branch of church musicians, and we may hope to 

 witness a reform in this respect also before long. 



2. We come now to the second division of the subject — Bell- 

 founders and foundries. 



When you examine a church bell, you will generally observe 

 that, besides a legend or some quaint epigraph upon them, there 

 are also the initials or the name of the founder, and sometimes the 

 town is added where the foundry was situated. The number of 

 bell-founders, whose bells exist in Wiltshire, amounts to between 

 twenty and thirty. This appears a large number, but you must 

 recollect that they range over a period of three hundred years at 

 least. I have a list of upwards of sixty founders, which I have 

 collected chiefly from inscriptions on bells, but they are not found 

 in Wiltshire only. I do not say that these twenty or thirty 



