Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 3.djvu/554

538 striking incidents could be indefinitely multiplied. It was, however, in the low countries of and, distracted with incessant , that, for purely  reasons, bells acquired unique importance.

But their and uses may be further noticed. The Ave bell tolled at 6 and 12 to remind men of  to ; the  bell for evening ; the  was for the last  of the day. The undefined, often a handbell, rung at the of the ; the passing bell, at. The (couvre feu), introduced by  into, rang at 8 o'clock to extinguish all lights. In many parts of the country and in towns at 8 and 6 o'clock bells are still rung. At  we find the Cloche de Triomphe, by ; sixteen bells at  and several at  and elsewhere bear the same maker's name. The Horrida, or ancient at, said to date from 1316, is long-shaped and is now unused. The curfew in the same tower rings at 5, 12, and 8. The Santa Maria (4½ s) first rang when entered  1467. St Antoine is another celebrated bell, and the favourite Carolus, given by (7½ s), is made of, , and , and valued at 20,000. At we have the  bell, with, “O Rex gloriæ Christæ veni cum pace,” and date 1375, 3 i (8 s), only rung when two s are seen in the town at once. The recall or bell warns travellers in the plain of the  coming from the. The Thor or gate bell, for shutting and opening s of the city, has been cast three times (1618, 1641, and 1651); it bears the following inscription:— The Mittags, or 12 o'clock bell, taken down in the, bore the — From all this it will appear that these bells acquired a strong personality from the feelings and uses with which they were associated; and, indeed, they were formally christened with more ceremony than we give to christening, and were then supposed to have the power of driving away , dispersing s, &c.

attained perfection in in the 16th and 17th centuries; and the names of Hemony, Dumery, and the Van den Gheyns stand out as the princes of the. Their bells are still heard throughout the, and are plentiful at, , , , , and. These bells are frequently adorned with of exquisite beauty, such as s, , , s, s, or  groups, and inscribed with , sometimes bad, but strong, quaint, and often pathetic. We give the preference to Hemony's small bells, and to Van den Gheyns's large ones. The names of Deklerk, Claes Noorden and Johann Albert de Grave (1714), Claude and Joseph Plumere (1664), Bartholomew Goethale (1680), and Andrew Steiliert (1563) also occur in. The following illustrate the nature of s and es common in :—“Non sunt loquelæ neque sermones audiantur voces eorum, F. Hemony, undefined, 1658;” “Laudate Domini omnes gentes, F. Hemony, 1674;” and on a bell— A common inscription runs— A few other inscriptions which occur on bells in and may be quoted. The bell in the at, already mentioned, which was melted down by  in 1793, bore the words— Bells of the  at, , had— By an old it appears that the bells of the  of, in , were in the year 1501 new cast and — In the little at,  built a , and placed in it bells for 's , round the largest of which was cast—

Some of the music played on the is still extant. We may specially mention the morceaux fugués discovered by, in the archives at, the work of the celebrated ist and carilloneur Matthias van den Gheyn (published by Schott and Co., and ). This music is as fine in its way as or.

Quite lately several have been put up in ; and one (1875) is in contemplation for. The new  by Messrs Gillett and Bland of, now employed almost everywhere in connection with s and s, is incomparably superior to anything of the kind on the. By its aid the, which falls on the outside of the bell, is raised mechanically instead of by the action of the fist or finger on the key; and all that the stroke on the key does is to let it slide off like a hair-, and drop on the bell. Thus the touch of the modern  bids fair to rival that of the. The same firm has also invented a bell. The chief s in at present are at , ,  ,  ,  , and. Several good peals of bells in are immortalized in the common  — Bell-ringing by is still a popular  in. The first regular peal of bells in this country was sent in 1456 by  to, , and was for 300 years the largest peal in. At the beginning of the 16th century sets of eight bells were hung in a few large es. In 1668 a famous work on bells, Tintinalogia, by T. W. [White], appeared, introducing a sort of bell-notation by printing the bells 1, 2, 3, 4, &c., on slips of paper in different orders according to the changes rung. Of these changes there is a great variety, spoken of technically as, dodging, snapping, place-making, plain-bob, bob-triple, bob-major, bob-major reversed, double bob-major, grandsire-bob-cator, &c. 