England, and if it exists, I doubt whether any one knows or cares for its musical superiority. Many chimes are respectable, with the exception of one or two bells, which, being flat or sharp, completely destroy every change that is rung upon them, yet it never occurs to anybody to have the offenders down, and either made right or re-cast. The Romsey Abbey bells, for instance, an octave peal of eight, are respectably in tune with the exception of the seventh, which is too sharp, but which has hung there and been rung there ever since 1791 without (as far as we are aware) creating any unpleasant sensation in the neighbourhood. Similar charges might be brought against most of our cathedral and metropolitan chimes. This being the case, it can hardly be wondered at if our clockchimes are found equally out of tune. I have before expressed my conviction that Big Ben with his four quarter-bells and the Westminster Abbey chimes would not be tolerated for twenty-four hours by any town in Belgium. As bells individually they may be good, bad, or indifferent; but as musical notes combined for musical purposes they are simply abominable. Yet the British citizen knows it not; nay, he prides himself upon the colossal Ben though cracked, he plumes himself upon the romantic chimes in the grey towers of the old Abbey, whereof the explanation is that the bells are to him as Time and Noise. But they are something worse than mere noise, they are rank discords and corrupters of the public ear. То hear a dozen or so of quarters struck out of tune every

day must have a disastrous effect upon musical taste It makes people indifferent to tune, which is the first essential of music. I have heard the street boys whistling Big Ben's quarters deliberately out of tune. The government would no doubt smile at the notion that it ought to prohibit such chimes and all such public discords as public offences against taste. Can there be any more lamentable proof of the truth of the much-contested sentence, "The English are not a musical people," than the fact that of all the lords and commons, the élite of the land, who sit at Westminster not a stone's throw from Big Ben, perhaps not half-adozen are aware that Big Ben and his four attendant quarter-bells are hideously out of tune?

Willingly do I escape from the din and discord of English belfries to Belgium, loving and beloved of bells.

The wind that sweeps over her campagnas and fertile levels is full of broken but melodious whispers.

In Belgium day and night are set to music, music on a scale more colossal than that of the largest orchestra ever yet heard; music more penetrating than the loudest trumpet or organ blast. For however loud the chorus and orchestra, it would scarcely be possible in the east end of London to hear a concert at Westminster, yet, on still nights, with a gentle wind blowing, we have often at that distance distinctly heard Big Ben. Well, in Belgium every seven minutes there is bell-music, not only for the whole

town, but for the country miles round. Those carillons, playing the same cheerful air every hour throughout the year, at last acquire a strange fascination over one who lives within sight and hearing of some such grey old church as St. Rombaud, at Mechlin. The listener has heard them at moments when, elated with hope, he was looking forward to the almost immediate realization of some long-desired joy, and the melody of the bells has filled him with exultation. He has heard the same strain rung out in seasons of depression, and his heart has leapt up at the sound so filled with memories. The bells may have again smitten upon his ear at the moment when some tragic news has reached him; or out in the fields, steeped in yellow sunshine, above the hum of insect life, the same tune has come to him between the pauses of the summer wind; or deep in his dreams through sleep, without awakening him, the bells have somehow mingled their old rhythm with his dormant fancies, until at last their sound becomes so charged with the incidents and emotions of his life that they are almost as much a part of him as his memory. When he comes to leave a town where he has dwelt for some time, he feels as if he had lost a whole side of life; he misses the sound of the friendly bells, which always had the power by force of association to call up some emotion congenial to the moment, -the sympathetic bells which seemed always equally ready to weep or to rejoice with him-the unobtrusive bells so familiar as never to be a disturbance the gentle bells that could, as it were, ring

aside to themselves when not wanted, and yet never failed to minister to the listening spirit whenever it stood in need of their companionship or sympathy.

There is no greater mistake than to suppose that bell-music every seven minutes is an unpleasant disturbance or interruption; its very frequency enables it to become completely assimilated to our everyday life. Are we not surrounded by natural changes and effects quite as marked in their way as bell-music, and yet which have no tendency to unsettle, distract, or weary us? How loud at times does the wind blow; how suddenly on a dark day will the sun burst into our room; how shrill is the voice of our canary, which at last we hardly heed at all; how often does a rumbling vehicle pass along in the streets; and yet we cease neither reading nor writing for any of these!

The bells musically arranged never irritate or annoy one in Belgium. Instead of time floating by in blank and melancholy silence, or being marked by harsh and brazen clashes, time floats on there upon the pulses of sweet and solemn music. To return from a town like Mechlin to chimeless and gong-like England, is like coming from a festival to a funeral.

M. Victor Hugo stayed at Mechlin in 1837, and the novelty of the almost incessant carillon chimes in the neighbouring tower of St. Rombaud appears, not unnaturally, to have driven sleep from his eyelids; yet he was not irritated or angry so much as fascinated, and at last the creative instinct awoke in the

poet, and rising from his bed he inscribed by moon. light the following charming lines with a diamondring upon the window-pane :

"J'aime le carillon dans tes cités antiques,

O vieux pays, gardien de tes mœurs domestiques.
Noble Flandre, où le Nord se réchauffe engourdi
Au soleil de Castille et s'accouple au Midi!
Le carillon, c'est l'heure inattendue et folle
Que l'œil croit voir, vêtue en danseuse espagnole
Apparaître soudain par le trou vif et clair
Que ferait, en s'ouvrant, une porte de l'air.
Elle vient, secouant sur les toits léthargiques
Son tablier d'argent, plein de notes magiques,
Réveillant sans pitié les dormeurs ennuyeux,
Sautant à petits pas comme un oiseau joyeux,
Vibrant, ainsi qu'un dard qui tremble dans la cible;
Par un frêle escalier de cristal invisible,

Effarée et dansante, elle descend des cieux;

Et l'esprit, ce veilleur, fait d'oreilles et d'yeux,
Tandis qu'elle va, vient, monte et descend encore,
Entend de marche en marche errer son pied sonore!"

To Belgium belongs the honour of having first understood and felt bells as musical notes, and devised that aërial and colossal musical instrument known as the carillon.

"Carillon" is derived from the Italian word quadriglio or quadrille. A dreary kind of dance music, of which many specimens still survive, seems under this name to have come from Italy, and been widely popular throughout Europe in the sixteenth century. People hummed the quadriglio in the streets, and as town bells, whether in the cathedral or in the town belfry, were regarded as popular institutions, it is not to be wondered at that the quadriglio was the first