Part 24 (2/2)

Is't then a mystery so great, what G.o.d and the man, and the world is?

No, but we hate to hear! Hence a mystery it remains.

The ma.s.sy misery so prettily hidden with the gold and silver leaf--_bracteata felicitas_.

[Sidenote: CONCERNING BELLS]

If I have leisure, I may, perhaps, write a wild rhyme on the _Bell_, from the mine to the belfry, and take for my motto and Chapter of Contents, the two distichs, but especially the latter--

Laudo Deum verum, plebem voco, congrego clerum: Defunctos ploro, pestem fugo, festa decoro.

Funera plango, fulgura frango, sabbata pango: Excito lentos, dissipo ventos, paco cruentos.

The waggon-horse _celsa cervice eminens clarumque jactans tintinnabulum_. Item, the cattle on the river, and valley of dark pines and firs in the Hartz.

The army of Clotharius besieging Sens were frightened away by the bells of St. Stephen's, rung by the contrivance of Lupus, Bishop of Orleans.

For ringing the largest bell, as a Pa.s.sing-bell, a high price was wont to be paid, because being heard afar it both kept the evil spirits at a greater distance, and gave the chance of the greater number of prayers _pro mortuo_, from the pious who heard it.

Names of saints were given to bells that it might appear the voice of the Saint himself calling to prayer. Man will humanise all things.

[It is strange that Coleridge should make no mention of Schiller's ”Song of the Bell,” of which he must, at any rate, have heard the t.i.tle.

Possibly the idea remained though its source was forgotten. The Latin distichs were introduced by Longfellow in his ”Golden Legend.”

Of the cow-bells in the Hartz he gives the following account in an unpublished letter to his wife. April-May, 1799. ”But low down in the valley and in little companies on each bank of the river a mult.i.tude of green conical fir-trees, with herds of cattle wandering about almost every one with a cylindrical bell around its neck, of no inconsiderable size. And as they moved, scattered over the narrow vale, and up among the trees of the hill, the noise was like that of a great city in the stillness of the Sabbath morning, where all the steeples, all at once are ringing for Church. The whole was a melancholy scene and quite new to me.”]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote E:

[O heaven, 'twas frightful! now run down and stared at By shapes more ugly than can be remembered-- Now seeing nothing and imagining nothing, But only being afraid--stifled with Fear!

And every goodly, each familiar form Had a strange somewhat that breathed terrors on me!

(_From my MS. tragedy_ [S. T. C.]) _Remorse_, iv. 69-74--but the pa.s.sage is omitted from _Osorio_, act iv. 53 _sq. P. W._, pp. 386-499]].

CHAPTER VII

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