Died:
Desiderius
Erasmus, scholar, 1536, Basel; General St. Ruth,
killed at Aghrim, Ireland, 1691; Titus Oates, 1704;
Christian G. Heyne (illustrator of ancient writings),
1814, Gottingen; Dr. John Jamieson (Scottish
Dictionary), 1838, Edinburgh; Mrs. Tonna ('Charlotte
Elizabeth'), controversial writer, 1846; Horace
Smith, novelist, comic poet, 1849; Robert Stevenson,
engineer of Bell Rock light-house, &c., 1850.
Feast Day: Saints Nabor
and Felix, martyrs, about 304; St. John Gualbert,
abbot, 1073.
MRS.
TONNA
It is quite possible to be an
author and have one's books sold by thousands, and yet
only attain a limited and sectional fame. Such was
Mrs. Tonna's case. We remember overhearing a
conversation between a young lady and a gentleman of
almost encyclopaedic information, in which a book by
Charlotte Elizabeth was mentioned. 'Charlotte
Elizabeth!' Exclaimed he; 'who is Charlotte
Elizabeth?' 'Don't you know Charlotte Elizabeth?'
rejoined she; 'the writer of so many very nice books.'
She was amazed at his ignorance, and probably
estimated his acquirements at a much lower rate
afterwards.
'Charlotte Elizabeth,' Miss
Browne, Mrs. Pelhan, finally Mrs. Tonna, was the
daughter of the rector of St. Giles, Norwich, and was
born in that city on the 1st of October 1790. As soon
as she could read she became an indiscriminate
devourer of books, and when yet a child, once read
herself blind for a season. Her favourite volume was
Fox's Martyrs, and its spirit may be said to have
become her spirit. Shortly after her father's death,
she entered into an unhappy marriage with one Captain
Pelhan, whose regiment she accompanied to Canada for
three years. On her return, she settled on her
husband's estate in Kilkenny, and mingling with the
peasantry, she came to the conclusion that all their
miseries sprang out of their religion. She thereon
commenced to write tracts and tales illustrative of
that conviction, which attracted the notice and favour
of the Orange party, with whom she cordially
identified herself.
As her writings became
remunerative, her husband laid claim to the proceeds,
and to preserve them from sequestration, she assumed
the name of 'Charlotte Elizabeth.' Her life
henceforward is merely a tale of unceasing literary
activity. Having become totally deaf, her days were
spent between her desk and her garden. In the
editorship of magazines, and in a host of
publications, she advocated her religious and
Protestant principles with a fervour which it would
not be unjust to designate as, occasionally at least,
fanatical.
In 1837, Captain Pelhan died,
and in 1841 she formed a happier union with Mr. Tonna,
which terminated with her death at Ramsgate on the
12th of July 1846. Mrs. Tonna had a handsome
countenance and in its radiance of intelligence and
kindliness, a stranger would never imagine that he was
in the presence of one whose religion and politics,
theoretically, were those of the days of Elizabeth
rather than of Victoria, and who was capable of saying
in all earnestness, as she once did say to a young
Protestant Irish lady of our acquaintance, on their
being introduced to each other, 'Well, my dear, I hope
you hate the Paapists!'
THE FEMALE
HEAD-DRESSES OF 1776
On the
12th of July 1776,
Samuel Foote appeared at the
Haymarket theatre in the
character of Lady Pentweazle, wearing one of the
enormous female head-dresses which were then
fashionable�not meaning, probably, anything so serious
as the reform of an absurdity, but only to raise a
laugh, and bring an audience to his play-house. The
dress is stated to have been stuck full of feathers of
an extravagant size; it extended a yard wide; and the
whole fabric of feathers, hair, and wool dropped off
his head as he left the stage. King George and Queen
Charlotte, who were present, laughed heartily at the
exhibition; and her majesty, wearing an elegant and
becoming head-dress, supplied a very fitting rebuke to
the absurdity which the actor had thus satirised.
There are numerous
representations to be met with in books of fashions,
and descriptions in books of various kinds, of the
head-dress of that period. Sometimes it was remarkable
simply for its enormous height; a lofty pad or cushion
being placed on the top of the head, and the hair
combed up over it, and slightly confined in some way
at the top. Frequently, however, this tower was
bedizened in a most extravagant manner, necessarily
causing it to be broad as well as high, and rendering
the whole fabric a mass of absurdity. It was a
mountain of wool, hair, powder, lawn, muslin, net,
lace, gauze, ribbon, flowers, feathers, and wire.
Sometimes these varied materials were built up, tier
after tier, like the successive stages of a pagoda.
The London Magazine, in satirizing the fashions of
1777, said:
'Give Chloe a bushel of
horse-hair and wool,
Of paste and pomatum a pound,
Ten yards of gay ribbon to deck her sweet skull,
And gauze to encompass it round.
Of all the bright colours the rainbow displays,
Be those ribbons which hang on the head;
Be her flounces adapted to make the folks gaze,
And about the whole work be they spread;
Let her flaps fly behind for a yard at the least,
Let her curls meet just under her chin;
Let these curls be supported, to keep up the jest,
With an hundred instead of one pin.'
The New Bath Guide,
which hits off the follies of that period with a good
deal of sarcastic humour, attacked the ladies'
head-dresses in a somewhat similar strain:
'A cap like a hat
(Which was once a cravat)
Part gracefully plaited and pin'd is,
Part stuck upon gauze,
Resembles macaws
And all the fine birds of the Indies.
But above all the rest,
A bold Amazon's crest
Waves nodding from shoulder to shoulder;
At once to surprise
And to ravish all eyes
To frighten and charm the beholder.
In short, head and
feather,
And wig altogether,
With wonder and joy would delight ye;
Like the picture I've seen
Of th' adorable queen
Of the beautiful bless'd Otaheite.
Yet Miss at the Rooms
Must beware of her plumes,
For if Vulcan her feather embraces,
Like poor Lady Laycock,
She'd burn like a haycock,
And roast all the Loves and the Graces.'
The last stanza refers to an
incident in which a lady's monstrous head-dress caught
fire, leading to calamitous results.
BELL
LEGENDS
Church-bells
are beginning to awake a regard that has long
slumbered. They have been deemed, too, recently, fit
memorial of the mighty dead. Turrets, whose echoes
have repeated but few foot-falls for a century, have
been intrepidly ascended, and their clanging tenants
diligently scanned for word or sign to tell their
story. Country clergy-men, skewing the lions of their
parishes to archaeological excursionists, have thought
themselves happy in the choice of church-bells as the
subject of the address expected of them. And it will
be felt that some of the magic of the International
Exhibition was due to the tumultuous reverberations of
the deep, filling, quivering tones of the many bells.
In monkish medieval times,
church-bells enjoyed peculiar esteem. They were
treated in great measure as voices, and were inscribed
with Latin ejaculations and prayers, such as�Hail,
Mary, full of grace, pray for us; St. Peter, pray for
us; St. Paul, pray for us; St. Katharine, pray for us;
Jesus of Nazareth, have mercy upon us; their tones,
swung out into the air, would, ecstatically, appear to
give utterence to the supplication with which they
were inscribed. A bell in St. Michael's church,
Alnwick, says, in quaint letters on a belt that is
diapered with studs, 'Archangel Michael, come to the
help of the people of God.' A bell at Compton Basset,
which has two shields upon it, each bearing a chevron
between three trefoils, says, 'Blessed be the name of
the Lord.' Many bells are found to have identical
inscriptions; there is, however, great variety, and
further search would bring much more to light.
In those old times, pious
queens and gentle-women threw into the mass of metal
that was to be cast into a bell their gold and silver
ornaments; and a feeling of reverence for the
interceding voices was common to gentle and simple. At
Sudeley Castle, in the chapel, there is a bell, dated
1573, that tells us of the concern which the gentle
dames of the olden time would take in this
manufacture. It says, 'St. George, pray for us. The
Lathe Doratie Chandos, Widdowe, made this.' They were
sometimes cast in monasteries under the
superintendence of ecclesiastics of rank. It is
written that Sir William
Corvehill, 'priest of the service of our Lady,'
was a 'good bell-founder and maker of frames;' and on
a bell at Sealton, in Yorkshire, we may read that it
was made by John, archbishop of Graf. One of the
ancient windows on the north side of the nave of York
minster is filled with stained-glass, which is divided
into subjects representing the various processes of
bell-casting, bell-cleaning, and bell-tuning, and has
for a border a series of bells, one below another;
proving that the associations with which bells were
regarded rendered them both ecclesiastical and
pictorial in the eyes of the artists of old.
The inscriptions on ancient
bells were generally placed immediately below the
haunch or shoulder, although they are sometimes found
nearer the sound bow. The legends are, with few
exceptions, preceded by crosses. Coats of arms are
also of frequent occurrence, probably indicating the
donors. The tones of ancient bells are incomparably
richer and softer, more dulcet, mellow, and sufficing
to the ear than those of the present iron age.
King Henry VIII, however,
looked upon church-bells only as so much metal that
could be melted down and sold. Hence, in the general
destruction and distribution of church-property in his
reign, countless bells disappeared, to be sold as mere
metal. Many curious coincidences attended this
wholesale appropriation. Ships attempting to carry
bells across the seas, foundered in several havens, as
at Lynn, and at Yarmouth; and, fourteen of the Jersey
bells being wrecked at the entrance of the harbour of
St. Male, a saying arose to the effect, that when the
wind blows the drowned bells are ringing. A certain
bishop of Bangor, too, who sold the bells of his
cathedral, was stricken with blindness when he went to
see them shipped; and
Sir
Miles Partridge, who won the Jesus bells of St.
Paul's, London, from King Henry, at dice, was,
not long afterwards hanged on Tower Hill.
Not-withstanding the regal and
archiepiscopal disregard of bells, they did not,
altogether, pass from popular esteem. Within the last
half century, at Brenckburne, in Northumberland, old
people pointed out a tree beneath which, they had been
told when they were young, a treasure was buried. And
when this treasure was sought and found, it turned out
to be nothing more than fragments of the bell of the
ruined priory church close by. Tradition recounts that
a foraging-party of moss-trooping Scots once sought
far and near for this secluded priory, counting upon
the contents of the larders of the canons. But not a
sign or a track revealed its position, for it stands
in a cleft between the wooded banks of the Coquet, and
is invisible from the high lands around. The enraged
and hungry marauders�says the legend�had given up the
search in despair, and were leaving the locality, when
the monks, believing their danger past, bethought
themselves to offer up thanksgivings for their escape.
Unfortunately, the sound of the bell, rung to call
them to this ceremony, reached the ears of the
receding Scots in the forest above, and made known to
them the situation of the priory. They retraced their
steps, pillaged it, and then set it on fire.
After the Reformation, the
inscriptions on bells were addressed to man, not to
Heaven; and were rendered in English. There is an
exception to this rule, however, at Sherborne, where
there is a fire-bell, 1652, addressed conjointly to
Heaven and man: 'Lord, quench this furious flame;
Arise, run, help, put out the same.' Many of the
legends on seventeenth-century bells reflect the
quaint times of George Herbert:
'When I ring, God's
prayses sing;
When I toule, pray heart and soule;'
and, 'O man be meeke, and lyve in rest;''
Geve thanks to God;'
I, sweetly tolling, men do call
To taste on meate that feeds the souk,'
are specimens of this period.
More vulgar sentiments subsequently found place. 'I am
the first, although but small, I will be heard above
you all,' say many bells coarsely. A bell at
Alvechurch says still more uncouthly, 'If you would
know when we was run, it was March the twenty-second
1701. "God save the queen,' occurs on an Elizabethan
bell at Bury, Sussex, bearing date 1599; and on
several others of the reign of Queen Anne, in
Devonshire, and on one in Magdalen College, Oxford.
'God save our king,' is found first written on a bell
at Stanford-upon-Soar, at the date of the accession of
James I., 1603; it is of frequent occurrence on later
bells; and the same sentiment is found produced in
other forms, one of which is Feare God and honner the
king, for obedience is a vertuous thing.'
'We have one bell that is
dedicated to a particular service. It is the great
bell of St. Paul's, London, which is only tolled on
the death of sovereigns. The ordinary passing bell,
now commonly called the dead-bell, used to be rung
when the dying person was receiving the sacrament, so
that those who wished to do so could pray for him at
this moment; but it is now only rung after death,
simply to inform the neighbourhood of the fact. In the
same way the sanctus-bell used to be rung in the
performance of mass, when the priest came to the words
'Sancte, Sancte, Sancte, Deus Sabaoth,' so that those
persons unable to attend, might yet be able to bow
down and worship at this particular moment. For this
reason, the bell was always placed in a position where
it might be heard as far as possible. In the gables of
the chancel arches of ancient churches, are seen small
square apertures, whose use few people can divine. It
was through these that the ringers watched the
services below, so as to be able to ring at the right
time.
The great bell of Bow owes its
reputation to the nursery legend of 'Oranges and
lemons, said the bells of St. Clement's;' not to any
superior characteristics, for it is exceeded in size
and weight by many others. English bells, generally,
are smaller than those of foreign countries; perhaps
for the reason that scientific ringing is not
practised abroad; and all effect must be produced by
the bells themselves, not by the mode in which they
are handled. The more polite the nation, it is argued,
the smaller their bells. The Italians have few bells,
and those that they have are small. The Flemish and
Germans, on the other hand, have great numbers of
large bells. The Chinese once boasted of possessing
the largest bells in the world; but Russia has since
borne off the palm, or in others, carried away the
bell, by hanging one in Moscow Cathedral, measuring 19
feet in height, and 63 feet 11 inches round the rim.
By the side of these proportions our Big Bens and Big
Toms are diminutive. The great bell of
St. Paul's is but 9 feet in diameter, and
weighs but 12,000 lbs. The largest bell in Exeter
Cathedral weighs 17,470 lbs.; the famous Bow Bell but
5800 lbs. York, Gloucester, Canterbury, Lincoln, and
Oxford, can also eclipse our familiar friend.
France possesses a few ancient
bells; some of them are ornamented with small bas-relievos
of the Crucifixion, of the descent from the Cross,
fleurs-de-lis, seals of abbeys and donors; and others
have inscriptions of the same character as our own,
each letter being raised on a small tablet more or
less decorated. There was a bell in the abbey-church
of Moissac (unfortunately recast in 1845), which was
of a very rare and early date. An inscription on it,
preceded by a cross, read, Salve Regina
misericordiae Between the two last words was a
bas-relief of the Virgin, and after them three seals;
then followed a line in much smaller characters,
Anno Domini millesimo cc' LXX. tercio Gofridus me
fecit et socios meos. Paulus vocor. French bells
were sometimes the gifts of kings and abbots; and were
in every way held in as great esteem as those of our
own country. In the accounts of the building of Troyes
Cathedral, there is mention of two men coming to cast
the bells, and of the canons visiting them at their
work and stimulating them to perform it well, by
harangues and by chanting the Te Deum. The canons
finally assisted at the consecration of the bells.
Bells have their literature as
well as legends. Their histories are written in many
russet-coloured volumes, in Latin, in French, and in
Italian. These have been published in different parts
of Europe, in Paris, in Leipsic, in Geneva, in Rome,
in Frankfort, in Pisa, in Dresden, in Naples, in the
fifteenth, sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth
centuries. They take the forms of dissertations,
treatises, descriptions, and notes. Early English
writers confined themselves more especially to
elucidating the art of ringing in essays bewilderingly
technical. The names of the different permutations
read like the reverie of a lunatic�single bob, plain
bob, grandsire bob, single bob minor, grandsire
treble, bob major, caters, bob royal, and bob maximus;
and the names of the parts of a bell are quite as
puzzling to the uninitiated. There are the canons,
called also ansa, the haunch, otherwise
cerebrum vel caput, the waist, latus, the
sound-bow, the mouth, or labium, the brim, and the
clapper. There is a manuscript in the British Museum
of the 'Orders of the Company of ringers in
Cheapside, 1603,' the year of Queen Elizabeth's
death. And a work published in 1684, the last year of
the reign of Charles I, called The School of
Recreation, or Gentleman's Tutor, gives ringing as
one of the exercises in vogue. There are, besides
these, True Guides for Ringers, and Plain
Hints for Ringers, a poem in praise of ringing,
written in 1761, by the author of Shrubs of
Parnassus, and other curious tracts of no value
beyond their quaintness. Schiller has sung the song of
the bell in vigorous verse; and in our own day the
subject has received much literary care at the hands
of more than one country clergyman.
There is another bell legend
to be told. On the eve of the feast of Corpus Christi,
to this day, the choristers of Durham Cathedral ascend
the tower, and in their fluttering white robes sing
the Te Deum. This ceremony is in commemoration of the
miraculous extinguishing of a conflagration on that
night, A.D. 1429. The monks were at midnight prayer
when the belfry was struck by lightning and set on
fire; but though the flames raged all that night and
till the middle of the next day, the tower escaped
serious damage and the bells were uninjured�an escape
that was imputed to the special interference of the
incorruptible St. Cuthbert, enshrined in the
cathedral. These bells, thus spared, are not those
that now reverberate among the house-tops on the steep
banks of the Wear. The registry of the church of St.
Mary le Bow, Durham, tells of the burial of Thomas
Bartlet, February 3, 1632, and adds, 'this man did
cast the abbey bells the summer before he dyed.'
The great bell in Glasgow
Cathedral, tells its own history, mournfully, in the
following inscription: 'In the year of grace, 1583,
Marcus Knox, a merchant in Glasgow, zealous for the
interest of the Reformed Religion, caused me to be
fabricated in Holland, for the use of his
fellow-citizens of Glasgow, and placed me with
solemnity in the Tower of their Cathedral. My function
was announced by the impress on my bosom: ME AUDITO,
VENIAS, DOCTRINAM SANCTAM UT DISCAS, and I was
taught to proclaim the hours of unheeded time. One
hundred and ninety-five years had I sounded these
awful warnings, when I was broken by the hands of
inconsiderate and unskilful men. In the year 1790, I
was cast into the furnace, refounded at London, and
returned to my sacred vocation. Reader! thou also
shalt know a resurrection; may it be to eternal life!
Thomas Mears fecit, London, 1790.'.
SIGNALS FOR SERVANTS
The history of the invention
and improvement of the manifold appliances for comfort
and convenience in a modern house of the better class,
would not only be very curious and instructive, but
would also teach us to be grateful for much that has
become cheap to our use, though it would have been
troublesome and costly to our ancestors, and looked on
by them as luxurious. We turn a tap, and pure water
flows from a distant river into our dressing-room; we
turn another, and gas for lighting or firing is at our
immediate command. We pull a handle in one apartment,
and the bell rings in a far-distant one. We can even,
by directing our mouth to a small opening beside the
parlour fireplace, send a whisper along a tube to the
servants' hall or kitchen, and thus obtain what we
want still more readily. We can now scarcely
appreciate the time and trouble thus saved. Hand-bells
or whistles were the only signals used in a house a
century and a half ago.
In an old comedy of the reign
of Charles II, the company supposed to be assembled at
a country-house of the better class, are summoned to
dinner by the cook knocking on the dresser with a
rolling pin! It was usual to call servants by ringing
hand-bells; which, thus becoming table-ornaments, were
frequently enriched by chasing. Walpole possessed a
very fine one, which he believed to be the work of Cellini, and made for Pope
Clement VII. He also had a
pair of very curious silver owls, seated on perches
formed into whistles, which were blown when servants
were wanted. They were curious and quaint specimens of
the workmanship of the early part of the seventeenth
century; and one of them is here engraved for the
first time, from a done sketch made during the
celebrated sale at Strawberry Hill in 1842.
It may be worth noting, as a
curious instance of the value attached by connoisseurs
to rare curiosities, that these owls were bought at
prices considerably above their weight in gold; and
the taste for collecting has so much increased, that
there is little doubt they would now realize even
higher prices.
