By the by, I have somewhere read, or heard, that one of the ancient judges, a lover of tintinnabulary pastime, got into a county town incog. the day before he was expected thither to hold the assizes, and the next morning made one among the “youths” in the belfry, and lustily assisted in “ringing-in” his own clerk. Certain it is that doctors in divinity have stripped off their coats to the exercise. “And moreover,” says the author of the treatise before quoted, “at this time, to our knowledge, there are several learned and eminent persons, both clergy and laymen of good estates, that are members of several societies of ringers, and think themselves very highly favoured that they can arrive at so great an happiness and honour.”
In the advice to a “youth,” on the management of his bell, he is recommended to “avoid all ungraceful gestures, and unseemly grimaces, which, to the judicious eye, are both disagreeable and highly censurable.”[403] Ringing, then, is a comely exercise; and a lover of the “music of bells” may, genteelly, do more than “bid them discourse.” Before the close of all gentlemanly recreation, and other less innocent vanities, he may assure himself of final commemoration, by a muffled peal of “Grandsire Triples.” As a loyal subject he dare not aspire to that which is clearly for kings alone,—dumb “Bobs Royal.” I take it that the emperor of Austria is the only sovereign in Europe, except his Holiness, who can rightfully claim a muffled “Bob Maximus.”
*
[403] Clavis Campanalogia.
THE CONDEMNED SHIP
AND
THE FALLS OF NIAGARA.
Various announcements in the American papers of a large vessel, constructed for the purpose of passing the Falls of Niagara, have terminated in very unsatisfactory accounts of the manner wherein the ship descended. All descriptions, hitherto, are deficient in exactness; nor do we know for what purpose the experiment was devised, nor why certain animals were put aboard the condemned ship. The latest particulars are in the following letter to the printers of the “Albany Daily Advertiser:”—
“Buffalo, Sept. 9, 1827.