The British Press; or, Morning Literary Advertiser.
London, England, 1825-11-02 00:00:00

LITERATURE.

The writer of the following amusing article in the Nes,
31onnoly Magazine, we have no doubt, has oftentiinet
lamented seriously, and in "sober sadness," the annoy.
mice he so humorously deplores. We bare experienced
often, and have classed it, as he appears to do, among the
miseries of human

A LETTER TO THE BELLS OF A PARISH CHURGII
IN ITALY.
For Cod's sake, dear bells, why this eternal noise,
Why do you make this everlasting jangling and outcry
Is it not enough that the whole village talk, but you must
be talking too? Are you the representative of all the
gossip in the neighbourhood? Now, they • tell me,
you inform us that a friar is dead: now you jingle a bles
sing on the rims and olives, " babbling o' green fields."
anon you -start away in honour of a marriage, and jangle
as if the devil were in you. Your hive of information
may be generous where there are no newspapers ; but when
you haveonce informed us that a friar is dead, where is the
necessity of repeating the same intelligence for twelve
hours together? Did any one ever hest of a newspapj
which contained nothing from beginning to end bas: a
series of paragraphs, informing us that a certain gcnt!en
was no more ? _ _ _

Died yesterday, Father Paul—.
Died yesterday, Father Paul_
Died yesterday, Father Paul—
and so on from nine in the morning tilt nine at night ? It
is like a piece of cut-glass with a thousand facets in
turned into a sound. You shall have some information
return, very necessary to be known by all the belie
Christentlotn. Learn then, sacred, but at the same bent
thoughtless tintinnabularies, that there are dying, as we!
as dead, people in the world, and sick people who will die
if they arc not encouraged. What- roust be the effect td
this mortal note unceasingly reiterated in their ears?
would set a -whining fellow at a sick man's door to repot
to him all day long, " Your neighbour's dead—you,
neighbour's dead." But you say, "It is to remind e,
healthy, and not the dying, that we sound • and the fez
must give way to the many." Good : it delights me t;',
hear you say so, because every thing will of course be
changed in the economy of certain governments, except
yourselves. But in this particular instance allow me to
think you are mistaken. I differ from a belfry with begin-
, tion. Triple bob majors arc things before which it be.
comes a philosophic inquirer to he modest. But bare we
not. memorandums enough to this good end? Have tee
not coughs, colds, fevers, plethoras, deaths of all sorts oc-
curring round about us, old faces, church-yards, sceitkmts
infinite, books, muskets, wars, apothecaries, kings? Is
not the whole nation swallowed up ill grief when a minister
dies ? Does not even a royal old lady die now and then ?
You remind the sict and the dying too forcibly: but you
are much mistaken if you think the healthy regard your
importunity of advice in any other liLht than that of a
considerable nuisance. They may get used to it; hu:
what then? So much the worse for your admonitions.
In like manner they get used to a hundred things which
Au them no tort of .good ; which only tend to keep tia.r
moods and tempers in a duller state of exasperation. l'rav
think of this. As to the bell-riggers, whom I should be
unwilling to throw out of bread, they might be given
some office in the state.
Then the marriages. Dear bells, do you ever consider
that there are people who have been married two years, as
well as two hours? What here becomes of your maxim of
the few giving way to the many? Have all the rest of the
married people, think you, made each other deaf, so that
, they cannot hear the sound ? It may he sport to the new
couple, but it is death to the old ones. If a pair orso
love one another almost as much as if they had never been
married, at least they arc none the better for you. If they
look kindly at one another when they hear the sound, do
you think it is not in spite of the bells, as well as for sweet-
ness of recollection ?

In my country it is bad enough. A bell shall go for
hours telling us that Mr. Ching is dead.
" Ring, ring, ring—Ching, Ching, Ching—Oh Ching !
Ching!—Ching, I say—Ching is gone—Gone, cone,
gone—Dodd people, listen to the steeple—Ching, Ching,
Ching."
" Aye," says a patient in his bed, " I knew Lim. lie
had the same palsy as I have."
" Mercy on us, ' cries an old woman in the next house,
" there goes poor Mr. Ching, sure enough."
" I just had a pleasant thought," says a sick mourner,
" and now that bell ! that melancholy bell !"
"The bell will go for me, mother, soon," observes a poor
child t' its weeping parent.
" What will become of my poor children?" exclaims&
dying father.
It would be useful toknow how many deaths are hasten-
ed by a bell: at least how many recoveries are retarded.
There are sensitive persons, not otherwise in ill health,
who find it difßcult to hear the sound without tears. What
must they feel on a sick bed! As for the unfeeling, who
are the only persons to be benefitterl, they, as I said before,
care for it no more than the postman's.
But in England we can at least reckon upon shorter bell.
ringings, and upon long intervals without any. We have
not bells every day as they have here, except at the Uni-
versitiva. The Saints in the Protestant calendar are quiet.
Our belfries also arc thicker ; the elappers do not come
swinging and flaring out of window, like so many scolds.
Italians talk of music; but I must roundly ask, bow came
Italian cars to put up with this music of the Chine&
Every thing in itl proper ple,ie. In China, I doubt not,
' you are a just relief to the monotony of the people's feel-.
hogs, neither more nor less than you ought to be. These
fit, little, bald-headed, long-gowned, smirking, winking-
eyed, smoked-faced gentlemen,who follow one another over
impossible bridges on tea-cups, must be grateful for any
information you choose to give them. But you belong to
that corner of earth exclusively, and ought all to return
thither. lam loth topraiseany thing Mussulinan in these
times ; but to give the Turk his due, he is not addicted to
superfluous noise. Ilia belfry-men cannot deafen a neigh-
bourhood all day long with the death of an lonaum, for
they are themselves the bells. Alas! why do not steepler
catch cold, and clappers require a gargle? Why must
things that have no feeling—belfries, and one's advisers—
be exclusively gifted with indefatigability of tongue ?
Lastly, your tunes! I thought, in Italy, that any thing
which undertook to be musical, would be in some way or
other truly so—harmonious, if not various ; various and
new, if not very harmonious. But I must say our bells in
England have double your science. I once sang a duct
' with St. Clement's Church in the Strand. Indeed I base
often done it returning from a symposium in the Temple.
The tune was the hundred and fourth psalm. I took the
second. And this reminds me that our Ertzlish bells base
' always the humanity to catch a cold now and then, c.
thing like it. They will lose two or three of their notes d!.
a time. I used to humour this infirmity in my friend S.:.
Clement's, as became an old acquaintance, and always
waited politely till he resumed. But in Italy the bells
have the oddest, and at the same time the most unfaolieg
and inexorable hops of tunes that can be imagined.
Light quirks of music, broken and uneven,
Make the soul dance upon a jig to heaven.
One might suppose that the steeple, in some unaccount-
able fit of merriment, struck u? a country-dance, like
that recorded in Mr. Monk Lewis a account of Orpheus:—
While an arm of the sea,
Introduced by a tree,
To a fair young whale advances
And making a leg,
Says •' alio, may I beg,
Your fin for the two neat dances I,"
_ _

I used to wonder at this, till one day I heard the host
announced in a procession by as merry a set of fiddles as
ever played to a ship's company. The o,tber day a deli
bishop was played out in church to the tune of Di pion?' ;
but I forget I am writing a letter ; and luckily my hun:our,
as well as my r•aper, is out. Besides, the bells have left
off before me ; for which lam their
Much obliged, exhausted humble servant.
NisoesoTALL's.

In the course of Monday Mr, Martin. M.P. attended at
the Middlesex Srssions, and, in propria persone, applied
for a writ of certiorari to remove the proceedings on the
libel bills obtained the other day, at his instance, into the
Court of King's Bench. The writ was granted as a matter
of course. At the same time the witnesses to the bills were
brought into Court, and bounty over to give evidence.