hill, a ploughman with his team appeared and disappeared at regular

intervals. At each revelation he stood still for a few seconds

against the sky: for all the world (as the Cigarette declared)

like a toy Burns who should have just ploughed up the Mountain

Daisy. He was the only living thing within view, unless we are to

count the river.

On the other side of the valley a group of red roofs and a belfry

showed among the foliage. Thence some inspired bell-ringer made

the afternoon musical on a chime of bells. There was something

very sweet and taking in the air he played; and we thought we had

never heard bells speak so intelligibly, or sing so melodiously, as

these. It must have been to some such measure that the spinners

and the young maids sang, 'Come away, Death,' in the Shakespearian

Illyria. There is so often a threatening note, something blatant

and metallic, in the voice of bells, that I believe we have fully

more pain than pleasure from hearing them; but these, as they

sounded abroad, now high, now low, now with a plaintive cadence

that caught the ear like the burthen of a popular song, were always

moderate and tunable, and seemed to fall in with the spirit of

still, rustic places, like the noise of a waterfall or the babble

of a rookery in spring. I could have asked the bell-ringer for his

blessing, good, sedate old man, who swung the rope so gently to the

time of his meditations. I could have blessed the priest or the

heritors, or whoever may be concerned with such affairs in France,

who had left these sweet old bells to gladden the afternoon, and

<<BackPagesTo menuNext>>