No instrument of music can have had more attention from
English poets and fanciful writers within the last few hundred years than the bell, and almost certainly there is none of which English people in general (the poets included) are so ignorant. We love the sound of bells—of carillon tunes, or artless village chimes pealing in some jackdaw haunted tower down in the valley—and we know absolutely nothing, most of us, of the art of campanology. Of what is a bell made ? How is it made ? How is it tuned ? Where and by whom are England's great bells made to-day ? How many people have ever heard of a musician called Simpson, and what is the Simpson method ? It would be safe to say that a general knowledge paper on bells would be one of the stiffest that could be set, even were the questions as elemental as the above ; and Mr. J. R. Nicholls need not therefore have apologized in the preface to his exhaustive book on the subject, Bells Thro' the Ages (Chapman and Hall. 21s.), for "thrusting yet another volume on the world of books." His book takes its place at once as the best short survey of "The Founders' Craft and Ringers' Art" published for many years : besides being authoritative, it is entertaining—there are excellent chapters on bell-legends, inscriptions and dedications—and contains plenty of good reading of a light historical character also. We recommend it to those who would like to know something about a very fascinating and very English art.
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