It is worth noting that nearly all of the noble Flemish towers with their wealth of bells are almost within sight (and I had nearly written, sound) of each other. From the summit of the tower in Antwerp one could see dimly the cathedrals of Malines and Brussels, perhaps even those of Bruges and Ghent in clear weather. Haweis ("Music and Morals") says that "one hundred and twenty-six towers can be seen from the Antwerp Cathedral on a fair morning," and he was a most careful observer. "So these mighty spires, gray and changeless in the high air, seem to hold converse together over the heads of puny mortals, and their language is rolled from tower to tower by the music of the bells."

"Non sunt loquellae neque sermones, audiantur voces eorum," (there is neither speech nor language, but their voices are heard among men).

This is an inscription copied by Haweis in the tower at Antwerp, from a great bell signed, "F. Hemony Amstelo-damia, 1658."

Speaking of the rich decorations which the Van den Gheyns and Hemony lavished on their bells, he says, "The decorations worked in bas relief around some of the old bells are extremely beautiful, while the inscriptions are often highly suggestive, and even touching." These decorations are usually confined to the top and bottom rims of the bell, and are in low relief, so as to impede the vibration as little as possible. At Malines on a bell bearing date "1697, Antwerp" (now destroyed) there is an amazingly vigorous hunt through a forest with dogs and all kinds of animals. I did not see this bell when I was in the tower of St. Rombauld, as the light in the bell chamber was very dim. The inscription was carried right around the bell, and had all the grace and freedom of a spirited sketch.

On one of Hemony's bells dated 1674 and bearing the inscription, "Laudate Domini omnes Gentes," we noticed a long procession of cherub boys dancing and ringing flat hand bells such as are even now rung before the Host in street processions.

Some of the inscriptions are barely legible because of the peculiarity of the Gothic letters. Haweis mentions seeing the initials J.R. ("John Ruskin") in the deep sill of the staircase window; underneath a slight design of a rose window apparently sketched with the point of a compass. Ruskin loved the Malines Cathedral well, and made many sketches of detail while there. I looked carefully for these initials, but I could not find them, I am sorry to say.

Bells have been strangely neglected by antiquaries and historians, and but few facts concerning them are to be found in the libraries. Haweis speaks of the difficulty he encountered in finding data about the chimes of the Low Countries, alleging that the published accounts and rumors about their size, weight, and age are seldom accurate or reliable. Even in the great libraries and archives of the Netherlands at Louvain, Bruges, or Brussels the librarians were unable to furnish him with accurate information.

He says: "The great folios of Louvain, Antwerp, and Mechlin (Malines) containing what is generally supposed to be an exhaustive transcript of all the monumental and funereal inscriptions in Belgium, will often bestow but a couple of dates and one inscription upon a richly decorated and inscribed carillon of thirty or forty bells. The reason of this is not far to seek. The fact is, it is no easy matter to get at the bells when once they are hung, and many an antiquarian who will haunt tombs and pore over illegible brasses with commendable patience will decline to risk his neck in the most interesting of belfries. The pursuit, too, is often a disappointing one. Perhaps it is possible to get half way around a bell and then be prevented by a thick beam, or the bell's own wheel from seeing the outer half, which, by perverse chance, generally contains the date and the name of the founder.

"Perhaps the oldest bell is quite inaccessible, or, after a half hour's climbing amid the utmost dust and difficulty, we reach a perfectly blank or commonplace bell."

He gives the date of 1620, as that when the family of Van den Gheyns were bringing the art of bell founding to perfection in Louvain, and notes that the tower and bells of each fortified town were half civic property. Thus the curfew, the carolus, and the St. Mary bells in Antwerp Cathedral belong to the town.

"Let us," he says, "enter the town of Mechlin (Malines) in the year 1638. The old wooden bridge (over the river Dyle) has since been replaced by a stone one. To this day the elaborately carved faÇades of the old houses close on the water are of incomparable richness of design. The peculiar ascent of steps leading up to the angle of the roof, in a style borrowed from the Spaniards, is a style everywhere to be met with. The noblest of square florid Gothic towers, the tower of St. Rombauld (variously spelled St. Rombaud, St. Rombaut, or St. Rombod) finished up to three hundred and forty-eight feet, guides us to what is now called the Grand' Place, where in an obscure building are the workshops and furnaces adjoining the abode of Peter Van den Gheyn, the most renowned bell founder of the seventeenth century, born in 1605. In company with his associate, Deklerk, arrangements are being made for the founding of a big bell.

"Before the cast was made there was no doubt great controversy between the mighty smiths, Deklerk and Van den Gheyn: plans had to be drawn out on parchment, measurements and calculations made, little proportions weighed by fine instinct, and the defects and merits of ever so many bells canvassed. The ordinary measurements, which now hold good for a large bell, are, roughly, one-fifteenth of the diameter in thickness, and twelve times the thickness in height. Describing the foundry buildings: The first is for the furnaces, containing the vast caldron for the fusing of the metal; in the second is a kind of shallow well, where the bell would have to be modeled in clay.

"The object to be first attained is a hollow mold of the exact size and shape of the intended bell, into which the liquid metal is poured through a tube from the furnace, and this mold is constructed in the following simple but ingenious manner:

"Suppose the bell to be six feet high, a brick column of about that height is built something in the shape of the outside of a bell. Upon the smooth surface of this solid bell-shaped mass can now be laid figures, decorations, and inscriptions in wax; a large quantity of the most delicately prepared clay is then produced, the model is slightly washed with some kind of oil to prevent the fine clay from sticking to it, and three or four coats of the fine clay in an almost liquid state are daubed carefully all over the model. Next, a coating of common clay is added to strengthen the mold to the thickness of some inches. And thus the model stands with its great bell-shaped cover closely fitting over it.

"A fire is now lighted underneath, the brick work in the interior is heated, through the clay, through the wax ornaments and oils, which steam out in vapor through two holes at the top, leaving their impressions on the inside of the cover (of clay).

"When everything is baked thoroughly hard, the cover is raised bodily into the air by a rope, and held suspended some feet exactly above the model. In the interior of the cover thus raised will, of course, be found the exact impression in hollow of the outside of the bell. The model of clay and masonry is then broken up, and its place is taken by another perfectly smooth model, only smaller—exactly the size of the inside of the bell, in fact. On this the great cover now descends, and is stopped in time to leave a hollow space between the new model and itself. This is effected simply by the bottom rim of the new model forming a base, at the proper distance upon which the rim of the clay cover may rest in its descent.

"The hollow space between the clay cover and second clay mold is now the exact shape of the required bell, and only waits to be filled with metal.

"So far all has been comparatively easy; but the critical moment has now arrived. The furnaces have long been smoking; the brick work containing the caldron is almost glowing with red heat; a vast draft passage underneath the floor keeps the fire rapid; from time to time it leaps up with a hundred angry tongues, or in one sheet of flame, over the furnace-imbedded caldron. Then the cunning artificer brings forth his heaps of choice metal, large cakes of red coruscated copper from Drontheim, called 'Rosette,' owing to a certain rare pink bloom that seems to lie all over it like the purple on a plum; then a quantity of tin, so highly refined that it shines and glistens like pure silver; these are thrown into the caldron and melted down together. Kings and nobles have stood beside those famous caldrons, and looked with reverence upon the making of these old bells. Nay, they have brought gold and silver and, pronouncing the name of some holy saint or apostle which the bell was thereafter to bear, they have flung in precious metals, rings, bracelets, and even bullion.

"But for a moment or two before the pipe which is to convey the metal to the mold is opened, the smith stands and stirs the molten mass to see if all is melted. Then he casts in certain proportions of zinc and other metals which belong to the secrets of the trade; he knows how much depends upon these little refinements, which he has acquired by experience, and which perhaps he could not impart even if he would, so true is it that in every art that which constitutes success is a matter of instinct, and not of rule, or even science.

"He knows, too, that almost everything depends upon the moment chosen for flooding the mold. Standing in the intense heat, and calling loudly for a still more raging fire, he stirs the metal once more. At a given signal the pipe is opened, and with a long smothered rush the molten metal fills the mold to the brim. Nothing now remains but to let the metal cool, and then to break up the clay and brick work and extract the bell, which is then finished for better or for worse."

We learn much of the difficulties encountered even by these great masters in successfully casting the bells, and that even they were not exempt from failure. "The Great Salvator" bell at Malines, made by Peter Van den Gheyn, cracked eight years after it was hung in the tower (1696). It was recast by De Haze of Antwerp, and existed up to a few years ago—surely a good long life for any active bell.

In the belfry of St. Peter's at Louvain, which is now in ruins and level with the street, was a great bell of splendid tone, bearing the following inscription: "Claes Noorden Johan Albert de Grave me fecerunt Amstel—odamia, MDCCXIV."

Haweis mentions also the names of Bartholomews Goethale, 1680, who made a bell now in St. Stephen's belfry at Ghent; and another, Andrew Steilert, 1563, at Malines (Mechlin). The great carillon in the belfry at Bruges, thus far spared by the iconoclasts of 1914, consisting of forty bells and one large Bourdon, or triumphal bell, is from the foundry of the great Dumery, who also made the carillon at Antwerp.

Haweis credits Petrus Hemony, 1658, with being the most prolific of all the bell founders. He was a good musician and took to bell founding only late in life. "His small bells are exceedingly fine, but his larger ones are seldom true."

To the ear of so eminent an authority this may be true, but, to my own, the bells seem quite perfect, and I have repeatedly and most attentively listened to them from below in the Grand' Place, trying to discover the inharmonious note that troubled him. I ventured to ask one of the priests if he had noticed any flatness in the notes, and he scorned the idea, saying that the bells, "all of them," were perfect.

Nevertheless, I must accept the statement of Haweis, who for years made a study of these bells and their individualities and than whom perhaps never has lived a more eminent authority.

From my room in the small hotel de Buda, just beneath the old gray tower of St. Rombauld in this ancient town of Malines, I have listened by day and night to the music of these bells, which sounded so exquisite to me that I can still recall them. The poet has beautifully expressed the idea of the bell music of Flanders thus, "The Wind that sweeps over her campagnas and fertile levels is full of broken melodious whispers" (Haweis).

Certainly these chimes of bells playing thus by day and night, day in, day out, year after year, must exercise a most potent influence upon the imagination and life of the people.

The Flemish peasant is born, grows up, lives his life out, and finally is laid away to the music of these ancient bells.

When I came away from Malines and reached Antwerp, I lodged in the Place Verte, as near to the chimes as I could get. My student days being over, I found that I had a strange sense of loss, as if I had lost a dear and valued friend, for the sound of the bells had become really a part of my daily existence.

Victor Hugo, who traveled through Flanders in 1837, stopped for a time in Malines, and was so impressed with the carillon that he is said to have written there the following lines by moonlight with a diamond upon the window-pane in his room:

"J'aime le carillon dans tes citÉs Antiques,
O vieux pays, gardien de tes moeurs domestiques,
Noble Flandre, oÙ le Nord se rÉchauffe engourdi
Au soleil de Castille et s'accouple au Midi.
Le carillon, c'est l'heure inattendue et folle
Que l'oeil croit voir, vÊtue en danseuse espagnole
ApparaÎtre soudain par le trou vif et clair
Que ferait, en s'ouvrant, une porte de l'air."

It was not until the seventeenth century that Flanders began to place these wondrous collections of bells in her great towers, which seem to have been built for them. Thus came the carillons of Malines, Bruges, Ghent, Antwerp, Louvain, and Tournai. Of these, Antwerp possessed the greatest in number, sixty-five bells. Malines came next with forty-four, then Bruges with forty, and a great bourdon or bass bell; then Tournai and Louvain with forty, and finally Ghent with thirty-nine.

In ancient times these carillons were played by hand on a keyboard, called a clavecin. In the belfry at Bruges, in a dusty old chamber with a leaden floor, I found a very old clavecin. It was simply a rude keyboard much like that of a primitive kind of organ, presenting a number of jutting handles, something like rolling pins, each of which was attached to a wire operating the hammer, in the bell chamber overhead, which strikes the rim of the bells. There was an old red, leather-covered bench before this machine on which the performer sat, and it must have been a task requiring considerable strength and agility so to smite each of these pins with his gloved fist, his knees and each of his feet (on the foot board) that the hammers above would fall on the rims of the different bells.

From my room in the old "Panier d'or" in the market-place on many nights have I watched the tower against the dim sky, and seen the light of the "veilleur," shining in the topmost window, where he keeps watch over the sleeping town, and sounds two strokes upon a small bell after each quarter is struck, to show that he is on watch. And so passed the time in this peaceful land until that fatal day in August, 1914.