Carillon.—­I was awakened this morning with the chime which Antwerp cathedral clock plays at half-hours.  The tune has been haunting me ever since, as tunes will.  You dress, eat, drink, walk and talk to yourself to their tune:  their inaudible jingle accompanies you all day:  you read the sentences of the paper to their rhythm.  I tried uncouthly to imitate the tune to the ladies of the family at breakfast, and they say it is “the shadow dance of Dinorah.”  It may be so.  I dimly remember that my body was once present during the performance of that opera, whilst my eyes were closed, and my intellectual faculties dormant at the back of the box; howbeit, I have learned that shadow dance from hearing it pealing up ever so high in the air, at night, morn, noon.

How pleasant to lie awake and listen to the cheery peal! whilst the old city is asleep at midnight, or waking up rosy at sunrise, or basking in noon, or swept by the scudding rain which drives in gusts over the broad places, and the great shining river; or sparkling in snow which dresses up a hundred thousand masts, peaks, and towers; or wrapped round with thunder-cloud canopies, before, which the white gables shine whiter; day and night the kind little carillon plays its fantastic melodies overhead.  The bells go on ringing.  Quot vivos vocant, mortuos plangunt, fulgara frangunt; so on to the past and future tenses, and for how many nights, days, and years!  Whilst the French were pitching their fulgara into Chasse’s citadel, the bells went on ringing quite cheerfully.  Whilst the scaffolds were up and guarded by Alva’s soldiery, and regiments of penitents, blue, black, and gray, poured out of churches and convents, droning their dirges, and marching to the place of the Hotel de Ville, where heretics and rebels were to meet their doom, the bells up yonder were chanting at their appointed half-hours and quarters, and rang the mauvais quart d’heure for many a poor soul.  This bell can see as far away as the towers and dykes of Rotterdam.  That one can call a greeting to St. Ursula’s at Brussels, and toss a recognition to that one at the town-hall of Oudenarde, and remember how after a great struggle there a hundred and fifty years ago the whole plain was covered with the flying French cavalry—­Burgundy, and Bern, and the Chevalier of St. George flying like the rest.  “What is your clamor about Oudenarde?” says another bell (Bob Major this one must be).  “Be still, thou querulous old clapper!  I can see over to Hougoumont and St. John.  And about forty-five years since, I rang all through one Sunday in June, when there was such a battle going on in the corn-fields there, as none of you others ever heard tolled of.  Yes, from morning service until after vespers, the French and English were all at it, ding-dong.”  And then calls of business intervening, the bells have to give up their private jangle, resume their professional duty, and sing their hourly chorus out of Dinorah.