Hence I must take you, and still under the auspices of Millin[112], to the great town-clock, or, as it is here called, _la Tour de la Grosse Horloge_; and I cannot help wishing on the occasion, that I had half the powers of instructing and amusing which he possessed. Like the writers in our most popular Reviews, he uses the subjects which he places at the head of his articles as little more than a peg, whereon to hang whatever he knows connected with the matter; and the result is, that he is never read without pleasure or information. Such is peculiarly the case in the present instance, in which he takes an opportunity of giving the history of the origin of clocks, tracing them from the simple dial, and particularising the most curious and intricate contrivances of modern ingenuity. Another name of the tower which contains this clock, is _la Tour du Beffroi_, or, as we should say in English, the _Belfry_; for the two words have the same meaning, and it is not to be doubted but that they originated from the same root, the Anglo-Saxon _bell_, whence barbarous Latinists have formed _Belfredus_ and _Berfredus_, terms for moveable towers used in sieges, and so denominated from their resemblance in form to bell-towers. I mention this etymology, because the French have misled themselves strangely on the subject; and one of them has wandered so widely in his conjectures, as to derive _beffroi_ from _bis effroi_, supposing it to be the cause of double alarm! Happily, in the most alarming of all times for France, that of the revolution, this bell, though appointed the _tocsin_, had scarcely ever occasion to sound. There is, however, another purpose, alarming at all periods, and especially in a town built of wood, to which it is appropriated, and to which we only yesterday heard it applied, the ringing to announce a fire. The precautions taken against similar accidents in Rouen, are excellent, and they had need be so; for insurance-companies of any kind are unknown, I believe, in France[113], or exist only upon a most limited scale, at the foot of the Pyrenees, where the farmers mutually insure each other against the effects of the hail. The daily office of this bell is to sound the curfew, a practice which, under different names, is still kept up through Normandy. Here it rings nightly at nine. In other towns it rings at nine in winter only, but not till ten in summer. In some places it is called _la retraite_.