Doubtless this seemed appropriate enough to an age which adorned its tombs and churchyards with cupids, urns, and such-like pagan emblems. Other examples of this kind from the provinces are-- THE PUBLIC RAISED ME WITH A LIBERAL HAND; WE COME WITH HARMONY TO CHEER THE LAND [Stroud]. ALL YOU OF BATH THAT HEARE ME SOUND THANK LADY HOPTON’S HUNDRED POUND [Bath Abbey]. Some inscriptions again are of historical interest, such as at Child Okeford, Dorset, where, in 1648, GOD BLESS KING CHARLES was actually placed on a bell by a founder who must have had the courage of his convictions! It need hardly be pointed out that the royal cause was just then at the depth of unpopularity. The eight bells of S. Helen’s, Worcester, bear the names of Marlborough’s victories in Queen Anne’s reign, with an appropriate couplet in each case. Other bells, such as the great bell of Glasgow Cathedral, and the tenor of Stepney, London, record their own history from mediaeval times down to their latest re-casting. A curious form of inscription found on seventeenth-century bells, and sometimes revived at the present day, is the chronogram, where the date is given by Roman letters of a larger size than the rest of the inscription, as at Clifton-on-Teme, Worcestershire-- HENRICVS IEFFREYS KENELMO DEVOVIT, where the letters MDCLVVVIII in numerical order read as the date 1668. [Illustration: _Plate 34._ SYMBOLS OF THE FOUR EVANGELISTS. Used as stamps by London bell-founders of the fifteenth century. (See pages 106, 108.)] It is one of the many debts that we owe to the Church Revival of the last century that such desecrations of our bells as quoted above are now a thing of the past. If our modern bells are often very dull affairs as regards their decoration or inscriptions, we can at least be thankful that profanity and frivolity have disappeared. Though as I have already noted, a tendency to self-advertisement is still too apparent, there has been a great change in the last fifty years, and the improvement in the choice of inscriptions is most marked. Those to whom such things are a concern have begun to realize that a bell is a vehicle of history, and that, therefore, its history should be duly recorded and preserved. But what is of far more importance, they have also learned to look upon it as an instrument destined for GOD’S service--as one of the “Ornaments of the Church”--and therefore just as deserving of honour as any other furniture of GOD’S house. CHAPTER VII _The Care of Bells_