Then, as to my contents. As this is an Autobiography, and as all Autobiographers are necessarily egotistical, you must allow me to dwell a few minutes more upon my personal specialities. And first, as to my _Peal of Bells_, eight in number, which are naturally of great interest to myself, and which hold a high place among the various peals of Norwich. These, according to the high authority of the late Mr. L’Estrange, were placed in me between the years 1593, or earlier, and 1738, and they were renovated and restored in 1870, at the expense of Messrs. Browne, Bridgman, and Firth, parishioners of St. Giles. (One of these bells is what is called a _Gabriel_ Bell—the “Angel Gabriel brought the good tidings to the Virgin Mary.”) And think for a moment what phases of life these bells have taken part in during all these hundreds of years. I find that since 1538, when our parish registers begin, some 2,524 entries of _marriage_ have been made in them. And it is reasonable to suppose that at a fair proportion of these, especially in earlier times, my bells have rung out their merry chimes, and in their special language have wished all joy and happiness to the newly wedded pairs. You remember how Byron speaks of this: “And all went merry as a marriage bell.” On the other hand, during the same period, or, rather, up to 1856, when interments in the Churchyard ceased by Act of Parliament, _i.e._ in 318 years, nearly ten thousand (9,770, as roughly counted) entries of _burials_ here are made in the parish register books. And it is almost certain that one of my bells has announced first the fact of the death, and then that of the mournful ceremony of interment, in each of these cases. Just think, as I do, of all these ten thousand dead lying at my foot, waiting, as Baring Gould has so beautifully said, for the “Resurrection morning,” when “soul and body meet again.” Such an accumulation of mortal remains in so limited a space may well arouse much and solemn reflection. How well a Suffolk poet reverently describes such a disused graveyard as mine now is, where he says:— “The gathered ashes of long centuries rest; A few _white_ tombstones and a few _dim-gray_, Mark names that have not yet quite passed away.” Nor can I fail to quote to you Gray’s beautiful words, so applicable to such a disused churchyard:— “Hark! how the sacred calm, that breathes around, Bids every fierce tumultuous passion cease, In still small accents whispering from the ground, A grateful earnest of eternal peace.” The graveyard of St. Giles, which lies beneath and around me, is, as I have already said, no longer used for burials. It is quite full and crowded with graves and many memorial tombstones. The names upon these, as far as legible, are fully and completely given in the book which has been published by a parishioner of mine, {106} upon the “Parish of St. Giles.”