Church bells in large towns, where one section of the community are night workers and seek their rest in the day-time, are by no means invested with sentiment. We have in our mind a church which is set in a dense population of railwaymen, engine drivers, stokers, guards, porters, &c. It possesses a particularly noisy peal of bells. They begin their brazen tintinnabulations at breakfast time, and ring on, at intervals, until past the supper hour. Sometimes the sound is a dismal monotone, as if the bellman had no heart for his work. At other times a number of stark mad Quasimodos seem to be pulling at the ropes to frighten the gilded cock on the vane into flapping flight. Sunday only brings an increase of the din, distracting all thought, destroying all conversation, defying all study, turning the blessed sense of hearing into a curse, and making you envy the deaf. It is well known that upon many persons in health the clangour of bells has a very depressing effect; but at night, when narcotics are given and the sick are wearied out, it is very easy to imagine how irritating these bells must be both to the invalids and their attendants. One is inclined to exclaim with the Frenchman-- Disturbers of the human race, Whose charms are always ringing, I wish the ropes were round your necks, And you about them swinging. How very wise those Spanish innkeepers were who, in the olden time, used to make "ruido" an item in their bills, charging their guests with the noise they made! Stories about Bells. By J. Potter Briscoe, F.R.H.S. On the eve of the feast of Corpus Christi the choristers of Durham Cathedral ascend the tower, and, clad in their fluttering robes of white, sing the _Te Deum_. This custom is performed to commemorate the miraculous extinguishing of a conflagration on that night in the year 1429. The legend goes that, whilst the monks were engaged in prayer at midnight, the belfry was struck by the electric current and set on fire. Though the flames continued to rage until the middle of the next day, the tower escaped serious damage, and the bells were uninjured--an escape which was imputed to the special interference of the incorruptible S. Cuthbert, who was enshrined in that cathedral. These are not the bells which now reverberate among the housetops on the steep banks of the Wear, they having been cast by Thomas Bartlett during the summer of 1631.