"'All this tumult heard the master, It was music to his ear; Fancy whispered all the faster, "Men shall hear of Thorberg Skafting For a hundred year!"' Would that there were more of this spirit in the workshops of our day! They did not, when such a work was finished, hasten to blaze it abroad with trumpet and shouting; it was not carried to the topmost pinnacle of the mountain, in sight of all the kingdoms of the earth. They were contented with the result of their labour, and cared little where it was placed, or who saw it; and so it is that some of the finest-toned bells in the world are at this moment to be found in village churches, and for so local a fame the maker worked as truly, and in as careful a manner, as if he had known his bell was to be hung in St. Peter's at Rome. This was the true spirit of art. Yet it is not altogether pleasant to contemplate this bell; the mind cannot but reflect upon the length of time it has survived those to whose joys or sorrows it has lent a passing utterance, and who are now dust in the yard beneath. "'For full five hundred years I've swung In my old gray turret high, And many a changing theme I've sung As the time went stealing by.' Even the 'old gray turret' shows more signs of age and of decay than the bell, for it is strengthened with iron clamps and rods to bind its feeble walls together. Of the pavements, whose flag-stones are monuments, the dates and names worn by footsteps; of the vaults beneath, with their grim and ghastly traditions of coffins moved out of place, as was supposed, by supernatural agency, but, as explained, by water; of the thick walls in which, in at least one village church, the trembling victim of priestly cruelty was immured alive--of these, and a thousand other matters that suggest themselves, there is no time to speak. But just a word must be spared to notice one lovely spot where two village churches stand not a hundred yards apart, separated by a stream, both in the hands of one vicar, whose 'cure' is, nevertheless, so scant of souls, that service in the morning in one, and in the evening in the other church, is amply sufficient. And where is there a place where spring-time possesses such a tender yet melancholy interest to the heart, as in a village churchyard, where the budding leaves, and flowers in the grass, may naturally be taken as symbolical of a still more beautiful spring-time yet in store for the soul?" CHAPTER VI. FICTION, EARLY AND LATE.