Let it not be wondered at, therefore, if on the summit of one of our Round Towers are to be found the traces of the apparatus for a bell. For independently of what Walsh and others inform us of, viz. that the Irish--enjoying tranquillity and repose after the expulsion of the Ostmen, and so recalling their attention to the cultivation of Christianity after their release from that scourge--converted those structures of exploded paganism to the only obvious use to which they could then be made subservient, namely, that of _belfries_, for the summoning together of the people to public worship, some remnants of which it is but natural may yet remain--independently, I say, of this, have I not here shown that _bells_ entered essentially into the code of the pagan ceremonial, from whence it is more than probable, nay, a downright certainty, that the first Christian ecclesiastics adopted the use, as the Mohammedans, in their minarets, did so likewise.[201] The instance to which I have referred in an early part of this volume, of astonishment created in the English minds, on their first beholding one of those implements, was that of Gildas, who, having finished his education at Armagh, and returned to Britain about the year 508, was engaged by Cadoc, abbot of the church of Mancarban, to superintend the studies of his pupils during his absence for a twelvemonth. Having done so most successfully, and without accepting of any remuneration for his labour, we find, in an ancient life of Cadoc, in the Tinmouth MS., Lambeth observes that “Cadoc, returning to his monastery, found Gildas a noble scholar, with a very beautiful _little bell_, which he brought with him from Ireland.” Those bells, then, we may be sure, appertained exclusively to the service of the Round Towers.[202] Having none of these in England, of course they had no bells, and hence the surprise manifested on the above occasion. In Ireland, too, they must have been, now, comparatively obsolete.[203] And hence we find, according to Primate Usher, that their (restored) use was not general in the _churches_ here before the latter end of the seventh century; while another writer assures us that it was not until the ninth century that large ones were invented for the purpose of suspension.[204]