have brought me
nearer to that simple and primitive village than the profusion of wood
had permitted me to perceive, and my nerves had been unconsciously
acted upon by tones which served as keys to all the associations
connected with these bells, their church, and the village of Chiswick!
I listened again, and now discriminated the identical sounds which I
had not heard during a period of more than thirty years. I
distinguished the very words, in the successive tones, which the
school-boys and puerile imaginations at Chiswick used to combine with
them. In fancy, I became again a school-boy--"Yes," said I, "the six
bells repeat the village-legend, and tell me that "_my dun cow has
just calv'd_," exactly as they did above thirty years since!"--Did the
reader ever encounter a similar key-note, leading to a multitude of
early and vivid impressions; for in like manner these sympathetic
tones brought before my imagination numberless incidents and
personages, no longer important, or no longer in existence. My
scattered and once-loved school-mates, their characters, and their
various fortunes, passed in rapid review before me;--my school-master,
his wife, and all the gentry, and heads of families, whose orderly
attendance at Divine service on Sundays, while those well-remembered
bells were "chiming for church," (but now departed and mouldering in
the adjoining graves!) were rapidly presented to my recollection. With
what pomp and form they used to enter and depart from their house of
God!--I saw with the mind's eye the widow Hogarth and her maiden
relative, Richardson, walking up the aisle, dressed in their silken
sacks, their raised headdresses, their black calashes, their lace
ruffles, and their high crook'd canes, preceded by their aged servant,
Samuel; who, after he had wheeled his mistress to church in her
Bath-chair, carried the prayer-books up the aisle, and opened and shut
the pew! There too was the portly Dr. Griffiths, of the Monthly
Review, with his literary wife in her neat and elevated wire-winged
cap! And oft-times the vivacious and angelic Duchess of Devonshire,
whose bloom had not then suffered from the canker-worm of pecuniary
distress, created by the luxury of charity! Nor could I forget the
humble distinction of the aged sexton Mortefee, whose skill in
psalmody enabled him to lead that wretched groupe of singers, whom
Hogarth so happily pourtrayed; whose performance with the tuning-fork
excited so much wonde