he most extraordinary comparison is that instituted
by Mrs. Lirriper in reference to her late husband.

My poor Lirriper was a handsome figure of a man,
with a beaming eye and a voice as mellow as a musical
instrument made of honey and steel.

What a vivid imagination the good woman had! Her descriptive
powers remind us of those possessed by Mrs. Gamp in speaking
of the father of the mysterious Mrs. Harris.

As pleasant a singer, Mr. Chuzzlewit, as ever you heerd,
with a voice like a Jew's-harp in the bass notes.

There are many humorous references to remarkable performances on
various instruments more or less musical in their nature. During
the election at Eatanswill the crier performed two concertos
on his bell, and shortly afterwards followed them up with a
fantasia on the same instrument. Dickens suffered much from
church bells, and gives vent to his feelings about them in
_Little Dorrit_, where he says that

Maddening church bells of all degrees of dissonance,
sharp and flat, cracked and clear, fast and slow,
made the brick-and-mortar echoes hideous.

In his _Pictures from Italy_ he wrote thus:

At Genoa the bells of the church ring incessantly,
not in peals, or any known form of sound, but in
horrible, irregular, jerking dingle, dingle, dingle;
with a sudden stop at every fifteenth dingle or so,
which is maddening.... The noise is supposed to be
particularly obnoxious to evil spirits.

But it was these same bells, which he found so maddening,
that inspired him with the title of a well-known story. He
had chosen a subject, but was at a loss for a name. As he sat
working one morning there suddenly rose up from Genoa

the clang and clash of all its steeples, pouring into
his ears, again and again, in a tuneless, grating,
discordant jerking, hideous vibration that made his
ideas spin round and round till they lost themselves
in a whirl of vexation and giddiness, and dropped
down dead.... Only two days later came a letter in
which not a syllable was written but 'We have heard
THE CHIMES at midnight, Master Shallow,' and I knew
he had discovered what he wanted.[11]

Yet, in spite of all this, Dickens shows--through his
characters--a deep interest in bells and bell-lore. Little Paul
Dombey finds a man mending the clocks at Dr. Blimber's Academy,
and asks a multitude of questions about chimes and clocks;
as, whethe