It has fallen to the writer's lot in the Divine dispensation to be en-trusted with the care or joint care of very many parishes in various parts of England: and he knows not any one external matter common to them all and to the neighbourhoods surrounding them which has caused him more pain than the ordinary use and the almost utter ne-glect for their own proper purposes of the Church Bells.
Indeed so much is the proper use of these holy instruments of edification (for such they really are) generally lost sight of that among all the New Churches which have been builded during the last few years scarcely any have more than one Bell; a greater number being considered a vain superfluity a kind of ecclesiastical luxury or by deeper thinkers a link between the Church and the world (and that of-ten in its fiercest contentions vainest hours and most carnal aspect) which we may well be rid of.