do; and the only wish I can
form, or that ever prompts the passing sigh, would be to live some of
my years over again--they would be those in which I enjoyed and
suffered most!

The ticking of a clock in the night has nothing very interesting nor
very alarming in it, though superstition has magnified it into an
omen. In a state of vigilance or debility, it preys upon the spirits
like the persecution of a teazing pertinacious insect; and haunting
the imagination after it has ceased in reality, is converted into a
death-watch. Time is rendered vast by contemplating its minute
portions thus repeatedly and painfully urged upon its attention, as
the ocean in its immensity is composed of water-drops. A clock
striking with a clear and silver sound is a great relief in such
circumstances, breaks the spell, and resembles a sylph-like and
friendly spirit in the room. Foreigners, with all their tricks and
contrivances upon clocks and time-pieces, are strangers to the sound
of village-bells, though perhaps a people that can dance may dispense
with them. They impart a pensive, wayward pleasure to the mind, and
are a kind of chronology of happy events, often serious in the
retrospect--births, marriages, and so forth. Coleridge calls them "the
poor man's only music." A village-spire in England peeping from its
cluster of trees is always associated in imagination with this
cheerful accompaniment, and may be expected to pour its joyous tidings
on the gale. In Catholic countries, you are stunned with the
everlasting tolling of bells to prayers or for the dead. In the
Apennines, and other wild and mountainous districts of Italy, the
little chapel-bell with its simple tinkling sound has a romantic and
charming effect. The Monks in former times appear to have taken a
pride in the construction of bells as well as churches; and some of
those of the great cathedrals abroad (as at Cologne and Rouen) may be
fairly said to be hoarse with counting the flight of ages. The chimes
in Holland are a nuisance. They dance in the hours and the quarters.
They leave no respite to the imagination. Before one set has done
ringing in your ears, another begins. You do not know whether the
hours move or stand still, go backwards or forwards, so fantastical
and perplexing are their accompaniments. Time is a more staid
personage, and not so full of gambols. It puts you in mind of a tune
with variations, or of an embroidered dress. Surely, nothing is more
simple