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Agriculture seems first to have been lifted into respectability by the Cistercian Monks, while spinning, weaving, and almost every mechanic calling, if we except the scribe, the armorer, and the bell-founder, continued down to very recent tunes to be held in contempt among the Gael.

It was destroyed in 1714 during the restoration of the cathedral. There is a terra-cotta medallion of Constantino Copronymus on the façade. The present campanile is of 1480. The great bell was cast in 1333 by two sons of the celebrated bell-founder, Jacopo da Venezia.

After giving his apprentice a last look full of many meanings, Cornelius double-locked the door, took away the key and descended the staircase, leaving the young nobleman as much befooled as a bell-founder when on opening his mould he finds nothing.

On the day which Wolf had appointed for the operation it seemed as though the entire populace had turned out to witness the spectacle. Wolf, having prepared the mould, made ready to pour into it the molten metal. The silence was almost oppressive, and on it fell distinctly the solemn words of the bell-founder, as in God’s name he released the metal.

By this means his mast broke off about three handfuls above his hand, whereat he stood amazed like a bell-founder, and cried out, Ah, Panurge, where art thou? Panurge, seeing that, said to the king and the giants, By G , they will hurt one another if they be not parted. But the giants were as merry as if they had been at a wedding.

The strenuous effort alluded to in these words, the great all-conquering achievement, the master chime which peals from the heights, has indeed not yet attained fulfillment. One might say of the work of Zahn as of the bell of Gerhart Hauptmann's bell-founder, "In the valley it vibrates, not on the heights." We find neither great problems of humanity and civilization nor real men of the heights.

The bell-founder is an idealist with a feeling for the dignity of man and of man's handiwork. As he orders his workmen to perform the successive operations involved in the casting of a bell, he delivers, from the depths of his larger experience, a little homily, suggested, in each case, by the present stage of the labor.

Agriculture seems first to have been lifted into respectability by the Cistercian Monks, while spinning, weaving, and almost every mechanic calling, if we except the scribe, the armorer, and the bell-founder, continued down to very recent tunes to be held in contempt among the Gael.

Among those whose ambitious souls were stirred by the statement of the city fathers was one, a bell-founder named Wolf, a man of evil passions and overbearing disposition, whose heart was firmly set on achieving success. In those days, let it be said, the casting of a bell was a solemn, and even a religious, performance, attended by elaborate ceremonies and benedictions.