The similarity between these two inscriptions favours the supposition that the ancient { 110} bell-founders, like some modern enterprising firms, kept a poet on the establishment, _e.g._
A friend informs me, that on a bell in Durham Cathedral these lines occur:
"To call the folk to Church in time, I chime. When mirth and pleasure's on the wing, I ring. And when the body leaves the soul, I toll."
Your correspondent who desires the blazon of the arms of the "town of Geneva," had better have specified to which of the two bearings assigned to that name he refers.
One of these, which I saw on the official seal affixed to the passport of a friend of mine lately returned from that place, is an instance of the obsolete practice of _dimidiation_; and is the more singular, because only the dexter one of the shields thus impaled undergoes curtailment.
The correct blazon, I believe, would be: Or, an eagle double-headed, displayed sable, dimidiated, and impaling gu. a key in pale argent, the wards in chief, and turned to the sinister; the shield surmounted with a marquis' coronet.
The blazon of the sinister half I owe to Edmondson, who seems, however, not at all to have understood the dexter, and gives a clumsy description of it little worth transcribing. He, and the _Dictionnaire de Blazon_, assign these arms to the Republic of Geneva.
The other bearing would, in English, be blazoned, Checquy of nine pieces, or and azure: and in French, _Cinq points d'or, équipollés à quatre d'azur_. This is assigned by Nisbett to the _Seigneurie_ of Geneva, and is quartered by the King of Sardinia in token of the claims over the Genevese town and territory, which, as Duke of Savoy, he has never resigned.
With regard to the former shield, I may just remark, that the dimidiated coat is merely that of the German empire. How or why Geneva obtained it, I should be very glad to be informed; since it appears to appertain to the present independent Republic, and not to the former seignorial territory.
Let me also add, that the plate in the _Dictionnaire_ gives the field of this half as argent. Mr. Willement, in his _Regal Heraldry_, under the arms of Richard II.'s consort, also thus describes and represents the imperial field; and Nisbett alludes to it as such in one place, though in his formal blazon he gives it as _or_.