The Early IVatch. pose of watching; and small apartments were constructed for them in steeples. In most, if not in all German cities, the town-piper or town musician, was appointed steeple watch man, and lodgings were assigned to him in the steeple; but in the course of time, as these were too high and too inconvenient, a house was given him near the church, and lie was allowed to have one of his servants or domestics keep watch in his stead. This is the case still at Göttingen. The city musi cian was called formerly the hausmann, which name is still retained here as well as at the Hartz, in Halle, and several other places, and the steeple in which he used to dwell and keep watch was called the haiismann's thurm. These establishments, how ever, were not general, and were not every where formed at a period equally early. If we can credit an Arabian author, whose travels were published by Renaudot, the Chinese were accustomed, so early as the ninth century, to have watchmen posted on towers, who announced the hours of the day as well as of the night by striking or beating upon a suspended board. Marco Polo, who in the thirteenth century, travelled through Tartarv and China, con firms this account, at least in regard to the city which he cal!s Quinsai, though he says that signals were given only in cases of fire and disturbance. Such boards are used in China even at present; and in St. Petersburg the watchmen who are stationed at single houses or in certain parts of the city, are accustomed to announce the hours by beat ing on a suspended plate of iron. Such boards are still used by the Christians in the Levant to assemble people to divine service, either because they dare not ring the bells or arc unable to purchase them. The former is related by Tournefort of the inhabitants of the Grecian Islands, and the latter by Chardin of the Mingrelians. The like means were employed in monasteries, at the earliest periods, to give notice of the hours of prayer,
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and to awaken the monks. Mahomet, who in his form of worship borrowed many things from the Christians of Syria and Arabia, adopted the same method of assembling the people to prayers; but when he remarked that it appeared to his followers to savor too much of Christianity, he again intro duced the practice of calling out. The steeple watchmen in Germany are often mentioned in the fourteenth and fif teenth centuries. In the year 1351, when the council of Erfurt renewed that police or dinance which was called the 7.uchtbrief (let ter of discipline), because it kept the peo ple in proper subjection, it was ordered, be sides other regulations in regard to fire, that two watchmen should be posted on every steeple. A watchman of this kind was ap pointed at Merseburg and Leisnig so early as the year 1400. In the beginning of the seventeenth century the town-piper of Leis nig lived still in apartments in the steeple. In the year 1563 a church steeple was erected in that place, and an apartment built in it for a permanent watchman, who was obliged to announce the hours every time the clock struck. In the fifteenth century the city of Ulm kept permanent watchmen in many of the steeples. In the year 1452 a bell was sus pended in the tower of the Cathedral of Frankfort-on-the-Maine, which was to be rung in times of feudal alarm, and all the watchmen on the steeples were then to blow their horns and hoist their banners. In the year 1476 a room for the watchman was constructed in the steeple of the Church of St. Nicholas. In the year 1509 watchmen were kept both on the watch-towers and the steeples, who gave notice by firing a musket when strangers approached. The watchman on the tower of the Cathedral immediately announced, by blowing a trumpet, whether the strangers were on foot or on horseback, and at the same time hung out a red flag to wards the quarter in which he observed
