The Romans used bells for various purposes. Lucian, 180 A.D., mentions an instrument {Clepsydra') mechanically constructed with water, which rang a bell as the water flowed to measure time. Bells summoned the Romans to the public baths; they were also used in processions, and so passed naturally into the service of the Western Church. The first recorded application of them to churches is ascribed by Polydore Vergil to Paulinus {circa 400 a.d.) He was bishop of Nola, a city of Campania (hence nola and campana, the names of certain bells). It has been maintained that Pope Sabinianus, 604, first used church bells; but it seems clear that they were introduced into France as early as 550. In 680 Benedict, abbot of Wearmouth, imported them from Italy; and in the 7th century, Bede mentions them in England. St Dunstan hung many in the 10th century; and in the 11th they were not uncommon in Switzerland and Germany. It is incredible that the Greek Christians, as has been asserted, were αnacquainted with bells till the 9th century; but it is certain that, for political reasons after the taking of Constantinople by the Turks, in 1453, their use was forbidden, lest they should provide a popular signal for revolt.

Several old bells are extant in Scotland, Ireland, and Wales; the oldest are often quadrangular, made of thin iron plates hammered and rivetted together. Dr Reeves of Lusk described in 1850 St Patrick’s bell preserved at Belfast, called Clog an eadhachta Phatraic, “ the bell of St Patrick’s will.” It is 6 inches high, 5 broad, 4 deep, adorned with gems and gold and silver filagree-work; it is inscribed 1091 and 1105, but is probably alluded to in Ulster annals in 552. For Scotch belle, see Illustrated Catalogue oj Archaeological Museum, Edinburgh, for 1856.

The four-sided bell of the Irish missionary St Gall, 646, is preserved at the monastery of St Gall, Switzerland. In these early times bells were usually small; even in the 11th century a bell presented to the church at Orleans weighing 2600 lb was thought large. In the 13th century larger bells were cast. The bell, Jacqueline of Paris, cast 1400, weighed 15,000 ft>; another Paris bell of 1472, 25,000 ft>; and the famous Amboise bell at Rouen, 1501, 36,364 ft. But there we have reached the threshold of the golden age of bells, of which more anon.

Before we enter on the history and manufacture of the bell in Europe it is worth while to enumerate the different kinds of bells named by Hieronymus Magius in his work De Tintinnabulis: — 1. Tintinnabulum, a little bell, otherwise called tinniol·um, for refectory or dormitory, according to Belethus, but Durandus names squilla for tho refectory ; 2. Petasius, or larger “broad-brimmed hat” bell; 3. Codon, orifice of trumpet, a Greek hand-bell; 4. Mela (see ante), a very small bell, used in the choir, according to Durandus; 5. Campana (see ante), a large bell, first used in the Latin churches in the steeple (Durandus), in the tower (Belethus); 6. Squilla, a shrill little bell. We read of cymbalum for the cloister (Durandus), or campanella for the cloister (Belethus); nolula or dupla in the clock; signum in the tower. There was also a bell called corrigiuncula t to summon the monks at scourging time.

We shall now give a brief account of the manufacture of the bell proper, i.e., the church bell of the last five centuries. It must not be supposed that the early bell-founders understood all the principles of construction, mixture of metals, lines, and proportions which go to form our notion of a good bell. As the Amati or Stradiuarius violin is the result of innumerable experiments extending over centuries, so the bells of Van den Gheyn (1550) and Hemony (1650) disengaged themselves after ages of empirical trials as the true models, and supplied the finished type for all succeeding bell-workers.

Bell-metal is a mixture of copper and tin in the proportion of 4 to 1. In Henry III.’s reign it was 2 to 1. In Mr Layard’s Nineveh bronze bells, it was 10 to 1. Zinc and lead are used in small bells. The thickness of the bell’s edge is 1*15th of its diameter, and its height is twelve times its thickness.

Bells, like viols, have been made of every conceivable shape within certain limits. The long narrow bell, the quadrangular, and the mitre-shaped in Europe at least indicate antiquity, and the graceful curved-inwardly-midway and full trumpet-mouthed bell indicates an age not earlier than the 16th century.

The bell is first designed on paper according to the scale of measurement. Then the crook is made, which is a kind of double wooden compass, the legs of which are respectively curved to the shape of the inner and outer sides of the bell, a space of the exact form and thickness of the bell being left betwixt them. The compass is pivotted on a stake driven into the bottom of the casting-pit. A stuffing of brickwork is built round the stake, leaving room for a fire to be lighted inside it. The outside of this stuffing is then padded with fine soft clay, well mixed and bound together with calves’ hair, and the inner leg of the compas3 run round it, bringing it to the exact shape of the inside of the bell. Upon this core, well smeared’with grease, is fashioned the false clay bell, the outside of which is defined by the outer leg of the compass. Inscriptions are now moulded in wax on the outside of the clay-bell; these are carefully smeared with grease, then lightly covered with the finest clay, and then with coarser clay, until a solid mantle is thickened over the outside of the clay belL A fire is now lighted, and the whole baked hard; the grease and wax inscriptions steam out through holes at the top, leaving the sham clay bell baked hard and tolerably loose, between the core and the cope or mantle. The cope is then lifted, the clay bell broken up, the cope let down again, enclosing now between itself and the core the exact shape of the bell. The metal is then boiled, and run molten into the mould. A large bell will take several weeks to cool. When extιicated it ought to be scarcely touched, and should hardly require tuning. This is called its maiden state, and it is one so sought after that many bells are left rough and out of tune in order to claim it.

A good bell, when struck, yields one note, so that any person with an ear for music can say what it is. This note is called the consonant, and when it is distinctly heard the bell is said to be “true.” Any bell of moderate size (little bells cannot well be experimented upon) may be tested in the following manner Tap the bell just on the curve of the top, and it will yield a note one octave above the consonant. Tap the bell about one quarter’s distance from the top, and it should yield a note which is the quint or fifth of the octave. Tap it two quarters and a half lower, and it will yield a tierce or third of the octave. Tap it strongly above the rim where the clapper strikes, and the quint, the tierce, and the octave will now sound simultaneously, yielding the consonant or key-note of the bell.

If the tierce is too sharp the bell’s note (i.e., the consonant) wavers between a tone and a half-tone above it; if the tierce is flat the note wavers between a tone and a half-tone below it; in either case the bell is said to be “false.” A sharp tierce can be flattened by filing away the inside of the bell just where the tierce is struck; but if the bell when cast is found to have a flat tierce there is no remedy. The consonant or key-note of a bell can be slightly sharpened by cutting away the inner rim of the bell, or flattened by filing it a little higher up inside, just above the rim. (See H. R. Haweis’s Music and Morals, 5th edition, p. 429.)

The quality of a bell depends not only on the casting and the fineness and mixture of metals, but upon the due proportion of metal to the calibre of the bell. The larger the bell the lower the tone; but if we try to make a large E bell with metal only enough for a smaller F bell, the E bell will be puny and poor. It has been calculated that for a peal of bells to give the pure chord of the ground tone or key-note, third, fifth, and octave, the diameters are required to be as thirty, twenty-four, twenty, fifteen, and the weights as eighty, forty-one, twenty-four, and ten.

The history of bells is full of romantic interest. In civilized times they have been intimately associated, not only with all kinds of religious and social rights, but with almost every important historical event. Their influence Upon architecture is not less remarkable, for to them indirectly we probably owe all the most famous towers in the world. Grose in his Antiquities observes, “Towers at first scarcely rose above the roof, being intended as lanterns for the admission of light, an addition to the height was in all likelihood suggested on the more common use of bells.”

Bells early summoned soldiers to arms, as well as citizens to bath or senate, or Christians to church. They sounded the alarm in fire or tumult; and the rights of the burghers in their bells were jealously guarded. Thus the chief bell in the cathedral often belonged to the town, not to the cathedral chapter. The curfew, the Carolus, and St Mary’s bell in the Antwerp tower all belong to the town; the rest are the property of the chapter. He who commanded the bell commanded the town; for by that sound, at a moment’s notice, he could rally and concentrate his adherents. Hence a conqueror commonly acknowledged the political importance of bells by melting them down; and the cannon of the conquered was in turn melted up to supply the garrison with bells to be used in the suppression of revolts. Many a bloody chapter in history has been rung in and out by bells.

On the third day of Easter 1282, at the ringing of the Sicilian vespers, 8000 French were massacred in cold blood by John of Procida, who had thus planned to free Sicily from Charles of Anjou. On the 24th of August, St Bartholomew’s day, 1571, bells ushered in the massacre of the Huguenots in France, to the number, it is said, of 100,000. Bells have rung alike over slaughtered and ransomed cities; and far and wide throughout Europe in the hour of victory or irreparable loss. At the news of Nelson’s triumph and death at Trafalgar, the bells of Chester rang a merry peal alternated with one deep toll, and similar striking incidents could be indefinitely multiplied. It was, however, in the low countries of Belgium and Holland, distracted with incessant civil wars, that, for purely political reasons, bells acquired unique importance.

But their religious and civil uses may be further noticed. The Ave Mary bell tolled at 6 and 12 to remind men of prayer to the Virgin; the vesper bell for evening prayer; the compline was for the last service of the day. The sanctus, often a handbell, rung at the sacrifice of the mass; the passing bell, at death. The curfew {couvre feu), introduced by the Conqueror into England, rang at 8 o’clock to extinguish all lights. In many parts of the country and in university towns at 8 and 6 o’clock bells are still rung. At Antwerp cathedral we find the Cloche de Triomphe, by Dumery; sixteen bells at Sotteghem and several at Ghent and elsewhere bear the same maker’s name. The Horrida, or ancient tocsin at Antwerp, said to date from 1316, is longshaped and is now unused. The curfew in the same tower rings at 5, 12, and 8. The Santa Maria (4⅜ tons) first rang when Carl the Bold entered Antwerp 1467. St Antoine is another celebrated bell, and the favourite Carolus, given by Charles V. (7∣ tons), is made of copper, silver, and gold, and valued at .£20,000. At Strasburg we have the Holy Ghost bell, with motto, “0 Rex gloriae Christoe veni cum pace,” and date 1375, 3 nonas Augusti (8 tons), only rung when two fires are seen in the town at once. The recall or storm bell warns travellers in the plain of the storm coming from the Vosges Mountains. The Thor or gate bell, for shutting and opening gates of the city, has been cast three times (1618, 1641, and 1651); it bears the following inscription :—

“Dieses Thor Glocke das erst mal schallt Als man 161S sahlt

Dass Mgte jahr regnet man

Nach doctor Luther Jubal jahr Das Bös hinaus das Gut hinein Zu läuten soll igr arbeit seyn.”

The Mittags, or 12 o'clock bell, taken down in the French Revolution, bore the motto—

“Vox ego sum vitae

Voco vos—orate—venite.”

From all this it will appear that these Continental bells acquired a strong personality from the feelings and uses with which they were associated; and, indeed, they were formally christened with more ceremony than we give to christening our ships, and were then supposed to have the power of driving away evil spirits, dispersing storms, &c.

Bell-founding attained perfection in Holland in the 16th and 17th centuries; and the names of Hemony, Dumery, and the Van den Gheyns stand out as the princes of the art. Their bells are still heard throughout the Low Countries, and are plentiful at Amsterdam, Bruges, Ghent, Louvain, Mechlin, and Antwerp. These bells are frequently adorned with bas reliefs of exquisite beauty, such as feathers, forest leaves, fruit, flowers, portraits, or dancing groups, and inscribed with Latin, sometimes bad, but strong, quaint, and often pathetic. We give the preference to Hemony’s small bells, and to Van den Gheyns’s large ones. The names of Deklerk, Claes Noorden and Johann Albert de Grave (1714), Claude and Joseph Plumere (1664), Bartholomew Goethale (1680), and Andrew Steiliert (1563) also occur in Belgium. The following illustrate the nature of inscriptions and mottoes common in Belgium :—“Non sunt loquelae neque sermones audiantur voces eorum, F. Hemony, Amstelodamia, 1658;” “Laudate Domini omnes gentes, F. Hemony, 1674 ; ” and on a Ghent bell—

“Mynem naem is Roelant

Als ick clippe dan ist brandt

Ale ick luyde dan is storm in Vlaenderland. ’

A common inscription runs—

“Funera plango, Fulgura frango, Sabbata pango, Excito lentos, Dissipo ventos, Paco cruentos.”

A few other inscriptions which occur on bells in France and England may be quoted. The bell in the cathedral at Rouen, already mentioned, which was melted down by the Revolutionists in 1793, bore the words—

“Je suis George d’Ambois Qui trente cinque mille pois Mais lui qui me pesera Trente six mille me trouvera.”

Bells of the parish church at Winnington,Bedfordshire,had— “Nomina campanis haec indita sunt quoque nostris.” 1st bell.—“Hoc signum Petri pulsatur nomine Christi.” 2d „ “Nomen Magdalene campana sonat melode.”

8d ,, “Sit nomen Domini benedictum semper in eum.”

4th ,, “Musa Raphaelis sonat auribus Immanuelis.”

δth ,, “Sum Rosa pulsata mundique Maria vocata.”

By an old chartulary it appears that the bells of the Priory of Little Dunmow, in Essex, were in the year 1501 new cast and baptized—

“Prima in honore Sancti Michaelis Archangeli.

Secunda in honore Sancti Johannis Evangelist!

Tertia in honore S. Johannis Baptisti.

Quarta in honore Assumptionis beatae Mariae.

Quinta in honore sanctae Trinitatis et omnium sanctorum.”

In the little sanctum at Westminster, Edward III. built a clocher, and placed in it bells for St Stephen’s chapel, round the largest of which was cast—

“King Edward made mee thirtye thousand weight and three Take me down and wey mee,

And more you shall fynd mee.”

Some of the music played on the carillon clavecin is still extant. We may specially mention the morceaux fugues discovered by the Chevalier van Elewyck, in the archives at Louvain, the work of the celebrated organist and carilloneur Matthias van den Gheyn (published by Schott and Co., Brussels and London). This music is as fine in its way as Bach or Handel.

Quite lately several carillons have been put up in England; and one (1875) is in contemplation for St Paul’s cathedral. The new carillon machinery by Messrs Gillett and Bland of Croydon, now employed almost everywhere in connection with clocks and carillons, is incomparably superior to anything of the kind on the Continent. By its aid the hammer, which falls on the outside of the bell, is raised mechanically instead of by the action of the fist or fingeT on the key; and all that the stroke on the key does is to let it slide off like a hair-trigger, and drop on the bell. Thus the touch of the modern carillon clavecin bids fair to rival that of the organ. The same firm has also invented a bell piano. The chief carillons in England at present are at Boston church, Lincolnshire, Worcester cathedral, Bradford town-hall, Rochdale town-hall, and Shoreditch. Several good peals of bells in London are immortalized in the common nursery rhyme—

“Gay go up and Gay go down,

To ring the bells of London town.’

Bell-ringing by rope is still a popular art in England. The first regular peal of bells in this country was sent in 1456 by Pope Calixtus III. to King’s College, Cambridge, and was for 300 years the largest peal in England. At the beginning of the 16th century sets of eight bells were hung in a few large churches. In 1668 a famous work on bells, Tintinalogia, by T. W. [White], appeared, introducing a sort of bell-notation by printing the bells 1, 2, 3, 4, &c., on slips of paper in different orders according to the changes rung. Of these changes there is a great variety, spoken of technically as hunting, dodging, snapping, place-making, plain-bob, bob-triple, bob-major, bobmajor reversed, double bob-major, grandsire-bob-cator, &c.

The following numbers show how three bells can ring six changes 1, 2, 3; 1, 3, 2; 2,1, 3; 2,3,1; 3,1,2; 3, 2,1. Four bells ring four times as many as three, i.e., twenty-four; five bells ring five times as many as four, or 120. And it may thus be shown that it would take ninety-one years to ring all the changes upon twelve bells at two strokes a second; whilst twenty-four bells would occupy more than 117 billions of years!

Bell-ringing is conducted as follows :—Ropes hang through holes in the bell-chamber, and are usually fastened to a wheel for leverage, round which the rope passes. There is a great knack in handling the rope. The first half-pull “drops” the bell, the second “sets” it; it next swings up to the slur-bar, then it swings down and up to the other side, the clapper striking as it ascends. Eight bells make the most perfect peal, tuned in the diatonic scale.

Bells are struck in three ways,—(1) with a hammer on the outside, let off either by a tambour or revolving drum, similar in appearance to the prickly cylinder of a musical box, which drum can be fitted with tunes or chimes by musical nuts or spikes, and altered at will; (2) the bell can also be struck by hand, as in the common stand of small bells to be seen occasionally in the London streets, the player having a hammer in each hand; or (3) the clapper may strike the bell internally, either being pulled by a rope, the bell being stationary, or by the bell swinging to and fro. If the hammer or clapper be too light the tone of the bell is not properly drawn;...

His collected works did not appear until 1568. The early death of the French Ovid, as he has been called, was a serious loss to European literature, for Joachim du Bellay wa3 at the height of his power, and still rapidly advancing. His poems have a force, an occasional sublimity, and a direct pathos for which we look in vain among his contemporaries; and none but Ronsard excelled him in facility and grace. His most famous poem, Un Vanneur de Blé aux Vents, one of the loveliest lyrics of the age, was written shortly before his death, and appeared in the Jeux Rustiques in 1560; it is nominally a paraphrase from the Latin of Naugerius. The standard edition of the French works of Joachim du Bellay is that published in 2 vols, by Lemerre in 1866, and edited by Ch. Marty-Laveaux. Spenser translated sixty of Du Bellay’s Roman sonnets into English, and published them in 1591. A very delicate essay on the poet will be found in Mr W. H. Pater’s Studies in the History of the Renaissance, 1873.