872 Mr. E. Bechett Denison, [March 6, 



of the Cathedral,) and that of the great bell of Bow, which is 

 prob;»bly much the same as that of St. Paul's, York, and Lincoln, 

 as they all came from the same foundry in Whitechapel. Indeed, 

 the sound-bow of this bell is fuller outside than the Paris beli, 

 because it is thicker ; so much so, that a straight edge laid exter- 

 nally against the top of the bell and the sound-bow would be thrown 

 out beyond the lip ; whereas generally such a straight line would 

 touch the lip, and just clear the sound-bow. Only within the last 

 few days I have found one other remarkable exception to this 

 general rule of construction, and a remarkable coincidence with the 

 external shape, and the proportions of height, breadth, and thick- 

 ness of our bell, and that is no other than the great bell of Moscow, 

 of which an exact section is given in Lyall's Russia, with various 

 different versions of its weight. The inside shape, however, is not 

 the same, and I am satisfied not so good, the curve being discon- 

 tinuous, and presenting an angle just below where the clapper 

 strikes, as in the Paris bell. That bell seems to have had a very 

 short life, a large piece having been broken out in a fire the year 

 after it was cast. Sir Roderick Murchison tells me that the sound 

 of the Russian bells is remarkably sweet. 



I cannot find that the exact height of a bell makes much differ- 

 ence. The foreign bells, except the Russian ones, it seems, are 

 generally higher than ours, being nearly |^th of their diameter high, 

 whether you measure it vertically inside, or obliquely outside from 

 the lip to the top corner, as the two measures are generally much 

 alike on account of the curvature of the top or crown. Ours run 

 from f rd to -fth of the diameter, though there are some higher ; 

 and on the whole my impression is against the high ones. The 

 vertical height inside of all these bells at Westminster is ~\ of the 

 diameter. Lower than that, the bell does not look well; and I 

 never saw an ugly bell that was a good one ; and it is clear from 

 all our experiments, that the upper or nearly cylindrical part is 

 of considerable importance, and though its vibrations are hardly 

 sensible, it cannot even be reduced in thickness without injury to 

 the sound, of which we had a curious proof. A bell of the usual 

 proportions, in which the thickness of the upper or thin part is one- 

 third of the sound bow or thickest part, sounds a tliird or a fourth 

 above the proper note when it is struck in the waist, and the sound 

 there is generally harsh and unmusical besides. It occurred to both 

 my colleague, the Rev. W. Taylor, and myself, that it would be better 

 to make the waist thinner, so as to give the same note as the sound 

 bow. After two or three trials we succeeded in doing this very 

 nearly, and without reducing the waist below ith instead of ^rd of 

 the sound bow. The bell sounded very freely with a light blow, 

 and kept the sound a long time, and a blow on the waist gave a 

 much better sound than usual. But for all that, when we tried it 

 at a distance with another bell of the same size and same thickness 

 of sound bow, but a thicker waist, the thin onewas manifestly the 



