1857.] on the Great Bell of Westminster. 369 



is not the making of a peal of bells, which must of course be in 

 tune with each other, but a single bell, which would have answered 

 its purpose just as well with any other note as the E natural, which 

 it happens to sound. I do not mean to say that it was not ascer- 

 tainable beforehand that it would be of this note, as soon as the 

 shape, size, and thickness were determined ; and it is very con- 

 venient that it should be some note exactly, according to the pitch 

 now accepted among musicians, because a bell is the most per- 

 manent of all musical instruments ; and so long as this bell lives 

 there will be no room for dispute about what was the accepted 

 musical standard in England in the middle of the nineteenth cen- 

 tury, assuming some record to be kept that this bell was then E 

 natural exactly. But the problem we had to solve in making this 

 first and largest of the five clock bells was, not to produce a bell of 

 any given note, but to make the best bell that can be made of the 

 given weight of 14 tons, which had been fixed long ago as the 

 intended weight. When I say the best bell that can be made, I 

 mean a combination of the most powerful and most pleasing sound 

 that can be got — not, observe, the deepest ; for we could get any 

 depth of note we liked out of the given weight, by merely making 

 the bell thinner, larger, and worse, as I shall explain further 

 presently. 



All that I have to do, therefore, is to describe the observations and 

 experiments which led me to adopt the particular form and com- 

 position which have been used for this the largest bell that has ever 

 been cast in England. The result is, undoubtedly, a bell which 

 gives a sound of a different quality and strength from any of the 

 other great bells in England. C)f course it is very easy to say, as 

 some persons have said, that we have got a clapper so much larger 

 than usual, in proportion to the bell, that the sound must needs be 

 different. But the reply to that is equally easy : the bellfounders 

 always make the clapper at their own discretion ; and in order to 

 make the most they can of their bells, you may be sure they will 

 make the clapper either as large as they dare, with regard to the 

 strength of the bell, or as large as they find it of any use to make 

 it; because there is always a limit, beyond which you can get 

 no more sound of a bell by increasing the clapper. In the West- 

 minster bell we found that we could go on increasing the sound by 

 increasing the clapper up to 13cwt., or say 12cwt., excluding the 

 shank or handle of the clapper, or about ■^ji\i of the weight of the 

 bell ; which is somewhat higher than the proportion found to hold 

 in some of the great Continental bells ; but two or three times as 

 high as the usual English proportion. And if the makers of the 

 other large .bells in England have found it either useless or unsafe 

 to put clappers into them of more than ^^jth, -^5*^, or y^o^h of their 

 weight, it certainly is not surprising that the sound of this bell 

 should be so different from theirs, as it is observed to be. The 

 truth is, that the difference in the size of the clapper is tlie con- 



