1879.] on Belh. 101 



The bell has a long past, and it will have a long future ; it did 

 not attain its present shape, or quality, or size all at once, it took 

 thousands of years 



About A.D. 180, Lucian mentions the clepsydra, or water-boll — a 

 bell rung periodically as the water fell from one level to another, 

 marking the time. The Romans used bells to call to the bath, 

 and the Christian Church adopted them about a.d. 400. France had 

 them in 550, England in G80, and Switzerland in the tenth and 

 eleventh centuries jiossessed a great many. There is St. Gall's bell, 

 still preserved at tlie monastery of St. Gall, in Switzerland, and 

 St. Patrick's bell, still to be seen in Belfast; but these are more 

 interesting as curiosities than as bells. They are small quadrilateral 

 handbells, made of metal plates, and can never have had a good 

 sound. In 1400, we get bells of larger calibre : in Paris, the bell 

 Jacqueline, and another of eleven tons, as thoy say, but I doubt the 

 figures. The great bell Amboise, 1501, of Rouen, is said to havo 

 weighed about fifteen tons ; but whatever the exact weight, it supplies 

 good evidence of the comparatively heavy calibre of bells in France 

 at that time. But with the dawn of the sixteenth century we are on 

 the threshold of the musical age of bells, and it is a most important 

 epoch because it marks the dawn of modern music also. The elements 

 of music had been in the world for centuries, as you know ; the 

 Greeks, even the Jews and Egyptians, had elaborated an art of music ; 

 but modern music is an affair of the last four hundred years, and 

 it could not exist before the discovery of the modern octave, or the 

 uniform arrangement of tones and semitones in each key, and the 

 " perfect cadence." This discovery is marked by the name of Monte- 

 verdi 



The rise of music was naturally marked by the rise of singing- 

 schools and the improvement of musical instruments. For centuries 

 the violin had been coming together — every conceivable shape, size, 

 and quality had been tried before it began to assume, in the hands of 

 Magini and the Amatis, something like its classic form ; and for 

 centuries bells had been vibrating through every conceivable shape 

 and proportion before the great boUsmiths Van den Gheyn and 

 Hemony fixed the shape, which has never since been seriously 

 departed from with impunity, and to which we shall have to return if 

 we want to make good bells. 



It is interesting and, I think, significant to notice how the bell 

 and the violin both settled into their true shapes about the time that 

 the modern octavo was prepared for them, and the modern musical 

 art created, and not before. I think I may claim to have been the 

 first to call attention to this in the pages of ' Music and Morals,' 

 and I will once more ask you to note the dates. In 1562, Peter 

 Van den Gheyn, the real father of the modern bell, set up his modest 

 carillon at Louvain. In 1540, Andrew Amati, the father of the 

 violin, set up his school at Cremona. From 1658 to 1750 we have 

 the great bell period, perfected from Hemony to Matthias Van den 



