108 Bev. H. B. Haweis [Feb. 7, 



thicken them to order ; they are not meant in Belgium to be whacked 

 like big drums, but to be struck with hammers from pp to ff, like a 

 pianoforte. They resonate more easily than English bells, requiring 

 a gentler stroke to elicit their full tone. In a word, the Belgian bell 

 is a musical note, not a gong or a drum. Then again, the thickness 

 and general proportions of the bell are of the greatest moment. Bells 

 vary from one-fifteenth to one-twelfth of the diameter at the thickest 

 part of the sound-bow, and the height is commonly about twelve times 

 the thickness. English bells are, roughly, as broad as they are long, 

 if you measure diameter from outside rim to rim, and length from rim 

 to top of canon. But in truth the thickness of the bell at different 

 levels is all-important. The thickness near the top is as important 

 as that of the sound-bow, and the diameter of the crown as critical a 

 dimension as that of the rim. The deep, rich tone (in proportion to 

 size) of the smaller Belgian bells is probably largely due to the wide 

 top diameter, combined with the thinness in certain proportions of 

 the sides half-way down. The way in which altering the thickness 

 affects the tone, and even the pitch of a bell, is shown by the fact that 

 a sharp bell can be flattened by shaving off the metal inside above the 

 sound-bow ; and Mr. Lewis tells me that he has destroyed beats by 

 scooping the bell elsewhere until they disappeared at a certain point, 

 but that on continuing to scoop they reappeared. All this shows 

 how purely tentative and experimental is at present the art of bell- 

 founding in England. In Belgium it is not scientific, but empirical, 

 the accumulated experience of ages. A certain tact or rule of thumb 

 takes the place of science ; rules there must be, founded on principles, 

 but the masters cannot explain their secrets. They produce the work 

 of art, others are left to discover the laws they have obeyed. When 

 we have analyzed their methods we may be able to make their bells. 

 So thought the Germans when they measured and analyzed Eaffaelle 

 and Tintoret, and produced the correct but lifeless hanalites of Ary 

 Scheffer ; so thought Vuillaume when he imitated the Amati fiddles 

 even to the very worm-holes, but for all that the French fiddles are not 

 Amatis. It may turn out that in the making of rich musical bells 

 like those of Van Aerschodt, there is something which cannot be 

 taught — the instinct, the incommunicable touch. 



When Severin Van Aerschodt, the lineal descendant of the Van 

 den Gheyns, the depository of the Hemony traditions, draws his bell, 

 he will vary his model here, giving amplitude to this line and 

 depression to that; he has no fixed or proportionately graduated 

 scale for a suite of bells, but every bell is drawn separately ; he has 

 no fixed proportion of tin and copper, but for every four bells or so 

 the quantity of tin is varied. I was present lately at the casting 

 of six large bells for the Courtrai carillon, Belgium. When the 

 glowing pool of metal boiled like a sea of dazzling jasper, and on the 

 surface certain strange lines of sinuous motion began to curl and 

 circle like live things born in the heat of that unearthly atmosphere, 

 the master had a ladleful of tlie crystal fluid taken out and plunged 



