BEA 



68 



Beard, in France. Philip V. ascended the throne with a 

 " shaved chin ; the courtiers imitated the prince, and 

 the people, in turn, the courtiers. This revolution, 

 however, was not congenial to the feelings of the na- 

 tion ; and there is a Spanish proverb which says, 

 Desde que no hay harba, ho hay mas alma. " Since 

 we have lost our beards, we have lost our souls." 

 The love of ancient usages, and a certain gravity of 

 character, have induced this people to retain the 

 whisker as a mark of dignity, when the progress 

 of refinement has exploded the beard from almost 

 every part of Europe. 



The respect in which the Portuguese held their 

 beards during the reign of queen Catherine, is evinced 

 by the remarkable anecdote of the brave John de 

 Castro pledging one of his whiskers, as the best se- 

 curity he could offer to the inhabitants of Goa in 

 India, for the repayment of a sum of money which 

 he had borrowed for the use of his fleet. The peo- 

 ple, however, relying implicitly on his honour, re- 

 quested him to retain both the money and the 

 whisker. Among the early French, all letters that 

 came from the sovereign had, for greater sanction, 

 three hairs of his beard on the seal. There is still 

 extant a charter of 1121, which concludes with the 

 following remarkable words : Quod ut ratum et sta- 

 bile perseveret in posterum, praesentis scripto sigilli 

 mei robur apposui cum tribus pilis barbm mem. 



We shall take leave of the subject of beards, with 

 a word or two on those of ecclesiastics. During the 

 first ages of Christianity, the priests were sometimes 

 enjoined to wear their beards, from a notion of too 

 much cftetninacy in shaving, and that a long beard 

 was more suitable to ecclesiastical gravity ; and some- 

 times they were enjoined to shave, that pride might 

 not lurk beneath a venerable beard. On the separa- 

 tion of the Greek and Roman churches, the practice 

 of shaving has become common among the Romanists, 

 by way of opposition to-the Greeks, who have con- 

 tinued to pay great reverence to a well covered chin ; 

 and are greatly scandalised at the beardless images of 

 saints in the Roman churches. The shaving of the 

 chin, and likewise of the head, according to the true 

 ecclesiastical tonsure, is regulated by various statutes 

 of the Romish church ; and the form of prayer is 

 still extant which was employed in the solemnity of 

 consecrating to God, the beard of an ecclesiastic 

 when he was first shaven. By the statutes of some 

 monasteries, it appears that the lay monks were 

 to let their beards grow, and the priests only to 

 shave ; and a writer of the seventh century complains, 

 that the manners of the clergy had become so cor- 

 rupted, that they could not be distinguished from 

 the lwty by their actions, but only by their want of 

 beards. (j) x 



BEARING Notes, in music, in the tuning of 

 keyed instruments, harps, &c. signify those notes be- 

 tween which the most erroneous or highly tempered 

 fifth is situate, on which also the wolf is said to be 

 thrown : Many tuners begin at C, and tune upwards, 

 through the progression of fifths, CGDAEB4G 

 6DandAA, and then stop, and begin again at C, 

 the octave above the former note, and tune down- 

 wards, through the fifths cF AB and i, and thus 

 tfce resulting fifth eA &E produces bearing notes; 



BEA 



owing to each fifth having been made more or leas 

 flat than the system of twelve notes will bear, the 

 least sum of all their errors or temperaments being 

 the Diaschisma, (see that article) ; for, had each 

 of these fifths been tuned flat, just Vr part of ct, 

 (sec Plate XXX. ), the resulting fifth would have been 

 also -rr t Hat, and in this case there could not be 

 said to be any bearing notes. See Equal Temper- 

 ament. It should be observed, that some tuners 

 are in the habit of throwing their wolf into the fifth 

 b A D, and others into that of 6D oG, which last, 

 as being nearest to the middle of the whole progres- 

 sion of fifths, seems its most appropriate place for 

 general use. See Temperament. (;) 



BEAT, in Music, is a transient grace or ornament 

 in the performance of a note, where either of these 

 marks -W- or % are placed over it, denoting that a 

 kind of shake is to be made, by beginning with the half 

 tone below the given note, and quickly repeating the 

 given note and that : on the contrary, the Shake, 

 marked * is effected by beginning on the note above 

 the given one (whether a half or whole tone dis- 

 tant) and repeating the given note and it alternate- 

 ly : the Turn differs from both of these in using 

 the notes above and below the given one. When 

 therefore a whole tone lies below any note marked 

 for a beat, an accidental sharp is to be supposed on 

 that lower note, except that A is seldom thus sharp- 

 ened in a beat. There are other varieties of beats 

 sometimes used, particularly by the German musi- 

 cians ; for which see Dr Callcott's Musical Grammar, 

 Arts. 118 to 121. ( ? ) 



BEATINGS, in Music, is a term used by some 

 to express those periodical jarring sounds often made, 

 by the irregular vibrations of two strings, pipes, &c. 

 sounding together, which, as Mr Emerson observes, 

 occasion a repetition of noises like ivaw, aw, aw, aw, 

 or yd, yd, yd, yd ; these are called beats by Dr Ro- 

 bert Smith, Mr Emerson, and, we believe, every 

 other mathematical writer that notices the pheno- 

 menon. (See Beats.) Earl Stanhope, we are aware, 

 in a letter of his, printed in the Philosophical Ma- 

 gazine, vol. xxviii. p. 150, has laboured to make a 

 distinction between the meaning of beats and beat- 

 ings, in order to identify the former with the pulses or 

 Vibrations of the sounds themselves, and to denomi- 

 nate the above phenomenon by the exclusive use of 

 the term beatings; but his lordship's reasoning having 

 failed in convincing us, we shall, with the late Dr 

 Robison and others, continue to consider and use 

 beat and beating as synonymous terms. (j) 



BEATS, or Beatings, in Music, are an audible 

 phenomenon attending the sounding of two notes at 

 the same time, which approach within certain limits 

 to the producing of a conchord with each other, 

 which the late Dr Robert Smith, in his Harmonics, 

 has applied, with the happiest effect, to the practical 

 tuning of instruments, according to any given system 

 or arrangement of the intervals. The phenomenon of 

 beats forms also the means, by which practical tuners, 

 unacquainted with theory or the exact comparative 

 magnitudes of intervals, adjust the notes of organs, 

 piano fortes, harps, &c. by the judgment of their 

 car, in the daily exercise of the tuning profession. 



It seems, therefore, of the utmost importance for 



Bt.-c 



I 

 Beatt. 



