and returns to the Giver of all breath, pure as he gave it. Nor will He forget it when He counteth up his jewels. On earth too, for as much and as long as the happy dead, to whom all things have long been made equal, need remembering, such a life will not have been lived in vain. Only the memory of the just Smells sweet, and blossoms in the dust. SOMETHING ABOUT BELLS. BEFORE the great bell for the palace at Westminster was cast, about the middle of last August, a commission was sent to France, while the Paris Exposition was still open, to collect information 'respecting the most esteemed chimes in France and Belgium, and whether there are in those countries makers acquainted with the traditions of the art, or who have applied the discoveries of science to the improvement of bells, or to efficient substitutes for them.' In answer to this inquiry, the commissioners, Professor Wheatstone and Sir Charles Barry, learned that no such efficient substitutes have been discovered, and that no improvement was known on the established mode and materials for casting them. There were some, however, who thought otherwise, and we were told that cast-steel bells were the things for the nineteenth century, till experiment proved their sound to be too harsh. The Institute of British Architects occupied three evenings of a session with papers and a discussion on the sonorous subject. Why should we, with our advanced knowledge, adhere to the old forms?-why could we not set up large gongs, or great metal basins, or huge tuning-forks, as in the St Nicholas Church at Hamburg? Mr C. H. Smith shewed to the Institute that two cones of soft steel, one being in a certain proportion larger and longer than the other, would, when united at their bases, and there supported horizontally, give out a prolonged musical sound on being struck on the centre of gravity of the whole mass. By varying the proportions of the cones, any accordant musical note could be produced; and if one was made of bell-metal, and the other of steel, the effect was yet more musical. Then, arguing from the gong, was it not a mistake to make bells so heavy? Would it not be better to hammer them into shape, as is the practice in making brass pans and caldrons. To say nothing of having a compacter metal, and with it a better tone, what a saving there would be in expense. No unimportant consideration this, seeing that the prime cost of the metal for the Westminster bell amounts to L.1700. In the discussions which followed, all parts of the subject came under notice: the casting of bells, the best shape for them, how they should be hung, how rung, and other points interesting only to the initiated; and a good deal was said that appears to be perfectly conclusive. Mr E. B. Denison, Q. C., shewed by direct experiment that although a gong gives out an imposing sound in a room, it cannot in reality be heard half so far off as the sound of a bell of half the weight. Moreover, the gong does not answer at once to the blow, as the bell does a most essential requirement-neither does it melt off into a prolonged musical sound. The deep solemn tone of the coiled wire upon which American clocks strike is familiar to numbers of persons: it might be taken for the great bell of a cathedral; but they may easily satisfy themselves that an ordinary clock-bell will send its sound to a distance where the other is perfectly inaudible; and so of the steel cones. Seeing that a hemispherical bell answers so well for an indoor clock, would the same form not be the best for church bells? This question appears to have been settled by the hemispherical bells shewn in the Great Exhibition. They had a thick rim, and when struck with pieces of wood, gave out a tone deeper than that of some of the Great Toms renowned in belldom; but if you walked away to the end of the building, you could not hear it; nor was it then audible, even if the blow was struck with a hammer. We thus see that depth of tone by no means involves penetrating power. Where the sound is not required to travel to a great distance, as in cemeteries, hemispherical bells have been introduced with advantage. A curious fact with respect to this kind of bells is worth mentioning. If you take a tube, the diameter of which is half, and its length the same as the diameter of the bell, and hold it near the rim of the bell, the sound given out is greatly increased, and different qualities of tone may be produced by employ- | ing tubes of different sizes. But the penetrating power of the sound is not increased; a bell of the same weight and of the ordinary form is heard further off The phenomenon is confined to the hemispherical bell, for no increase of sound is obtained by applying a tube to the pyramidal bell. If I am to offer a guess at the reason of this,' says Mr Denison, 'it is that the upper part of the common bell, which is nearly a tube in shape, does really act as the sounding tube to the vibrations of the bell when struck.' That the bells of former ages are generally better than those of the present, will astonish if it does not mortify those who hold modern science to excel all that has preceded. The old founders had some method of treating their bells, which, if not entirely lost, is never practised. They had some law of proportion between the inside and the outside. An illumination on a medieval manuscript represents a man grinding the inside of a bell; and it is a fact that a bell finished off in a lathe, quite smooth on both sides, gives a better note than one left in the rough. On this point, Mr C. Varley stated he had witnessed the full effect on the occasion of Lord Macartney's embassy to China, near the end of the last century, when two splendid musical snuff-boxes were taken as presents to the emperor; they played five tunes each, and opening the lid started one tune. It being desirable to obtain the utmost perfection, the musical part, and the tuning and fitting of the bells, were intrusted to his late uncle, Mr Samuel Varley; and though the bells were smoothly cast, in that state they were like bells in dampers, when compared with the musical sound from the truly turned and polished bells. The inside being made quite true to the outside, caused the entire co-operation of the whole bell to produce the sound.' Mr Wheatstone says, touching this part of the question: The very unsatisfactory result of the chimes constructed for the Royal Exchange, which have been twice recast, without any ultimate advantage, shews that no known bell-founder in England can be relied on.' A fact by no means flattering; although it appears that testimonials as to the very fine qualities of bells are as readily producible, as for the effects of Life Pills or Taffy's Elixir. Who that has heard the carillon at Bruges, and other places on the continent, will not regret our lack of skill in this particular? Mr Denison says there are many much bepraised bells which he would not buy at a penny a pound, except for the purpose of selling again at ninepence.' [Since this was written, the Big Ben of Westminster has given it a remarkable commentary by cracking.] However, not to throw too much discouragement on modern bell-founders, we cite another passage from Mr Denison, which shews that our forefathers, with all their knowledge, were sometimes at fault. 'Most Oxford men,' he observes, 'believe their Great Tom is a very fine bell, just because it makes a loudish noise; and they have no idea, and cannot have any, whether it is either the quantity or quality of noise which ought to come out of a bell of seven and a half tons. Whereas, I know that a good bell of half that weight would give a much louder, and a much pleasanter sound, and that, in fact, the bell is about as bad as possible.' This Oxford Tom was cast in 1680. The great bells of York and Montreal, and the new Tom of Lincoln, though not quite so bad as it, are described as 'all very far short of what they ought to be, and very inferior to the old Tom of Lincoln, which was cast in 1600, and was considered the finest large bell in England.' much more goes to make up the proper effect of a peal of bells than would be supposed. From the earliest stage in the production of a bell, the same nicety is required. The metal is generally composed of four parts of copper to one of tin; and as metals, while fluid, throw off vapours, and diminish in bulk as water does while boiling, the metal which melts most easily must not be put into the furnace with the other. It is sometimes desirable to melt the metals in different furnaces; then especial pains have to be taken to insure proper cooling, so that the whole mass shall be of one homogeneous texture. If cooled suddenly, the metal becomes stringy inside, and appears to have twice as much tin in it as when cooled slowly. The smoother the bell is, the better; hence all mouldings, ornaments, and inscriptions on the outside, are so much taken from the goodness of the tone. The addition of silver to the metal does not improve the sound, though it is thought that aluminum, being very sonorous, night be added with advantage. We conclude these loose remarks on bells with a few particulars of the weight of some of the most famous bells of Europe. The great bell of Moscow, which was broken in 1737, weighs 193 tons; the bell at the Kremlin, which fell down in 1855, weighs 63 tons; the bell at Novgorod, 31 tons; at Vienna, cast in 1711, 17 tons 14 cwt.; at Notre Dame, Paris, 12 tons 16 cwt.; at York, cast 1845, 10 tons 15 cwt.; St Peter's, Rome, 8 tons; at Exeter, cast 1675, 5 tons 11 cwt.; St Paul's, London, cast 1709, 5 tons 4 cwt. There is at Peking a bell which weighs 53 tons. A fiddle improves by age and use; a piano does not, neither does a bell. There is, perhaps, a slight improvement for the first few years, but afterwards the quality deteriorates. Metal, we know, is altered by repeated and long-continued hammering. Thump a piece of iron, and you change the quality of its magnetism: the shock of the waves modifies the magnetism of an iron ship; and some of the music is knocked out of a bell by long-continued use of the clapper. A peculiar effect is noticed in the bell of Cripplegate Church when it strikes twelve: the first two or three strokes are distinct and clear, then a discord begins, which accumulates with every stroke, until with the eleventh and twelfth a complete double sound is produced. Unsoundness in the metal may have something to do with this; and a fault of this sort, which is more often present than is commonly supposed, is aggravated by age. Mr Varley once blew the two surfaces of a brass air-pump plate nearly half THE REGISTRAR-GENERAL'S REPORT ON 1855. an inch apart, when in appearance it was perfectly sound. The clapper, as a rule, injures bells much THE Registrar-general's report on 1855 has been lately more than the clock-hammer; it wears them thin in published. It is rather voluminous, from the variety certain places. They then crack, and become useless. of tabular statistics it contains, and is somewhat As a remedy for this, methods have been proposed-lengthened by the addition of an interesting letter and one has been patented-for turning a bell from time to time on its point of suspension, so that the clapper may not play too long on any one part. Bells should be hung so that their mouth will be just above the sill of the belfry windows. Tourists, while walking round a foreign church, not unfrequently remark that they can look up into the bells from the ground. The reason is obvious-that the sound should all escape through the windows. In English belfries, the bells are sometimes hung so much below the windows, that great part of the sound is lost. Another defect is, that the windows are made too small, and are too much choked with louvre-boards. The proper way is to have large windows with but two or three stone louvres, and a wire-netting to keep out birds. Bell-ringing is often said to be injurious to the church tower: the oscillation is great, and the vibration of the masonry perceptible. But the old builders knew what they were about; they supported the timber framework to which the bells are hung on corbels or brackets built into the wall, and left a clear space all round, whereby the effect of vibration was sensibly diminished. But it happens that the timber frames become weak in course of years; and churchwardens, to save the expense of proper repair, seek to strengthen the wood-work by driving wedges between it and the wall. The consequence is, that the wall is forced outwards, and being loosened every time the bells are rung, it eventually cracks; and instances have occurred in which the tower fell, or was obliged to be pulled down and rebuilt. Sometimes new strengthening timbers have been fixed, and in such a way, that as the bells swung, the beams moved to and fro as battering-rams against the walls. The old way of placing the framework is thought to be the best, if not left at the mercy of ignorant interference. We learn from the foregoing particulars, that very from Dr Farr on the causes of death in that year. It appears that early marriages among women have increased rapidly in the last few years, being most frequent in Stafford, Durham, and Monmouth, the great coal-districts, and most rare in London, Middlesex, Devon, and North Wales. Early marriages among men have also increased; but, as might be expected, three-fourths of those who marry under age are females. In 1855, there were upwards of 3,000,000 of married couples in England. Of these there were 900,000 in which only one of the couple could write, and 700,000 in which neither husband nor wife could sign their names-a lamentable fact, deserving the attention of that useful personage, the 'schoolmaster at home.' In 1855, one child was born to every thirty of the population, the ratio of births having slightly increased from 1838, when the proportion was only one to every thirty-three persons living. Births were most numerous among the collieries. In Durham, there was one birth to every twenty-two of the population; while in Westmoreland there was only one to every thirtyseven. Twenty-six boys were born for every twentyfive girls; and of every sixteen children born, one was illegitimate. The latter births were most frequent in Cumberland, Norfolk, and Westmoreland, where the average was one to every eleven, and most rare in Huntingdon and Monmouth, where the ratio was only one to twenty-three. The records of the last eighteen years shewed the mortality to have been lowest in 1850, when there was one death out of every forty-eight persons living, and highest in 1849, the year of the cholera, when one in every forty died. In 1855, there was one death to every forty-five of the population, the mortality of to an increase in the consumption of coal; people approached nearer to the fire than in ordinary years, and the cold was thus the indirect cause of probably more than 400 deaths by burns alone.' Eight hundred and fifty infants died from want of their natural nourishment, and one mother died for every 213 children born. The deaths from poison were 380; in 1848, they were 467. This decrease is partly attributable to the fact of arsenic being now much less easily obtained. Upwards of 800 deaths are ascribed to alcoholism,' 1300 to hanging and suffocation, and 2500 to drowning. Of those who died, only one in fourteen had reached old age. The most fatal of all causes of death was consumption. To bronchitis and pneumonia, a fourth of the deaths is to be ascribed, and the same number is attributed to old age, convulsions, premature birth and debility, scarlatina, and typhus. Thus half the mortality was owing to eight causes. A comparison is made between the registration returns of France and England for the year 1853. The mortality of France, on the whole, exceeds that of England and Wales; but among the middle-aged, death is much busier in England than in France. The French suffer severely in times of famine, having no poor-laws or other provision as an insurance against starvation. They fall rapidly, too, before the cholera, on account of a defective supply of water, and an abominable system of cess-pools. The deaths in France exceeded the births by nearly 70,000. Some have attributed this to cholera and scarcity; but be this as it may, it is an indisputable fact that the births in France are actually decreasing. To a population of 1000, there were, in 1854, thirty-four births in our country, while in France there were only twenty-six. An analysis of the relative numbers who did not sign their names, but made their marks in the marriageregisters, has been taken to shew the state of elementary education in the two countries. It appears from this, that among the men of the two countries the proportion is nearly the same-thirty-four in every hundred not signing their names; but among the women it is different, for in France fifty-five in every hundred made their marks, while in England the number was only forty-eight in every hundred. Nearly 177,000 persons emigrated in the year 1855. Of these 63,000 were of English or Welsh origin; of whom 30,000 sailed for our Australian colonies, 28,000 for the United States, and only 5000 for our North American possessions; 25,000 of them were adult males, 22,000 adult females, 1300 children under fourteen years of age, and 2000 infants. We cannot conclude without drawing attention to the fact, that Ireland is the only civilised country harpoon) difficult. But the properties of the animal as food are deserving of the greatest attention. We take the following from the (Australian) Argus: 'Its flesh is not only palatable and nutritious, but actually curative in a very high degree, and is particularly good for all forms of scrofula and other diseases arising from a vitiated condition of the blood. In its fresh state it is something like tender beef; and salted, it very nearly resembles bacon -so nearly, indeed, that I unconsciously ate it at friend Cassim's for bacon, and was rather startled by his assurance afterwards, that the morning's rasher consisted of the animal consists of the oil, which is extracted from it in flesh of a "young un." But the principal value of this large quantities. An intelligent medical man, in long practice in Brisbane, has found that this oil possesses all the virtues, and more than all, of the celebrated cod-liver oil of oil is almost entirely free from all unpleasant odour or the pharmacopoeia. When properly prepared, the dugong therefore, very much greater than is the case with the flavour, and the quantities which can be administered are, cod-liver oil, without risk of offending the most delicate stomach. With a little management, it could be obtained in large quantities, as each full-grown animal will yield from eight to twelve gallons of the oil.' WE REAR NO WAR-DEFYING FLAG. [This piece is from The Poetical Works of Robert Story (Longman), a volume of minor poetry, written throughout a course of more than thirty years, yet, from first to last, exhibiting a The most spirited are the curious equality in tone and merit. political poems, which, being of a high conservative tendency, are remarkable as the productions of a peasant at a time of great popular discontent.] WE rear no war-defying flag, Though armed for battle still; The powerful never will. Float where it may, or when, Of 'Peace, good-will to men!' For death, the truth that cheers and saves: Outflashed from press and pen; Cry Peace, good-will to men!' But, are there states who never cease To hate or envy ours? And who esteem our wish for peace As proof of waning powers? Shall wave our war-flag then, NEW ROMANCE BY MAYNE REID. which is without a system of registration of births, On the 2d of January 1858 will appear in this Journal deaths, and marriages.' the commencement of OCEOLA: A STORY OF THE SEMINOLE WAR. BY CAPTAIN MAYNE REID, AUTHOR OF THE 'WAR-TRAIL,' &c. To be continued weekly till completed. Printed and Published by W. & R. CHAMBERS, 47 Paternoster OF PULAR LITERATURE Pussy cat, mew, shall have no more milk, and its Latin: A clean-swept hearth, the soft wavering light from a Pussy cat, Pussy cat, where have you been? We ourselves are always conscious of this fact, and In Latin thus: sensible of Pussy's beauty and slumberous grace, although, from some peculiarity in our constitution, we cannot bear a cat in the room. Poor puss! we were born with one of those strange antipathies to cat-kin which no effort of reason can overcome. We acknowledge the picturesque effect of her presence, but we cannot abide her near proximity; it induces a coldness and sickness, unlike any other feeling. Nor are we alone in this antipathy; we are acquainted with several persons who suffer from, and are conscious of a cat's presence, even when she herself is unseen. We were once told by a scientific friend that the reason might be found in the great amount of electricity contained in its fur, manifested by the sparks proceeding from the skin when rubbed in the dark. Might not these occasional sensations, and the known fact of the emission of visible sparks from a black cat's skin, have originated the 'demonology' of these quadrupeds? Be that as it may, the cat has obtained a high place in the imaginative literature of the people. Very early we meet with her there. It is she who is the sole friend of the lonely 'prentice-boy in his wretched garret; she lies at his feet, as he sits by the wayside listening to the weird chimes; and, finally, she wins for him the wealth and state they prophesied. Pussy and Sir Richard Whittington have gone down to posterity together. 6 Pussy has her place also in the nursery rhymes known to us as Gammer Gurton's,' those strange fantastic jingles, full of wit run mad, which have come down through the lapse of three centuries. In them she is a very distinguished and elegant personage. Her dress, her fashionable carelessness, her choice of society, are all flatteringly described. Par exemple: Pussy cat, mew! jumps over a coal; Dic ubi terrarum, dulcissima Felis, abires? Augustæ in plateas, Reginam ut cernere possem. Et quid in Augusta tibi contigit, optima Felis? Attonitum feci murem sub sede latentem. Amongst fairy legends, Pussy's poetical place is also distinguished. She is the confidant and friend of the miller's desolate son, in the French tale which so well matches with our Whittington legend; her inventive and rather swindling ingenuity transforms him at length into a veritable Marquis de Carrabas, and unites him in marriage with the daughter of the somewhat credulous and avaricious king. This tale can be traced to an Italian origin;† and indeed Puss in Boots may be said to belong to European literature. There is another very amusing French fable-apropos of instinctive nature-in which a prince falls in love with his cat, and desires a benignant fairy to transform her into a woman. The request is granted; but the palace happening to swarm with mice, the prince's slumbers are disturbed by his bride springing out of bed to go a-mousing, which so disgusts him, that he sees her without regret restored to her original shape. Very significant of a mésalliance. As the White Cat, Pussy charmed our childhood by a certain melancholy grace. There was something very touching in her hopeless love for the errant prince, reminding one of the exquisite lines in Shakspeare: The ambition in my love thus plagues itself: boasts of its cat-legend-not so pretty and domestic as she would not soil her delicate paws-a fact, for cats of her interest in a young Troll-the Trolls are the are scrupulously clean; And in her best petticoat burns a great hole * Elizabeth. + It is called in Italian Gagliuoso. dwarfish hill-men of Scandinavia, good-natured, sociable, and very ugly spirits-and vowed he would take his rival's life. The disturbance his jealous lunes occasioned amongst the little people, caused him to be nicknamed Knurremurre-Anglicé, Rumble-grumble. The object of his malignity thought it expedient to leave the hills till his enemy's wrath and jealousy had subsided; so, turning himself into a fine tortoise-shell tom-cat, he journeyed to the neighbouring town of Lyng, in Jutland, and established himself in the family of a poor, honest man named Plat. Here he passed his days easily enough, being treated kindly by the family, who never dreamed that they were entertaining, in Pussy's person, a Troll crossed in love; a fact which by no means affected his appetite, as he devoured every day plenty of milk and good grout-a species of food like frumenty, made of shelled oats or barley. Plat happened to return from work rather late one evening, and, as he entered the room, the cat was sitting in his usual place, scraping meal-grout out of a pot, and licking the pot carefully. 'Hearken, dame,' said Plat, as he came in at the door, till I tell you what happened to me on the road. Just as I was coming past Bröndhöi, there came out a Troll, and called to me, saying: The moment the cat heard these words, he tumbled the pot down on the floor, sprang out of the chair, and stood up on his hind-legs. Then, as he hurried to the door, he cried out, to the amazement of the worthy couple: Knurremurre is dead! I may go home as fast as I please.' They followed him to the door, and beheld him scampering up the Troll's hill with wonderful eagerness. We are not aware of the result-that is, whether he wedded the widow or not; but this legend of the Troll turned cat is still told in the lowly homes of Denmark. A very similar tale is told in Ireland, the only difference being that the personages in it are all cats in pure good faith, and address the countryman as he passes the village churchyard. But it is time to turn from these pleasant and playful pictures of Pussy to her darker and more poetical one. Doubtless, her pretty, graceful movements, her love of domesticity, and her shrewdness, originated the fables of faëry, and the characteristics ascribed to her in them. But the very subtilty which gave her a place next to Reynard the Fox in the literature of the middle ages, obtained for her an unenviable position as regarded the superstitious fears of the period. She is the attendant of the witch; the malicious familiar who is supposed to advise the mischiefs which those feared and detested unfortunates perpetrated. To be old, ugly, and to have a black cat, was a dangerous thing in those twilight days. The fiend, eschewing his former choice of a serpent, was supposed to inhabit the feline form; and the glittering eyes, so plainly to be seen in darkness, the electricity of the fur, the arched back, and the spitting of Pussy when offended, all tended to confirm the superstitious awe attached to her. The very name given her, Greymalkin, modernised Grimalkin, was that of a fiend, though now we connect no such notion with it. The dramatists of the day confirmed this cruel slander, and have immortalised the superstition. Middleton, who preceded Shakspeare, has the following scene: Voices of spirits in the air. Come away, come away! Hecate. I come, I come, I come, I come; With all the speed I may. Where's Stadlin? Voices. Here. Hecate. Where's Puckle? And Hoppo too, and Hellwain too: [A spirit like a cat descends. Voices. There's one come down to fetch his dues; A kiss, a coll, a sip of blood; And why thou stay'st so long, I muse, I muse, Hecate. Oh, art thou come? What news? what news? Cat. All goes still to our delight; Refuse, refuse. Hecate. Now, I am furnished for the flight. Firestone (Hecate's son). Hark! hark! (The cat sings a brave treble in her own language.) Hecate (going up). Now I go, now I fly, Greymalkin, my sweet spirit, and I. Oh, what a dainty pleasure 'tis To ride in the air When the moon shines fair, And sing, and dance, and toy, and kiss! We fly by night, 'mongst troops of spirits. No ring of bells to our ears sounds; No howl of wolves, no yelp of hounds; No, not the noise of waters' breach, Or cannon's throat our height can reach. Shakspeare's allusion to the same superstition. In Few of our readers can be unacquainted with the dark cavern where the witches wait Macbeth, the first sound that breaks the awful silence, is an Thrice the brinded cat hath mewed; augury evidently of some important event; probably like the pricking of the witches' thumbs on the approach of Macbeth. Ben Sometimes the poor animal is supposed to suffer for the completion of the witches' incantations. Jonson in his Masque of Queens, makes a witch sing thus: I, from the jawes of a gardiner's bitch, Did snatch these bones, and then leapt the ditch; Killed the blacke cat, and here is the brain. But the fairy and demoniacal power of Pussy is now only a remembrance or a myth. Gray's Ode to a Favourite Cat contains something of the same allegorical, playful character as the fairy tales anent her. Wordsworth restores her to nature in her prettiest, and yet most ordinary appearance. Our readers may compare these two poems, with which we finish our talk of cats. ODE TO A FAVOURITE CAT. "Twas on a lofty vase's side, Gazed on the lake below. |