Chapter 10

Bibliography.—Th. Juste,Histoire de la Belgique(2 vols., 1853);La Révolution belge de 1830(2 vols., 1872);Congrès national de Belgique(2 vols., 1880);Memoirs of Leopold I.(2 vols., 1868); De Gerlache,Histoire du royaume des Pays-Bas(3 vols., 1859); D.C. Boulger,The History of Belgium, part i. (1900); C. White,The Belgic Revolution of 1830(2 vols., 1835); Moke and Hubert,Histoire de Belgique(jusque 1885) (1892); L. Hymans,Histoire parlementaire de la Belgique(1830-1899);Cinquante ans de liberté(4 vols., 1881); J.J. ThonissenLa Belgique sous le règne de Leopold Ier(4 vols., 1855-1858); De Laveleye,Le Parti clérical en Belgique(1874); Vandervelde and Destree,Le Socialisme belge(1898); C. Woeste,Vingt ans de polémique(1890); Hamelius,Le Mouvement flamand(1894).

(G. E.)

Literature

Belgian literature, taken in the widest sense of the term, falls into three groups, consisting of works written respectively in Flemish, Walloon and French. The earlier Flemish authors are treated underDutch Literature; the revival of Flemish Literature (q.v.) since the separation of Belgium from the Netherlands in 1830, and Walloon Literature (q.v.), are each separately noticed. The earlier French writers born on what is now Belgian territory—e.g.Adenès le Rois, Jean Froissart, Jean Lemaire des Belges and others—are included in the general history of French Literature (q.v.). It remains to consider the literature written by Belgians in French during the 19th century, and its rapid development since the revolution of 1831.

Belgian writers were commonly charged with provincialism, but the prejudice against them has been destroyed by the brilliant writers of 1870-1880. It was also asserted that Belgian French literature lacked a national basis, and was merely a reflection of Parisian models. The most important section of it, however, has a distinctive quality of its own. Many of its most distinguished exponents are Flemings by birth, and their writings reflect the characteristic Flemish scenery; they have the sensuousness, the colour and the realism of Flemish art; and on the other hand the tendency to mysticism, to abstraction, is far removed from the lucidity and definiteness associated with French literature properly so-called. This profoundly national character disengaged itself gradually, and has been more strikingly evident since 1870. The earlier writers of the century were content to follow French tradition.

The events of 1830-1831 gave a great stimulus to Belgian letters, but the country possessed writers of considerable merit before that date. Adolphe Mathieu (1802-1876) belongs to the earlier half of the century, although the tenth and last volume of hisŒuvres en verswas only printed in 1870. His later works show the influence of the Romantic revival. Auguste Clavareau (1787-1864), a mediocre poet, an imitator of the French and Dutch, produced some successful comedies, but he ceased to write plays before 1830. Édouard Smits (1789-1852) showed romantic tendencies in his tragedies ofMarie de Bourgogne(1823),Elfrida(1825), andJeanne de Flandre(1828). The first of these had a great success, partly no doubt because of its patriotic subject. For four years before 1830 André van Hasselt (q.v.) had been publishing his verses in theSentinelle des Pays-Bas, and from 1829 onwards he was an ardent romanticist. A burst of literary and artistic activity followed the Revolution; and van Hasselt’s house became a centre of poets, artists and musicians of the romantic school. The best work of the Belgian romanticists is in the rich and picturesque prose of the 16th century romance of Charles de Coster (seeDe Coster), and in the melancholy and semi-philosophical writings of the moralist Octave Pirmez (q.v.). ThePoésies(1841) and theChansons(1866) of Antoine Clesse (1816-1889), have been compared with the work of Béranger; and the Catholic party found a champion against the liberals and revolutionists in the satirical poet, Benoît Quinet (b. 1819). Among the famous dramatic pieces of this epoch was theAndré Chénier(1843) of Édouard Wacken (1819-1861), who was a lyric rather than a dramatic poet; also the comedies of Louis Labarre (1810-1892) and of Henri Delmotte (1822-1884). Charles Potvin (1818-1902), a poet and a dramatist, is best known by a patrioticHistoire des lettres en Belgique, forming vol. iv. of the Belgian compilation,Cinquante ans de liberté(1882), and by his essays in literary history. Eugène van Bemmel (1824-1880) established an excellent historical tradition in hisHistoire de la Belgique(1880), reproducing textually the original authorities, and also edited a Belgian Encyclopaedia (1873-1875), thePatria Belgica. Baron E.C. de Gerlache (1785-1871) wrote the history of the Netherlands from the ultramontane standpoint. The romanticists were attacked in an amusing satire,Les Voyages et aventures de M. Alfred Nicolas(1835), by François Grandgagnage (1797-1877), who was a nationalist in the narrowest sense, and regarded the movement as an indefensible invasion of foreign ideas. The best of the novelists of this period, excluding Charles de Coster, was perhaps Estelle Ruelens (néeCrèvecœur; 1821-1878); she wrote under the pseudonym of “Caroline Gravière.” Her tales were collected by the bibliophile “P.L. Jacob” (Paris, 1873-1874).

The whole of this literature derived more or less from foreign sources, and, with the exception of Charles de Coster and Octave Pirmez, produced no striking figures. De Coster died in 1879, and Pirmez in 1883, and the new movement in Belgian literature dates from the banquet given in the latter year to Camille Lemonnier (q.v.) whose powerful personality did much to turn “Young Belgium” into a national channel. Lemonnier himself cannot be exclusively claimed by any of the conflicting schools of young writers. He was by turns naturalist, lyrist and symbolist; and it has been claimed that the germs of all the later developments in Belgian letters may be traced in his work. The quinquennial prize of literature had been refused to hisUn mâle, and the younger generation of artists and men of letters gave him a banquet which was recognized as a protest against the official literature, represented by Louis Hymans (1829-1884), Gustave Frédérix (b. 1834), the literary critic ofL’Indépendance belge, and others. The centres around which the young writers were grouped were two reviews,L’Art moderneandLa Jeune Belgique.L’Art modernewas founded in 1882 by Edmond Picard, who had as his chief supporters Victor Arnould and Octave Maus. The first editor ofLa Jeune Belgiquewas M. Warlomont (1860-1889), known under the pen-name of “Max Waller.” This review, which owed much of its success to Waller’s energy, defended the intense preoccupation of the new writers with questions of style, and became the depository of the Parnassian tradition in Belgium. It had among its early contributors Georges Eekhoud, Albert Giraud, Iwan Gilkin and Georges Rodenbach. Edmond Picard (b. 1836) was one of the foremost in the battle. He was well known as an advocate in Brussels, and made a considerable contribution to jurisprudence as the chief writer of thePandectes belges(1886-1890). HisPro arte(1886) was a kind of literary code for the young Belgian writers. His novels, of whichLa Forge Roussel(1881) is a good example, were succeeded in 1902-1903 by two plays,JérichoandFatigue de vivre.

Georges Eekhoud, born at Antwerp on the 27th of May 1854, was in some ways the most passionately Flemish of the wholegroup. He described the life of the peasants of his native Flanders with a bold realism, making himself the apologist of the vagabond and the outcast in a series of tragic stories:—Kees Doorik(1883),Kermesses(1883),Nouvelles Kermesses(1887),Le Cycle patibulaire(1892),Mes Communions(1895),Escal Vigor(1899) andLa Faneuse d’amour(1900), &c.Nouvelle Carthage(1888) deals with modern Antwerp. In 1892 he produced a striking book on English literature entitledAu siècle de Shakespeare, and has written French versions of Beaumont and Fletcher’sPhilaster(1895) and of Marlow’sEdward II.(1896).

The earlier work of “Young Belgium” in poetry was experimental in character, and was marked by extravagances of style and a general exuberance which provoked much hostile criticism. The young writers of 1870 to 1880 had not long to wait, however, for recognition both at home and in Paris, where many of them found hospitality in the pages of theMercure de Francefrom 1890 onwards. They divided their allegiance between the leaders of the French Parnassus and the Symbolists.

The most powerful of the Belgian poets, Émile Verhaeren (q.v.), is the most daring in his technical methods of expressing bizarre sensation, and has been called the “poet of paroxysm.” His reputation extends far beyond the limits of his own country.

Many of the Belgian poets adhere to the classical form. Albert Giraud (born at Louvain in 1860) was faithful to the Parnassian tradition in hisPierrot lunaire(1884),Pierrot narcisse(1891) andHors du siècle(1886). In the earlier works of Iwan Gilkin (born at Brussels in 1858) the influence of Charles Baudelaire is predominant. He wroteDamnation de l’artiste(1890),Ténèbres(1892),Stances dorées(1893),La Nuit(1897) andProméthée(1899). The poems of Valère Gille (born at Brussels in 1867), whoseCitharewas crowned by the French Academy in 1898, belong to the same group. Émile van Arenberghe (born at Louvain in 1854) is the author of some exquisite sonnets. Fernand Severin (b. 1867) in hisPoèmes ingénus(1900) aims at simplicity of form, and seems to have learnt the art of his musical verse direct from Racine. With Severin is closely associated Georges Marlow (b. 1872), author ofL’Âme en exil(1895).

Georges Rodenbach (1855-1898) spent most of his life in Paris and was an intimate of Edmond de Goncourt. He produced some Parisian and purely imitative work; but the best part of his production is the outcome of a passionate idealism of the quiet Flemish towns in which he had passed his childhood and early youth. In his best known work,Bruges la Morte(1892), he explains that his aim is to evoke the town as a living being, associated with the moods of the spirit, counselling, dissuading from and prompting action.

The most famous of all modern Belgian writers, Maurice Maeterlinck (q.v.), made his début in a Parisian journal, thePléiade, in 1886. He succeeded more nearly than any of his predecessors in expressing or suggesting ideas and emotions which might have been supposed to be capable of translation only in terms of music. “The unconscious self, or rather the sub-conscious self,” says Émile Verhaeren, “recognized in the verse and prose of Maeterlinck its language or rather its stammering attempt at language.” Maeterlinck was a native of Ghent, and the first poems of two of his fellow-townsmen also appeared in thePléiade. These were Grégoire le Roy (b. 1862), author ofLa Chanson d’un soir(1886), andMon Cœur pleure d’autrefois(1889); and Charles van Lerberghe (b. 1861), author of a play,Les Flaireurs(1890) and a collection ofPoèmes(1897).

Max Elskamp (born at Antwerp in 1862) is the author of some volumes of religious poetry—Dominical(1892),Salutations, dont d’angéliques(1893),En symbole vers l’apostolat(1895)—for which he has devised as background an imaginary city. Eugène Demolder (b.1862) also created a mythical city as a setting for his prosecontesin theLégende d’Yperdamme(1897).

Belgian literary activity extends also to historical research. Baron Kervyn de Lettenhove (1817-1891) wrote aHistoire de Flandre(7 vols., 1847-1855), and a number of monographs on separate points in Flemish and English history. Though an accurate historian, he allowed himself lo be prejudiced by his extreme Catholic views. He was a vehement defender of Mary Stuart. Louis Gachard (1800-1885) wrote many valuable works on 16th century history; Mgr. Namèche (1810-1893) completed the 29th volume of hisCours d’histoire nationalebefore his death; Charles Piot (b. 1812) edited the correspondence of Cardinal de Granvelle; Alphonse Wauters (1818-1898), archivist of Brussels, published many archaeological works; and Charles Rahlenbeck (1823-1903) wrote enthusiastically of the history of Protestantism in Belgium. One of the most masterly writers of French in Belgium was the economist Émile de Laveleye (q.v.). In aesthetics should be noted the historian of music, François Joseph Fétis (1784-1871); F.A. Gevaert (1828-1908), author ofHistoire et théorie de la musique d’antiquité(2 vols., 1875-1881); and Victor Mahillon (b. 1841) for his work in acoustics and his descriptive catalogue (1893-1900) of the museum of musical instruments belonging to the Brussels conservatoire. In psychology Joseph Delboeuf (1831-1896) enjoyed a great reputation outside Belgium; Elisée Reclus (b. 1830), though a Frenchman by birth, completed hisGéographie universelle(1875-1894) in exile at Brussels; and Ernest Nys has written many standard works on international law. In the history of literature an important work is compiled by Ferdinand van der Haeghen and others in theBibliotheca Belgica(1880, &c.), comprising a description of all the books printed in the Netherlands in the 15th and 16th centuries. The vicomte de Spoelberch de Lovenjoul (1836-1907) was well known in France as the author ofSainte-Beuve inconnu(1901),La Genèse d’un roman de Balzac(1901),Une Page perdue de H. de Balzac(1903), and of numerous bibliographical works.

See F.V. Goethals,Histoire des lettres, des sciences et des arts en Belgique(4 vols., 1840-1844); Fr. Masoin,Histoire de la littèrature française en Belgique de 1815 à 1830(1903); F. Nautet,Histoire des lettres belges d’expression française(3 vols., 1892 et seq.), written from the point of view of young Belgium, and by no means impartial; A. de Koninck,Bibliographie nationalebrought down to 1880;Biographie nationale de Belgique(1866, &c.) in progress; see also articles by Émile Verhaeren in theRevue des revues(15th June 1896), by Albert Mockel in theRevue encyclopédique(24th July 1897); a collection of criticisms chiefly on Belgian writers by Eugène Gilbert,France et Belgique; études litteraires(1905); Frédéric Faber,Histoire du théâtre français en Belgique(5 vols., 1878-1880). An excellent anthology of Belgian poets was published by K. Pol de Mont with the title ofModernités(1898).

(E. G.)

1See for earlier historyNetherlands,Flanders,Brabant,Liége, &c.

BELGRADE(Servian,BiogradorBeograd,i.e.“White Castle”), the capital of Servia. Pop. (1900) 69,097. Belgrade occupies a triangular ridge or foreland, washed on the north-west by the Save, and on the north-east by the Danube; these rivers flowing respectively from the south-west and north-west. The sides of the triangle slope down abruptly towards the west, more gradually towards the east; at the base stands the cone of Avala Hill, the last outpost of the Rudnik Mountains, which extend far away to the south; and, at the apex, a cliff of Tertiary chalk, 200 ft. high, overlooks the confluence of the two rivers, the large, flat island of Veliki Voyn and several smaller islets. This cliff is crowned by the walls and towers of the citadel, once white, but now maroon with age, and, though useful as a prison and barracks, no longer of any military value. Behind the citadel, and along itsglacison the southern side, are the gardens of Kalemegdan, commanding a famous view across the river; behind Kalemegdan comes Belgrade itself, a city of white houses, among which a few great public buildings, like the high school, national bank, national theatre and the so-called New Palace, stand forth prominently. The town was formerly divided into three parts, namely, the Old town, the Russian town (Sava-Makhalaor Save district), and the Turkish town (Dorčol, or Cross-road). A great change, however, took place in the course of the 19th century, and the old divisions are only partially applicable, while there has to be added the Tirazia, an important suburban extension along the line of the aqueduct orTirazi. A few old Turkish houses, built of plaster, with red-tiled roofs, are left among the ill-paved and insanitary districts bordering upon the rivers, but as the royal residence, the seat of government, and the centre of the import trade, Belgrade was, after 1869,rapidly transformed into a modern European town, with wide streets, electric tramways and electric lighting. Only the multitude of small gardens, planted with limes, acacias and lilacs, and the bright costumes of the Servian or Hungarian peasants, remain to distinguish it from a western capital. For a town of such importance, which is also the seat of the metropolitan of Servia, Belgrade has very few churches, and these are of a somewhat modest type. There were, in 1900, four Servian Orthodox churches, including the cathedral, one Roman Catholic chapel, one Evangelical chapel (German), two synagogues and one mosque. This last is kept up entirely at the expense of the Servian government.

The highest educational establishments are to be found in Belgrade: theVelika Shkola(a small university with three faculties), the military academy, the theological seminary, the high school for girls, a commercial academy, and several schools for secondary education on German models. A commercial tribunal, a court of appeal and the court of cassation are also in Belgrade. There is a fine monument to Prince Michael (1860-1868) who succeeded in removing the Turkish garrison from the Belgrade citadel and obtaining other Turkish fortresses in Servia by skilful diplomacy. There are also an interesting national museum, with Roman antiquities and numismatic collections, a national library with a wealth of old Servian MSS. among its 40,000 volumes, and a botanical garden, rich in specimens of the Balkan flora. To promote commerce there are a stock and produce exchange (Berza), a national bank, privileged to issue notes, and several other banking establishments. The insurance work is done by foreign companies.

The bulk of the foreign trade of Servia passes through Belgrade, but the industrial output of the city itself is not large, owing to the scarcity both of labour and capital. The principal industries are brewing, iron-founding and the manufacture of cloth, boots, leather, cigarettes, matches, pottery, preserved meat and confectionery. The railway from Budapest to Constantinople crosses the Save by a fine bridge on the south-west, above the landing-place for steamers. Farther south is the park ofTopchider, with an old Turkish kiosk built for Prince Milosh (1818-1839) in the beautifully laid-out grounds. In the adjoining forest of lime-trees, calledKoshutnyakor the “deer-park,” Prince Michael was assassinated in 1868. Just opposite the citadel, in a north-westerly direction, half-an-hour by steamer across the Danube, lies the Hungarian town of Semlin. For administrative purposes, Belgrade forms a separate department of the kingdom.

The first fortification of the rock, at the confluence of the Save and the Danube, was made by the Celts in the 3rd centuryB.C.They gave it the name ofSingidunum, by which Belgrade was known until the 7th centuryA.D.The Romans took it from the Celts, and replaced their fort by a regular Romancastrum, placing in it a strong garrison. Roman bricks, dug up in the fortress, bear the inscription,Legio IV. Flavia Felix. From the 4th to the beginning of the 6th centuryA.D.it often changed its masters (Huns, Sarmatians, Goths, Gepids); then the emperor Justinian brought it once more under Roman rule and fortified and embellished it. Towards the end of the 8th century it was taken by the Franks of Charlemagne. In the 9th century it was captured by the Bulgarians, and held by them until the beginning of the 11th century, when the Byzantine emperor Basil II. reconquered it for the Greek empire. The Hungarians, under king Stephen, took it from the Greeks in 1124. From that time it was constantly changing hands—Greeks, Bulgarians, Hungarians, replacing each other in turn. The city was considered to be the key of Hungary, and its possession was believed to secure possession of Servia, besides giving command of the traffic between the Upper and the Lower Danube. It has, in consequence, seen more battles under its walls than most fortresses in Europe. The Turks used to call itDarol-i-Jehad, “the home of wars for faith.” During the 14th century it was in the hands of the Servian kings. The Servian prince George Brankovich ceded it to the Hungarians in 1427. The Turkish forces unsuccessfully besieged the city in 1444 and 1456, on which last occasion a glorious victory was obtained by the Christian garrison, led by the famous John Hunyady and the enthusiastic monk John Capistran. In 1521 Sultan Suleiman took it from the Hungarians, and from that year it remained in Turkish possession until 1688, when the Austrians captured it, only to lose it again in 1690. In 1717 Prince Eugene of Savoy conquered it for Austria, which kept it until 1739, improving the fortifications and giving great impulse to the commercial development of the town. From 1739 to 1789 the Turks were again its masters, when, in that last year, the Austrians under General Laudon carried it by assault, only to lose it again in 1792. In 1807 the Servians, having risen for their independence, forced the Turkish garrison to capitulate, and became masters of Belgrade, which they kept until the end of September 1813, when they abandoned it to the Turks. Up to the year 1862 not only was the fortress of Belgrade garrisoned by Turkish troops, but the Danubian slope of the town was inhabited by Turks, living under a special Turkish administration, while the modern part of the town (the plateau of the ridge and the western slope) was inhabited by Servians living under their own authorities. This dual government was a constant cause of friction between the Servians and the Turks, and on the occasion of one conflict between the two parties the Turkish commander of the fortress bombarded the Servian part of the town (June 1862). The indirect consequence of this incident was that in 1866, on the categoric demand of Prince Michael of Servia, and under the diplomatic pressure of the great powers, the sultan withdrew the Turkish garrison from the citadel and delivered it to the Servians.

(C. Mi.)

BELHAVEN AND STENTON, JOHN HAMILTON,2nd Baron(1656-1708), was the eldest son of Robert Hamilton, Lord Presmennan (d. 1696), and was born on the 5th of July 1656. Having married Margaret, granddaughter of John Hamilton, 1st Baron Belhaven and Stenton, who had been made a peer by Charles I. in 1647, he succeeded to this title in 1679. In 1681 he was imprisoned for opposing the government and for speaking slightingly of James, duke of York, afterwards James II., in parliament, and in 1689 he was among those who asked William of Orange to undertake the government of Scotland. Belhaven was at the battle of Killiecrankie; he was a member of the Scottish privy council, and he was a director of the Scottish Trading Company, which was formed in 1695 and was responsible for the Darien expedition. He favoured the agitation for securing greater liberty for his country, an agitation which culminated in the passing of the Act of Security in 1705, and he greatly disliked the union of the parliaments, a speech which he delivered against this proposal in November 1706 attracting much notice and a certain amount of ridicule. Later he was imprisoned, ostensibly for favouring a projected French invasion, and he died in London on the 21st of June 1708. Belhaven is chiefly famous as an orator, and two of his speeches, one of them the famous one of November 1706, were printed by D. Defoe in an appendix to hisHistory of the Union(1786).

Belhaven’s son, John, who fought on the English side at Sheriffmuir, became the 3rd baron on his father’s death. He was drowned in November 1721, whilst proceeding to take up his duties as governor of Barbados, and was succeeded by his son John (d. 1764). After the death of John’s brother James in 1777 the title was for a time dormant; then in 1799 the House of Lords declared that William Hamilton (1765-1814), a descendant of John Hamilton, the paternal great-grandfather of the 2nd baron, was entitled to the dignity. William, who became the 7th baron, was succeeded by his son Robert (1793-1868), who was created a peer of the United Kingdom as Baron Hamilton of Wishaw in 1831. He died without issue in December 1868, when the barony of Hamilton became extinct; in 1875 the House of Lords declared that his cousin, James Hamilton (1822-1893) was rightfully Baron Belhaven and Stenton, and the title descended to his kinsman, Alexander Charles (b. 1840), the 10th baron.

BELISARIUS(c.505-565), one of the most famous generals of the later Roman empire, was born aboutA.D.505, in “Germania,”a district on the borders of Thrace and Macedonia. His name is supposed to be Slavonic. As a youth he served in the bodyguard of Justinian, who appointed him commander of the Eastern army. He won a signal victory over the Persians in 530, and successfully conducted a campaign against them, until forced, by the rashness of his soldiers, to join battle and suffer defeat in the following year. Recalled to Constantinople, he married Antonina, a clever, intriguing woman, and a favourite of the empress Theodora. During the sedition of the “green” and “blue” parties of the circus (known as the Nika sedition, 532) he did Justinian good service, effectually crushing the rebels who had proclaimed Hypatius emperor. In 533 the command of the expedition against the Vandal kingdom in Africa, a perilous office, which the rest of the imperial generals shunned, was conferred on Belisarius. With 15,000 mercenaries, whom he had to train into Roman discipline, he took Carthage, defeated Gelimer the Vandal king, and carried him captive, in 534, to grace the first triumph witnessed in Constantinople. In reward for these services Belisarius was invested with the consular dignity, and medals were struck in his honour. At this time the Ostrogothic kingdom, founded in Italy by Theodoric the Great, was shaken by internal dissensions, of which Justinian resolved to avail himself. Accordingly, Belisarius invaded Sicily; and, after storming Naples and defending Rome for a year against almost the entire strength of the Goths in Italy, he concluded the war by the capture of Ravenna, and with it of the Gothic king Vitiges. So conspicuous were Belisarius’s heroism and military skill that the Ostrogoths offered to acknowledge him emperor of the West. But his loyalty did not waver; he rejected the proposal and returned to Constantinople in 540. Next year he was sent to check the Persian king Chosroes (Anushirvan); but, thwarted by the turbulence of his troops, he achieved no decisive result. On his return to Constantinople he lived under a cloud for some time, but was pardoned through the influence Of Antonina with the empress. The Goths having meanwhile reconquered Italy, Belisarius was despatched with utterly inadequate forces to oppose them. Nevertheless, during five campaigns he held his enemies at bay, until he was removed from the command, and the conclusion of the war was entrusted to the eunuch Narses. Belisarius remained at Constantinople in tranquil retirement until 559, when an incursion of Bulgarian savages spread a panic through the metropolis, and men’s eyes were once more turned towards the neglected veteran, who placed himself at the head of a mixed multitude of peasants and soldiers, and repelled the barbarians with his wonted courage and adroitness. But this, like his former victories, stimulated Justinian’s envy. The saviour of his country was coldly received and left unrewarded by his suspicious sovereign. Shortly afterwards Belisarius was accused of complicity in a conspiracy against the emperor (562); his fortune was confiscated, and he was confined as a prisoner in his palace. He was liberated and restored to favour in 563, and died in 565.

The fiction of Belisarius wandering as a blind beggar through the streets of Constantinople, which has been adopted by Marmontel in hisBélisaire, and by various painters and poets, is first heard of in the 10th century. Gibbon justly calls Belisarius the Africanus of New Rome. He was merciful as a conqueror, stern as a disciplinarian, enterprising and wary as a general; while his courage, loyalty and forbearance seem to have been almost unsullied. He was the idol of his soldiers, a good tactician, but not a great strategist.

Authorities.—Procopius,De BellisandHistoria Arcana(best edition by J. Haury, 1905, 1907); see Gibbon,Decline and Fall(ed. Bury, vol. 4); T. Hodgkin,Italy and her Invaders(vol. 4); J.B. Bury,Later Roman Empire, vol. i.; Diehl,Justinien(Paris, 1901).

(J. B. B.)

BELIT(signifying the “lady,”par excellence), in the Babylonian religion, the designation of the consort of Bel (q.v.). Her real name was Nin-lil,i.e.the “lady of power,” if the explanation suggested inBelfor the second element is correct. She is also designated as Nin-Khar-sag, “Lady of the mountain,” which name stands in some relationship to Im-Khar-sag, “storm mountain”—the name of the staged tower or sacred edifice to Bel at Nippur. As the consort of En-lil, the goddess Nin-lil or Belit belongs to Nippur and her titles as “ruler of heaven and earth,” and “mother of the gods” are all due to her position as the wife of Bel. While recognized by a temple of her own in Nippur and honoured by rulers at various times by having votive offerings made in her honour and fortresses dedicated in her name, she, as all other goddesses in Babylonia and Assyria with the single exception of Ishtar, is overshadowed by her male consort. The title Belit was naturally transferred to the great mother-goddess Ishtar after the decline of the cult at Nippur, and we also find the consort of Marduk, known as Sarpanit, designated as Belit, for the sufficient reason that Marduk, after the rise of the city of Babylon as the seat of his cult, becomes the Bel or “lord” of later days.

(M. Ja.)

BELIZE,orBalize, the capital and principal seaport of British Honduras, on the Caribbean Sea, in 17° 29′ N. and 88° 11′ W. Pop. (1904) 9969. Belize occupies both banks of the river Belize, at its mouth. Its houses are generally built of wood, with high roofs and wide verandahs shaded by cocoanut or cabbage palms. The principal buildings are the court house, in the centre of the town, government house, at the southern end, Fort George, towards the north, the British bank of Honduras, the hospital, the Roman Catholic convent, and the Wesleyan church, which is the largest and handsomest of all. Mangrove swamps surround the town and epidemics of cholera, yellow fever and other tropical diseases have been frequent; but the unhealthiness of the climate is mitigated to some extent by the high tides which cover the marshes, and the invigorating breezes which blow in from the sea. Belize is connected by telegraph and telephone with the other chief towns of British Honduras, but there is no railway, and communication even by road is defective. The exports are mahogany, rosewood, cedar, logwood and other cabinet-woods and dye-woods, with cocoanuts, sugar, sarsaparilla, tortoiseshell, deerskins, turtles and fruit, especially bananas. Breadstuffs, cotton fabrics and hardware are imported.

Belize probably derives its name from the Frenchbalise, “a beacon,” as no doubt some signal or light was raised here for the guidance of the buccaneers who once infested this region. Local tradition connects the name with that of Wallis or Wallace, a Scottish buccaneer, who, in 1638, settled, with a party of logwood cutters, on St George’s Cay, a small island off the town. In the 18th century the names Wallis and Belize were used interchangeably for the town, the river and the whole country. The history of Belize is inextricably bound up with that of the rest of British Honduras (q.v.).

BELJAME, ALEXANDRE(1842-1906), French writer, was born at Villiers-le-Bel, Seine-et-Oise, on the 26th of November 1842. He spent part of his childhood in England and was a frequent visitor in London. His lectures on English literature at the Sorbonne, where a chair was created expressly for him, did much to promote the study of English in France. In 1905-1906 he was Clark lecturer on English literature at Trinity College, Cambridge. He died at Domont (Seine-et-Oise) on the 19th of September 1906. His best known book was a masterly study of the conditions of literary life in England in the 18th century illustrated by the lives of Dryden, Addison and Pope. This book,Le Public et les hommes de lettres en Angleterre au XVIIIesiècle(1881), was crowned by the French Academy on the appearance of the second edition in 1897. He was a good Shakespearian scholar, and his editions of Macbeth, Othello and Julius Caesar also received an academic prize in 1902.

BELKNAP, JEREMY(1744-1798), American author and clergyman, was born at Boston on the 4th of June 1744, and was educated at Harvard College, where he graduated in 1762. In 1767 he became minister of a Congregational church at Dover, New Hampshire, remaining there until 1787, when he removed to Federal Street church, Boston. He is recognized as the founder of the Massachusetts Historical Society, and in 1792 became an overseer of Harvard. He died at Boston on the 20th of June 1798. Belknap’s chief works are:History of New Hampshire(1784-1792);An Historical Account of thosepersons who have been distinguished in America, generally known asAmerican Biography(1792-1794);The Foresters(1792), &c.

BELKNAP, WILLIAM WORTH(1820-1890), American soldier and politician, was born at Newburgh, N.Y., on the 22nd of September 1829. Entering the Union army in 1861, he took part in the battles of Shiloh, Corinth and Vicksburg, as major of the 15th Iowa volunteers. In the Atlanta campaign under Sherman he gained considerable distinction, rising successively to the rank of brigadier-general in 1864 and major-general in 1865. During the four years that followed he was collector of internal revenue for Iowa, leaving that post in 1869 to become secretary of war. In 1876, in consequence of unproved accusations of corruption, he resigned. He died at Washington, D.C., on the 13th of October 1890.

BELL, ALEXANDER GRAHAM(1847- ), American inventor and physicist, son of Alexander Melville Bell, was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, on the 3rd of March 1847. He was educated at the university of Edinburgh and the university of London, and removed with his father to Canada in 1870. In 1872 he became professor of vocal physiology in Boston University. In 1876 he exhibited an apparatus embodying the results of his studies in the transmission of sound by electricity, and this invention, with improvements and modifications, constitutes the modern commercial telephone. He was the inventor also of the photophone, an instrument for transmitting sound by variations in a beam of light, and of phonographic apparatus. Later, he interested himself in the problem of mechanical flight. He published many scientific monographs, including a memoir on the formation of a deaf variety in the human race.

BELL, ALEXANDER MELVILLE(1819-1905), American educationalist, was born at Edinburgh, Scotland, on the 1st of March 1819. He studied under and became the principal assistant of his father, Alexander Bell, an authority on phonetics and defective speech. From 1843 to 1865 he lectured on elocution at the university of Edinburgh, and from 1865 to 1870 at the university of London. In 1868, and again in 1870 and 1871, he lectured in the Lowell Institute course in Boston. In 1870 he became a lecturer on philology at Queen’s College, Kingston, Ontario; and in 1881 he removed to Washington, D.C., where he devoted himself to the education of deaf mutes by the “visible speech” method of orthoepy, in which the alphabetical characters of his own invention were graphic diagrams of positions and motions of the organs of speech. He held high rank as an authority on physiological phonetics (q.v.) and was the author of numerous works on orthoepy, elocution and education, includingSteno-Phonography(1852);Letters and Sounds(1858);The Standard Elocutionist(1860);Principles of Speech and Dictionary of Sounds(1863);Visible Speech: The Science of Universal Alphabetics(1867);Sounds and their Relations(1881);Lectures on Phonetics(1885);A Popular Manual of Visible Speech and Vocal Physiology(1889);World English: the Universal Language(1888);The Science of Speech(1897);The Fundamentals of Elocution(1899).

See John Hitz,Alexander Melville Bell(Washington, 1906).

BELL, ANDREW(1753-1832), British divine and educationalist, was born at St Andrews on the 27th of March 1753. He graduated at the university there, and afterwards spent some years as a tutor in Virginia, U.S.A. On his return he took orders, and in 1787 sailed for India, where he held eight army chaplaincies at the same time. In 1789 he became superintendent of the male orphan asylum at Madras, and having been obliged from scarcity of teachers to introduce the system of mutual tuition by the pupils, found the scheme answer so well that he became convinced of its universal applicability. In 1797, after his return to London, he published a small pamphlet explaining his views on education. Little public attention was drawn towards the “monitorial” plan till Joseph Lancaster (q.v.), the Quaker, opened a school in Southwark, conducting it in accordance with Bell’s principles, and improving on his system. The success of the method, and the strong support given to Lancaster by the whole body of Nonconformists gave immense impetus to the movement. Similar schools were established in great numbers; and the members of the Church of England, becoming alarmed at the patronage of such schools resting entirely in the hands of dissenters, resolved to set up similar institutions in which their own principles should be inculcated. In 1807 Bell was called from his rectory of Swanage in Dorset to organize a system of schools in accordance with these views, and in 1811 became superintendent of the newly formed “National Society for Promoting the Education of the Poor in the Principles of the Established Church.” For his valuable services he was in some degree recompensed by his preferment to a prebend of Westminster, and to the mastership of Sherburn hospital, Durham. He tried, but without success, to plant his system in Scotland and on the continent. He died on the 27th of January 1832, at Cheltenham, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. His great fortune was bequeathed almost entirely for educational purposes. Of the £120,000 given in trust to the provost of St Andrews, two city ministers and the professor of Greek in the university, half was devoted to the founding of the important school, called the Madras College, at St Andrews; £10,000 was left to each of the large cities, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leith, Inverness and Aberdeen, for school purposes; and £10,000 was also given to the Royal Naval School.

Southey’sLife of Dr Bell(3 vols.) is very tedious; J.D. Meiklejohn’sAn Old Educational Reformeris concise and accurate.

BELL, SIR CHARLES(1774-1842), Scottish anatomist, was born at Edinburgh in November 1774, the youngest son of the Rev. William Bell, a clergyman of the Episcopal Church of Scotland; among his brothers were the anatomist, John Bell, and the jurist, G.J. Bell. After attending the high school and the university of Edinburgh, he embraced the profession of medicine, and devoted himself chiefly to the study of anatomy, under the direction of his brother John. His first work, entitledA System of Dissections, explaining the anatomy of the human body, the manner of displaying the parts, and their varieties in disease, was published in Edinburgh in 1798, while he was still a pupil, and for many years was considered to be a valuable guide to the student of practical anatomy. In 1802 he published a series of engravings of original drawings, showing the anatomy of the brain and nervous system. These drawings, which are remarkable for artistic skill and finish, were taken from dissections made by Bell for the lectures or demonstrations he gave on the nervous system as part of the course of anatomical instruction of his brother. In 1804 he wrote the third volume, containing the anatomy of the nervous system and of the organs of special sense, ofThe Anatomy of the Human Body, by John and Charles Bell. In November of the same year he migrated to London, and from that date, for nearly forty years, he kept up a regular correspondence with his brother George, much of which was published in theLetters of Sir Charles Bell, &c., 1870. The earlier letters of this correspondence show how rapidly he rose to distinction in a field where success was difficult, as it was already occupied by such men as John Abernethy, Sir Astley Cooper and Henry Cline. Before leaving Edinburgh, he had written his work on theAnatomy of Expression, which was published in London soon after his arrival and at once attracted attention. His practical knowledge of anatomy and his skill as an artist qualified him in an exceptional manner for such a work. The object of this treatise was to describe the arrangements by which the influence of the mind is propagated to the muscular frame, and to give a rational explanation of the muscular movements which usually accompany the various emotions and passions. One special feature was the importance attributed to the respiratory arrangements as a source of expression, and it was shown how the physician and surgeon might derive information regarding the nature and extent of important diseases by observing the expression of bodily suffering. This work, apart from its value to artists and psychologists, is of interest historically, as there is no doubt the investigations of the author into the nervous supply of the muscles of expression induced him to prosecute inquiries which led to his great discoveries in the physiology of the nervous system.

In 1811 Bell published hisNew Idea of the Anatomy of the Brain,in which he announced the discovery of the different functions of the nerves corresponding with their relations to different parts of the brain; his latest researches were described inThe Nervous System of the Human Body(1830), a collection of papers read by him before the Royal Society. He discovered that in the nervous trunks there are special sensory filaments, the office of which is to transmit impressions from the periphery of the body to the sensorium, and special motor filaments which convey motor impressions from the brain or other nerve centre to the muscles. He also showed that some nerves consist entirely of sensory filaments and are therefore sensory nerves, that others are composed of motor filaments and are therefore motor nerves, whilst a third variety contains both kinds of filaments and are therefore to be regarded as sensory-motor. Furthermore, he indicated that the brain and spinal cord may be divided into separate parts, each part having a special function—one part ministering to motion, the other to sensation, and that the origin of the nerves from one or other or both of those sources endows them with the peculiar property of the division whence they spring. He also demonstrated that no motor nerve ever passes through a ganglion. Lastly, he showed, both from theoretical considerations and from the result of actual experiment on the living animal, that the anterior roots of the spinal nerves aremotor, while the posterior aresensory. These discoveries as a whole must be regarded as the greatest in physiology since that of the circulation of the blood by William Harvey. They were not only a distinct and definite advance in scientific knowledge, but from them flowed many practical results of much importance in the diagnosis and treatment of disease. It is not surprising that Bell should have viewed his results with exultation. On the 26th of November 1807, he wrote to his brother George:—“I have done a more interestingnova anatomia cerebri humanithan it is possible to conceive. I lectured it yesterday. I prosecuted it last night till one o’clock; and I am sure it will be well received.” On the 31st of the same month he wrote:—“I really think this new anatomy of the brain will strike more than the discovery of the lymphatics being absorbents.”

In 1807 he produced aSystem of Comparative Surgery, in which surgery is regarded almost wholly from an anatomical and operative point of view, and there is little or no mention of the use of medicinal substances. It placed him, however, in the highest rank of English writers on surgery. In 1809 he relinquished his professional work in London, and rendered meritorious services to the wounded from Coruña, who were brought to the Haslar hospital at Portsmouth. In 1810 he published a series ofLetters concerning the Diseases of the Urethra, in which he treated of stricture from an anatomical and pathological point of view. In 1812 he was appointed surgeon to the Middlesex hospital, a post he retained for twenty-four years. He was also professor of anatomy, physiology and surgery to the College of Surgeons of London, and for many years teacher of anatomy in the school which used to exist in Great Windmill Street. In 1815 he went to Brussels to treat the wounded of the battle of Waterloo. In 1816, 1817 and 1818, he published a series ofQuarterly Reports of Cases in Surgery; in 1821 a volume of coloured plates with descriptive letterpress, entitledIllustrations of the great operations of Surgery, Trepan, Hernia, Amputation and Lithotomy, and in 1824Observations on Injuries of the Spine and of the Thigh Bone. On the formation of University College, Gower Street, he was for a short time head of the medical department. In 1832 he wrote a paper for the Royal Society of London on the “Organs of the Human Voice,” in which he gave many illustrations of the physiological action of these parts, and in 1833 a Bridgewater treatise,The Hand: its Mechanism and Vital Endowments as evincing Design. Along with Lord Brougham he annotated and illustrated an edition of Paley’sNatural Theology, published in 1836. The Royal Society of London awarded to him in 1829 the first annual medal of that year given by George IV. for discoveries in science; and when William IV. ascended the throne, Charles Bell received the honour of knighthood along with a few other men distinguished in science and literature.

In 1836 the chair of surgery in the university of Edinburgh was offered to him. He was then one of the foremost scientific men in London, and he had a large surgical practice. But his opinion was “London is a place to live in, but not to die in”; and he accepted the appointment. In Edinburgh he did not earn great local professional success; and, it must be confessed, he was not appreciated as he deserved. But honours came thick upon him. On the continent of Europe he was spoken of as greater than Harvey. It is narrated that one day P.J. Roux, a celebrated French physiologist, dismissed his class without a lecture, saying “C’est assez, messieurs, vous avez vu Charles Bell.” During his professorship he published theInstitutes of Surgery, arranged in the order of the lectures delivered in the university of Edinburgh(1838); and in 1841 he wrote a volume ofPractical Essays, two of which, “On Squinting,” and “On the action of purgatives,” are of great value. He died at Hallow Park near Worcester on the 28th of April 1842.

BELL, GEORGE JOSEPH(1770-1843), Scottish jurist, was born at Edinburgh on the 20th of March 1770. He was an elder brother of Sir Charles Bell. At the age of eight he entered the high school, but he received no university education further than attending the lectures of A.F. Tytler, Dugald Stewart and Hume. He became a member of the Faculty of Advocates in 1791, and was one of the earliest and most attached friends of Francis Jeffrey. In 1804 he published aTreatise on the Law of Bankruptcyin Scotland, which he subsequently enlarged and published in 1826 under the title ofCommentaries on the Law of Scotland and on the principles of Mercantile Jurisprudence—an institutional work of the very highest excellence, which has had its value acknowledged by such eminent jurists as Joseph Story and James Kent. In 1821 Bell was elected professor of the law of Scotland in the university of Edinburgh; and in 1831 he was appointed to one of the principal clerkships in the supreme court. He was placed at the head of a commission in 1833 to inquire into the Scottish bankruptcy law; and in consequence of the reports of the commissioners, chiefly drawn up by himself, many beneficial alterations were made. He died on the 23rd of September 1843. Bell’s smaller treatise,Principles of the Law of Scotland, became a standard text-book for law students. TheIllustrations of the Principlesis also a work of high value.

BELL, HENRY(1767-1830), Scottish engineer, was born at Torphichen, Linlithgowshire, in 1767. Having received the ordinary education of a parish school, he was apprenticed to his uncle, a millwright, and, after qualifying himself as a ship-modeller at Bo’ness, went to London, where he found employment under John Rennie, the celebrated engineer. Returning to Scotland in 1790, he first settled as a carpenter at Glasgow and afterwards removed to Helensburgh, on the Firth of Clyde where he pursued his mechanical projects, and also found occasional employment as an engineer. In January 1812 he placed on the Clyde a steamboat (which he named the “Comet”) of about 25 tons, propelled by an engine of three horse power, at a speed of 7 m. an hour. Although the honour of priority is admitted to belong to the American engineer Robert Fulton, there appears to be no doubt that Fulton had received very material assistance in the construction of his vessel from Bell and others in Great Britain. A handsome sum was raised for Bell by subscription among the citizens of Glasgow; and he also received from the trustees of the river Clyde a pension of £100 a year. He died at Helensburgh on the 14th of November 1830. A monument to his memory stands on the banks of the Clyde, at Dunglass, near Bowling.

BELL, HENRY GLASSFORD(1803-1874), a Scottish lawyer and man of letters, was born at Glasgow on the 8th of November 1803. He received his education at the Glasgow high school and at Edinburgh University. He became intimate with “Delta” Moir, James Hogg, John Wilson (Christopher North), and others of the brilliant staff ofBlackwood’s Magazine, to which he was drawn by his political sympathies. In 1828 he became editor of theEdinburgh Literary Journal, which was eventually incorporated in theEdinburgh Weekly Chronicle. He was admittedto the bar in 1832. In 1839 he was appointed sheriff-substitute of Lanarkshire, and in 1867 he succeeded Sir Archibald Alison in the post of sheriff-principal of the county, an office which he filled with distinguished success. In 1831 he publishedSummer and Winter Hours, a volume of poems, of which the best known is that on Mary, queen of Scots. He further defended the cause of the unfortunate queen in a proseLife(2 vols., 1828-1831). Among his other works may be mentioned a preface which he wrote to Bell and Bains’s edition (1865) of the works of Shakespeare, andRomances and Minor Poems(1866). He figures in the society of theNoctes Ambrosianaeas “Tallboys.” He died on the 7th of January 1874.

BELL, JACOB(1810-1859), British pharmaceutical chemist, was born in London on the 5th of March 1810. On the completion of his education, he joined his father in business as a chemist in Oxford Street, and at the same time attended the chemistry lectures at the Royal Institution, and those on medicine at King’s College. Always keenly alive to the interests of chemists in general, Bell conceived the idea of a society which should at once protect the interests of the trade, and improve its status, and at a public meeting held on the 15th of April 1841, it was resolved to found the Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain. Bell carried his scheme through in the face of many difficulties, and further advanced the cause of pharmacy by establishing thePharmaceutical Journal, and superintending its publication for eighteen years. The Pharmaceutical Society was incorporated by royal charter in 1843. One of the first abuses to engage the attention of the new body was the practice of pharmacy by unqualified persons, and in 1845 Bell drew up the draft of a bill to deal with the matter, one of the provisions of which was the recognition of the Pharmaceutical Society as the governing body in all questions connected with pharmacy. For some time after this the question of pharmaceutical legislation was widely discussed. In 1850 Bell successfully contested the borough of St Albans in order that he might be able to advocate his proposals for reform more effectually in parliament. In 1851 he brought forward a bill embodying these proposals. It passed its second reading, but was considerably whittled down in committee, and when eventually it became law it only partially represented its sponsor’s intentions. Bell was the author of anHistorical Sketch of the Progress of Pharmacy in Great Britain. He died on the 12th of June 1859.

BELL, JOHN(1691-1780), Scottish traveller, was born at Antermony in Scotland in 1691, and educated for the medical profession, in which he took the degree of M.D. In 1714 he set out for St Petersburg, where, through the introduction of a countryman, he was nominated medical attendant to Valensky, recently appointed to the Persian embassy, with whom he travelled from 1715 to 1718. The next four years he spent in an embassy to China, passing through Siberia and the great Tatar deserts. He had scarcely rested from this last journey when he was summoned to attend Peter the Great in his perilous expedition to Derbend and the Caspian Gates. The narrative of this journey he enriched with interesting particulars of the public and private life of that remarkable prince. In 1738 he was sent by the Russian government on a mission to Constantinople, to which, accompanied by a single attendant who spoke Turkish, he proceeded in the midst of winter and all the horrors of war, returning in May to St Petersburg. It appears that after this he was for several years established as a merchant at Constantinople, where he married in 1746. In the following year he retired to his estate of Antermony, where he spent the remainder of his life. He died in 1780. His travels, published at Glasgow in 1763, were speedily translated into French, and widely circulated in Europe.

BELL, JOHN(1763-1820), Scottish anatomist and surgeon, an elder brother of Sir Charles Bell, was born at Edinburgh on the 12th of May 1763. After completing his professional education at Edinburgh, he carried on from 1790 in Surgeons’ Square an anatomical lecture-theatre, where, in spite of much opposition, due partly to the unconservative character of his teaching, he attracted large audiences by his lectures, in which he was for a time assisted by his younger brother Charles. In 1793-1795 he publishedDiscourses on the Nature and Cure of Wounds, and in 1800 he became involved in an unfortunate controversy with James Gregory (1753-1821), the professor of medicine at Edinburgh. Gregory in 1800 attacked the system whereby the fellows of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh acted in rotation as surgeons at the Royal Infirmary, with the result that the younger fellows were excluded. Bell, who was among the number, composed anAnswer for the Junior Members(1800), and ten years later published a collection ofLetters on Professional Character and Manners, which he had addressed to Gregory. After his exclusion from the infirmary he ceased to lecture and devoted himself to study and practice. In 1816 he was injured by a fall from his horse and in the following year went to Italy for the benefit of his health. He died at Rome on the 15th of April 1820. His works also includedPrinciples of Surgery(1801),Anatomy of the Human Body, which went through several editions and was translated into German, andObservations on Italy, published by his widow in 1825.

BELL, JOHN(1797-1869), American political leader, was born near Nashville, Tennessee, on the 15th of February 1797. He graduated at the university of Nashville in 1814, and in 1817 was elected to the state senate, but retiring after one term, he devoted himself for ten years to the study and the practice of the law. From 1827 until 1841 he was a member of the national House of Representatives, of which from June 1834 to March 1835 he was the speaker, and in which he was conspicuous as a debater and a conservative leader. Though he entered political life as a Democrat, he became estranged from his party’s leader, President Jackson, also a Tennessean, and after 1835 was one of the leaders of the Whig party in the South. In March 1841 he became the secretary of war in President Harrison’s cabinet, but in September, after the death of Harrison and the rupture between the Whig leaders and President Tyler, he resigned this position. From 1847 until 1859 he was a member of the United States Senate, and attracted attention by his ability in debate and his political independence, being one of two Southern senators to vote against the Kansas-Nebraska Bill of 1854 and against the admission of Kansas with the Lecompton or pro-slavery constitution in 1858. Strongly conservative by temperament and devoted to the Union, he ardently desired to prevent the threatened secession of the Southern states in 1860, and was the candidate, for the presidency, of the Constitutional Union Party, often called from the names of its candidates for the presidency and the vice-presidency (Edward Everett) the “Bell and Everett Party,” which was made up largely of former Whigs and Southern “Know-Nothings,” opposed sectionalism, and strove to prevent the disruption of the union. The party adopted no platform, and discarding all other issues, resolved that “it is both the part of patriotism and of duty to recognize no political principle other than the constitution of the country, the union of the states, and the enforcement of the laws.” Bell was defeated, but received a popular vote of 587,830 (mostly cast in the Southern states), and obtained the electoral votes of Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee—39 altogether, out of a total of 303. Bell tried earnestly to prevent the secession of his own state, but after the issue of President Lincoln’s proclamation of the 15th of April 1861 calling on the various states for volunteers, his efforts were unavailing, and when Tennessee joined the Confederacy Bell “went with his state.” He took no part in the Civil War, and died on the 10th of September 1869.

BELL, ROBERT(1800-1867), Irish man of letters, was born at Cork on the 16th of January 1800. He was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, where he was one of the founders of the Dublin Historical Society. In 1828 he settled in London, where he edited a weekly paper, theAtlas, and until 1841 was engaged in journalism; and afterwards in miscellaneous literary work. He died on the 12th of April 1867. His most important work is his annotated edition of theEnglish Poets(24 vols., 1854-1857; new ed., 29 vols., 1866), the works of each poet being prefaced by a memoir. For Lardner’sCabinet Cyclopaediahe wrote:History of Russia(3 vols., 1836-1838);Lives of English Poets(2 vols.,1839); a continuation, with W. Wallace, of Sir James Mackintosh’sHistory of England(vols. iv.-x., 1830-1840); and the fifth volume (1840) of theLives of the British Admirals, begun by R. Southey. He was a director of the Royal Literary Fund, and well known for his open-hearted generosity to fellow men of letters.

BELLa hollow metallic vessel used for making a more or less loud noise (A.S.bellan, to bellow; Mid. Eng. “to bell”; cf. “As loud as belleth, winde in helle,” in Chaucer,House of Fame, iii. 713). Bells are usually cup-like in shape, and are constructed so as to give one fundamental note when struck. The term does not strictly include gongs, cymbals, metal plates, resonant bars of metal or wood, or tinkling ornaments, such ase.g.the “bells” upon the Jewish high priest’s dress (Exodus xxviii. 32); nor is it necessary here to deal with the common useful varieties of sheep or cow bells, or bells on sledges or harness. For house bells see the end of this article. A “diving-bell” (seeDivers) is only so called from the analogy of its shape.

The main interest of bells and bell-ringing has reference to church or tower bells, their history, construction and uses.

Early Bells.—Of bells before the Christian era there is no trustworthy evidence. The instruments which summoned the Romans to public baths or processions, or that which Lucian (A.D.180) describes as set in motion by a water-clock (clepsydra) to measure time, were probably cymbals or resonant plates of metal, like the timbrels (corybantia aera, Virg.Aen.iii. 111) used in the worship of Cybele, or the Egyptiansistrum, which seems to have been a sort of rattle. The earliest Latin word for a bell (campana) is late Latin of the 4th or 5th centuryA.D.; and the first application of bells to churches has been ascribed to Paulinus, bishop of Nola in Campania aboutA.D.400. There is, however, no confirmation of this story, which may have arisen from the wordscampanaandnola(a small bell); and in a letter from Paulinus to the emperor Severus, describing very fully the decoration of his church, the bishop makes no mention of bells. It has been maintained with somewhat more reason that Pope Sabinianus (604) first used church bells; but it seems clear that they were introduced into France as early as 550. In the 7th century Bede mentions a bell brought from Italy by Benedict Biscop for his abbey at Wearmouth, and speaks of the sound of a bell being well known at Whitby Abbey at the time of St Hilda’s death (680). St Dunstan hung many in the 10th century; and in the 11th they were not uncommon in Switzerland and Germany. It is said that the Greek Christians were unacquainted with bells till the 9th century; but it is known that for political reasons, after the taking of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453, their use was forbidden lest they should provide a popular signal for revolt.

Several old bells are extant in Scotland, Ireland and Wales; the oldest are often quadrangular, made of thin iron plates hammered and riveted together. A well-known specimen is St Patrick’s bell preserved at Belfast, calledClog an eadhachta Phatraic, “the bell of St Patrick’s will.” It is 6 in. high, 5 broad, 4 deep, adorned with gems and gold and silver filigree-work; it is inscribed 1091 and 1105, but it is probably alluded to in Ulster annals in 552. (For Scottish bells, seeIllustrated Catalogue of Archaeological Museum, Edinburgh, for 1856.)

The four-sided bell of the Irish missionary St Gall (646) is preserved at the monastery of St Gall, Switzerland. In these early times bells were usually small; even in the 11th century a bell presented to the church at Orleans weighing 2600 ℔ was thought large. In the 13th century larger bells were cast. The bell Jacqueline of Paris, cast in 1400, weighed 15,000 ℔; another Paris bell of 1472, 25,000 ℔; and the famous Amboise bell at Rouen (1501) 36,364 ℔

To these scanty records of the early history of bells may be added the enumeration of different kinds of bells by Hieronymus Magius, in his workDe Tintinnabulis:—1.Tintinnabulum, a little bell, otherwise calledtinniolum, for refectory or dormitory, according to Joannes Belethus, but Guillaume Durand namessquillafor the refectory; 2.Petasius, or larger “broad-brimmed hat” bell; 3.Codon, orifice of trumpet, a Greek hand-bell; 4.Nola, a very small bell, used in the choir, according to Durand; 5.Campana, a large bell, first used in the Latin churches in the steeple (Durand), in the tower (Belethus); 6.Squilla, a shrill little bell. We read ofcymbalumfor the cloister (Durand) orcampanellafor the cloister (Belethus);nolulaorduplain the clock;signumin the tower (e.g.in theExcerptionsof St Egbert, 750); the Portuguese still call a bellsino.

Bell-founding.—The earliest bells were probably not cast, but made of plates riveted together, like the bells of St Gall or Belfast above mentioned. The bell-founder’s art, originally practised in the monasteries, passed gradually into the hands of a professional class, by whom, in England and the Low Countries especially, were gradually worked out the principles of construction, mixture of metals, lines and proportions, now generally accepted as necessary for a good bell. In England some of the early founders were peripatetic artificers, who travelled about the country, setting up a temporary foundry to cast bells wherever they were wanted. Miles Graye (c.1650), a celebrated East Anglian founder, carried on his work in this fashion, and in old churchwardens’ accounts are sometimes found notices of payment for the casting of bells at places where no regular foundry is known to have existed. The chief centres of the art in medieval times were London, York, Gloucester and Nottingham; and bells bye.g.“John of York” (14th century), Samuel Smith, father and son, of York (1680-1730), Abraham Rudhall and his descendants of Gloucester (1684-1774), Mot (16th century), Lester and Pack (1750), Christopher Hodson of London (who cast “Great Tom” of Oxford, 1681) and Richard Phelps (1716) are still in high repute. The Whitechapel Bell Foundry (now Mears and Stainbank), established by Robert Mot in 1570, incorporated the business of the Rudhalls, Lester and Pack, Phelps, Briant and others, and is now one of the leading firms of bell-founders; others being Warner and Sons of Spitalfields and Taylor & Co., Loughborough, the founders of “Great Paul” for St Paul’s cathedral (1881). Of Dutch and Flemish founders the firms of van den Gheyn (1550), Hemony (1650), Aerschodt & Wagheven at Louvain and others have a great reputation in the Low Countries, especially for “carillons,” such as those at Antwerp or Bruges, a form of bell-music which has not taken much root in England, despite the advocacy of the Rev. H.R. Haweis, who proclaimed its superiority to English change-ringing.

Bell-metal is a mixture of copper and tin in the proportion of 4 to 1. In Henry III.’s reign it was 2 to 1. In Layard’s Nineveh bronze bells, it was 10 to 1. Zinc and lead are used in small bells. The thickness of the bell’s edge is about one-tenth of its diameter, and its height is twelve times its thickness.

Bells, like viols, have been made of every conceivable shape within certain limits. The long narrow bell, the quadrangular, and the mitre-shaped in Europe at least indicate antiquity, and the graceful curved-inwardly-midway and full trumpet-mouthed bell indicates an age not earlier than the 16th century.

The bell is first designed on paper according to the scale of measurement. Then the crook is made, which is a kind of double wooden compass, the legs of which are respectively curved to the shape of the inner and outer sides of the bell, a space of the exact form and thickness of the bell being left betwixt them. The compass is pivoted on a stake driven into the bottom of the casting-pit. A stuffing of brickwork is built round the stake, leaving room for a fire to be lighted inside it. The outside of this stuffing is then padded with fine soft clay, well mixed and bound together with calves’ hair, and the inner leg of the compass run round it, bringing it to the exact shape of the inside of the bell. Upon thiscore, well smeared with grease, is fashioned the false clay bell, the outside of which is defined by the outer leg of the compass. Inscriptions are now moulded in wax on the outside of the clay-bell; these are carefully smeared with grease, then lightly covered with the finest clay, and then with coarser clay, until a solid mantle is thickened over the outside of the clay bell. A fire is now lighted, and the whole baked hard; the grease and wax inscriptions steam out through holes at the top, leaving the sham clay bell baked hard and tolerably loose, between thecoreand thecopeormantle. The cope is then lifted, the clay bell broken up, thecopelet down again, enclosing now between itself and thecorethe exact shape of the bell. The metal is then boiled and run molten into the mould. A large bell will take several weeks to cool. When extricated it ought to be scarcely touched and should hardly require tuning. This is called its maiden state, and it used to be so sought after that many bells were left rough and out of tune in order to claim it.

Bell Tones and Tuning.—A good bell, fairly struck, should give out three distinct notes—a “fundamental” note or “tonic”; the octave above, or “nominal”; and the octave below, or “hum-note.” (It also gives out the “third” and “fifth” above the fundamental; but of these it is less necessary to take notice.) Very few bells, however, have any two of these notes, and hardly any all three, in unison—the “hum-notes” being generally a little sharper, and the “fundamentals” a little flatter, than their respective “nominals.” In tuning a “ring” or series of bells, the practice of founders has hitherto been to take one set of notes (in England usually the nominals, on the continent the fundamentals) and put these into tune, leaving the other tones to take care of themselves. But in different circumstances different tones assert themselves. Thus, when bells are struck at considerable intervals, the fundamental notes being fuller and more persistent are more prominent; but when struck in rapid succession (as in English change-ringing or with the higher bells of a Belgian “carillon,” which take the “air”) the higher tone of the “nominal” is more perceptible. The inharmonious character of many Belgian carillons, and of certain Belgian and French rings in England, is ascribed by Canon A.B. Simpson (in his pamphlet,Why Bells sound out of Tune, 1897) to neglect of the “nominals,” the fundamentals only being tuned to each other. To tune a series of bells properly, the fundamental tone of each bell must be brought into true octave with its nominal, and the whole series of bells, thus rectified, put into tune with each other. The “hum-note” of each, which is the tone of the whole mass of metal, should also be in tune with the others. If flatter than the nominal, it cannot be sharpened; but if sharper (as is more usual), it may be flattened by thinning the metal near the crown of the bell. The great bell (“Great Paul”) cast by Messrs Taylor for St Paul’s cathedral, London, has all its tones in true harmony, except that the tone next above the fundamental (E♭) is a “fourth” (A♭) instead of a “third” (G or G♭). The great bell cast by the same founders for Beverley Minster is in perfect tune; and with the improved machinery now in use, there is no reason why this should not henceforth be the case with all church bells.

The quality of a bell depends not only on the casting and the fineness and mixture of metals, but upon the due proportion of metal to the calibre of the bell. The larger the bell the lower the tone; but if we try to make a large E bell with metal only enough for a smaller F bell, the E bell will be puny and poor. It has been calculated that for a peal of bells to give the pure chord of the ground tone or key-note, third, fifth and octave, the diameters are required to be as thirty, twenty-four, twenty, fifteen, and the weights as eighty, forty-one, twenty-four and ten.

History and Uses of Bells.—The history of bells is full of romantic interest. In civilized times they have been intimately associated, not only with all kinds of religious and social uses, but with almost every important historical event. Their influence upon architecture is not less remarkable, for to them indirectly we probably owe most of the famous towers in the world. Church towers at first, perhaps, scarcely rose above the roof, being intended as lanterns for the admission of light, and addition to their height was in all likelihood suggested by the more common use of bells.

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