GREAT BELLS

RICHARD QUICK

HE celebrated bells of the world are headed by the

TH

great Bell of Moscow. This is known to Russians by the name of Tsarine Kolokol, or Queen of Bells, and it is undoubtedly the largest and heaviest bell in the world. It has been twice recast, the last time in 1733, by order of the Empress Anna Ivanovna, to replace the bell of the Tsar Alexis Michaelovitch, which was broken at the time of the fire at the Kremlin in 1701. This final bell is twenty feet seven inches high and is twenty-two feet eight inches in diameter at the mouth, and its greatest thickness is twenty-two inches. It weighs about 193 tons.

I may here mention a fact that throws light on the opening in the bell which is so noticeable in all the pictures of it.

In 1737 (four years after the bell was cast) a great and terrible fire broke out, and destroyed a part of the city, including the workshops and other timber round and above the bell, which appears to have never been removed from its mould, and which, it is said, became so hot that the inhabitants, thinking to save their precious casting, threw water on it, and so caused the fracture which is seen to-day by the piece which came out. The water thus, in reality,

did more harm than good. After it was broken, it still lay in the pit for just upon a century. The Emperor Nicholas I. ordered that the bell should be raised, and so, with great engineering skill and patience, this was accomplished on July 23, 1836. Thus when this colossus first saw the full light of day it was 103 years old.

The operation, says Mr. Montferrand (the engineer), took forty-three minutes. Three days after it was placed on its present octagonal pedestal of granite.

If the bell is looked at as a work of art, the observer will be struck by the beauty of its form and the elegance of the various designs on its surface.

The bas-reliefs represent the Tsar Alexis Michaelovitch and the Empress Ivanovna; between these portraits, upon two cartouches, are inscriptions. The upper part of the bell is ornamented by figures of our Lord, the Virgin and the four Evangelists, and by a band of an especially beautiful pattern. The whole is now surmounted by a ball and Greek cross, also of bronze. The total height of the whole is thirty-four feet. It has, of course, been of no practical use, and has probably never given forth a musical

note.

The Mingun Bell or Great Bell of Mandalay is, I believe, the largest hanging bell in the world. It is located on the right bank of the Irrawaddy, almost opposite the city of Mandalay. This immense bell measures as follows height to crown, twelve feet; twenty-one feet high to the top of the griffin-like monsters; diameter at the lip,

sixteen feet, three inches; thickness of metal from six to twelve inches. It weighs about eighty tons. It is suspended on three massive round beams of teak placed horizontally the one over the other, their ends resting on two pillars of enormous size, composed of masonry and large upright teak posts. The bell was cast at the end of the last century, under the superintendence of the reigning king. It is, indeed, a prodigious casting, and a high proof of the skill and ingenuity of the Burmese, who attach great importance to their bells, which are used in connection with the rites and ceremonies of Buddhism.

The next largest bell is again to be found in Moscow, a city celebrated for gigantic bells. It is hung in the tower of St. Ivan's Church. It was cast in 1760 and weighs about sixty-three tons. It is called the Bolshoi (the "big").

China is also renowned for its bells. The great bell of Pekin is suspended in the tower or two-storied pagoda. Dr. Rennie, who visited it in 1862, says that it is one of eight great bells cast in the reign of Yang-lo, about 1400 A. D., and is a wonderful work of art. It is about twenty feet high and eleven feet in diameter, and is estimated to weigh a little over sixty-two tons.

Chinese bells are all more or less of one type.

Japan comes next in the scale as to large bells. Two are especially colossal. One of these is located in the city of Kioto, and until lately was resting on a stone base like the Moscow bell. It was cast in 1614 at Nagoya. The tower