BELKNAP, WILLIAM \Yount (1829-90). An American soldier. He was born at Newburgh, N. Y., graduated at Princeton in 1848, and set tled as a lawyer in Keokuk, Iowa. He entered the Union Army as major of volunteers, 1861; distinguished himself in Sherman's Atlanta campaign, and was brevetted major-general in 1805. He was Secretary of War under President Grant from 1869 to 1S76. and in the latter year was impeached on charges of corruption; but resigned before the proceedings could be formally begun, so that this charge was dropped on the ground of lack of jurisdiction.
BELL (perhaps connected in origin with bell, bellow, to roar). A hollow, cup-shaped, metallic percussion instrument, suspended by a neck and sounded by a swinging clapper, or a hollow me tallic sphere sounded by a loose ball in its in terior. From a remote antiquity, cymbals and hand-bells were used in religious ceremonies. In Egypt it is certain that the feast of Osiris was announced by ringing hells: the Jewish high priests wore golden hells attached to their vest ments, and in Athens the priests of Cybele used bells in their rites. The Greeks employed them (koda) in camps and garrison; and the Romans announced the hour of bathing and of business by the tintinnabulum. The introduction of bells into Christian churches is usually ascribed to Paulinns, Bishop of Nola. in Campania (A.D. 353 431) ; but there is no evidence of their existence fora century later. That they were first made in Campania, is inferred from the name given to them—can:pence; hence, campanile, the bell tower. Their use in churches and monasteries soon spread through Christendom. They were introduced into Gaul about 500; and Benedict, Abbot of Wearmouth, brought one from Italy for his church about 68(1. Pope Sabinian (G00) ordained that every hour should be announced by sound of bell, that the people might be warned of the approach of the canonical hours (q.v.). Bells came into use in the East in the Ninth Century, and in Switzerland and Germany in the Eleventh Century. Most of the hells first used in Western Christendom seem to have been hand-bells. Several examples, some of them, it is believed, as old as the Sixth Century, are still preserved in Ireland. Scotland, and Wales. They are made of thin plates of hammered iron, bent into a four-sided form, fastened with rivets, and brazed or bronzed. Perhaps the most remark
able is that which is still preserved at Belfast, and said to have belonged to Saint Patrick, called the Clog-an-cadhaehla Phatraie, or 'the bell of Patrick's Will.' It is 6 inches high, 5 inches broad, and 4 inches deep, and is kept in a case or shrine of brass, enriched with gems and with gold and silver filigree. and made (as an in scription in Irish shows) between the years 1091 and 1105. The bell itself is believed to be men. dolled in the Annuls of Ilstcr as early as the year 552. The four-sided bell of Saint Gall, an Irish missionary, who died about 646, is still shown in the monastery of the city which bears his name in Switzerland. Church-bells were suspended either in the steeples or chureh-towers, ur in special bell-towers. They were long of comparatively small size; the bell which a king presented to the Church of Orleans in the Eleventh Century, and which was remarkable in its age, weighed only 2600 pounds. In the Thirteenth Century much larger bells began to be cast, but it was not until the Fifteenth Cen tury that they reached really considerable dimensions. The bell 'Jacqueline,' of Paris, cast in 1400. weighed 15,000 pounds; another Paris bell, east in 1472, weighed 25,000 pounds; the famous bell of Rouen, cast in 1501, weighed 36, 364 pounds. The largest NH in the world is the great bell of :Moscow, east in 1733, it being 21 feet high, 21 feet in diameter, and weighing 432,000 pounds. This bell, in 1737.was injured by a fire and remained partly buried in the earth until 1837, when it was raised, and now forms the dome of a chapel formed by excavating the earth beneath it. Among other large bells are: another at Noseow, cast in 1819, and weighing 127,830 pounds; the great hell of Burma, 12 feet high, feet in diameter, weighing 260, 000 pounds; the great bell at Peking, 14 feet high, 13 feet in diameter, and weighing 130,000 pounds; those at .Novgorod, Russia, 62,000 pounds; Olmiitz, Rouen, and Vienna, each weigh ing about 40,000 pounds; Houses of Parliament, London, 30.000 pounds; New York City Hall, 23.000 pounds; Nimtreal Cathedral, 28,560 pounds; Notre Dame, Paris, 28,672 pounds; Saint Peter's, Home, 18.600 pounds; Saint. Paul's, London, 11,470 pounds.