inquiry into the sources or operating causes of this efficacious attribute of our active nature. What are the influences that determine us to adopt some notions as grounds of action and elements of hope or depression, in preference to others? The common answer to this question is the possession of evidence, of which two kinds are reckoned by some schools -namely, experience and intuition; while others recognise experience alone, and reject the intuitive as a sufficient foundation of belief.

As regards the actual sources of men's convictions, it is undeniable that many things are credited without any reference to experience. The existence of superstitions is an example. So the partialities arising out of our likings to particular persons, and the undue depreciation of the merits of those whom we dislike present instances equally removed from the criterion of experience. It is evident, therefore, that men do not abide by that criterion, even granting that they ought to do so. Accordingly, it is one of the tasks of the mental philosopher, to specify the portions of our constitution that give birth to false, mistaken, or unfounded beliefs; and in so doing he indicates, first, certain intuitive impulses connected with our active nature; and secondly, our various feelings, or emotions. Whether the intuitive be a source of authentic beliefs, may be a matter of doubt; there is no doubt as to its being a genuine source of real convictions. We have a decided tendency from the first to believe that the present state of things will continue, and that the absent resembles the present. He that has always seen water liquid, cannot at first be convinced that it is ever or anywhere solid. We have always a great difficulty in surmounting the primitive impulse to consider other men's minds as exactly like our own. It is the tendency of the uncultured human being to overgeneralise; and experience comes as a corrective, often very painful to submit to. Then, again, as regards the emotions, it is found that every one of these, if at all strong, is liable to blind us to the realities of the world. Fear is a notable example. Under a fright, a man will believe in the approach of the direst calamities. Superstition is, for the most part, the offspring of men's fears. The effect of a strong emotion is to exclude from the mind every fact or consideration except those in keeping with itself. Intense vanity so lords it over the current of the thoughts and the course of the observations, as to present to one's mind only the very best side of the character. A fit of self-abasement and remorse will work the contrary effect.

beyond experience; such is the metaphysical doctrine of the infinite. These various convictions-à priori, as they are called, being grounded solely in the internal impulses of the human mind—are all open to one common remark. It must be conceded that some intuitive beliefs are unsound, seeing that we are obliged to reject a greater or less number because of their being flatly contradicted by our experience. But if any have to be rejected in this way, why may not all be; and what criterion, apart from experience, can be set up for discriminating those that we are to retain? Man undoubtedly has boundless longings; and the doctrine of the infinite corresponds in a manner to these. But in actual life we find very few of our desires fully gratified, not even those most honourable to the human mind, such as curiosity, the passion for self-improvement, and the desire of doing good. How, then, are we to ascertain which of the longings carries with it its own necessary fulfilment? Moreover, the intuitive tendencies are exceedingly various in men; and all cannot be equally true.

Testimony, which is properly reckoned one of the sources of belief, is, in its operation, partly founded on an intuitive tendency, and partly on experience. We at first believe whatever we are told; the primitive phase of our nature is credulity; the experience that we soon attain to of untrue statements puts us on our guard, and we learn to receive testimony under some circumstances, and from some persons, and not in all cases indiscriminately.

3. Responsibility for Belief.-A lengthened controversy arose some time ago, on the saying of Lord Brougham, that man is no longer accountable to man for his belief, over which he has himself no control.' Reduced to precise terms, the meaning of this assertion is: a man's belief being involuntary, he is not punishable for it. The question therefore arises, how far is belief a voluntary function? for it is known that the will does to some extent influence it.

What a man shall see when he opens his eyes is not in his own power; but the opening of the eyes is a voluntary act. So, after listening to a train of arguments on a certain dispute, we might be irresistibly inclined to one side; but, supposing us to live in a country where the adhesion to that side is criminal, and punished severely, we should very likely be deterred from hearing or reading anything in its favour. To this extent, the adoption of a belief is voluntary. The application of strong motives of the nature of reward or punishment is sufficient to cause one creed to prevail rather than another, as we see in those countries and in those ages where there has been no toleration of dissent from the established religion. The mass of the people have been in this way so fenced in from knowing any other opinions, that they have become conscientiously attached to the creed of their education.

When the question is asked, therefore, whether punishment can control men's beliefs, and not their professions merely, all history answers in the affirmative, as regards religious and political creeds, on which the majority of mankind, being insufficient judges of themselves, are led by tradition and by education. But in matters of daily practice, where the simplest can judge as well as the wisest, the case is altered. No severity of threat could bring a man into the state of believing that his night's rest was hurtful to him; he might be overawed into saying that it was so, but he would never act out his forced affirmation, and therefore he would shew that he did not believe it.

BELISA'RIUS (in Slavonic, Beli-tzar, White Prince'). This heroic and loyal soldier, to whom the Emperor Justinian was principally indebted for the glory of his reign, was born at Germania, in Illyria, about 505 A. D. He first assumed a conspicuous position when he was appointed to the command of the eastern army of the empire, stationed on the confines of Persia, where, in 530 A.D., he gained a victory over a Persian army nearly twice as large as his own. The historian Procopius was at this time secretary to Belisarius. In the following year, when the Persians had penetrated into Syria, intending to attack Antioch, B. being compelled by the impatience of his troops to offer battle at Callinicum, a town at the junction of the rivers Bilecha and Euphrates, was defeated, and in consequence recalled. This petulant injustice, however, did not weaken that principle of duty which ever controlled and inspired the great soldier. He still remained the firm supporter of his sovereign. In Constantinople, the strife of the two parties, styled respectively the green' and 'the blue,' had endangered the authority and even the life of Justinian; already a new emperor, Hypatius, had been elected, when B. at the head of the life-guards, attacked and slew, in the race-course, 30,000 of the green or anti-loyalist Party, and thus restored tranquillity. Previous to this, he had married a wealthy but profligate lady, Antonina, whom he loved with the same blind uxoriousness that Marcus Aurelius exhibited towards Faustina. The only points in his history which are not edifying, are those in which he yielded to her noxious solicitations. The military career of B. may be divided into two great epochs: the war against the Vandals in Africa, and the war against the Goths in Italy, which again subdivides itself into two campaigns, with an interval of four years between them. The first of these epochs was commenced by Justinian sending B., in 533 A. D., with an army of 15,000 men into Africa, in order to recover the provinces there held by the Vandal king, Gelimer. After achieving two victories, B. made the king a prisoner, seized his treasures, and after conquering Sardinia, Corsica, and the Balearic Isles, he brought him to Constantinople, where he appeared in a triumphal procession of the conqueror the first that a subject had enjoyed since the days of Tiberius. The African Vandals never recovered from this overthrow. Medals were struck in B.'s honour; and on the 1st January 535, he was invested with the dignity of 'consul,' and granted a second triumph, according to the old republican style. The second war was occasioned by the divisions existing in the royal family of the Ostrogoths, which induced Justinian to attempt to wrest Italy from the hands of the barbarians. In 535, B. conquered Sicily: and in the autumn of 536, he crossed over to Lower Italy, where all the cities submitted to him except Naples, which he carried by storm. On the 10th of December, he entered Rome, having made an amicable arrangement with

enough to contend with the Goths in open field, he allowed himself to be enclosed and besieged in Rome: after the defence had lasted a year, the Goths raised the siege. In 538, Narses had been sent with a reinforcement for the army in Italy; but some misunderstanding occurring between the two generals, they were prevented from relieving Milan, which in 539 was carried and devastated by Braias, nephew of the Gothic king, Vitiges. Consequently, Narses was recalled from Italy; and B., now placed at the head of both armies, refused to assent to the treaty proposed to King Vitiges by Justinian's ambassadors. Vitiges had persuaded the Persian king, Chosroes, to invade the eastern Roman territory. B. now drove the Goths back to Ravenna, which he captured in 540, along with Vitiges himself. But before he could complete his conquest of the Goths, he was recalled by Justinian to Constantinople, where he soon appeared, bringing with him the king Vitiges, several Gothic chieftains, and the royal treasures. In 541-542, he was engaged in a campaign against the Persians, who had captured Antioch; but was again recalled, on account of slanderous representations made to the emperor, and the enterprise necessarily proved indecisive. His second great struggle with the Ostrogoths now begins. In 544, the barbarians, under Totila, again invaded and reconquered Italy. B. was sent against them, but with an insufficient army. He, however, maintained his ground for five years, harassing the enemy by his skilful movements, and even succeeded so far as to regain possession of Rome. But, in spite of his repeated entreaties, no reinforcements were sent to him; and in September 548, he gave up the command, his rival, Narses, being appointed in his place. After ten years of retirement, B. once more came forward at the head of an army hastily collected, and overthrew the Bulgarians, who had threatened Constantinople. Here this faithful servant, who at Ravenna had, in a spirit of noble loyalty unknown to the warriors in those selfish and ambitious times, refused the crown of Italy offered to him by the Goths, was at length accused of a conspiracy against Justinian, and imprisoned, December 563; but according to Malala and Theophanes, Justinian became convinced of B.'s innocence, and restored him, after six months, to all his honours. He died March 564.

The biography of B. has been treated with great licence by writers of fiction, especially by Marmontel, who has represented the hero as cruelly deprived of sight, and reduced to beg for his bread in the streets of Constantinople. Tzetzes, a writer of the 12th c., states that, during his half-year's imprisonment, B. suspended a bag from the window of his cell, and exclaimed to those who passed by: Give an obolus to B., who rose by merit, and was cast down by envy!' but no writer contemporary with B. mentions this circumstance. Lord Mahon, in his Life of Belisarius (Lond. 1829), endeavours, but without success, to confirm the tradition, or rather the fiction, of B. being deprived of sight and reduced to mendicancy. This fiction supplies the subject of a fine picture by the French painter, Gérard.

In figure, B. was tall and majestic; in disposition, humane and generous, pure in his morals, temperate in his habits, a valiant soldier, a skilful general, and above all, possessed by a sublime spirit of loyalty to his sovereign.

BELIZE. See BALIZE.

BELL. Bells are usually formed of a composition of copper and tin, called bell-metal. When the proper proportions of the two metals are fused together,

Queen Mary's silver-gilt Hand-bell.

real silver, and gold.

The notion that in old times silver was mixed with bell-metal to sweeten the tone, is a mistake.

Silver, in any quantity, would injure the tone. The quality of a bell depends not only on the composition of the metal it is made of, but very much also on its shape, and on the proportions between its height, width, and thickness; for which the bell-founder has rules derived from experience, and confirmed by science. The pitch of a bell is higher the smaller it is. For a peal of four bells to give the pure chord of ground tone (key-note), third, fifth, and octave, the diameters require to be as 30, 24, 20, 15, and the weights as 80, 41, 24, 10. A less quan

tity of metal than is due to the calibre of the bell though giving the same note, produces a meagre harsh sound; and the real or fancied superiority in dignity of tone of some old bells, is ascribed to a greater weight of metal having been allowed for the same note than modern economy would dictate. Bells have been cast of steel, some of which have had a tone nearly equal in fineness to that of the best bell-metal but deficient in length, having less vibration. Some have also been cast of glass, with a considerable thickness of the material; and these give an extremely fine sound, but are too brittle to stand the continued use of a clapper.

From a remote antiquity, cymbals and handbells were used in religious ceremonies. In Egypt, it is certain that the feast of Osiris was announced by ringing bells; Aaron, and other Jewish high priests, wore golden bells attached to their vestments; 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 Paulinus, Bishop of Nola in Campania (400 A. D.); but there is no evidence of their existence for a century later. That they were first made in Campania, is inferred from the name given to them-campana; hence campanile, the bell-tower. Their use in churches and monasteries soon spread through Christendom. They were introduced into France about 550; and

Italy for his church about 680. Pope Sabinian (600) ordained that every hour should be announced by sound of bell, that the people might be warned of the approach of the horæ canonica, or hours of devotion. Bells came into use in the East in the 9th c., and in Switzerland and Germany in the 11th. Most of the bells first used in Western Christendom seem to have been hand-bells. Several examples, some of them, it is believed, as old as the 6th c., 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 remarkable is that which is said to have belonged to St. Patrick, called the Clog-an-eadhachta Phatriac, 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 inscription in Irish shews) between the years 1091 and 1105. The bell itself is believed to be mentioned in the Annals of Ulster as early as the year 552. Engravings as well of the bell as of its shrine, with a history of both, by the Rev. Dr. Reeves of Lusk, were published at Belfast (where the relic is preserved) in 1850. Some of the Scotch bells, of the same primitive type, are figured and described in the Illustrated Catalogue of the Archaeological Museum at Edinburgh in 1856 (Edin. 1859). The four-sided bell of St. Gall, an Irish missionary, who died about 646, is still shewn

St. Ninian's Bell, as figured in the above work. in the monastery of the city which bears his mame in Switzerland. Church-bells were suspended either in the steeples or church-towers, or in special belltowers. They were long of comparatively small size: the bell which a king presented to the church of Orleans in the 11th c., and which was remarkable in its age, weighed only 2600 pounds. In the 13th c., much larger bells began to be cast, but it was not until the 15th c. that they reached really considerable dimensions. The bell 'Jacqueline' of Paris, cast in 1300, weighed 15,000 pounds; another Paris bell, cast in 1472, weighed 25,000; the famous bell of Rouen, cast in 1501, weighed 36,364 pounds. The largest bell in the world is the Great Bell or Monarch of Moscow, above 21 feet in height and diameter, and weighing 193 tons. It was cast in 1734, but fell down during a fire in 1737, was injured, and remained sunk in the earth till 1837, when it was raised, and now forms the dome of a chapel made by excavating the space below it. Another Moscow bell, cast in 1819, weighs 80 tons. The Great Bell at Pekin, 14 feet high, with a diameter of 13 feet, weighs 53 tons; those of Olmütz, Rouen, and Vienna, nearly 18 tons; that first cast for the New Palace at Westminster (but cracked),

on bells; but in England, it is more usual to give the term carillons to the suites of bells which yield this kind of music. In this last sense, the tower of Les Halles, a large building at Bruges, is allowed to contain the finest carillons in Europe. There is a set of music bells of this kind in the steeple of St Giles's Church, Edinburgh. On these, tunes are played for an hour daily at certain seasons by a musician, who has a small salary from the civic corporation.

Many of the church-towers in London are provided with peals of bells, the ringing of which is a well-known practice. Eight bells, which form an octave or diatonic scale, make the most perfect peal. The variety of changes or permutations of order that can be rung on a peal, increases enormously with the number of bells: 3 bells allow 6 changes; 4 bells, 24; 12 bells give as many as 479,001,600 changes. The ringing of peals differs entirely from tolling-a distinction not sufficiently recognised in those places where an ordinary ringing of bells is made to suffice alike for solemn and festive occasions. The merry peal almost amounts to an English national institution. It consists in ringing the peal in moderately quick time, and in a certain order, without interruption, for the space of an hour. Merry peals are rung at marriages (if ordered), and at other festive events, the ringers being properly paid, according to use and wont. The English appear to be fond of these peals, and the associations which they call up. They actually make bequests to endow periodical peals in their parish church-towers; leaving, for example, so much money to ring a merry peal for an hour on a certain evening of the week, or to commemorate victories, or some other subjects of national rejoicing, in all time coming. One of the most celebrated peals of bells in London is that of St Mary-Le-Bow, Cheapside, which form the basis of a proverbial expression meant to mark emphatically a London nativity-Born within the sound of Bow-bells.' Brand speaks of a substantial endowment by a citizen for the ringing of Bow-bells early every morning to wake up the London apprentices. The ringing of bells in token of merriment is an old usage in England, as we learn from Shakspeare:

Get thee gone, and dig my grave thyself, And bid the merry bells ring to thy ear, That thou art crowned, not that I am dead. Sometimes, in compliment to a newly opened church, efforts are made to furnish its belfry with the proper number of bells, and to endow it at once for a weekly merry peal. It is common for some of the humbler class of parishioners to form a company of bell-ringers, acting under the authority of the church-wardens. Some endowments for peals embrace a supper, as well as a money-payment to the ringers; and of course, in such circumstances, there is little risk of the merry peal falling into desuetude. The consequence is, that what with marriages, and other festive celebrations, and as a result of endowments, merry peals are almost constantly going on somewhere in the metropolis-a fine proof, it may be said, of the naturally cheerful and generous temperament of the English, and of their respect for old customs. In Lancashire, the art of playing on bells is cultivated with much enthusiasm and success. The bells are small, and arranged on a movable stand; they are struck by a small instrument which is held in each hand of the performer, and produce a sweet tinkling kind of music.

The custom of hanging bells on the necks of horses, cows, and other animals, was in use by the Romans, and survives till our own day. Hung on the necks of horses, the bells give notice of approach

in the dark; and hung on cows, goats, or sheep, these animals can be easily found in the woods, or on the mountains. The charming poetical allusion of Gray

And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds— will be called to remembrance. In some parts of England, as many as eight small bells, forming an octave, are attached to the harness of wagon-horses; and the sounds produced are very pleasant. The attaching of bells in a fanciful manner to riding and sleigh-horses is common in some parts of Europe and America.

The term bell is infused in much of our convertional phraseology. To bear the bell,' is a phrase which we previously attempted to explain. At one period, a silver bell was the prize in horse-races in England, and the winning horse was said to bear away the bell. A less probable explanation is, that the phrase originated in the custom of one of the most forward sheep in a flock carrying a bell. Hence at least, 'bell-wether of the flock,' a phrase applied disparagingly to the leader of a party. The old fable, in which a sagacious mouse proposes that a bell shall be hung on the neck of the cat, so that all the mice may be duly warned of her approach, has given rise to the well-known phrase of belling the cat.' Any one who openly and courageously does something to lower the offensive pretensions of a powerful and dangerous person, is said 'to bell the cat.'

The hanging of bells in dwelling-houses, and ringing them by means of wires from the different apartments, is quite a modern invention; for it was not known in England in the reign of Queen Anne. Now the use of room-bells is universal. Lately, there has been a great improvement in domestic bell-hanging. Instead of traversing the apartments, and turning and winding by means of cranks, the wires are carried directly upward in small tubes in the walls to the garret: thence from a row of cranks, they descend together to their respective bells, which are hung in one of the lower passages. In the larger hotels of the United States, wires from the several apartments operate on a single bell, at the same time developing a number on a board corresponding to the number of the room where attendance is required. This ingenious contrivance, which has been introduced into one of the large hotels in Paris, saves the perplexity which would ensue from some hundreds of bells.

BELL, BOOK, AND CANDLE. The excommunication by B., B., and C. is a solemnity belonging to the Church of Rome. The officiating minister pronounces the formula of excommunication, consisting of maledictions on the head of the person anathematised, and closes the pronouncing of the sentence by shutting the book from which it is read, taking a lighted candle and casting it to the ground, and tolling the bell as for the dead. This mode of excommunication appears to have existed in the western churches as early as the 8th c. Its symbolism may be explained by quoting two or three sentences from the conclusion of the form of excommunication used in the Scottish Church before the Reformation: Cursed be they from the crown of the head to the sole of the foot. Out be they taken of the book of life. And as this candle is cast from the sight of men, so be their souls cast from the sight of God into the deepest pit of hell. Amen.' The rubric adds: And then the candle being dashed on the ground and quenched, let the bell be rung.' So, also, the sentence of excommunication against the murderers of the Archbishop of Dublin in 1534: 'And to the terror and fear of the said damnable persons, in sign and figure that they be accursed of

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