"It has a strange history. It is said to have been cast originally in the time of Boris Godounoff, and a traveller in 1611 mentions a bell in Russia which required twenty-four men to swing the clapper. During a fire it fell to the ground and was broken; in 1654 it was recast, and weighed at that time 288,000 pounds. Twenty years later it was suspended from a wooden beam at the foot of the tower; the beam gave way during a fire in 1706, and the bell was again broken. The Empress Anne ordered it recast in 1733, but it only lasted four years. The falling of some rafters in 1737 broke the bell as we now see it, and it lay on the ground just ninety-nine years, or until 1836, when it was raised and placed in its present position by the Emperor Nicholas.
"And how large do you think it is?
"It is thought to weigh 444,000 pounds, or 220 tons; it is nineteen feet three inches in height, and sixty feet nine inches in circumference, or twenty feet three inches in diameter. Just stop and measure these figures with your eye in a barn or a large room of a house, and then realize what this great bell is.
VISITING THE GREAT BELL.
"Look at the picture of the bell, and see the piece that is broken out of it. This piece is six feet high, and both of us walked through the place left by its removal without any difficulty. There is an inscription on the bell which gives its history, and it presents also several sacred figures and the portraits of the Czar Alexis and the Empress Anne.
EMPRESS ANNE.