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, the Atlas, 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 the English Poets (24 vols., 1854-1857; new ed., 29 vols., 1866), the works of each poet being prefaced by a memoir. For Lardner’s Cabinet Cyclopaedia he wrote: History of Russia (3 vols., 1836-1838); Lives of English Poets (2 vols., 1839); a continuation, with W. Wallace, of Sir James Mackintosh’s History of England (vols. iv.-x., 1830-1840); and the fifth volume (1840) of the Lives 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.
BELL a 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 as e.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” (see [Divers]) 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 Egyptian sistrum, 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 century A.D.; and the first application of bells to churches has been ascribed to Paulinus, bishop of Nola in Campania about A.D. 400. There is, however, no confirmation of this story, which may have arisen from the words campana and nola (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, called Clog 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, see Illustrated 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 work De Tintinnabulis:—1. Tintinnabulum, a little bell, otherwise called tinniolum, for refectory or dormitory, according to Joannes Belethus, but Guillaume Durand names squilla for 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 of cymbalum for the cloister (Durand) or campanella for the cloister (Belethus); nolula or dupla in the clock; signum in the tower (e.g. in the Excerptions of St Egbert, 750); the Portuguese still call a bell sino.