the tone is improved by age, owing to some kind of molecular change in the metal; this is known to be the case in some old organs, and in instruments of the violin class, in the metal of the one and the wood of the other; and so far there is analogy to support the opinion. For good peals of bells, the founders generally prefer D or E as the note for the tenor or largest bell. As to largeness in a bell, its intention bears relation rather to _loudness_ than to _pitch_, as a means of throwing the sound to a great distance. This is the reason for the mighty bells that we are told of--St. Paul's weighing something like 13,000 lbs.; Antwerp, 16,000 lbs.; Oxford, 17,000 lbs.; Rome, 18,000 lbs.; Mechlin, 20,000 lbs.; Bruges, 23,000 lbs.; York, 24,000 lbs.; Cologne, 25,000 lbs.; Montreal, 29,000 lbs.; Erfurt, 30,000 lbs.; "Big Ben," at the Houses of Parliament, 31,000 lbs.; Sens, 34,000 lbs.; Vienna, 40,000 lbs.; Novgorod, 69,000 lbs.; Pekin, 119,000 lbs.; Moscow, 141,000 lbs.; and, giant of all the giants, another Moscow bell weighing 192 tons, or 430,000 lbs. Our own Big Ben is more than twice as heavy as our own St. Paul's bell, which used to be regarded as one of our wonders, and its sound travels much further; but whether its quality of tone is equal, is a point on which opinions differ. {35} The history of the two Big Bens must be more or less familiar to most of our readers--how that three chief commissioners of works, and two architects, and three bell-founders, and two bell-doctors, quarrelled year after year; how that both the Bens cracked, and got into disgrace; how that one of them recovered its voice again; and how that we have paid the piper to the tune of something like four thousand pounds for the two Big Bens and the four smaller bells. If a musical reader wishes to know, he may be told that the four quarter-bells give out the notes B, E, F++, G++, and that Big Ben's tone is E, an octave below the first E. Remember, when Big Ben is heard six miles off, it is half a minute behind time, seeing that sound takes about half a minute to travel that distance.