Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 3.djvu/552

536 Ravenna, and with it of the Gothic king Yitiges. So con spicuous were Belisarius s heroism and military skill that the Ostrogoths offered to acknowledge him Emperor of the West. But his loyalty did not waver ; he rejected the pro posal and returned to Constantinople in 540. Next year he was sent to check the Persian king Nushirvan ; but, thwarted by the turbulence of his troops, he achieved no decisive result. On his return to Constantinople the intrigues of Antonina, whom he had confined on account of her illicit amours, caused him to be stripped of his dignities and condemned to death, and he was only pardoned by humbling himself before his imperious consort. The Goths having meanwhile reconquered Italy, Belisarius was despatched with utterly inadequate forces to oppose them. Nevertheless, during five campaigns his strategic skill enabled him to hold his enemies at bay, until he was removed from the command, and the conclusion of the war entrusted to his rival Narses. Belisarius remained at Constantinople in tranquil retire ment until 559, when an incursion of Bulgarian savages spread a panic through the metropolis, and men s eyes were once more turned towards the neglected veteran, who placed himself at the head of a mixed multitude of peasants and soldiers, and repelled the barbarians with his wonted courage and adroitness. But this, like his former victories, stimulated Justinian s envy. The saviour of his country was coldly received and left unrewarded by his suspicious sovereign. Shortly afterwards Belisarius was accused of complicity in a conspiracy against the emperor ; his fortune was confiscated, and himself flung into prison. His last years are shrouded in uncertainty, as they are not dealt with in the circumstantial history of Procopius ; but he seems to have been liberated and reinstalled in the enjoy ment of his hard-won honours before his death in 565. The fiction of Belisarius wandering as a blind beggar through the streets of Constantinople, which has been adopted by Marmontel in his Belisaire, and by various painters and poets, seems to have been invented by Tzetzes, a writer of the 1 2th century. Gibbon justly calls Belisarius the Af ricanus of New Rome. But for his successes, which were achieved with most insignificant means, the effete Byzantine empire would have been dismembered among Vandals, Persians, and Goths. He was merciful as a con queror, stern as a disciplinarian, enterprising and wary as a general ; while his courage, loyalty, and forbearance seem to have been almost unsullied. Like Corbulo, the faithful general of Nero, he was suspected and persecuted by an ungrateful master; and, like him, he restored the old dis cipline to the troops and the ancient lustre to the Roman nrnas in a corrupt and nerveless age. (Of. Mahon s Life of Belisarius ; Finlay s Greece under the Romans ; Procopius ; Gibbon s Decline and Fall, ch. 41-43.)

BELIZE, the capital of, and the only - in the. It is situated on the -, at the mouth of a of the same name, in undefined. 17° 29′ N. and undefined. 88° 8′ W. It consists of one principal along the shore with a number of offshoots, is for the most part well built, and has a 's house, a, a , a , a  , a , and a number of s. The exports are principally , , , , s, , and. In 1872, 379 vessels, most of them, with a total nage of 32,345 s, entered the. Regular communication has been established with,. The population is about 5000.

BELKNAP,, an American clergyman and author, was born at Boston in 1744 and died in 1798. He was educated at Harvard University, where he graduated in 1762. In 1767 he was called to a Congrega tional church in Dover, New Hampshire, and remained there for twenty years. He then removed to the Federal Street church in Boston, which he held till his death. His principal works are History of New Hampshire, 3 vols., 1784-92 ; American Biography, 2 vols., 1794-98; The Foresters, 1792.

BELL (from Ang. Sax. bellan, to resound, akin to peal), an open  varying in shape and material, but usually -like or  and lic, so constructed as to yield one dominant note. This definition excludes on the score of sound the s of (Dodonæi lebetes of the   s), and also the  or n s, and, on the score of shape, all s, s, the metal plates of the, and resonant bars of  or  still used by many savage s.}} {{ti|1em|{{9link|Antiquaries}} have worried themselves and their readers about the antiquity of bells and to small purpose. It is doubtful whether the bells of ({{abbr|Exod|Exodus}}. xxviii. 32, 35) were anything but jangling ornaments of some kind worn by the {{9link|High Priest|high priest}}; but {{nowrap|Mr Layard}} believes that he has found some small {{9link|bronze}} bells in the {{9link|palace}} of {{9link|Nimroud}}. We may gather generally that small bells long preceded large ones, which latter, however, were used in and {{9link|China}} long before they were known in .}

The used bells for various purposes. , 180 A.D., mentions an (Clepsydra) mechanically constructed with, which rang a bell as the water flowed to. Bells summoned the to the ; they were also used in processions, and so passed naturally into the service of the. The first recorded application of them to es is ascribed by to  (circa 400 A.D.) He was  of, a  of  (hence nola and campana, the names of certain bells). It has been maintained that, 604, first used church bells; but it seems clear that they were introduced into as early as 550. In 680, of , imported them from ; and in the 7th century,  mentions them in. hung many in the 10th century; and in the 11th they were not uncommon in and. It is incredible that the, as has been asserted, were unacquainted with bells till the 9th century; but it is certain that, for political reasons after the taking of by the , in 1453, their use was forbidden, lest they should provide a popular signal for.

Several old bells are extant in, , and ; the oldest are often quadrangular, made of thin plates hammered and rivetted together. Dr Reeves of described in 1850 's bell preserved at, called Clog an eadhachta Phatraic, “the bell of 's .” It is 6 es high, 5 broad, 4 deep, adorned with s and  and  -work; it is inscribed 1091 and 1105, but is probably alluded to in  s in 552. For bells, see Illustrated Catalogue of Archæological Museum,, for 1856.

The four-sided bell of the , 646, is preserved at the  of ,. In these early times bells were usually small; even in the 11th century a bell presented to the at  weighing  was thought large. In the 13th century larger bells were cast. The bell, Jacqueline of, cast 1400, weighed ; another bell of 1472, ; and the famous  bell at , 1501,. But there we have reached the threshold of the golden age of bells, of which more anon.

Before we enter on the history and manufacture of the bell in it is worth while to enumerate the different kinds of bells named by  in his work De Tintinnabulis:—1. Tintinnabulum, a little bell, otherwise called tinniolum, for or, according to , but  names squilla for the