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 British Honduras, and the only trading-port in the colony. It is situated on the sea-coast, at the mouth of a river of the same name, in lat. 17° 29′ N. and long. 88° 8′ W. It consists of one principal street along the shore with a number of offshoots, is for the most part well built, and has a governor's house, a fort, a court-house, a jail, a Gothic church, a hospital, and a number of schools. The exports are principally mahogany, rosewood, cedar, logwood, cocoa-nuts, fustic, and sugar. In 1872, 379 vessels, most of them British, with a total tonnage of 32,345 tons, entered the port. Regular steamboat communication has been established with Kingston, Jamaica. The population is about 5000.
BELKNAP, Jeremy, 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 percussion instrument varying in shape and material, but usually cup-like or globular and metallic, so constructed as to yield one dominant note. This definition excludes on the score of sound the cauldrons of Dodona (Dodonæi lebetes of the Greek oracular temples), and also the Chinese or Indian gongs, and, on the score of shape, all drums, cymbals, the metal plates of the Romans, and resonant bars of metal or wood still used by many savage tribes.}} {{ti|1em|Antiquaries have worried themselves and their readers about the antiquity of bells and to small purpose. It is doubtful whether the bells of gold (Exod. xxviii. 32, 35) were anything but jangling ornaments of some kind worn by the high priest; but Mr Layard believes that he has found some small bronze bells in the palace of Nimroud. We may gather generally that small bells long preceded large ones, which latter, however, were used in India and China long before they were known in Europe.}
The Romans used bells for various purposes. Lucian, 180 A.D., mentions an instrument (Clepsydra) mechanically constructed with water, which rang a bell as the water flowed to measure time. Bells summoned the Romans to the Public Baths; they were also used in processions, and so passed naturally into the service of the Western Church. The first recorded application of them to churches is ascribed by Polydore Vergil to Paulinus (circa 400 A.D.) He was bishop of Nola, a city of Campania (hence nola and campana, the names of certain bells). It has been maintained that Pope Sabinianus, 604, first used church bells; but it seems clear that they were introduced into France as early as 550. In 680 Benedict, abbot of Wearmouth, imported them from Italy; and in the 7th century, Bede mentions them in England. St Dunstan hung many in the 10th century; and in the 11th they were not uncommon in Switzerland and Germany. It is incredible that the Greek Christians, as has been asserted, were unacquainted with bells till the 9th century; but it is certain 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 rivetted together. Dr Reeves of Lusk described in 1850 St Patrick's bell preserved at Belfast, called Clog an eadhachta Phatraic, “the bell of St Patrick's will.” It is 6 inches high, 5 broad, 4 deep, adorned with gems and gold and silver filagree-work; it is inscribed 1091 and 1105, but is probably alluded to in Ulster annals in 552. For Scotch bells, see Illustrated Catalogue of Archæological 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 1400, weighed 15,000 ℔; another Paris bell of 1472, 25,000 ℔; and the famous Amboise bell at Rouen, 1501, 36,364 ℔. 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 Europe it is worth while to enumerate the different kinds of bells named by Hieronymus Magius in his work De Tintinnabulis:—1. Tintinnabulum, a little bell, otherwise called tinniolum, for refectory or dormitory, according to Belethus, but Durandus names squilla for the