a mere creature of the imagination, composed of such contradictions and absurdities as cannot possibly anywhere exist but in thought.

CHIMES OF A CLOCK, a kind of periodical music, produced at equal intervals of time, by means of a particular apparatus, added to a clock.

In order to calculate numbers for the chimes, and adapt the chime-barrel, it must be observed, that the barrel must turn round in the same time that the tune it is to play requires in singing. As for the chime-barrel, it may be made up of certain bars that run athwart it with a convenient number of holes punched in them to put in the pins that are to draw each hammer; and these pins, in order to play the time of the tune rightly, must stand uprightly or hang down from the bar, some more, some less. To place the pins rightly, you may proceed by the way of changes on bells; viz. 1, 2, 3, 4; or rather make use of the musical notes. Observe what is the compass of your tune, and divide the barrel accordingly from end to end.

Thus, in the examples on Plate CXLIV, each of the tunes is eight notes in compass; and accordingly the barrel is divided into eight parts. These divisions are struck round the barrel; opposite to which are the hammer-tails.

We speak here as if there were only one hammer to each bell, that it may be more clearly apprehended; but when two notes of the same sound came together in a tune, there must be two hammers to the bell to strike it; so that if in all the tunes you intend to chime of eight notes compass, there should happen to be such double notes on every bell, instead of eight you must have sixteen hammers; and accordingly you must divide the barrel, and strike sixteen strokes round it, opposite to each hammer tail; then you are to divide it round about into as many divisions as there are musical bars, semibreves, minims, &c. in the tune.

Thus the hundredth-psalm tune has 20 semibreves, and each division of it is a semibreve: the first note of it also is a semibreve; and, therefore, on the chime-barrel must be a whole division, from five to five; as you may understand plainly, if you conceive the surface of a chime-barrel to be represented by the above figures, as if the cylindrical superficies of the barrel were stretched out at length, or extended on a plane: and then such a table, so divided, if it were to be wrapped round the barrel, would show the places where all the pins are to stand in the barrel; for the dots running about the table are the places of the pins that play the tune.

Indeed, if the chimes are to be complete, you ought to have a set of bells to the gamut notes; so as that each bell having the true sound of sol, la, mi, fa, you may play any tune with its flats and sharps; nay, you may by this means play both the base and treble with one barrel: and by setting the names of your bells at the head of any tune, that tune may easily be transferred to the chime-barrel, without any skill in music: but it must be observed, that each line in the music is three notes distant; that is, there is a note between each line, as well as upon it.