_Bell at Rouen_ (Vol. viii., p. 448.).--Your valuable correspondent W.
SPARROW SIMPSON, B.A., has probably taken his account of the great bell in
the cathedral at Rouen from a note made before the French Revolution of
1792-3, because the George d'Ambois, which was once considered the largest
bell in Europe (it was thirteen feet high, and eleven feet in diameter),
excepting that at Moscow, shared the destructive fate of many others at
that eventful period, and was melted down for cannon. In 1814 the bulb of
its clapper was outside the door of a blacksmith's shop, as you go out of
the city towards Dieppe. It was pointed out to me by a friend with whom I
was then travelling--a gentleman of the neighbourhood, who was at Rouen at
the time it was brought there--and there, if I mistake not, but I cannot
find my note, I saw it again within the last ten years.