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Echoes, and Whispering-Places

in the way to Naples, two days from Rome, I saw, in a inn, a room with a square vault, where a whisper could be easily heard at the opposite corner, but not at all in the side corner that was near to you. "I saw another, in the way from Paris to Lyons, in the porch of a common inn, which had a round vault: but neither of these was comparable to that of Gloucester; only the difference between these last two was, that to the latter, by holding your mouth to the side of the wall, several could hear you on the other side; the voice being more diffused: but to the former, it being a square room, and you whispering in the corner, it was only audible in the opposite corner, and not to any distance from thence, as to distinction of words. And this property was common to each corner of the room. "As to Echoes, there is one at Brussels that answers fifteen times: but when at Milan, I went two miles from thence to a nobleman's palace, to notice one still more extraordinary. The building is of some length in the front, and has two wings projecting forward; so that it wants only one side of an oblong figure. About one hundred paces before the house, there runs a small brook, and that very slowly; over which you pass from the house into the garden. We carried some pistols with us, and, firing one of them, I heard fifty-six reiterations of the noise. The first twenty were with some distinction; but then, as the noise seemed to fly away, and the answers were at a great distance, the repetition was so doubled, that you could hardly count them all, seeming as if the principal sound was saluted in its passage by reports on this and that side at the same time. Some of our company reckoned above sixty reiterations, when a louder pistol was discharged."

Some persons tell us, that the sound of one musical instrument in this place will seem like a great number of instruments playing together in concert. This echo is of the multiple or tautological kind, returning one sound several times successively, so as to make one clap of the hands seem like many,one ha, like a laughter, or one instrument like several of the same kind, imitating each other; and by placing certain echoing bodies in such a manner, that any note played should be returned in thirds, fifths, and eighths, a musical room may be so contrived, that not only one violin played therein shall seem many of the same sort and size, but even a concert of different instruments. Those echoes which return the voice but once are called single; whereof some are tonical, only repeating when modulated into some particular musical tone. Others, that repeat many syllables or words, are termed polysyllabical; of which kind is the fine echo in Woodstock Park, which Dr. Plott assures us will return seventeen sylla bles distinctly in the day-time, and in the night twenty. Barthius likewise, in his notes on Statius's Thebais, mentions an echo near Bingeni in Germany, which would repeat words seventeen times, as he himself had proved; and what is very strange in this echo, the person who speaks is scarcely heard at all, but the repetition most clearly, and always in surprising varieties, the echo seeming sometimes to approach nearer, and sometimes to retire to a greater distance. Vitruvius tells us, that in several parts of Greece and It ly there were brazen vessels artfully ranged under the seats of the theatres, to render the sound of the actors' voices me clear, and make a kind of echo, by which means, of the prodigious number of persons present, every one might hear with ease and plea sure.

KNOUT. - This is a punishment inflicted in Russia, with a kind of whip called knout, and made of a long strap of leather prepared for this purpose. With this whip the executioners dexterously carry a slip of skin from the neck to the bottom of the back, laid bare to the waist; and repeating their blows, in a little while rend away all the skin off the back in parallel strips. In the common knout, the criminal receives the lashes suspended on the back of one of the executioners; but in the great knout, which is generally used on the same occasions as racking on the wheel was in France, the criminal is raised into the air by means of a pulley fixed to the gallows, and a cord fastened to the two wrists, which are tied together; a piece of wood is placed between his two legs, which are also tied together; and another of a crucial form under his breast Sometimes his hands are tied behind over his back, and when he is pulled up in this position, his shoulders are dislocated. The executioners can make this punishment more or less cruel; and it is said, they are so dexterous, that when a criminal is condemned to die, they can make him expire either by one or several lashes.