Note i — BOOK IV.

It would nauseate the Reader to reckon up the Places famed for the Conveyance of Whispers, such as the Prison of Dionysius at Syracuse, which is said to encrease a Whisper to a Noise; the clapping ones Hands to the Sound of a Cannon, &c. Nor the Aquaducts of Claudius, which carry a Voice sixteen Miles, and many others both Ancient and Modern. If the Reader hath a mind to be entertained in this way, he may find enough in Kircher’s Phonurgia. But it may not be irksome to mention one or two of our own in England. Among which, one of the most famed is the Whispering-Place in Gloucester Cathedral, which is no other than a Gallery above the East-end of the Choir, leading from one side thereof to the other. It consisteth, (if I mistake not) of five Angles, and six Sides, the middle-most of which is a naked, uncovered Window, looking into a Chapel behind it. I guess the two Whisperers stand at about twenty five Yards Distance from one another. But the Dome of St. Paul’s, London, is a more considerable Whispering-Place, where the ticking of a Watch (when no Noise is in the Streets) may be heard from Side to Side; yea, a Whisper may be sent all round the Dome. And not only in the Gallery below, but above, upon the Scaffold, I tried, and found that a Whisper would be carried over one’s Head round the top of the Arch, notwithstanding there is a large Opening in the middle of it into the upper part of the Dome.