The Nuttall Encyclopaedia Part 218

GLENROY, a narrow glen 14 m. long, in Inverness-shire, in the Lochaber district; Fort William lies 13 m. NE. of its SW. extremity; the Roy flows through the valley; the steep sides are remarkable for three regular and distinctly-formed shelves or terraces running parallel almost the entire distance of the glen, the heights on either side exactly corresponding; these are now regarded as the margins of a former loch which gradually sank as the barrier of glacial ice which dammed the waters up slowly melted.

GLOGAU (20), a town with a strong fortress in Silesia, on the Oder, 35 m. NW. of Liegnitz; is a place of manufacture; was brilliantly taken by Frederick the Great in the Silesian War on the 9th March 1741 by scalade, in one hour, at the very break of day.

GLOMMEN or STOR-ELV (i. e. Great River), the largest river in Norway; has its source in Lake Aursund, and, after a southward course of 350 m., broken by many falls, and for the most part unnavigable, discharges into the Skager Rack at Frederikstad.

GLORIANA, Queen Elizabeth, represented in her capacity as sovereign in Spenser's "Faerie Queen."

GLOUCESTER: 1 (39), the capital of Gloucestershire, on the Severn, 38 m. NE. of Bristol; a handsomely laid out town, the main lines of its ground-plan testifying to its Roman origin; conspicuous among several fine buildings is the cathedral, begun in 1088 (restored in 1853) and exhibiting features of Perpendicular and Norman architecture; the river, here tidal, is spanned by two stone bridges, and a flourishing commerce is favoured by fine docks and a ca.n.a.l; chemicals, soap, &c., are manufactured. 2 (25), a seaport of Ma.s.sachusetts, U.S., 30 m. NE. of Boston; is a favourite summer resort, an important fishing-station, and has an excellent harbour; granite is hewn in large quant.i.ties in the neighbouring quarries.

GLOUCESTER, ROBERT OF, English chronicler; was a monk of Gloucester Abbey, and lived in the 13th century; his chronicle, which is in verse, traces the history of England from the siege of Troy to 1271, the year before the accession of Edward I.

GLOUCESTERSHIRE (600), a west midland county of England, which touches Warwick in the centre of the country, and extends SW. to the estuary of the Severn; it presents three natural and well-defined districts known as the Hill, formed by the Cotswold Hills in the E.; the Vale, through which the Severn runs, in the centre; the Forest of Dean (the largest in England) in the W.; coal is wrought in two large fields, but agricultural and dairy-farming are the main industries; antiquities abound; the princ.i.p.al rivers are the Wye, Severn, Lower and Upper Avon, and Thames; BRISTOL (q. v.) is the largest town.

GLuCK, CHRISTOPH VON, a German musical composer and reformer of the opera; made his first appearance in Vienna; studied afterwards for some years under San-Martini of Milan, and brought out his first opera "Artaxerxes," followed by seven others in the Italian style; invited to London, he studied Handel, attained a loftier ideal, and returned to the Continent, where, especially at Vienna and Paris, he achieved his triumphs, becoming founder of a new era in operatic music; in Paris he had a rival in Piccini, and the public opinion was for a time divided, but the production by him of "Iphigenie en Aulide" established his superiority, and he carried off the palm (1714-1787).

GNOMES, a set of imaginary beings misshapen in form and of diminutive size, viewed as inhabiting the interior of the earth and presiding over its secret treasures.

GNOSTICS, heretics, consisting of various sects that arose in the Apostolic age of Christianity, and that sought, agreeably to the philosophic opinions which they had severally embraced, to extract an esoteric meaning out of the letter of Scripture and the facts especially of the Gospel history, such as only those of superior speculative insight could appreciate; they set a higher value on Knowledge (_gnosis_, whence their name) than Faith; thus their understanding of Christianity was speculative, not spiritual, and their knowledge of it the result of thinking, not of life; like the Jews they denied the possibility of the Word becoming flesh and of a realisation of the infinite in the finite; indeed, Gnosticism was at once a speculative and a practical denial that Christ was G.o.d manifest in the flesh, and that partic.i.p.ation in Christianity was, as He presented it (John vi. 53), partic.i.p.ation in His flesh. See CHRISTIANITY.

GOA (495), a Portuguese possession in W. India, lying between the Western Ghats and the sea-coast, 250 m. SE. of Bombay; large quant.i.ties of rice are raised in it; is hilly on the E. and covered with forests; it was captured in 1510 by Albuquerque. Old Goa, the former capital, has fallen from a populous and wealthy city into utter decay, its place being taken by Nova Goa or Panjim (8), on the Mandavi, 3 m. from the coast.

GOBELINS, GILLES AND JEAN, brothers, celebrated dyers, who in the 15th century introduced into France the art of dyeing in scarlet, subsequently adding on tapestry-weaving to their establishment; their works in Paris were taken over by government in Louis XIV.'s reign, and the tapestry, of gorgeous design, then put forth became known as Gobelins; Le Brun, the famous artist, was for a time chief designer, and the tapestries turned out in his time have a world-wide celebrity; the works are still in operation, and a second establishment, supported by government, for the manufacture of Gobelins exists at Beauvais.

G.o.dAV'ARI, an important river of India, rises on the E. side of W.

Ghats, traverses in a SE. direction the entire Deccan, and forming a large delta, falls into the Bay of Bengal by seven mouths after a course of 900 m.; its mighty volume of water supplies irrigating and navigable ca.n.a.ls for the whole Deccan; it is one of the 12 sacred rivers of India, and once in 12 years a bathing festival is celebrated on its banks.

G.o.dET, FREDERICK, Swiss theologian, born at Neuchatel; became professor of Theology there; author of commentaries on St. John's and Luke's Gospels and on the Epistles to the Romans and the Corinthians, along with other works; _b_. 1812.

G.o.dFREY OF BOUILLON, a renowned Crusader, eldest son of Eustace II., Count of Boulogne; he served with distinction under the Emperor Henry II., being present at the storming of Rome in 1084; his main t.i.tle to fame rests on the gallantry and devotion he displayed in the first Crusade, of which he was a princ.i.p.al leader; a series of victories led up to the capture of Jerusalem in 1099, and he was proclaimed "Defender and Baron of the Holy Sepulchre," but declined to wear a king's crown in the city where his Saviour had borne a crown of thorns; his defeat of the sultan of Egypt at Ascalon in the same year confirmed him in the possession of Palestine (1061-1100).

G.o.dIVA, LADY, wife of Leofric, Earl of Mercia and Lord of Coventry, who pled in vain with her husband on behalf of the inhabitants of the place for relief from heavy exactions he had laid upon them, till one day he relented and consented he would grant her prayer if she would ride through Coventry on horseback naked, which, with his leave, she at once undertook to do, and did, not one soul of the place peering through to look at her save Peeping Tom, who paid for his curiosity by being smitten thereafter with blindness.

G.o.dOLPHIN, SYDNEY G.o.dOLPHIN, EARL OF, a celebrated English statesman and financier, born at G.o.dolphin Hall, near Helston, Cornwall; at 19 was a royal page in the Court of Charles II., and in 1678 engaged on a political mission in Holland; in the following year entered Parliament and was appointed to a post in the Treasury, of which, five years later, he became First Commissioner, being at the same time raised to the peerage; under James II, was again at the head of the Treasury, and at the Revolution supported James, till the abdication, when he voted in favour of a regency; on the elevation of William to the throne was immediately reinstated at the Treasury, where he continued eight years, till the Whig ascendency brought about his dismissal; for six months in 1700 he once more a.s.sumed his former post, and under Anne fulfilled the duties of Lord High-Treasurer from 1702 to 1710, administering the finances with sagacity and integrity during the great campaigns of his friend Marlborough, and in 1706 he was created an Earl (1645-1712).

G.o.dOY, MANUEL DE, minister of Charles IV. of Spain, born at Badajoz; played a conspicuous part in the affairs of Spain during the French Revolution and the Empire; received the t.i.tle of Prince of Peace for an offensive and defensive treaty he concluded with France in 1796, in opposition to the general wish of the nation; lost all and died in Paris (1767-1851).

G.o.dWIN, Earl of the West Saxons, a powerful English n.o.ble of the 11th century and father of Harold II.; first comes into prominence in the reign of c.n.u.t; was created an earl previous to 1018, and shortly afterwards became related to the king by marriage; he was a zealous supporter of Harthac.n.u.t in the struggle which followed the demise of c.n.u.t; subsequently was instrumental in raising Edward the Confessor to the throne, to whom he gave his daughter Edith in marriage; continued for some years virtual ruler of the kingdom, but in 1051 his opposition to the growing Norman influence brought about his banishment and the confiscation of his estates; in 1052 he returned to England and was received with so great popular acclaim that the king was forced to restore to him his estates and offices; _d_. 1054.

G.o.dWIN, MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT, an English auth.o.r.ess, and first to publicly a.s.sert the Rights of Women, born at Hoxton, of humble Irish parentage; at 19 she began to support herself by teaching, and continued to do so till 1788, when she established herself in London to push her way as a writer, having already published "Thoughts on the Education of Daughters"; in 1791 she replied to Burke's "Reflections," and in the following year appeared her famous "Vindication of the Rights of Women"; while in Paris in 1793 she formed a _liaison_ with an American, Captain Imlay, whose cruel desertion of her two years later induced her to attempt suicide by drowning; in 1796 she became attached to William G.o.dwin, a friend of five years' standing, and with him lived for some months, although, in accord with their own p.r.o.nounced opinions, no marriage ceremony had been performed; in deference to the opinions of others, however, they departed from this position, and a marriage was duly celebrated five months before the birth of their daughter Mary (Sh.e.l.ley's second wife); contemporary opinion shows her to have been generous and gentle of nature, and animated throughout by a n.o.ble zeal for the welfare of humanity (1759-1797).

G.o.dWIN, WILLIAM, a political writer and novelist, the son of a Presbyterian minister, born at Wisbeach, Somersetshire; was educated for the Church, and was for five years in the ministry; during this period his opinions on politics and religion underwent a radical change, and when in 1787 he threw up his holy office to engage in literature, he had become a republican in the one and a free-thinker in the other; various works had come from his pen, including three novels, before his celebrated "Political Justice" appeared in 1793, "Caleb Williams," a novel, and his best-known work, being published in the following year; in 1797 he married Mary Wollstonecraft (_See_ preceding), who died the same year, and four years later he married a widow, Mrs. Clement; to the close of his long life he was a prolific writer on literary, historical, and political subjects, but his carelessness and lack of business habits left him little profit from all his literary activity; his writings are clear and vigorous in the expression, if visionary and impracticable in theory (1756-1836).

GOETHE, JOHANN WOLFGANG VON, a great poet and wise man, the greatest, it is alleged, the world has seen since Shakespeare left it, and who, being born in Frankfort-on-the-Main 10 years before Robert Burns, died in the small duchy of Weimar the same year as Sir Walter Scott; was the son of an imperial chancellor, a formal man and his pedagogue in boyhood, and of Elizabeth Textor, daughter of the chief magistrate of the city, a woman of bright intelligence, who was only eighteen at the time of his birth. Spiritually and bodily he was the most perfectly formed, symetrically proportioned, justly balanced, and completely cultivated man perhaps that ever lived, whose priceless value to the world lies in this, that in his philosophy and life there is found the union in one of what to smaller people appears entirely and absolutely antagonistic, of utmost scientific scepticism and highest spiritual faith and worth. "He was filled full with the scepticism, bitterness, hollowness, and thousandfold contradictions of his time, till his heart was like to break; yet he subdued all this, rose victorious over this, and manifoldly, by word and act, showed others that came after how to do the like." Carlyle, who is never done recalling his worth, confesses an indebtedness to him--which he found it beyond his power to express: "It was he," he writes to Emerson, "that first proclaimed to me (convincingly, for I saw it _done_): 'behold, even in this scandalous Sceptico-Epicurean generation, when all is gone but hunger and cant, it is still possible that Man be Man.'" "He was," says he, "king of himself and his world;... his faculties and feelings were not fettered or prostrated under the iron sway of Pa.s.sion, but led and guided in kindly union under the mild sway of Reason; as the fierce primeval elements of chaos were stilled at the coming of Light, and bound together, under its soft vesture, into a glorious and beneficent Creation." His life lies latent in his successive works, above all in "Goetz," in "Werter," in "Faust," and in "Meister"; but as these have not been duly read it has not yet been duly written, though an attempt is being made to do so in the said connection. Of the last of the four works named, Carlyle, who has done more than any one else yet to bring Goethe near us, once said, "There are some ten pages of that book that, if ambition had been my object, I would rather have written than all the literature of my time."

"One counsel," says Carlyle, "he has to give, the secret of his whole poetic alchemy, 'Think of living! Thy life is no idle dream, but a solemn reality. It is thy own, it is all thou hast to front eternity with.'"

"Never thought on thinking," he has said, _Nie ans Denken gedacht_. "What a thrift," exclaims Carlyle, "of faculty here!" Some think he had one weakness: he lived for culture, believed in culture, irrespective of the fact and the need of individual regeneration. And Emerson, who afterwards in his "Representative Men" did Goethe full justice, in introducing him as, if not a world-wise man, at all events as a world-related, once complained that "he showed us the _actual_ rather than the _ideal_." To which Carlyle answered, "That is true; but it is not the whole truth. The actual well seen _is_ the ideal. The actual, what really is and exists; the past, the present, and the future do all lie _there_" (1749-1832).

GOETZ VON BERLICHINGEN (of the Iron Hand), a German knight of the 16th century; was involved in turbulent movements, and lost his right hand at the siege of Landshut, which he replaced by one of his own invention made of steel; spent his life in feuds, and left an autobiography which interested Goethe, who dramatised his story, "to save," as he said, "the memory of a brave man from darkness," a drama that had the honour of being translated by Sir Walter Scott.

GOG AND MAGOG, names that occur in the Bible of foes of Israel, and designative in the Apocalypse of enemies of the kingdom of G.o.d, as also of a Scythian tribe N. of the Caucasus. The names are applied likewise to two giants, survivors of a race found in Britain by Brute of Troy, effigies of whom stood at the Guildhall Gate, symbolic defenders of the city.

GOGOL, NICOLAI VASILIEVITCH, a popular Russian novelist, born in Poltava; in 1829 he started as a writer in St. Petersburg, but met with little success till the appearance of his "Evenings in a Farm near Dikanka"; the success of the included sketches of provincial life induced him to produce a second series in 1834, which are characterised by the same freshness and fidelity to nature; in 1837 appeared his masterpiece "Dead Souls," in which all his powers of pathos, humour, and satire are seen at their best; for some time he tried public teaching, being professor of History at St. Petersburg, and from 1836 to 1846 lived chiefly at Rome; many of his works, which rank beside those of Puschkin and Turgenieff, are translated into English (1809-1852).

GOLCONDA, a fortified town in the Nizam's dominions, 7 m. W. of Hyderabad; famous for its diamonds, found in the neighbourhood; beside it are the ruins of the ancient city, the former capital of the old kingdom; the fort is garrisoned, and is the treasury of the Nizam; it is also a State prison.

GOLD COAST (1,475, of whom 150 are Europeans), a British crown colony on the Gulf of Guinea, West Africa, with a coast-line of 350 m.; from the low and marshy foresh.o.r.e the country slopes upward and inward to Ashanti; the climate is very unhealthy; palm-oil, india-rubber, gold dust, &c., are exported; Cape Coast Castle is the capital.

GOLDEN AGE, the age of happy innocence under the reign of Cronos or Saturn, in which, as fabled, the earth yielded all fulness without toil, and every creature lived at peace with every other; the term is applied to the most flourishing period in the history of a nation. See AGES.

GOLDEN a.s.s, a romance of APULEIUS (q. v.).

GOLDEN BULL, an Imperial edict, issued by the Emperor Charles IV., which determined the law in the matter of the Imperial elections, and that only one member of each electoral house should have a vote; so called from the gold case enclosing the Imperial seal attached.

GOLDEN FLEECE, the fleece of a ram which PHRYXOS (q. v.), after he had sacrificed him to Zeus, gave to aeetes, king of Colchis, who hung it on a sacred oak, and had it guarded by a monstrous dragon, and which it was the object of the Argonautic expedition under Jason to recover and bring back to Greece, an object which they achieved. See ARGONAUTS.

GOLDEN FLEECE, ORDER OF THE, an order of knighthood founded by Philip III., Duke of Burgundy and the Netherlands in 1429, and inst.i.tuted for the protection of the Church.

GOLDEN HORN, the inlet on which Constantinople is situated.