Part 210 (1/2)

GALGACUS, a Caledonian chief defeated by Agricola at the battle of the Grampians in 85, after a desperate resistance.

GALIA'NI, FERDINANDO, an Italian political economist, man of letters, and a wit; held with honour several important offices under the Neapolitan Government; was attache to the emba.s.sy at Paris, and the a.s.sociate of Grimm and Diderot (1728-1787).

GALICIA, 1, an old province (1,919) of Spain, formerly a kingdom in the NW. corner of it, fronting the Bay of Biscay and the Atlantic; now divided into the four minor provinces, Coruna, Lugo, Orense, Pontevedra; the county is hilly, well watered, fertile, and favoured with a fine climate, but cultivated only very partially; some mining is carried on.

2, A crownland (6,607) in the NE. of Austria, between Russia and the Carpathians; the inhabitants are mainly Slavs, but there is a goodly number of Jews, Germans, Poles, &c.; the land is fertile, consists chiefly of extensive plains, well watered by the Dneister and other large rivers, and yields abundance of cereals, while one-fourth is covered with forest; timber is largely exported, and salt; many of the useful metals are found, and productive petroleum wells; it has an independent Diet, but an Austrian governor; Austria annexed it in 1772.

GALILaeANS, a fanatical sect, followers of one Judas of Galilee, who fiercely resented the taxation of the Romans, and whose violence contributed to induce the latter to vow the extermination of the whole race.

GALILEE, the northern division of Palestine, divided into Upper, hilly, Lower, level, about 60 m. long and 30 broad.

GALILEE, SEA OF, an expansion of the Jordan, 12 m. long, and at the most 8 m. broad, enclosed by steep mountains, except on NW.

GALILEO, an ill.u.s.trious Italian mathematician, physicist, and astronomer, born at Pisa, demonstrated the isochronism of the pendulum, invented the thermometer and the hydrostatic balance, propounded the law of falling bodies, constructed the first astronomical telescope, and by means of it satisfied himself of, and proved, the truth of the Copernican doctrine, that the sun and not the earth is the centre of the planetary system, and that the earth revolves round it like the other planets which reflect its light; his insistence on this truth provoked the hostility of the Church, and an ecclesiastical decree which p.r.o.nounced the Copernican theory heresy; for the profession of it he was brought to the bar of the Inquisition, where he was compelled to forswear it by oath, concluding his recantation, it is said, with the exclamation, ”still, it moves”; before his end he became blind, and died in Florence at 78, the year Newton was born (1564-1642).

GALITZIN, the name of a Russian family distinguished for their ability and success in both war and peace from the 16th century onwards.

GALL, FRANZ JOSEPH, the founder of phrenology, born at Tiefenbronn, on the borders of Baden and Wurtemberg; in 1785 he established himself as a physician in Vienna, where for many years he carried on a series of elaborate investigations on the nature of the brain and its relation to the outer cranium, visiting with that view lunatic asylums, &c.; in 1796 he gave publicity to his views in a series of lectures in Vienna, which were, however, condemned as subversive of morality and religion; being joined by Spurzheim, who adopted his theories, he undertook a lecturing tour through a large part of Europe, and eventually settled at Paris, where he published his phrenological work ”Fonctions du Cerveau”; it is a curious fact that on his death his skull was found to be twice the usual thickness, and that there was a tumour in the cerebellum (1758-1828).

GALL, ST., an Irish monk who, about 585, accompanied St. Columban to France in his missionary labours, banished from which he went to Switzerland, and founded a monastery on the Lake of Constance, which bore his name; _d_. about 646.

GALLAND, ANTOINE, French Orientalist, born in Picardy, professor of Arabic in the College of France; was the first to translate the ”Arabian Nights” into any European tongue (1646-1715).

GALLAS, an Ethiopian race occupying the S. and E. of Abyssinia, energetic, intelligent, and warlike; follow mostly pastoral occupations; number over four millions, and are mostly heathens.

GALLE or POINT DE GALLE (33), fortified seaport town, prettily situated on a rocky promontory in the SW. of Ceylon; there is a good harbour, but the s.h.i.+pping, which at one time was extensive, has declined since the rise of Colombo.

GALLICAN CHURCH, the Catholic Church in France which, while sincerely devoted to the Catholic faith and the Holy See, resolutely refused to concede certain rights and privileges which belonged to it from the earliest times; it steadfastly contended that infallibility was vested not in the Pope alone, but in the entire episcopal body under him as its head; maintained the supreme authority of general councils and that of the holy canons in the government of the Church, and insisted that there was a distinction between the temporal and the spiritual power; contentions summed up in a declaration of the French clergy in 1682, the body of whom opposed to which are known by the name of ”Ultramontanists.”

GALLICANISM, the name given to the contention of the GALLICAN CHURCH (q. v.).

GALLIENUS, PUBLIUS LICINIUS, Roman Emperor from 260 to 268, and for seven years (253-260) a.s.sociated in the government with his father, the Emperor Valerian; under his lax rule the empire was subjected to hostile inroads on all sides, while in the provinces a succession of usurpers, known as the Thirty Tyrants, sprang up, disowning allegiance, and aspiring to the t.i.tle of Caesar; in his later years he roused himself to vigorous resistance, but in 268 was murdered by his own soldiers whilst pressing the rebel Aureolus at the siege of Milan.

GALLIGANTUA, the wizard giant slain by Jack the Giant-killer.

GALLIO, the Roman proconsul of Achaia in the days of St. Paul, before whom the Jews of Corinth brought an appeal against the latter, but which he treated with careless indifference as no affair of his, in consequence of which his name has become the synonym of an easy-going ruler or prince.