110 



GASOLENE 



GASTEROPODA 



George Eliot. Mrs Gaskell had some measure of 

 almost all the gifts of the great novelist deep and 

 genuine pathos, a singularly genial and truthful 

 humour, a graceful and unforced style, power 

 of description, dramatic faculty on occasion, and 

 sympathetic insight into character ; while she 

 wrote of nothing that she did not know and 

 understand indeed many passages are close 

 transcripts from her own life- history and experi- 

 ence. Though written with a purpose, her novels 

 have not failed to be completely artistic, perhaps 

 because they flowed so freely from her heart, and 

 because their purpose was so truly and so much her- 

 self. Mrs Gaskell died suddenly of heart-disease at 

 Holybourne, Alton, in Hampshire, 12th November 

 1865, and was fittingly buried at Knutsford. Be- 

 sides her novels she wrote The Life of Charlotte 

 Bronte ( 1857), which will remain one of the master- 

 pieces of English biography. Mary Barton was 

 received as a revelation of the habits, thoughts, 

 privations, and struggles of the industrial poor, as 

 these are to be found in such a social beehive as 

 Manchester, and has had many imitators, but not 

 an equal. 



Gasolene* or GAZOLINE, rectified petroleum 

 (q. v. ) used for gas-engines and horseless-carriages. 



Gasometer. See GAS-LIGHTING. 



Gasparin, VALERIE BOISSIER, COMTESSE DE, 

 was born at Geneva in 1813, and married Count 

 Agenor de Gasparin (1810-71), a zealous advocate 

 of religious liberty. Till her death, 18th June 

 1894, she warmly supported the reformed faith, 

 but denounced the extravagances of fanatics. 

 Two of her works obtained the Montyon prize at 

 the Academie Francaise : Le Mariage an, point de 

 vue Chretien, and II y a des Pauvres a Paris, et 

 ailleurs. Among her other publications are Voyage 

 dans le Midi par une ignorante, Allans faire 

 Fortune d Paris, Un Livre pour les Femmes 

 Marines, Lisez et Jugez (Strictures on the ' Salvation 

 Army'), ami Les Horizons Prochaines. Several of 

 her books have been translated into English. 



Gaspe\ a peninsula in the east of Quebec pro- 

 vince, comprising the counties of Gaspe and Bona- 

 venture, projects into the Gulf of St Lawrence, 

 between tne estuary of that name on the north and 

 the Bay of Chaleurs on the south. It lias an area of 

 nearly 8000 sq. m., and about 35,000 inhabitants, the 

 greater number engaged in the important fisheries, 

 which, with the export of lumber, form the staple 

 business of the country. GASPE BASIN, where 

 Cartier landed in 1534 (see CANADA), is a port of 

 entry in Gaspe Bay, now the seat of extensive 

 fisheries. Pop. 726. 



Gassendi, or GASSEND, PIERRE, French 

 philosopher and mathematician, was born 22d 

 January 1592, at Champtercier, a village of Pro- 

 vence. His unusual powers of mind showed them- 

 selves at an early age. Having resolved upon an 

 ecclesiastical career, he studied, and afterwards 

 taught, philosophy at Aix. But, catching the in- 

 fection of empirical methods of study, he revolted 

 from the predominant scholastic philosophy, and 

 began to subject it to a critical scrutiny. At the 

 same time he bent his energies upon physics and 

 astronomy. The results of his examination of the 

 Aristotelian system and methods appeared at 

 Grenoble in 1624, Exercitationes paradoxicce adver- 

 sus Aristoteleos, in which he utters an emphatic 

 protest against accepting the Aristotelian dicta as 

 final in all matters of philosophy, and especially of 

 physics. In the same year he was appointed prevot 

 of the cathedral at Digne, an office which enabled 

 him to pursue without distraction his researches in 

 astronomy and other natural sciences. From 1628 

 he spent several years travelling through Holland, 

 Flanders, and France, until in 1645 he was 



appointed professor of Mathematics in the College 

 Royal de France, at Paris, where he died, 14th 

 October 1655. During his stay in the Low 

 Countries he controverted ( 1631 ) the mystical 

 opinions of Robert Fludd, and wrote a treatise 

 on parhelia, besides other astronomical papers. 

 Eleven years later he proceeded also to criticise 

 adversely the new system of philosophy promul- 

 gated by Descartes, in a work entitled Objectiones 

 ad Meditationes Cartesii. Whilst at Paris Gassendi 

 wrote his principal philosophical works, De Vita 

 Epicuri (1647) ; a commentary on Diogenes Laer- 

 tius' tenth book, De Vita, Moribus, et Placitis 

 Epicuri (1649); and in the same year the Syn- 

 tagma Philosophice Epicurem, which contains a 

 complete view of the system of Epicurus. But, 

 whilst thus going back to the ancients in his philo- 

 sophy, Gassendi marched in the van of the moderns 

 in natural and physical science. Kepler and Galileo 

 were numbered amongst his friends. His Institutio 

 Astronomica ( 1647) is a clear and connected repre- 

 sentation of the state of the science in his own 

 day ; in his Tychonis Brahcei, Nicolai Copernici, 

 Georc/ii Puerbachii, et Joannis Regiomontani Vitce 

 (Pans, 1654) he gives not only a masterly account 

 of the lives of these men, but likewise a complete 

 history of astronomy down to 'his own time. His 

 collected works were published by Montmort and 

 Sorbiere (6 vols. Lyons, 1658), and by Averrani 

 (6 vols. Flor. 1728). 



Gassner, JOHANN JOSEPH, exorcist, was born 

 28th August 1727, near Bludenz, in the Vorarlberg, 

 and became Catholic priest at Klosterle, in the 

 diocese of Coire. He began to cure the sick by 

 driving out the demons that possessed them by 

 means of exorcism and prayer. In 1774 he received 

 the sanction of the Bishop of Ratisbon ; and by the 

 mere word of command, Cesset ( ' Give over ' ), he 

 cured the lame or blind, but especially those 

 afflicted with convulsions and epilepsy, who were 

 all supposed to be possessed by the devil. Ulti- 

 mately he was found to be an impostor ; the arch- 

 bishops of Prague and Salzburg issued pastorals 

 against his imposture, and the imperial authorities 

 compelled the Bishop of Ratisbon to dismiss him. 

 The bishop, however, gave him the cure of Bendorf, 

 and there he died in 1779. 



Gas-tar. See COAL-TAR, GAS AND GASES, 

 ANILINE, DYEING, &c. 



Gastein, a romantic valley in the south of the 

 Austrian duchy of Salzburg, 28 miles long, with a 

 number of small villages. The chief of these, 

 Wildbad-Gastein, is a very famous watering-place, 

 and was a favourite resort of the Emperor William 

 I. of Germany. Some 5000 guests visit the place 

 in summer to drink the waters of its seven warm 

 springs. Here, on 14th August 1865, a convention 

 was signed between Austria and Prussia, which, 

 by a partition of Sleswick and Holstein, for a short 

 period prevented the rupture between the rival 

 powers. Pop. of the valley, about 4000. See W. 

 Fraser Rae's Austrian Health Resorts (1888). 



Gasteropoda (Gr., 'belly-footed'), a large 

 class of molluscs, including snails, slugs, buckies, 

 whelks, cowries, limpets, and the like. Along 

 with the cuttle-fishes or Cephalopods, and the yet 

 more closely allied ' butterfly-snails ' or Pteropods, 

 the Gasteropods are contrasted with the bivalves 

 or Lamellibranchs by the more or less prominent 

 development of the head-region, and by the pres- 

 ence of a rasping ribbon or tongue on the floor of 

 the mouth. 



General Characters. In addition to the develop- 

 ment of head and rasping tongue, the Gasteropods 

 are characterised by the nature of the 'foot' or 

 muscular ventral surface. Except in some forms 

 adapted for free-swimming, the ' foot ' is simple, 



