158 



GEORGE 



GEORGE I. 



projection. In 1637 Descartes gave to the world 

 his invention of analytical geometry, thus placing 

 in the hands of mathematicians one of the most 

 powerful instruments of research, and withdrawing 

 their attention from pure geometry. Pascal ( 1623- 

 62), whose extraordinary precocity has often been 

 cited, wrote an essay on conic sections at the 

 age of sixteen. He afterwards wrote a complete 

 work, one of the properties of which is the 

 theorem of the mystic hexagram. His last work 

 was on the cycloid. With the mere mention of 

 the names of Wallis, Fermat, Barrow, Huygens, 

 we pass to Newton, whose great work, the 

 Principia, is the glory of science. Chasles thinks 

 Newton's best title to fame is that he has raised 

 such a monument of his genius by the methods 

 and with the resources 01 the geometry of the 

 ancients. The names of Halley, Maclaurin, 

 Robert Simson, and Euler bring us down to near 

 the end of the 18th century. During the 19th 

 century a revival of interest in pure geometry has 

 been brought about by Monge, the inventor of 

 descriptive geometry, by Carnot, the author of the 

 theory of transversals, by Poncelet and Gergonne. 

 These have been succeeded by Mobius, Steiner, 

 Chasles, and Von Staudt. 



The best works on the history of Greek Geometry are 

 Allman's Greek Geometry from ~2'hales to Euclid ( 1889 ) ; 

 Paul Tannery's La Geometric Grecque (1887); Bret- 

 schneider's Die Geometrie und die Geometer vor Euklides 

 (1870). Chasles's Apr-rcu historique sur I'Oriyine etle 

 Developpement des methodes en Geometric (1837 or 1875) 

 and his Rapport sur le Progres de la Geometric ( 1870) 

 embrace the whole field of Geometry. The following 

 more general histories may also be consulted : Cantor's 

 Vorlesungen iiber Geschichte der Mathematik (1880) ; 

 Hoefer's Histoire des Mathematiques (1874) ; Marie's His- 

 toire des Sciences Mathematiques et Physiques (12 v<>ls. 

 1883-88) ; Montucla's Histoire des Mathematiques ( 1802); 

 Cow's Short History of Greek Mathematics (1884) ; and 

 Ball's Short Account of the History of Mathematics ( 1888 ). 



George, a division of the western province of 

 Cape Colony, on the south coast, east of Cape- 

 town. It contains 2600 sq. m., and about 11,000 

 inhabitants. It is valuable chiefly for its pastur- 

 age and its timber. The town of George stands 

 6 miles N. of the coast, and has a population of over 

 2000. On the coast is the port of Mossel Bay. 



George, ST, the especial patron of chivalry, 

 and tutelary saint of England. Although venerated 

 both in the Eastern and Western churches, his 

 history is extremely obscure, the extant accounts 

 .containing very much less history than legend. 

 The story in the Acta Sanctorum is that he was 

 born of noble Christian parents in Cappadocia, 

 became a distinguished soldier, and, after testifying 

 to his faith before Diocletian, was tortured and 

 put to death at Nicomedia, April 23, 303. By 

 many writers, as by Gibbon, he has been con- 

 founded with the turbulent and unscrupulous 

 Arian partisan, George of Cappadocia, who after 

 a troubled life as army contractor and tax-gatherer 

 became Archbishop of Alexandria, and after five 

 years of misgovernment was torn in pieces by a 

 furious mob. Most authorities, Catholic and Pro- 

 testant, agree in admitting the great improbability 

 of this identification. Dr Peter Heylin is of one 

 mind in this matter with the Jesuit Papebroch, 

 and Dean Milman with the Roman Catholic Bishop 

 Milner. Whatever may be said of the unhistorical 

 character of St George's martyrdom, the fact of 

 his being honoured as a martyr by the Catholic 

 Church, of churches being dedicated to him, and 

 of the Hellespont being called ' St George's Ann,' 

 is traced by Papebroch, by Milner, and by other 

 writers to so early a date, and brought so imme- 

 diately into contact with the times of the angry 

 conflicts in which George of Cappadocia figured as 

 an Arian leader, that it is impossible to believe 



that the Catholics of the East while the tomb of 

 Athaiiasius was hardly closed upon his honoured 

 relics would accept as a sainted martyr his cruel 

 and unscrupulous persecutor. The St George of 

 the Eastern Church was no doubt a real personage 

 of an earlier date than George of Cappadocia, but 

 beyond this we can say nothing of him. His name 

 was early obscured in fable one oriental story 

 making him suffer as many as seven martyrdoms, 

 reviving after each save the last. The same story 

 exists even in Mussulman legends, whose Chwolson 

 identifies the hero with the Semitic Tammuz. 



The famous story of St George's struggle with 

 the dragon is first found in Voragine's Legcnda 

 Aurea, but soon found its way into the office-books 

 of the church, until left out by Pope Clement VII. 

 To slay a dragon was a common exploit for the 

 saints and heroes of Christendom as well as of 

 Teutonic and Indian antiquity ; and St George 

 here touches so closely the common myths of the 

 Aryan family as to have himself been explained, 

 by Baring-Gould and others, as in this aspect 

 merely a mythical form of the sun-god dispelling 

 the darkness by his beams of light. 



Churches were dedicated to St George from very 

 early times ; the Crusades gave a great impetus 

 to his cultus, and he was adopted as the soldier- 

 saint who led his votaries to cattle. Many new 

 chivalrous orders assumed him as their patron, and 

 he was adopted as their tutelary saint by England, 

 Aragon, and Portugal. In 1348 Edward III. 

 founded St George's Chapel, Windsor, and in 1344 

 the celebrated Order of the Garter was instituted. 

 See Baring-Gould's Curious Myths of the Middle 

 Ages, and the article DRAGON. The cross of St 

 George, red on a white ground, was worn as a 

 badge over the armour by every English soldier 

 in the 14th and subsequent centuries. For the 

 banner of St George, now represented in the Union 

 flag, see FLAG. 



George I., son of Ernest Augustus, Elector of 

 Hanover, and of Sophia, granddaughter of James 

 I. of England, was born in Hanover on 28th 

 May 1660. Immediately after Queen Anne's death 

 on 1st August 1714, he was proclaimed king of 

 Great Britain and of Ireland in London, the pro- 

 clamation at Edinburgh taking place four days, 

 and at Dublin five days later. He had been Elector 

 of Hanover since 1698, and he was the first monarch 

 of the House of Brunswick who, in accordance with 

 the Act of Settlement, succeeded to the throne of 

 this country. He arrived at Greenwich on 29th 

 September, and was crowned at Westminster on 

 31st October 1714. He had commanded the 

 imperial forces in the war against France in which 

 Maryborough acquired distinction, and, though less 

 successful than Marlborough as a general, he was 

 as chagrined as he when the Tory party, under 

 the inspiration of Bolingbroke, made peace, and 

 sanctioned the treaty of Utrecht. In 1682 he 

 married his cousin, the Princess Dorothea of Zell. 

 Twelve years later he obtained a divorce on the 

 ground of her intrigue with Count Konigsmark, 

 and caused her to be imprisoned in the castle of 

 Ahlden, where she died on 2d November 1726. 

 While punishing his consort for her frailty, he lived 

 openly with mistresses, and was neither ashamed 

 of his conduct nor made to suffer for it. 



The Tories and Jacobites who clung to the 

 banished House of Stuart were the objects of his 

 aversion, and the Whigs were favoured by him. 

 Bolingbroke and the Duke of Ormond fled 

 to France ; both of them, and Oxford, who 

 remained behind, were impeached. In Scotland a 

 Jacobite rising, headed by the Earl of Mar, took 

 place in 1715 ; a battle at Sheriffmuir on the 13th 

 November, though indecisive, dispirited the rebels, 

 who afterwards dispersed. Another body marched 



