210 



GIL BLAS 



GILDING 



lying hilly islands. Some of the atolls (e.g. Peru 

 or Francis) are rising in elevation. Cocoa-nuts 

 and copra are the chief, almost the only, pro- 

 ductions of the group. The inhabitants, a mixed 

 Malayo-Polynesian race, closely resemble the 

 Marshall islanders, though they speak a different 

 language. Many of the people take service in 

 Samoa, Fiji, &c. as labourers. The archipelago 

 belongs to the jurisdiction of the British High 

 Commissioner of the Western Pacific. It was dis- 

 covered by Marshall and Gilbert in 1788. 



Gil Bias. See LE SAGE. 



Gilboa, a bare chain of hills between 500 and 

 600 feet high, overhanging the site of the ancient 

 city of Jezreel, and rising between the fertile plain 

 of Esdraelou on the west and the green valley of 

 the Jordan on the east. It is memorable as the 

 Bcene of the defeat and death of King Saul and his 

 three sons at the hands of the Philistines. 



Gilchrist, ALEXANDER, Blake's biographer, 

 was born at Newington Green, 1828, the son 

 of a Unitarian minister who, conscientiously 

 withdrawing from the office of the ministry, re- 

 moved, when Alexander was a year old, to a mill 

 near Reading. At the age of twelve Gilchrist 

 entered University College, London, where for four 

 years he was a diligent scholar, and formed a 

 friendship with the liossettis. Leaving school at 

 sixteen, he entered the Middle Temple in 1846, and 

 was called to the bar in 1849, but never practised. 

 Maintaining himself chiefly by art-criticism, he 

 married in 1851. After collecting in Yorkshire 

 materials for a Life of Etty, he settled in 1853 at 

 Guildford. The Life of Etty, warmly commended 

 by Carlyle, appeared in 1855. The following year 

 he removed to Chelsea, taking a house next door to 

 the Carlyles. Here was composed his Life of Blake, 

 a labour of love engaging all his faculties. Before 

 the task was yet completed, the author, in the full 

 vigour of life, was cut off by scarlet fever on 

 30th November 1861. His wife, ANNE GILCHRIST, 

 nee Burrows, was born in London, 1828. In 1851 

 she married; in 1855 began to write for All the 

 Year Bound, in 1861 for Macmillaris. On her 

 husband's death she undertook the completion of 

 his Life of Blake (1863), to the second edition of 

 which (1880) is appended a memoir of Alexander 

 Gilchrist. In 1869 she published in the American 

 Radical Review ' A Woman's Estimate of Walt 

 Whitman ; ' and it was largely to become personally 

 acquainted with the poet that she spent three 

 years in America (1876-79), when she wrote for 

 Blackwood's ' Glimpses of a New England Village. ' 

 In 1883 appeared her Life of Mary Lamb, and in 

 1885, only a few months before her death that 

 year, her last essay, ' A Confession of Faith. ' See 

 "Anne Gilchrist: her Life and Writings, by her son 

 (1887). 



Gild. See GUILDS. 



Gildas, surnamed by some Sapiens, by others 

 Badonicus, the earliest native English historian, 

 flourished in the 6th century, and wrote in 

 Armorica (about 550-560) his famous treatise De 

 Excidio Britannice Liber Querulus. This was first 

 printed at London in 1525, again in Gale's Scriptores 

 XV. ( 1691 ), where it was first divided into two 

 works, the History and the Epistle. The treatise 

 falls naturally into two distinct portions : from the 

 invasion of Britain by the Romans to the revolt of 

 Maximin at the beginning of the 4th century, and 

 from the close of the 4th century to the writer's 

 own time. It is Gildas who narrates the story of 

 the famous letter sent to Rome in 446 by the 

 despairing Britons, commencing : ' To ^Egidius 

 { JEtius) consul for the third time, the groans of 

 the Britons. ' Gildas is a weak and wordy writer, 

 and the value of his historical work has been assailed 



by Sir T. D. Hardy and others, but is vigorously 

 defended by Dr Guest ; and it must be remembered 

 that its latter portion was adopted without hesita- 

 tion by Bede. Gibbon has described him in a 

 single sentence as ' a monk, who, in the profound 

 ignorance of human life, has presumed to exercise 

 the office of historian, strangely disfigures the state 

 of Britain at the time of its separation from the 

 Roman empire.' An edition of Gildas, edited by 

 Joseph Stevenson, was published by the Historical 

 Society in 1838; a new translation by J. A. Giles, 

 in 1841. 



Gilding. There are many processes of gilding, 

 varying with the nature of the substance to be 

 gilded, and the kind of effect required to be pro- 

 duced, but they may all be classified under three 

 heads viz. (1) mechanical gilding, (2) chemical 

 gilding, ( 3 ) encaustic gilding. 



The first is used chiefly for gilding wood, plaster 

 of Paris, leather, paper, and other substances. If 

 the object to be gilt is a picture or mirror frame, 

 consisting of a plain wooden moulding, then, after 

 getting a coat of oil-paint, from four to ten coats of 

 fine whiting mixed with fine glue are put on, each 

 in its turn being smoothed with pumice-stone and 

 fine sand-paper. This done, a coat of gold-size is 

 given to those parts which are not to be burnished ; 

 but those which are receive only a coating of clear 

 animal size. Both of these prepared surfaces now 

 receive the gold-leaf, which is laid on by means of a 

 broad thin brush called a tip, and further pressed 

 on with a thick soft-haired brush. Those parts 

 which have been gold-sized are in this way oil-gilt, 

 and will stand washing ; while such portions as 

 have been gilt on the size preparation in order to 

 be burnished will not bear soap and water. If the 

 picture-frame is much enriched with fine raised 

 ornament, the surface to be gilt is previously pre- 

 pared with oil-paint and gold-size alone, as the 

 coating with whiting destroys the sharpness of the 

 work. The result, however, is more tender and 

 less durable. 



Japanner's Gilding. Where gilt ornaments are 

 to be put on a japanned ground, they are, by one 

 method, painted with gold-size, and gold-leaf after- 

 wards applied. By another method, rather more 

 than the space the ornament is to occupy is wholly 

 covered with gold-leaf, adhering with isinglass. 

 The ornament is then painted on witli asplialtum,, 

 which protects the gold beneath it while the super- 

 fluous leaf is being washed away. A little turpen- 

 tine will then remove the protecting asphaltum so 

 as to display the gilt ornament. Japanners' gold- 

 size is a mixture of linseed-oil, gum-animi, and 

 vermilion. 



False Gilding, although an old invention, has 

 become in recent years an important trade in 

 Germany. The moulding intended to be ' gilt ' in 

 this way is first covered with bright silver-leaf or 

 tinfoil on a surface prepared as above, and then 

 coated with a yellow varnish. Other substitutes 

 for genuine gilding that are largely used consist in 

 applying ' Dutch gold,' which is copper beaten out 

 lilce gold-leaf, as in genuine gilding, or in using so- 

 called ' gold paint,' which is finely powdered brass 

 or other similar alloy. 



Chemical Gildiny. Metals are now usually gilded 

 by the process of electro-gilding (see ELECTRO- 

 METALLURGY ) ; but, besides this, various methods 

 of chemical gilding have been adopted, and some 

 are still in use. 



Water or Wash Gilding, as it is somewhat inap- 

 pijf:>priately termed, consists in applying to metal a 

 paste formed of an amalgam of gold, and afterwards 

 evaporating the volatile mercury by heat, which 

 leaves the gold firmly adhering to the surface of 

 the metal. 



Gilding by Immersion. For this purpose a 



