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GIANT'S CAUSEWAY GIBBON. 



GIANT'S CAUSEWAY; a promontory in Ireland, 

 (n the county of Antrim, on the north coast, west of 

 Bcngore Head ; eight miles N. E. Coleraine, 120 N. 

 Dublin. It consists of many hundred thousands of 

 columns, composed of a hard black rock, rising per- 

 pendicularly Irom 200 to 400 feet above the water's 

 edge. The columns, or basaltes, are generally pen- 

 tagonal, or liave five sides, and are so closely attach- 

 ed to each other, that, though perfectly distinct, from 

 top to bottom, scarcely any thing can be introduced 

 I'd ween them. This extraordinary disposition of the 

 rocks continues below the water's edge ; it also ob- 

 tains, in a small degree, on the opposite shore in 

 Scotland. The columns are not each of one solid 

 stone, in an upright position, but composed of sev- 

 eral short lengths, exactly joined, not with flat sur- 

 faces, but articulated into each other, as a ball in a 

 socket, one end of the joint having a cavity of three 

 or four inches deep, into which the convex end of the 

 opposite joint is exactly fitted. This is not visible till 

 the stones are disjointed. The Giant's Causeway is 

 accounted the greatest natural curiosity in Ireland, 

 and one of the most remarkable of the kind in the 

 world. 



GIAOUR; a Turkish word, meaning dog, used by 

 the Turks to designate the adherents of all religions 

 except the Mohammedan, more particularly Chris- 

 tians. The use of it is so common that it is often 

 applied without intending an insult. 



GIBBON, Edward ; an eminent English historian, 

 was born at Putney, in 1737. He was the son of 

 Edward Gibbon, a gentleman of an ancient Kentish 

 family. After being two years at a private school at 

 Kingston-upon-Thames, he was sent, at the age of 

 twelve, to Westminster, where his weak state of health 

 precluded him from making a regular progress in 

 the classical studies of the school. After several 

 changes of situation, in which he was chiefly the object 

 of medical care, his constitution suddenly acquired 

 firmness, and he entered as a gentleman commoner 

 at Magdalen college, Oxford, before he had complet- 

 ed his fifteenth year. He remained fourteen months 

 at Oxford, which he characterizes in his memoirs as 

 most unprofitably spent ; and his censure of that uni- 

 versity is very strong and unequivocal. To a total 

 neglect of religious instruction he attributes his boy- 

 ish conversion to the Roman Catholic religion, which 

 was produced by an assiduous perusal of the contro- 

 versies between the Catholics and Protestants ; and, 

 to use his awn expressions, as he entered into the 

 field ' ' without armour," he fell before the " weapons of 

 authority, which the Catholics know so well how to 

 wield." Following his convictions, he abjured the 

 errors of heresy at the feet of a Catholic priest in 

 London, and then wrote a long letter to his father, to 

 justify the step which he had taken. The conse- 

 quence of this disclosure was his immediate banish- 

 ment to Lausanne, where he was placed under the 

 care of M. Pavillard, a learned Calvinistic minister. 

 By the well-directed efforts of his tutor, aided by his 

 own mature reflections, his new faith gradually gave 

 way, and he was again restored to Protestantism. 

 His residence at Lausanne was highly favourable to 

 his progress in knowledge, and the formation of re- 

 gular habits of study. The belles-lettres, and the 

 history of the human mind, chiefly occupied his at- 

 tention ; and to this fortunate period of retirement 

 and application, he was chiefly indebted for his fu- 

 ture reputation as a writer and a thinker. In 1758, 

 he returned to England, and immediately began to lay 

 the foundation of a copious library; and soon afcei 

 composed his Essai sur r Etude de la Litterature, in 

 the French language, which, for some years, hac 

 been more familiar to him than his own. This work 

 which was printed in 1761, was a highly respectable 



uvenile performance, and obtained considerable 

 )raise in the foreign journals. lit- some time after 

 iccepted a captain's commission in the Hants militia, 

 and for some time studied military tactics with great 

 assiduity ; but he heartily rejoiced when the peace of 

 1763 set him free. After passing some months in the 

 metropolis, he visited Paris and Lausanne, at which 

 alter place he employed himself in collecting and 

 jreparing materials for a profitable journey to Italy. 

 This took place in 1764 ; and it was at Rome, as he 

 limself informs us, on the fifteenth of October, in 

 ,hat year, as he sat musing among the ruins of the 

 capitol, "while the barefooted friars were singing 

 vespers in the temple of Jupiter," that his idea of 

 writing the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire 

 entered his mind. He had previously thought of the 

 listory of the republic of Florence, ami of that of the 

 Swiss liberty, in the last of which he had made some 

 progress, but he subsequently committed the MS. to 

 the flames. In 1770, he first tried his powers in his 

 native tongue, by a pamphlet in refutation of War- 

 burton's extraordinary hypothesis concerning the 

 connexion of Virgil's fabled descent of ^Eneas witt 

 the Eleusinian mysteries, entitled Critical Observa- 

 tions on the sixth Book of the JEneid. It received 

 Sfreat commendation, particularly from professor 

 Heyne, and proved a conclusive refutation. In 1774, 

 by the favour of his kinsman, Mr (afterwards lord) 

 Eliott, he obtained a seat in parliament for the borough 

 of Liskeard, and was a silent supporter of the North 

 administration and its American politics for eight 

 years. In 1776, the first quarto volume of his De- 

 cline and Fall of the Roman Empire was given to 

 the public, which at once rivetted general attention; 

 the first edition going off in a few days, and a second 

 and a third being scarcely equal to the demand. Of 

 all the applause he received, none seemed to flatter 

 him so much as the spontaneous suffrages of Hume 

 and Robertson. The prosecution of his history was 

 for some time delayed, by his complying with the 

 request of ministers to answer a manifesto which the 

 French court had issued against Great Britain, pre- 

 paratory to war. This he very ably executed, 

 in a Memoire Justificatif, composed in French, which 

 was delivered in a state paper to the courts of Europe; 

 and for this service he received the appointment of one 

 of the lords of trade. In 1781 appeared the second 

 and third volumes of his history ; and at a new elec- 

 tion he lost his seat fbr Liskeard, but was brought in 

 by ministerial influence for the borough of Lymington. 

 On the retirement of the North administration, he lost 

 his appointment, by the dissolution of the board of 

 trade, and immediately formed the resolution of retir- 

 ing to his favourite Lausanne, which plan he put into 

 execution in 1783. Here, in the course of four 

 years, he completed the three remaining volumes 

 of his history, which were published together in 

 April, 1788. The storms of the French revolution, 

 which he regarded from the first with fear and aver- 

 sion, gradually lessened his attachment to Lausanne; 

 but his return to England, which took place in 1793, 

 was hastened by his solicitude to sympathize with his 

 friend, lord Sheffield, under a heavy domestic calami- 

 ty. He spent some months with that nobleman ; when 

 a disorder, which he had endured for three and-twenty 

 years, terminated in a mortification, that carried him 

 off on the 16th January, 1794, in the fifty-seventh 

 year of his age. Mr Gibbon was fond of society, 

 and possessed, in an eminent degree, the manners and 

 sentiments of a gentleman. It is as the student and 

 historian that he principally claims attention ; and in 

 these capacities the universal acknowledgment of 

 the world has allowed him the highest rank. In 

 1796, his friend, lord Sheffield, published two quarto 

 volumes of his miscellaneous works, of which the 



