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time served in the army in the Low Countries. He afterwards went to France, where be became enamoured of a Scottish lady, and married her. At length he returned to Eugland, and settled once more in Gray's Inn, where he wrote most of his poems. The latter part of his life he spent in his native village of Walthamstow, where he died in 1578. His plays, first printed separately, were afterwards reprinted with other poems, in 2 vols. 4to. in 1577 and 1587.

GASCOIGNE (Sir William), chief justice of the king's bench under Henry IV., a celebrated judge, who, being insulted, it is said, on the bench by the then prince of Wales, afterwards Henry V., with great coolness and intrepidity committed him to prison. It is not well authenticated that

the prince struck Sir William, as represented by Shakspeare; but all authors agree that he interrupted the course of justice to screen a lewd servant. Sir William died in 1413. Several of his remarks and decisions are referred to in the law books.

GASCONADE, n. s. & v. n. From the Gascons, a people remarkable for boasting. A boast or bravado: to brag, or swagger.

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GASCONY, a ci-devant province of France, bounded by Guienne on the north, by Languedoc on the east, by the Pyrenees on the south, and by the Bay of Biscay on the west. It had its name from the Gascons, its ancient inhabitants. After these were subdued by the Franks, they had for some time dukes of their own, who were subject to the duke of Aquitaine; but both were at last dispossessed by the kings of France. It produces corn, wine, fruit, tobacco, hemp, brandy, prunes, &c.; and abundance of fine timber in the department of the Landes. Gascony is watered by the Garonne and Adour, besides smaller streams, and becomes hilly towards the south, the mountains containing mines and warm springs. Bourdeaux and Bayonne are the principal harbours, and the former is one of the best trading ports in France. The principal articles of export are wine, brandy, and vinegar; fruit, wool, linseed, pitch, cork, and wood: marble, iron, and coloring earths of all kinds, are also sent from the neighbourhood of the Pyrenees. Since the revolution Gascony forms the departments of the Upper Pyrenees, the Gers, the Landes, and part of those of the Lower Pyrenees, the Upper Garonne, and the Lot and Garonne.

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Rowe's Royal Conv.

I was fond of back-sword and cudgel play, and I now bear in my body many a black and blue gash and scar. Arbuthnot. GASKINS. See GALLIGASKINS. GASP, n. s. & v. n. Goth. geisfd; Dan. gispe, to sob; or probably from Sax. geapan, to yawn. To open the mouth wide for inspiration whether convulsively or not; to breathe with difficulty; to desire anxiously; but this use is hardly to be justified, as not being analogous to nature.

His fortunes all lie speechless, and his name Is at last gasp. Shakspeare. Cymbeline. Ah, Warwick, Montague hath breathed his last; And to the latest gasp cryed out for Warwick.

Shakspeare. The rich countrymen in Austria were faint and Brown's Travels. gasping for breath. The sick for air before the portal gasp.

Dryden.

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under the same master, who, seeing how dearly they loved one another, and gasped after their liberty, de

manded a most exorbitant price for their ransom. Id. Spectator.

He now with pleasure views his gasping prize, Gnash his sharp teeth and roll his blood-shot eyes. Gay

Parting day

Dies like the Dolphin, whom each pang imbues With a new colour as it gasps away.

Byron. Childe Harold.

GASPAR STRAIT and ISLAND, a passage and island in the Eastern seas, between the east coast of the island of Banca, and the west coast of the island of Billiton. The island is high and conspicuous, about five miles long; and the strait, about fourteen leagues broad, is divided into two arms, and connects the China and Java seas. GASPE, a district and county of Lower Canada, North America, on the south side of the St. Lawrence, which lies between 64° and 66° 30′ W. long., and between 47° 20′ and 49° 10′ N. lat. It is bounded on the west by the district of Quebec, on the east and north-east by the river and gulf of St. Lawrence, and on the south by the province of New Brunswick and the bay of Chaleurs. It sends one member to the provincial parliament; and is divided into two parts by a ridge of mountains, which run northeast. The tract on the northern declivity of these mountains to the St. Lawrence is rough and barren; being almost covered with impenetrable forests. The south-east side of the ridge is also uneven and rugged in many parts. In 1808 the population amounted to 3200, and between 300 and 400 fishermen. New Carlisle is the principal town.

GASPE, a bay of the above district, in the gulf of St. Lawrence, between Cape Gaspe and Whale Head. It runs about sixteen miles into the land, and is about five miles broad. Two other inlets, called the north-west and south-west arms, penetrate from the end of it a considerable way into the interior, and receive the waters of numerous streams from the mountains. This bay is deep and well sheltered; capable of affording protection to a large number of ships. The shores are lofty.

GASPE is also the name of a cape on the coast of Canada, in the gulf of St. Lawrence. Long. 64° 10′ W., lat 48° 35′ N.

GASSENDI (Peter), a celebrated philosopher of France, was born at Chantersier in Provence, in 1592. His parents sent him to school at Digne, where he soon made such extraordinary progress in learning, that some persons, who had seen specimens of his genius, removed him to Aix, to study philosophy under Fesay, a learned minor friar. He was afterwards invited to be professor of rhetoric at Digne, before he was quite sixteen years of age; and he had been engaged in that office but three years when, Fesay dying, he was made professor in his room at Aix. There he composed his Paradoxical Exercitations; which coming to the hands of Nicholas Peiresc, Gassendi was first made canon of the church of Digne and D. D., and then obtained the rectorship of the church. Gassendi's fondness for astronomy increased with his years; and, his reputation daily increasing, he was, in 1645, appointed royal professor of mathematics at Paris. This institution being chiefly designed for astronomy, he read lectures on that science to crowded audiences. He, however, did not hold this place long; for a dangerous cough, and inflammation of the lungs, obliged him, in 1647, to return to Digne for the benefit of his native air. Gassendi combated the metaphysics of Descartes; and divided with that great man the philosophers of his time, almost all of whom were CarVOL. X.

tesians or Gassendians. He left nine volumes of his philosophical works. 1. Three on Epicurus's Philosophy, and six which contained his own. 2. Astronomical Works. 3. The Lives of Nicholas de Peiresc, Epicurus, Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, Puerbachius, and Regiomontanus. 4. Epistles, and other treatises. All his works were collected together, and printed at Lyons, in 1658, in 6 vols. folio. He died at Paris, in 1655, aged sixty-three.

GASSICOURT (Charles Louis Cadet de) a nodern French philosopher, and advocate, who had the singular good fortune to survive the whole of the revolution, was the son of an apothecary of Paris. M. Gassicourt first attracted notice by a pamphlet, published in 1797, on the Theory of Elections. Then followed other essays on political and miscellaneous subjects, among which was one On the Private Life of Mirabeau; St. Geran, a Critique on the New Modes of Thinking, Writing, and Speaking, introduced into France by the Changes of the Times; and others on the Influence of the Masonic Societies in the Process of the Revolution; and the Four Ages of the National Guard. About the same period appeared a volume of Travels in Normandy, and a Dramatic Sketch, pourtraying the principal characters who flourished under Louis XIV. and his successor, entitled The Supper of Moliere. On the death of his father, himself a man of scientific pursuits and the personal friend of Buffon, Lalande, and Condorcet, he seems to have diverted his attention from politics to the study of chemistry and physics. He edited his father's treatise on Domestic Pharmacy, and a Formulary on the same subject; and gave the world a New Dictionary of Chemistry, afterwards introduced into the Polytechnic school. This book appeared first in 1803. He followed the French army into Austria in 1809, and subsequently wrote an account of the Campaign, during which he invented a military instrument called les baquettes. The modern plan for the organisation of the French board of health owes its origin to him, and he had not only the satisfaction of seeing it eagerly adopted, but that of obtaining the appointment of Reporting Secretary. In this capacity he continued till his death, which took place at Paris in the summer of 1823. Besides the productions enumerated, Gassicourt was the author of a series of epistles on London and the English Nation; and a treatise on the application of the Physical Science to Military Purposes. He was also a material contributor to a variety of useful and scientific publications; and assisted in founding the Lyceum, afterwards the Athenæum, at Paris.

GAST, Sax. gast. Vide aghast. To terrify. When he saw my best alarmed spirits Bold in the quarrel's right, roused to the encounter, Or whether gasted by the noise I made, Full suddenly he fled. Shakspeare. King Lear.

GASTEROSTEUS, the stickleback, in ichthyology, a genus of fishes belonging to the order of thoracici. There are three rays in the membrane of the gills: the body is carinated; and there are some distinct prickles before the back fin. There are thirteen species, distinguished by thenumber of prickles on the back. One of these,

C

G. aculeatus, stickleback, bansticle, or sharpling, is common in many of the British rivers. In the fens of Lincolnshire, and some rivers that proceed from them, they are found in prodigious quantities. At Spalding, once in seven or eight years, amazing shoals appear in the Welland, and come up the river in form of a vast column. They are supposed to be the multitudes that have been washed out of the fens by the floods of several years, and collected in some deep place, till, overcharged with numbers, they are periodically obliged to attempt a change of place. The quantity is so great that they are used to manure the land, and trials have been made to get oil from them. An idea may be conceived of this vast shoal, by being told that a man, having been employed by a farmer to take them, once obtained for a considerable time 4s. a day, by selling them for a halfpenny per bushel. This species is seldom two inches long: it has three sharp spines upon the back, that can be raised or depressed at pleasure. The color of the back and sides is an olive green; the belly white; but in some the lower jaws and belly are of a bright

crimson.

GASTRELL (Francis), bishop of Chester, was born in 1662, appointed preacher to the society of Lincoln's Inn in 1694, and made bishop of Chester in 1714. He preached a course of sermons for Boyle's lectures; engaged in the Trinitarian controversy with Mr. Collins and Dr. Clarke; and published two popular pieces entitled Christian Institutes, and A Moral Proof of a Future State. He also vindicated the rights of the university of Oxford against the archbishop of Canterbury, in the appointment of the warden of Manchester College; and opposed the violent proceedings against bishop Atterbury in the house of lords, though he disliked the bishop's principles. He died in 1725. GASTRIC, adj. The root of all these GASTRO'RAPHIA, N. S. words is the Gr. yasno, GASTROTOMY, N. S. the belly. It is used GASTRONOMY, N. S. in composition with раπrw, to sow up; Teμvw, to cut, and voμos, a law or rule, and in these cases refers to sewing wounds, making incisions, or laying down laws in reference to the stomach or belly.

The gastric juice of an owl, falcon, or kite, will not touch grain. Paley's Theology.

GASTRIC JUICE, a thin pellucid liquor, which distils from certain glands in the stomach, for the dilution, &c., of the food.

It is soluble in water, has a slight saline taste, and is quite limpid. Its peculiar property is that of dissolving the food in the stomach into a milky liquid called chyle. After death this solvent power even acts upon the stomach itself. By evaporation it is reduced to a dry mass, which gives out in destructive distillation ammonia and empyreumatic oil, leaving carbonaceous matter, which contains muriate of soda and other neutral salts.

GASTROMANCY, GASTROMANTIA, from yasno, the belly, and μavrea, divination, a kind of divination practised among the ancients, by means of words coming, or seeming to come, out of the belly. There is another kind of gastromancy, which is performed by means of glasses,

er other round transparent vessels, within which. certain figures appear by magic art. It is thus called, because the figure appears as in the belly of the vessels.

GASTUNI, a town of Greece, in the Morea, over against the island of Zante. It has a castle on the Igliaco, and contains 3000 inhabitants, who cultivate the vine, cotton, and silk, with great industry. The environs are very fertile. About six miles to the east are found the ruins of the ancient Elis. Twelve miles east of Chiarenza.

GAT, the preterite of get.

Moses gat him up into the mount.

Ex. xxiv. 13.

GAT, EAST, a channel W. N. W. of the island of Walcheren, Netherlands, between the Caloot Sand and the Querns Flat. It has from four to five fathoms water.

GATA, CAPE, a promontory on the coast of Granada, Spain, forming the eastern limit of the bay of Almeria, and consisting of a mass of rocks, twenty-four miles in circuit, and thirteen in breadth. In the centre of this promontory there are four hills, called the Sacristan, the Two Friars, the Captain, and the White Mountain; and, about fifty paces from the beach, a rocky mass 200 feet high, crystallised in pieces that have four or five plates chased one within another. They are of the color of ashes, from eight to fourteen inches long, with a large grain that takes a good polish. The other side of the promontory, is called El Puerto de la Plata. Long 2° 22′ W., lat. 36° 43′ N.

GATAKER (Thomas), a learned critic and divine, born in London, in 1574. He studied at St. John's College, Cambridge, and was afterwards chosen preacher at Lincoln's Inn; which he quitted, in 1611, for the rectory of Rotherhithe. In 1620 he made a tour through the Low Countries; and, in 1624, published in London a work, entitled Transubstantiation declared by the confession of the Popish Writers to have no necessary foundation in God's Word. He wrote also a defence of this discourse. In 1642 he was appointed one of the assembly of divines, and was engaged with them in writing annotations upon the Bible. He died in July, 1654, in the eightieth year of his age. He published also, 1. A Dissertation upon the Style of the New Testament. 2. De Nomine Tetragrammata. 3. De Dipthongis, sive Bivocalibus. 4. An Edition and Transla

tion of Marcus Antoninus's Meditations. 5. A

Collection of Sermons, in folio; and many other works.

GATE, n. s.

Gate and way; Sax. geat. GATEWAY, n. s. SA frame of timber or other material upon hinges giving access to a city, castle, dwelling or field: also an avenue or opening itself.

That other gate was kept by Shame,
Whiche opened, as it was couthe
Towardes the parté of the southe.

Chaucer. Romaunt of the Ross.
She then the cities sought from gate to gate,
And everie one did aske, did he him see.

Spenser. Faerie Queene. Auria had done nothing but wisely and politically, in setting the Venetians together by the ears with the Turks, and opening a gate for a long war. Knolle..

Knowest thou the way to Dover?
-Both stile and gate, horseway, and footpath.
Shakspeare.

Open the gate of mercy, gracious God!
My soul flies through these wounds to seek thee. Id.
Gateways between inclosures are so miry, that
they cannot cart between one field and another.
Mortimer's Husbandry.

He feeds yon almshouse, neat but void of state, Where age and want sit smiling at the gate. Pope. GATES, in agriculture, are the convenient moveable parts of fences, generally formed of timber or iron, which are designed to give the freest inlet or outlet to enclosures, and at the same time to keep in cattle and admit of being securely closed

The great object is generally said to be to combine strength with lightness in their construction. The common sort are constructed of timber, and, whatever kind may be used, it is essential that it be well seasoned, as without attention in this respect they are soon warped in their structure by the heat of the sun they should also be well and correctly put together. Oak is andoubtedly the best sort of wood for the purpose, where durability is the object; though some of the lighter kind of woods, as deal, willow, &c., will often last a great length of time, and from their lightness they are not so apt to destroy themselves. The lighter gates are made towards the head or opening part, the better, provided they be sufficiently strong for the pur pose they are to serve; and, on this account, the top bars may in many cases, as where horses are to be kept, be left considerably stronger than the others. If this be not done, they are liable to be broken by the animals rubbing their necks upon them, except where they are made very high. Gates are generally made eight and a half or nine feet in width, and from five to six feet in height; the bars being three or four feet broad, and five or six in number. To prevent small animals getting through, a smaller bar is sometimes introduced between the two lowermost ones. At the ordinary prices of wrought iron and oak, the former will be found of doubtful economy, and cast iron gates are too heavy, and too liable to be broken, for agricultural purposes, but they are frequently used for ornamental gates, to divide pastures.

The posts to which gates are attached should, in all convenient cases, says Mr. Loudon, be formed of stone; as this material, when hewn and properly constructed, will last for ages. When formed of wood, oak or larch are the best sorts. The latter, where suitable, should be used without removing the bark, which has been found to add greatly to their durability. In some places it is customary to plant trees for gate-posts, and, after they have attained a certain size and thickness, to cut them over about ten feet above the surface: where the trees thrive, they form the most durable of all gate-posts; in many instances, however, they misgive, and much trouble is necessary to repair the defect. Where the posts are made of dead timber, they should always be strong, and the wood well prepared; that part which is let into the earth should also be defended, by dipping it in coarse oil, or giving it a coat of pyrolignous liquor;

and all that is above ground exposed to the action of the weather should be well covered with one or two good coats of oil-paint. The expense of this preparation is but trifling, while the benefit is very great.

According to Parker, the substance of a gatepost should be from eight to ten inches square, or, for very heavy gates, a foot square would not be too large. If made of still larger size it is better. And he says, that the steadiness of a gate-post depends, in a great measure, upon the depth to which it is set in the ground, which ought to be nearly equal to the height of it. But the posts may be kept in their places by a Five or six feet is, in general, fully sufficient. strong frame-work placed under the ground, extending between the posts.

The common slip-bar gate is, perhaps, the most durable of any, especially where the gateposts are of stone, with proper openings for the reception of the bars. The only objection is the trouble of opening and shutting this gate; which, when servants or others are passing through it in a hurry, occasions its being frequently left open. In other respects it is preferable to every other description of gate, says the above writer, both in the original cost and greater durability. It is to be noticed, however, that upon the verge of a farm or estate, especially where it is bounded by a high road, the slip-bar gate will not answer, as it does not admit of being locked, or secured in the same way as other gates. But the chained slip-bar gate, though more expensive, is not liable to this objection. Here the bars are connected by a chain down the middle of the gate, and therefore, if one bar is padlocked to the post, none of them can be moved till that one is unlocked.

Parker's compensation-hinge for gates is much in use, and forms an excellent corrective to their falling; all that is necessary when the gate sinks at the head is to screw it up by the nut n, till it regains its original position.

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A gate should have one fall to the hanging post to make it catch, and another to a point at a right angle with the gateway, so as to keep it open. To effect this, having set the post perpendicular, let a plumb-line be drawn upon it: on this line, at a proper height, place the hook, so that it may project three inches and a half from the face of the post; and at a convenient distance below this place the lower hook an inch and a half to one side of the perpendicular line, and projecting two inches from the face of the post; then place the top loop, or eye, two inches from the face of the hanging stile, and the bottom loop three inches and a half. A gate thus hung will have a tendency to shut in every position; because if the weight of the gate be represented by a diagonal line from the heel to the head, this, by the resolution of forces, is resolvable into other two lines, one perpendicular, and the other horizontal; the former representing that part of the weight which presses in a perpendicular position, and the latter that part of the weight which presses in a horizontal direction, and gives the gate a tendency to shut.

The fastenings of gates, it is observed by Parker, are as various as the blacksmiths who construct them the subject occupied his attention in connerion with the hanging of gates, and he has introduced various improvements. One of the

most secure is a spring latch a, opened by a lever 3, which works in a groove of the upper bar of the gate, and therefore cannot be rubbed open by cattle; while, by means of a knob at the end of the lever, and rising up against the top of the upright bar c, so that cattle cannot touch it, it is very easily opened by persons on horseback with or without a stick or whip.

A cheap, simple, and effective spring-latch consists of a bolt which is loose, and plays freely in two mortised openings in the upright bars, and is kept in place by a spring. The gate may be shut from either side, when the bar, striking against the projection on the falling post is pushed back, till, arriving at the mortise, the spring forces it in, and the gate is shut securely. Such a gate is easily opened by a rider. This is a good latch for the common field-gates of a farm.

Double, or folding gates, are sometimes considered to be much more durable than those of the swing kind; because the bars, being only half the length, render the joints of the gate not so liable to be broken, or the hinges to be so much strained. On the other hand, such gates require more opening and shutting, and the latter operation is troublesome to perform, when both halves have fallen at all from the perpendicular. These gates are not, therefore, in such general use in agriculture, as the swing kind; but are common only as gates to parks, &c.

Clarke's window-sash gate is the last invention we shall notice. It is suspended by two weights, and opens and shuts exactly on the principle of a window-sash. The weights may be of stone or cast iron; the pulleys are of iron, and nine inches diameter. It was applied in the first instance to a cattle-court; but has since been erected in different situations. Its advantages the inventor states to be the following:-It is easy to open b, or shut a; remains in whatever situation it is placed; is not liable to be beaten to pieces by the action of the wind; shuts always perfectly close, whatever be the height of the straw or dung in the court or gateway; a cart may be driven quite close on either side before opening; is perfectly out of the way when fully open, and not liable to shut on what is passing; the gate bottom not liable to decay by being immersed in the dung, as is commonly the case with cattle court-gates; not liable to go out of order; may be erected in a hollow place, where a swinging-gate could not open either outwardly or inwardly; and is likely to be more durable than ordinary gates. See diagram.

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GATES, in a military sense, are made of strong planks, with iron bars, to oppose an enemy. They are generally made in the middle of the curtain, whence they are seen and defended by the two flanks of the bastions. They should be covered with a good ravelin, that they may not be seen or enfiladed by the enemy. These gates, belonging to a fortified place, are passages through the rampart, which may be shut and opened by means of doors and a portcullis. They are either private or public.

Private Gates are those passages by which

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the troops can go out of the town unseen by the enemy, when they pass to and from the relief of the duty in the outworks, or on any other occasion which is to be concealed from the besiegers.

Public Gates are those passages, through the middle of such curtains, to which the great roads of public ways lead. The dimensions of these are usually about thirteen or fourteen feet high, and nine or ten feet wide, continued through the rampart, with proper recesses for foot passengers to stand in, out of the way of whee, car riages.

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