from the commencement unfortunate. It sailed from Cawsand Bay, near Plymouth, on the 11th of June. Two days after, the Raleigh was obliged to put back on account of sickness. Gilbert pursued his course with the rest of the squadron, and reached Newfoundland. The seas adjoining that island were already the seat of an extensive cod-fishery. Arrived here, Gilbert, without opposition on the part of the mariners collected on the spot, proceeded to execute his commission. He took possession, in Queen Elizabeth's name, of the land adjoining the harbour of St. John, and made various grants among his followers. He then determined to go, in pursuit of discovery, to the southward, first embarking those of his men who were sick on board one of his ships left behind for the purpose. He sailed himself in the Squirrel, the "little frigate" (as the historian of his adventures styles her) of ten tons burthen. In the neighbourhood of Cape Breton, the largest of the three ships now remaining with Gilbert was lost on a rock, and nearly all who were on board perished. The advanced period of the season, not less than the disappointments and sufferings encountered, made it necessary to relinquish any further pursuit of their enterprise, and it was determined to return. Gilbert was urged in vain to make his own passage to England on board the Hind, which was by much the larger of the two ships now remaining, but he preferred remaining in the Squirrel:—"I will not," he nobly said, "forsake my little company going homeward, with whom I have passed so many storms and perils." He was still full of hope, and confident of future success. On Monday the 9th September (we quote the words of Hayes, the captain of the Hind, whose narrative is printed in Hakluyt) "in the afternoon, the frigate"—i.e. the Squirrel—"was near cast away, oppressed by the waves, yet at that time recovered; and, giving forth signs of joy, the general, sitting abaft with a book in his hand, cried out unto us in the Hind—so oft as we did approach within hearing—'We are as near to heaven by sea as by land;' reiterating the same speech, well beseeming a soldier resolute in Jesus Christ, as I can testify he was...The same Monday night, about twelve of the clock, or not long after, the frigate being a-head of us in the Golden Hind, suddenly her lights were out, whereof, as it were in a moment, we lost the sight, and withal our watch cried the general was cast away, which was too true, for in that moment the frigate was devoured and swallowed up by the sea." Thus perished a brave-hearted English gentleman, one of the truest ornaments of the most chivalric period of English story, and the parent of English colonization in the western world.—W. H.
GILBERT, Sir Jeffrey, a learned English judge. He is said to have been born at Goodhurst in Kent in 1674. Of his education nothing is known. His promotion in the law was rapid. In 1715 he was made judge of the king's bench, Ireland, and in the same year chief-baron of the exchequer in that country. While in this office he and his colleagues in the court were proceeded against to imprisonment by the Irish house of lords, for obeying an order of the British parliament, on an appeal from the chancery side of his court to that parliament, an obedience warranted by the Act 6, Geo. I., then in force, but afterwards repealed by 22, Geo. III.—(See Flood, Henry). Soon after this, he returned to England and passed through the offices first in 1722 of baron, and then in 1725 chief baron of exchequer in England. He was also a commissioner of the great seal in 1725. He died in the year 1726, and was buried at Bath. There was a monument erected to his memory in the Temple church, London. In the lawyer's library of the last century, Gilbert's Treatises—some with, others without his name—occupied a large space. Yet he never published any one of them in his lifetime, and was so diffident of their merit that he annexed as a condition to the gift of his MSS, that they should not be printed. His work on "Uses" was edited by Lord St. Leonards, 1811; his "Tenures," by the celebrated conveyancer Watkins, 1796; and his treatise on "Evidence," by Capel Lofft, who prefixed to it a memoir of his life. His general MS. collection furnished the statements for several articles in the so-called Bacon's Abridgment of the Law, fol.—S. H. G.
GILBERT, Nicolas Joseph Laurent, born in 1751; died in 1780. He early determined to devote himself to literature, refused lucrative employment, and supported himself by taking pupils. He also delivered lectures on literature, but had not the good fortune to attract an audience. He next published romances, pastorals, cantos, and projected epics also on royal marriages and funerals; then made a noise with satires; and at last made his name familiar with the coteries of Paris. He complained of fortune; but there always was some doubt whether he was quite in earnest, as he often seemed to be laughing behind his dramatic mask. He was given large pensions, and the legacies which he bequeathed prove him to have died rich; one was to a brother soldier, Bernadotte. His skull was fractured by a fall from his horse. He appeared for a while to have recovered; but mental disease supervened. He, however, was at times able to write, and some lines produced a little before his death, "Au Banquet de la Vie," are highly praised. His poems were first collected in 1788. Several editions of his works have since been published, all said to be very imperfect—J. A., D.
GILBERT, William, a distinguished physician and natural philosopher, who laid the foundations of the allied sciences of magnetism and electricity, was born in 1540 at Colchester. After studying at Cambridge, he devoted his attention to medicine, and travelled for some time on the continent to extend his knowledge. Obtaining the degree of M.D. from one of the foreign universities, he returned to England with a high reputation for learning, and established himself in London in medical practice. About the year 1573 he was elected a fellow of the College of Physicians, and he soon became so eminent in his profession that Queen Elizabeth appointed him her physician-in-ordinary, with a considerable pension. In the limited leisure allowed him by an extensive practice, Gilbert applied himself to the study of magnetism and electricity; and after seventeen years of intense labour and research, he published in 1600 his celebrated work, "De Magnete, magneticisque corporibus, et de magno magnete Tellure, Physiologia nova." The great expectations which had been formed of this work, both at home and abroad, were more than realized on its publication. Though nominally a treatise on the loadstone, it embraced also the kindred subject of electricity, and then for the first time were the two classes of phenomena, the magnetic and the electric, distinctly recognized as two emanations of a single fundamental force pervading all nature. It was only in 1819 that the truth of this bold speculation was established by Oersted's discovery of electro-magnetism; and the subsequent researches of Faraday, particularly his grand discovery of magneto-electricity, have drawn still closer the connection between the two sciences. Besides amber and tourmaline, Gilbert ascertained that a great variety of substances were capable of being electrically excited; and he first pointed out the fact that a moist state of the atmosphere was unfavourable to the production of electricity. He considered the earth itself to be a great magnet, an opinion now generally adopted, and his work on the magnet, taken as a whole, has been justly regarded as one of the most important contributions to physical science, presenting, as it did, a pure specimen of strictly inductive reasoning, though published some years anterior to the Novum Organon. It was indeed characterized by Lord Bacon as an instance of extravagant speculation founded on insufficient data; but this is a verdict indignantly repudiated by some of the highest modern authorities—Davy, Humboldt, and Whewell. "Lord Bacon," says Humboldt, "whose comprehensive views were unfortunately accompanied by very limited mathematical and physical knowledge, even for the age at which he lived, was very unjust to Gilbert;" and Whewell remarks that "Bacon showed his inferior aptitude for physical research in rejecting the Copernican doctrine, which William Gilbert adopted." On the death of Elizabeth in 1600, this eminent man who has justly been ranked with Galileo and others as one of the "practical reformers of the physical sciences," was continued in his office and pension by James I., but died in 1603. A work which he left behind him in manuscript, "De Mundo nostro sublunari, Philosophia Nova," was published by Boswell some years afterwards, but has excited less notice.—G. BL.
GILBERT (St.) of Sempringham, was born at the village of that name in Lincolnshire in the year 1083. After he had finished his studies, his father nominated him to the benefices of Sempringham and Tirington, of which he was patron. Alexander, bishop of Lincoln, ordained him priest. He founded at Sempringham, and endowed from his paternal property, a convent of nuns whom he placed under the rule of St. Benedict, and one of canons regular under the rule of St. Austin. The institution became so popular that St. Gilbert founded during his lifetime thirteen monasteries, nine for nuns and four for canons. His manner of life was exceedingly austere. His order was approved
