,,._> GOLDONI seat near Venice. At the age. of 8 years he wrote a sort of comic drama, and at 13 played female part* on the stage at Perugia. He studied philosophy under the Dominicans at Rimini but deserted them to join a troop of comedians. His father, a physician, undertook to teach him his own profession, but he soon solicited an exchange from medicine to law. At 16 he was transferred from legal studies at Venice to a scholarship in the papal college at Pavia, with the design of fitting him for the church. Within a year he became accomplished in music, dancing, and fencing, and learned a little of civil and canonical law. At the close of the second year he descended the Ticino and the Po with a company of wits and men of pleasure, and arriving at Chioggia was called upon to preach. His attempt met with brilliant success, and he returned to Pavia with a repu- tation for eloquence. In the third year of his scholarship he composed a satire against the inhabitants of the town for an insult that they had offered to the students, and was expelled from the college. He resumed his studies of law, and in 1732 was admitted into the corps of advocates at Venice. He had already com- posed two comedies, and been manager of the theatre where they were produced, playing the principal parts himself; and while waiting for clients he published a medley of prose and verse under the title of Esperiema del passa- to, Vcutrologo delV avenire, &c. He soon after went to Milan, where his comic opera the " Venetian Gondolier " was produced and ap- plauded. In 1734 his tragedy of Belisario was played at Venice with overwhelming success. His second tragedy, Rosamonda, failed in the following year. After furnishing other pieces with various success to different strolling com- panies, he married in 1730, and began to write for the company of Sacchi at Venice with the design of gradually reforming the Italian thea- tre. His aims were to substitute human vices and follies for fantastic and frivolous adven- tures, to have the plays written in full instead of being only sketched by the author and in large part improvised by the actors, and to banish from the stage the traditional masks and costumes by which the Harlequin, Birghella, Pantalon, and other chief actors were distin- guished. In 1739 he was appointed Genoese consul at Venice, but after two years he again resumed his wandering life. At Rimini he was appointed director of the spectacles and amusements; he passed four months in Flor- ence, visited Siena, and was received with en- thusiasm at Pisa, where he resumed for a short time the practice of law, at the same time send- ing to Venice some of his most successful corn- In 1747 he returned to Venice, deter- mined to devote himself to the stage ; and at the close of the first season he had raised the theatre to which he was attached to a superior- ity over its rivals, and during the second year pro, hired 18 new pieces of three acts each. The excessive labor injured his health, and to GOLDSCHMIDT indemnify himself he began to publish his com- edies, contesting the right to do so with the manager. He had already written 120 pieces, when in 1761 he was invited to Paris, where after writing two years for the Italian theatre he was attached to the court as instructor of the daughters of the king in the Italian lan- guage, and after three years more was awarded a pension. He continued to produce comedies at intervals, the most successful of which was the Bourru lienfaisant. His last literary labor was writing his memoirs, which appeared first in French (Paris, 1787), and afterward in Italian (Venice, 1788) ; they are said by Gibbon to be more comical than his best comedies. The most striking characteristic of Goldoni as an author is his fertility, scarcely surpassed by that of Calderon and Lope de Vega. The best of his pieces are in the Venetian dialect, and his greatest merits are his theatrical skill, and the liveliness, piquancy, and humor with which he depicts the manners of all classes of society in Italy. Schlegel criticises him as deficient in depth of characterization and in novelty and richness of invention. Critical biographies of him have been written by Giovanni (Milan, 1821), Carrer (Venice, 1824), Gavi (Milan, 1826), and Meneghezzi (Milan, 1827). Among the editions of Goldoni's works may be men- tioned that of Venice in 44 vols. 8vo, l788-'95, and that of Lucca in 26 vols., 1809. GOLDSBOROUGH, Louis Maleshcrbes, an Ameri- can naval officer, born in Washington in 1805. He was appointed midshipman in 1812, and made lieutenant in 1825. During the Seminole war he commanded a company of mounted volunteers, and also an armed steamer. He was made commander in 1841 ; took part in the Mexican war, and was afterward senior naval officer of a joint army and navy com- mission on the Pacific coast. He became cap- tain in 1855, and from 1853 to 1857 was super- intendent of the naval academy at Annapolis. In 1861 he was placed in command of the naval part of Burnside's expedition to North Carolina. He was made rear admiral in 1862, commanded the European squadron in 1865-'7, and subsequently the Washington navy yard. GOLDSCHMIDT, Hermann, a German painter and astronomer, of Jewish descent, born in Frankfort, June 17, 1802, died at Fontaine- bleau, Sept. 11, 1866. He studied painting at Munich under Schnorr and Cornelius, and in 1836 established himself in Paris. Among his paintings are the "Cumsean Sibyl" (1844), an "Offering to Venus" (1845), "Cleopatra" and a "View of Rome" (1849), and the "Death of Romeo and Juliet" (1857). He began to devote himself to astronomy in 1847, and discovered 14 asteroids between 1852 and 1861. He also pointed out more than 10,000 stars that were wanting in the maps of the academy at Berlin, and in 1863 announced that he had observed six satellites or companion stars to Sirius, one of which had been discov- ered in the previous year by A Ivan Clark of
