vigorous Doric phraseology fast passing out of use even in country districts. In this novel Mr Galt used, for the first time, the term “ Utilitarian,” which has since become so intimately associated with the doctrines of John Stuart Mill and his followers (see Annals of the Parish, chap. xxxv., and a note by Mr Mill in Utilitarianism, chap. ii.). In Sir .lwlrew Wylie the hero entered London as a poor lad, but achieved remarkable success by his shrewd business quali- ties. The character is somewhat exaggerated, but exces- sively amusing. The Entafl was read thrice by Byron and Scott, and is the best of Galt’s longer novels. Leddy Grippy is a wonderful creation, and was considered by Byron equal to any female character in literature since Shakespeare’s time. The Provost, in which Provost Pawkie tells his own story, portrays inimitany the jobbery, bicker- ings, and selfseeking of municipal dignitaries in a quaint Scottish burgh. In Lawrie Todd Galt, by giving us the Scot in America, has accomplished a feat which Sir 1Valter never attempted. This novel exhibits more variety of style and a greater love of nature than his other books. The life of a settler is depicted with unerring pencil, and with an enthusiasm and imaginative power much more poetical than
any of the author's professed poems.Galt’s humour is broader and more contagious than Scott’s; and his pictures of the sleepy life of old Scottish towns are unrivalled in literature. He is generally called an imitator of Scott ; but the Annals of the Parish existed in MS. before ll'averley was published. As Galt is pre- eminently an illustrator of west-country Scottish life, his range may be said to be narrower than Scott’s; but within it he is supreme. It would be difficult to overrate the im- mense services which Galt has rendered alike to the history of the manners and to the history of the language of the Scottish people.
For further information about Galt, see his Autobiography; The Literary Life of John Galt; and a biographical memoir by his friend the late Dr Mair of Musselburgh, prefixed to The Annals of the Parish.
(t. gi.)
GALOIS, Evariste (1811–1832), an eminently original and profound French mathematician, born 26th October 1811, killed in a duel May 1832. A necrological notice by his friend M. Auguste Chevalier appeared in the Revue Encyclopéclique, September 1832, p. 744 ; and his collected works are published, Lionville, t. xi. (1846), pp. 381—444, about fifty of these pages being occupied by researches on the resolubility of algebraie equations by radicals. But these researches, crowning as it were the previous labours of Lagrange, Gauss, and Abel, have in a signal manner advanced the theory, and it is not too much to say that they are the foundation of all that has since been done, or is doing, in the subject. The fundamental notion consists in the establishment of a group of permutations of the roots of an equation, such that every function of the roots invariable by the substitutions of the group is rationally known, and reciprocally that every rationally determinable function of the roots is invariable by the substitutions of the groups ; some further explanation of the theorem, and in connexion with it an explanation of the notion of an adjoint radical, is given under Equation, No. 32. As part of the theory (but the investigation has a very high independent value as regards the Theory of Numbers, to which it properly belongs), Galois introduces the notion of the imaginary roots of an irreducible congruence of a degree superior to unity; i.e., such a congruence, F (x)_=_0 (mod. a prime number 7)), has no integer root; but what is done is to introduce a quantity i subjected to the condition of verify- ing the congruence in question, F(z')El (mod. p), which quantity i is an imaginary of an entirely new kind, occupy- ing in the theory of numbers a position analogous to that of — ~/ — 1 in algebra.
GALUPPI, Baldassarre (1706–1785), a musical com- poser, was born in 1 706, in the island of Burauo, near Venice. His father, a barber by profession, was a musical amateur, and prepared his son for the music school of Venice called Conservatorio degl’ Incurabili, where the great Lotti became his master. His first opera, written at the age of sixteen, was a failure ; but his comic opera named Dorimlu, produced seven years later, was a great success, and laid the founda- tion of the youthful composer’s fame. He was a prolific writer, and no less than seventy of his operas are enumer- ated, none of which, however, have kept the stage. Some of these were written for London, where Galuppi resided between 1741 and 1744, but his masterpiece in tragic opera was produeed at St Petersburg in 1766. The composer had been induced by liberal offers to accept a position as imperial conductor of music, and to leave his native country for Russia, where he lived in high honour at the court of the czar, and is said to have in return done much for the progress of his art in Russia by introducing amongst other things Italian church—music. In 1768 he left Russia, aml resumed his position as organist of the cathedral of St Mark at Venice, to which he had been appointed in 17 2, and which had been kept open for him during his absence. He died in 1785, and left 50,000 lire to the poor of Venice. His best comic opera bears the title I! momlo dellu 1mm. The libraries of Dresden and Vienna preserve several of his operas in MS. At Vienna also some of his works of sacred music may be found. Others are in Paris and Rome.
physiologist, after whom galvanism received its name, was born at Bologna, September 9, 1737. It was his wish in early life to enter the church, but by his parents he was educated for a medical career. At the university of Bologna, in which city he practised, he was in 1762 appointed public lecturer in anatomy, and soon gained repute as a skilled though not eloquent teacher, and, chiefly from his researches on the organs of hearing and genito-urinary tract of birds, as a comparative anatomist. His celebrated theory of animal electricity he enunciated in a treatise, “ De viribus electricitatis in motu musculari commentarins,” published in the 8th volume of the memoirs of the Institute of Sciences at Bologna in 1791, and separately at Modena in the follow- ing year, and elsewhere subsequently. The statement has frequently been repeated that, in 1786, Galvani had skinned some frogs to make broth for his wife, who was in delicate health; that the leg of one of these, on being accidentally touched by a scalpel which had lain near an electrical machine, was thrown into violent convulsions, and that it was thus that his attention was first directed to the relations of animal functions to electricity. From documents in the possession of;the Institute of Bologna, however, it appears that twenty years previous to the publication of his Com- mentary Galvani was already engaged in investigations as to the action of electricity upon the muscles of frogs. The observation that the suspension of certain of these animals on an iron railing by copper hooks caused twitching in the muscles of their legs led him to the invention of his metallic arc, the first experiment with which is described in the third part of the Commentary, wherein it is registered September 20, 1786. The are he constructed of two different metals, which, placed in contact the one with a nerve and the other with a muscle of a frog, caused contraction of the latter. In Galvani’s view the motions of the muscle were the result of the union, by means of the metallic arc, of its exterior or negative electrical charge with positive electricity which proceeded along the nerve from its inner substance. Volta, on the other hand, attributed them solely to the effect of electricity having its source in the junction of the two dis- similar metals of the arc, and regarded the nerve and muscle
simply as conductors. Galvani in one of his memoirs