GHIKE
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GIBRALTAR
bronze statues of John the Baptist, St. Stephen and others. He died at Florence, Dec. i, 1455.
Qhike, Helen. See KOLTSOF-MASALSKI, PRINCESS.
Ghirlandajo (ger-lan-daryo), Domenico Corradi, nicknamed II Ghirlandajo (the garland-maker), an Italian painter, was born in 1449 at Florence. As a youth he was apprenticed to a maker of metal garlands, and it was not until his 3ist year that he became known as a painter. He painted mainly frescoes in his native city. He also painted, in the Sistine Chapel at Rome, the fresco Christ calling Peter and Andrew. Besides these, he executed some easel-pictures of great merit. His mosaic of the Annunciation in the Cathedral of Florence is especially celebrated. Michael Angelo for a time was one of his pupils. He died on Jan. n, 1494.
Giants' Causeway, a sort of natural pier or mole of basalt, in the form of columns, extending from the coast of Antrim, Ireland, into North Channel. It obtained its name from a legend that it was the commencement of a road to be built by giants across the channel to Scotland. It is part of an overlying mass of basalt, which covers almost the whole county of Antrim and the eastern part of Londonderry and appears in several remarkable beds, of which the Giants' Causeway is one. This remarkable bed is exposed for 300 yards, and forms an unequal pavement, formed of the tops of 40,000 vertical, closely-fitting columns, which in shape are chiefly six-sided, though examples may be found of five, seven, eight or nine sides.
Gib'bon Edward, the greatest of English historians, was born at Putney, near London, April 27, 1737. His own autobiography tells clearly the story of his life. A sickly childhood was followed by 14 months at Oxford, which he himself called the most idle and unprofitable months of his life. His adoption of the Roman Catholic faith barred him out of Oxford, but at Lausanne, on Lake Geneva, he again became a Protestant. Here he spent five years carrying out those private studies in French literature and in the Latin classics which, aided by his prodigious memory, made him a master of learning without a superior. In 1758 he returned to his father's house, and spent some time in the wandering life of a captain of grenadiers, and later visited Italy. "It was at Rome," he says, "as I sat musing in the midst of the capitol, while the barefooted friars were singing vespers in the temple of Jupiter, that the idea of writing the decline and fall of the city first started into my mind." He served for some time in parliament, and in 1776, after the labors of seven years and infinite care in its composition, he published the first volume of the Dec line and Fall of the Roman Empire,
Its success was immediate, but the attack which it contains upon Christianity provoked sharp criticism against the author. He again settled at Lausanne, where the six volumes of his great work were finished. His last years were not happy, and he died at London, Jan. 16, 1794. The great work of Gibbon will ever remain one of the masterpieces of history. His glowing imagination gives life and vigor to the stately march of the narrative. His one great fault was his failure to do justice to the moral grandeur of the early days of Christianity. See Walter Bagehot's Literary Studies and Morrison's monograph on Gibbon in Morley's English Men of Letters series.
Gibbons, James, one of the cardinals of the Roman Catholic church in the United States, was born at Baltimore, July 23, 1834, where he grad-uated at St. Mary's Seminary in 1857. In 1868 he was appointed bishop of Adra-myttium and first vicar-apostolic of North Carolina, where his work was marked with a thoroughness and success which led to his promotion to the see of Richmond in 1872. Here his zeal and ability were further demonstrated, and in 1877 he became coadjutor to Archbishop Bayley. On the death of the latter in the same year Bishop Gibbons became Archbishop of Baltimore. He presided at the plenary council of Baltimore in 1884, and Leo XIII, approving of the acts and decrees of this council, created him cardinal in 1886. In this high office he has shown the qualities of a wise and able prelate, and has gained wide influence, not only as a leading churchman, but as a thoroughly progressive and patriotic citizen. He is the author of The Faith of Our Fathers; Our Christian Heritage; and The Ambassador of Christ.
Gibraltar (jt-bral'tdr), a mass of rock in the southwest of Spain, at the end of a low, sandy peninsula which juts out on the Mediterranean. It is a crown-colony and garrison of Great Britain. It rises to a height of 1,408 feet, is three miles in length and three fourths of a mile in average breadth. Its western side is washed by the Bay of Gibraltar, and on the same side at the foot of the rock is the city of Gibraltar, which has a population of 24,701, including the garrison of between 5,000 and 6,000 men. At the northern base of the rock is the open space called the
CARDINAL GIBBONS
