← Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Gichtel, Johann" to "Glory" / Volume 12, Slice 1
Chapter 3
Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Gichtel, Johann" to "Glory" (part 3)
When a glacier originates upon a dome-shaped or a level surface the ice will deploy radially in all directions. When a snow-field is formed above steep valleys separated by high ridges the ice will flow downwards in long streams. If the valleys under the snow-fields are wide and shallow the resultant glaciers will broaden out and partially fill them, and in all cases, since the conditions of glacier formation are similar, the resultant form and the direction of motion will depend upon the amount of ice and the form of the surface over which the glacier flows. A glacier flowing down a narrow gorge to an open valley, or on to a plain, will spread at its foot into a fan-shaped lobe as the ice spreads outwards while moving downwards. An ice-cap is in the main thickest at the centre, and thins out at the edges. A valley glacier is thickest at some point between its source and its end, but nearer to its source than to its termination, but its thickness at various portions will depend upon the contour of the valley floor over which the glacier rides, and may reach many hundreds of feet. At its centre the Greenland ice-cap is estimated to be over 5000 ft. thick. In all cases the glacier ends where the waste of ice is greater than the supply, and since the relationship varies in different years, or cycles of years, the end of a glacier may advance or retreat in harmony with greater or less snow-fall or with cooler or hotter summers. There seems to be a cycle of inclusive contraction and expansion of from 35 to 40 or 50 years. At present the ends of the Swiss glaciers are cradled in a mass of moraine-stuff due to former extension of the glaciers, and investigations in India show that in some parts of the Himalayas the glaciers are retreating as they are in North America and even in the southern hemisphere (Nature, January 2, 1908, p. 201).
Movement.—The fact that a glacier moves is easily demonstrated; the cause of the movement is pressure upon a yielding mass; the nature of the movement is still under discussion. Rows of stakes or stones placed in line across a glacier are found to change their position with respect to objects on the bank and also with regard to each other. The posts in the centre of the ice-stream gradually move away from those at the side, proving that the centre moves faster than the sides. It has also been proved that the surface portions move more rapidly than the deeper layers and that the motion is slowest at the sides and bottom where friction is greatest.
The rate of motion past the same spot is not uniform. Heat accelerates it, cold arrests it, and the pressure of a large amount of water stimulates the flow. The rate of flow under the same conditions varies at different parts of the glacier directly as the thickness of ice, the steepness of slope and the smoothness of rocky floor. Generally speaking, the rate of motion depends upon the amount of ice that forms the “head” pressure, the slope of the under surface and of the upper surface, the nature of the floor, the temperature and the amount of water present in the ice. The ordinary rate of motion is very slow. In Switzerland it is from 1 or 2 in. to 4 ft. per day, in Alaska 7 ft., in Greenland 50 to 60 ft., and occasionally 100 ft. per day in the height of summer under exceptional conditions of quantity of ice and of water and slope. Measurements of Swiss glaciers show that near the ice foot where wastage is great there is very little movement, and observations upon the inland border of Greenland ice show that it is almost stationary over long distances. In many aspects the motion of a body of ice resembles that of a body of water, and an alpine glacier is often called an ice-river, since like a river it moves faster in the centre than at the sides and at the top faster than at the bottom. A glacier follows a curve in the same way as a river, and there appear to be ice swirls and eddies as well as an upward creep on shelving curves recalling many features of stream action. The rate of motion of both ice-stream and river is accelerated by quantity and steepness of slope and retarded by roughness of bed, but here the comparison ends, for temperature does not affect the rate of water motion, nor will a liquid crack into crevasses as a glacier does, or move upwards over an adverse slope as a glacier always does when there is sufficient “head” of ice above it. So that although in many respects ice behaves as a viscous fluid the comparison with such a fluid is not perfect. The cause of glacier motion must be based upon some more or less complex considerations. The flakes of snow are gradually transformed into granules because the points and angles of the original flakes melt and evaporate more readily than the more solid central portions, which become aggregated round some master flake that continues to grow in the névé at the expense of its smaller neighbours, and increases in size until finally the glacier ice is composed of a mass of interlocked crystalline granules, some as large as a walnut, closely compacted under pressure with the principal crystalline axes in various directions. In the upper portions of the glacier movement due to pressure probably takes place by the gliding of one granule over another. In this connexion it must be noted that pressure lowers the melting point of ice while tension raises it, and at all points of pressure there is therefore a tendency to momentary melting, and also to some evaporation due to the heat caused by pressure, and at the intermediate tension spaces between the points of pressure this resultant liquid and vapour will be at once re-frozen and become solid. The granular movement is thus greatly facilitated, while the body of ice remains in a crystalline solid condition. In this connexion it is well to remember that the pressure of the glacier upon its floor will have the same result, but the effect here is a mass-effect and facilitates the gliding of the ice over obstacles, since the friction produces heat and the pressure lowers the melting point, so that the two causes tend to liquefy the portion where pressure is greatest and so to “lubricate” the prominences and enable the glacier to slide more easily over them, while the liquid thus produced is re-frozen when the pressure is removed.
In polar regions of very low temperature a very considerable amount of pressure must be necessary before the ice granules yield to momentary liquefaction at the points of pressure, and this probably accounts for the extreme thickness of the Arctic and Antarctic ice-caps where the slopes are moderate, for although equally low temperatures are found in high Alpine snow-fields the slopes there are exceedingly steep and motion is therefore more easily produced.
Observations made upon the Greenland glaciers indicate a considerable amount of “shearing” movement in the lower portions of a glacier. Where obstacles in the bed of the glacier arrest the movement of the ice immediately above it, or where the lower portion of the glacier is choked by débris, the upper ice glides over the lower in shearing planes that are sometimes strongly marked by débris caught and pushed forwards along these planes of foliation. It must be remembered that there is a solid push from behind upon the lower portion of a glacier, quite different from the pressure of a body of water upon any point, for the pressure of a fluid is equal in all directions, and also that this push will tend to set the crystalline granules in positions in which their crystalline axes are parallel along the gliding planes. The production of gliding planes is in some cases facilitated by the descent into the glacier of water melted during summer, where it expands in freezing and pushes the adjacent ice away from it, forming a surface along which movement is readily established.
If under all circumstances the glacier melted under pressure at the bottom, glacial abrasion would be nearly impossible, since every small stone and fragment of rock would rotate in a liquid shell as the ice moved forward, but since the pressure is not always sufficient to produce melting, the glacier sometimes remains dry at its base; rock fragments are held firmly; and a dry glacier may thus become a graving tool of enormous power. Whatever views may be adopted as to the causes of glacier motion, the peculiar character of glacier ice as distinct from homogeneous river or pond ice must be kept in view, as well as the characteristic tendency of water to expand in freezing, the lowering of the melting point of ice under pressure, the raising of the melting point under tension, the production of gliding or shearing planes under pressure from above, the presence in summer of a considerable quantity of water in the lower portions of the glacier which are thus loosened, the cracking of ice (as into crevasses), under sudden strain, and the regelation of ice in contact. A result of this last process is that fissures are not permanent, but having been produced by the passage of ice over an obstruction, they subsequently become healed when the ice proceeds over a flatter bed. Finally it must be remembered that although glacier ice behaves in some sense like a viscous fluid its condition is totally different, since “a glacier is a crystalline rock of the purest and simplest type, and it never has other than the crystalline state.”
Characteristics.—The general appearance of a glacier varies according to its environment of position and temperature. The upper portion is hidden by névé and often by freshly fallen snow, and is smooth and unbroken. During the summer, when little snow falls, the body of the glacier moves away from the snow-field and a gaping crevasse of great depth is usually established called the bergschrund, which is sometimes taken as the upper limit of the glacier. The glacier as it moves down the valley may become “loaded” in various ways. Rock-falls send periodical showers of stones upon it from the heights, and these are spread out into long lines at the glacier sides as the ice moves downwards carrying the rock fragments with it. These are the “lateral moraines.” When two or more glaciers descending adjacent valleys converge into one glacier one or more sides of the higher valleys disappear, and the ice that was contained in several valleys is now carried by one. In the simplest case where two valleys converge into one the two inner lateral moraines meet and continue to stream down the larger valley as one “median moraine.” Where several valleys meet there are several such parallel median moraines, and so long as the ice remains unbroken these will be carried upon the surface of the glacier and finally tipped over the end. There is, however, differential heating of rock and ice, and if the stones carried are thin they tend to sink into the ice because they absorb heat readily and melt the ice under them. Dust has the same effect and produces “dust wells” that honeycomb the upper surface of the ice with holes into which the dust sinks. If the moraine rocks are thick they prevent the ice under them from melting in sunlight, and isolated blocks often remain supported upon ice-pillars in the form of ice tables, which finally collapse, so that such rocks may be scattered out of the line of the moraine. As the glacier descends into the lower valleys it is more strongly heated, and surface streams are established in consequence that flow into channels caused by unequal melting of the ice and finally plunge into crevasses. These crevasses are formed by strains established as the central parts drag away from the sides of the glacier and the upper surface from the lower, and more markedly by the tension due to a sudden bend in the glacier caused by an inequality in its bed which must be over-ridden. These crevasses are developed at right angles to the strain and often produce intersecting fissures in several directions. The morainic material is gradually dispersed by the inequalities produced, and is further distributed by the action of superficial streams until the whole surface is strewn with stones and débris, and presents, as in the lower portions of the Mer de Glace, an exceedingly dirty appearance. Many blocks of stone fall into the gaping crevasses and much loose rock is carried down as “englacial material” in the body of the glacier. Some of it reaches the bottom and becomes part of the “ground moraine” which underlies the glacier, at least from the bergschrund to the “snout,” where much of it is carried away by the issuing stream and spread finally on to the plains below. It appears that a very considerable amount of degradation is caused under the bergschrund by the mass of ice “plucking” and dragging great blocks of rock from the side of the mountain valley where the great head of ice rests in winter and whence it begins to move in summer. These blocks and many smaller fragments are carried downwards wedged in the ice and cause powerful abrasion upon the rocky floor, rasping and scoring the channel, producing conspicuous striae, polishing and rounding the rock surfaces, and grinding the contained fragments as well as the surface over which it passes into small fragments and fine powder, from which “boulder clay” or “till” is finally produced. Emerging, then, from the snow-field as pure granular ice the glacier gradually becomes strewn and filled with foreign material, not only from above but also, as is very evident in some Greenland glaciers, occasionally from below by masses of fragments that move upwards along gliding planes, or are forced upwards by slow swirls in the ice itself.
As a glacier is a very brittle body any abrupt change in gradient will produce a number of crevasses, and these, together with those produced by dragging strains, will frequently wedge the glacier into a mass of pinnacles or séracs that may be partially healed but are usually evident when the melting end of the glacier emerges suddenly from a steep valley. Here the streams widen the weaker portions and the moraine rocks fall from the end to produce the “terminal” moraine, which usually lies in a crescentic heap encircling the glacier snout, whence it can only be moved by a further advance of the glacier or by the ordinary slow process of atmospheric denudation.
In cases where no rock falls upon the surface there is a considerable amount of englacial material due to upturning either over accumulated ground débris or over structural inequalities in the rock floor. This is well seen at the steep sides and ends of Greenland glaciers, where material frequently comes to the surface of the melting ice and produces median and lateral moraines, besides appearing in enormous “eyes” surrounded in the glacial body by contorted and foliated ice and sometimes producing heaps and embankments as it is pushed out at the end of the melting ice.
The environment of temperature requires consideration. At the upper or dorsal portion of the glacier there is a zone of variable (winter and summer) temperature, beneath which, if the ice is thick enough, there is a zone of constant temperature which will be about the mean annual temperature of the region of the snow-field. Underlying this there is a more or less constant ventral or ground temperature, depending mainly upon the internal heat of the earth, which is conducted to the under surface of the glacier where it slowly melts the ice, the more readily because the pressure lowers the melting point considerably, so that streams of water run constantly from beneath many glaciers, adding their volume to the springs which issue from the rock. The middle zone of constant temperature is wedge-shaped in “alpine” glaciers, the apex pointing downwards to the zone of waste. The upper zone of variable temperature is thinnest in the snow-field where the mean temperature is lowest, and entirely dominant in the snout end of the glacier where the zone of constant temperature disappears. Two temperature wedges are thus superposed base to point, the one being thickest where the other is thinnest, and both these lie upon the basal film of temperature where the escaping earth-heat is strengthened by that due to friction and pressure. The cold wave of winter may pass right through a thin glacier, or the constant temperature may be too low to permit of the ice melting at the base, in which cases the glacier is “dry” and has great eroding power. But in the lower warmer portions water running through crevasses will raise the temperature, and increase the strength of the downward heat wave, while the mean annual temperature being there higher, the combined result will be that the glacier will gradually become “wet” at the base and have little eroding power, and it will become more and more wet as it moves down the lower valley zone of ice-waste, until at last the balance is reached between waste and supply and the glacier finally disappears.
If the mean annual temperature be 20° F., and the mean winter temperature be −12° F., as in parts of Greenland, all the ice must be considerably below the melting point, since the pressure of ice a mile in depth lowers the melting point only to 30° F., and the earth-heat is only sufficient to melt ¼ in. of ice in a year. Therefore in these regions, and in snow-fields and high glaciers with an equal or lower mean temperature than 20° F., the glacier will be “dry” throughout, which may account for the great eroding power stated to exist near the bergschrund in glaciers of an alpine type, which usually have their origin on precipitous slopes.
A considerable amount of ice-waste takes place by water-drainage, though much is the result of constant evaporation from the ice surface. The lower end of a glacier is in summer flooded by streams of water that pour along cracks and plunge into crevasses, often forming “pot-holes” or moulins where stones are swirled round in a glacial “mill” and wear holes in the solid rock below. Some of these streams issue in a spout half way up the glacier’s end wall, but the majority find their way through it and join the water running along the glacier floor and emerging where the glacier ends in a large glacial stream.
Results of Glacial Action.—A glacier is a degrading and an aggrading agent. Much difference of opinion exists as to the potency of a glacier to alter surface features, some maintaining that it is extraordinarily effective, and considering that a valley glacier forms a pronounced cirque at the region of its origin and that the cirque is gradually cut backward until a long and deep valley is formed (which becomes evident, as in the Rocky Mountains, in an upper valley with “reversed grade” when the glacier disappears), and also that the end of a glacier plunging into a valley or a fjord will gouge a deep basin at its region of impact. The Alaskan and Norwegian fjords and the rock basins of the Scottish lochs are adduced as examples. Other writers maintain that a glacier is only a modifying and not a dominant agent in its effects upon the land-surface, considering, for example, that a glacier coming down a lateral valley will preserve the valley from the atmospheric denudation which has produced the main valley over which the lateral valley “hangs,” a result which the believers in strong glacial action hold to be due to the more powerful action of the main glacier as contrasted with the weaker action of that in the lateral valley. Both the advocates and the opponents of strenuous ice action agree that a V-shaped valley of stream erosion is converted to a U-shaped valley of glacial modification, and that rock surfaces are rounded into roches moutonnées, and are grooved and striated by the passage of ice shod with fragments of rock, while the subglacial material is ground into finer and finer fragments until it becomes mud and “rock-flour” as the glacier proceeds. In any case striking results are manifest in any formerly glaciated region. The high peaks rise into pinnacles, and ridges with “house-roof” structure, above the former glacier, while below it the contours are all rounded and typically subdued. A landscape that was formerly completely covered by a moving ice-cap has none but these rounded features of dome-shaped hills and U-shaped valleys that at least bear evidence to the great modifying power that a glacier has upon a landscape.
There is no conflict of opinion with regard to glacial aggradation and the distribution of superglacial, englacial and subglacial material, which during the active existence of a glacier is finally distributed by glacial streams that produce very considerable alluviation. In many regions which were covered by the Pleistocene ice-sheet the work of the glacier was arrested by melting before it was half done. Great deposits of till and boulder clay that lay beneath the glaciers were abandoned in situ, and remain as an unsorted mixture of large boulders, pebbles and mingled fragments, embedded in clay or sand. The lateral, median and terminal moraines were stranded where they sank as the ice disappeared, and together with perched blocks (roches perchées) remain as a permanent record of former conditions which are now found to have existed temporarily in much earlier geological times. In glaciated North America lateral moraines are found that are 500 to 1000 ft. high and in northern Italy 1500 to 2000 ft. high. The surface of the ground in all these places is modified into the characteristic glaciated landscape, and many formerly deep valleys are choked with glacial débris either completely changing the local drainage systems, or compelling the reappearing streams to cut new channels in a superposed drainage system. Kames also and eskers (q.v.) are left under certain conditions, with many puzzling deposits that are clearly due to some features of ice-work not thoroughly understood.
See L. Agassiz, Études sur les glaciers (Neuchâtel, 1840) and Nouvelles Études ... (Paris, 1847); N. S. Shaler and W. M. Davis, Glaciers (Boston, 1881); A. Penck, Die Begletscherung der deutschen Alpen (Leipzig, 1882); J. Tyndall, The Glaciers of the Alps (London, 1896); T. G. Bonney, Ice-Work, Past and Present (London, 1896); I. C. Russell, Glaciers of North America (Boston, 1897); E. Richter, Neue Ergebnisse und Probleme der Gletscherforschung (Vienna, 1899); F. Forel, Essai sur les variations périodiques des glaciers (Geneva, 1881 and 1900); H. Hess, Die Gletscher (Brunswick, 1904).
(E. C. Sp.)
GLACIS, in military engineering (see Fortification and Siegecraft), an artificial slope of earth in the front of works, so constructed as to keep an assailant under the fire of the defenders to the last possible moment. On the natural ground-level, troops attacking any high work would be sheltered from its fire when close up to it; the ground therefore is raised to form a glacis, which is swept by the fire of the parapet. More generally, the term is used to denote any slope, natural or artificial, which fulfils the above requirements.
GLADBACH, the name of two towns in Germany distinguished as Bergisch-Gladbach and München-Gladbach.
1. Bergisch-Gladbach is in Rhenish Prussia, 8 m. N.E. of Cologne by rail. Pop. (1905) 13,410. It possesses four large paper mills and among its other industries are paste-board, powder, percussion caps, nets and machinery. Ironstone, peat and lime are found in the vicinity. The town has four Roman Catholic churches and one Protestant. The Stundenthalshöhe, a popular resort, is in the neighbourhood, and near Gladbach is Altenberg, with a remarkably fine church, built for the Cistercian abbey at this place.
2. München-Gladbach, also in Rhenish Prussia, 16 m. W.S.W. of Düsseldorf on the main line of railway to Aix-la-Chapelle. Pop. (1885) 44,230; (1905) 60,714. It is one of the chief manufacturing places in Rhenish Prussia, its principal industries being the spinning and weaving of cotton, the manufacture of silks, velvet, ribbon and damasks, and dyeing and bleaching. There are also tanneries, tobacco manufactories, machine works and foundries. The town possesses a fine park and has statues of the emperor William I. and of Prince Bismarck. There are ten Roman Catholic churches here, among them being the beautiful minster, with a Gothic choir dating from 1250, a nave dating from the beginning of the 13th century and a crypt of the 8th century. The town has two hospitals, several schools, and is the headquarters of important insurance societies. Gladbach existed before the time of Charlemagne, and a Benedictine monastery was founded near it in 793. It was thus called München-Gladbach or Monks’ Gladbach, to distinguish it from another town of the same name. The monastery was suppressed in 1802. It became a town in 1336; weaving was introduced here towards the end of the 18th century, and having belonged for a long time to the duchy of Juliers it came into the possession of Prussia in 1815.
See Strauss, Geschichte der Stadt München-Gladbach (1895); and G. Eckertz, Das Verbrüderungs und Todtenbuch der Abtei Gladbach (1881).
GLADDEN, WASHINGTON (1836- ), American Congregational divine, was born in Pottsgrove, Pennsylvania, on the 11th of February 1836. He graduated at Williams College in 1859, preached in churches in Brooklyn, Morrisania (New York City), North Adams, Massachusetts, and Springfield, Massachusetts, and in 1882 became pastor of the First Congregational Church of Columbus, Ohio. He was an editor of the Independent in 1871-1875, and a frequent contributor to it and other periodicals. He consistently and earnestly urged in pulpit and press the need of personal, civil and, particularly, social righteousness, and in 1900-1902 was a member of the city council of Columbus. Among his many publications, which include sermons, occasional addresses, &c., are: Plain Thoughts on the Art of Living (1868); Workingmen and their Employers (1876); The Christian Way (1877); Things New and Old (1884); Applied Christianity (1887); Tools and the Man—Property and Industry under the Christian Law (1893); The Church and the Kingdom (1894), arguing against a confusion and misuse of these two terms; Seven Puzzling Bible Books (1897); How much is Left of the Old Doctrines (1899); Social Salvation (1901); Witnesses of the Light (1903); the William Belden Noble Lectures (Harvard), being addresses on Dante, Michelangelo, Fichte, Hugo, Wagner and Ruskin; The New Idolatry (1905); Christianity and Socialism (1906), and The Church and Modern Life (1908). In 1909 he published his Recollections.
GLADIATORS (from Lat. gladius, sword), professional combatants who fought to the death in Roman public shows. That this form of spectacle, which is almost peculiar to Rome and the Roman provinces, was originally borrowed from Etruria is shown by various indications. On an Etruscan tomb discovered at Tarquinii there is a representation of gladiatorial games; the slaves employed to carry off the dead bodies from the arena wore masks representing the Etruscan Charon; and we learn from Isidore of Seville (Origines, x.) that the name for a trainer of gladiators (lanista) is an Etruscan word meaning butcher or executioner. These gladiatorial games are evidently a survival of the practice of immolating slaves and prisoners on the tombs of illustrious chieftains, a practice recorded in Greek, Roman and Scandinavian legends, and traceable even as late as the 19th century as the Indian suttee. Even at Rome they were for a long time confined to funerals, and hence the older name for gladiators was bustuarii; but in the later days of the republic their original significance was forgotten, and they formed as indispensable a part of the public amusements as the theatre and the circus.
The first gladiators are said, on the authority of Valerius Maximus (ii. 4. 7), to have been exhibited at Rome in the Forum Boarium in 264 B.C. by Marcus and Decimus Brutus at the funeral of their father. On this occasion only three pairs fought, but the taste for these games spread rapidly, and the number of combatants grew apace. In 174 Titus Flamininus celebrated his father’s obsequies by a three-days’ fight, in which 74 gladiators took part. Julius Caesar engaged such extravagant numbers for his aedileship that his political opponents took fright and carried a decree of the senate imposing a certain limit of numbers, but notwithstanding this restriction he was able to exhibit no less than 300 pairs. During the later days of the republic the gladiators were a constant element of danger to the public peace. The more turbulent spirits among the nobility had each his band of gladiators to act as a bodyguard, and the armed troops of Clodius, Milo and Catiline played the same part in Roman history as the armed retainers of the feudal barons or the condottieri of the Italian republics. Under the empire, notwithstanding sumptuary enactments, the passion for the arena steadily increased. Augustus, indeed, limited the shows to two a year, and forbade a praetor to exhibit more than 120 gladiators, yet allusions in Horace (Sat. ii. 3. 85) and Persius (vi. 48) show that 100 pairs was the fashionable number for private entertainments; and in the Marmor Ancyranum the emperor states that more than 10,000 men had fought during his reign. The imbecile Claudius was devoted to this pastime, and would sit from morning till night in his chair of state, descending now and then to the arena to coax or force the reluctant gladiators to resume their bloody work. Under Nero senators and even well-born women appeared as combatants; and Juvenal (viii. 199) has handed down to eternal infamy the descendant of the Gracchi who appeared without disguise as a retiarius, and begged his life from the secutor, who blushed to conquer one so noble and so vile. Titus, whom his countrymen surnamed the Clement, ordered a show which lasted 100 days; and Trajan, in celebration of his triumph over Decebalus, exhibited 5000 pairs of gladiators. Domitian at the Saturnalia of A.D. 90 arranged a battle between dwarfs and women. Even women of high birth fought in the arena, and it was not till A.D. 200 that the practice was forbidden by edict. How widely the taste for these sanguinary spectacles extended throughout the Roman provinces is attested by monuments, inscriptions and the remains of vast amphitheatres. From Britain to Syria there was not a town of any size that could not boast its arena and annual games. After Italy, Gaul, North Africa and Spain were most famous for their amphitheatres; and Greece was the only Roman province where the institution never thoroughly took root.
Gladiators were commonly drawn either from prisoners of war, or slaves or criminals condemned to death. Thus in the first class we read of tattooed Britons in their war chariots, Thracians with their peculiar bucklers and scimitars, Moors from the villages round Atlas and negroes from central Africa, exhibited in the Colosseum. Down to the time of the empire only greater malefactors, such as brigands and incendiaries, were condemned to the arena; but by Caligula, Claudius and Nero this punishment was extended to minor offences, such as fraud and peculation, in order to supply the growing demand for victims. For the first century of the empire it was lawful for masters to sell their slaves as gladiators, but this was forbidden by Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius. Besides these three regular classes, the ranks were recruited by a considerable number of freedmen and Roman citizens who had squandered their estates and voluntarily took the auctoramentum gladiatorium, by which for a stated time they bound themselves to the lanista. Even men of birth and fortune not seldom entered the lists, either for the pure love of fighting or to gratify the whim of some dissolute emperor; and one emperor, Commodus, actually appeared in person in the arena.
Gladiators were trained in schools (ludi) owned either by the state or by private citizens, and though the trade of a lanista was considered disgraceful, to own gladiators and let them out for hire was reckoned a legitimate branch of commerce. Thus Cicero, in his letters to Atticus, congratulates his friend on the good bargain he had made in purchasing a band, and urges that he might easily recoup himself by consenting to let them out twice. Men recruited mainly from slaves and criminals, whose lives hung on a thread, must have been more dangerous characters than modern galley slaves or convicts; and, though highly fed and carefully tended, they were of necessity subject to an iron discipline. In the school of gladiators discovered at Pompeii, of the sixty-three skeletons buried in the cells many were in irons. But hard as was the gladiators’ lot,—so hard that special precautions had to be taken to prevent suicide,—it had its consolations. A successful gladiator enjoyed far greater fame than any modern prize-fighter or athlete. He was presented with broad pieces, chains and jewelled helmets, such as may be seen in the museum at Naples; poets like Martial sang his prowess; his portrait was multiplied on vases, lamps and gems; and high-born ladies contended for his favours. Mixed, too, with the lowest dregs of the city, there must have been many noble barbarians condemned to the vile trade by the hard fate of war. There are few finer characters in Roman history than the Thracian Spartacus, who, escaping with seventy of his comrades from the school of Lentulus at Capua, for three years defied the legions of Rome; and after Antony’s defeat at Actium, the only part of his army that remained faithful to his cause were the gladiators whom he had enrolled at Cyzicus to grace his anticipated victory.
There were various classes of gladiators, distinguished by their arms or modes of fighting. The Samnites fought with the national weapons—a large oblong shield, a vizor, a plumed helmet and a short sword. The Thraces had a small round buckler and a dagger curved like a scythe; they were generally pitted against the Mirmillones, who were armed in Gallic fashion with helmet, sword and shield, and were so called from the fish (μορμύλος or μορμύρος) which served as the crest of their helmet. In like manner the Retiarius was matched with the Secutor: the former had nothing on but a short tunic or apron, and sought to entangle his pursuer, who was fully armed, with the cast-net (jaculum) that he carried in his right hand; and if successful, he despatched him with the trident (tridens, fuscina) that he carried in his left. We may also mention the Andabatae who are generally believed to have fought on horseback and wore helmets with closed vizors; the Dimachaeri of the later empire, who carried a short sword in each hand; the Essedarii, who fought from chariots like the ancient Britons; the Hoplomachi, who wore a complete suit of armour; and the Laquearii, who tried to lasso their antagonists.
Gladiators also received special names according to the time or circumstances in which they exercised their calling. The Bustuarii have already been mentioned; the Catervarii fought, not in pairs, but in bands; the Meridiani came forward in the middle of the day for the entertainment of those spectators who had not left their seats; the Ordinarii fought only in pairs, in the regular way; the Fiscales were trained and supported at the expense of the imperial treasury; the Paegniarii used harmless weapons, and their exhibition was a sham one; the Postulaticii were those whose appearance was asked as a favour from the giver of the show, in addition to those already exhibited.
The shows were announced some days before they took place by bills affixed to the walls of houses and public buildings, copies of which were also sold in the streets. These bills gave the names of the chief pairs of competitors, the date of the show, the name of the giver and the different kinds of combats. The spectacle began with a procession of the gladiators through the arena, after which their swords were examined by the giver of the show. The proceedings opened with a sham fight (praelusio, prolusio) with wooden swords and javelins. The signal for real fighting was given by the sound of the trumpet, those who showed fear being driven on to the arena with whips and red-hot irons. When a gladiator was wounded, the spectators shouted Habet (he is wounded); if he was at the mercy of his adversary, he lifted up his forefinger to implore the clemency of the people, with whom (in the later times of the republic) the giver left the decision as to his life or death. If the spectators were in favour of mercy, they waved their handkerchiefs; if they desired the death of the conquered gladiator, they turned their thumbs downwards. The reward of victory consisted of branches of palm, sometimes of money. Gladiators who had exercised their calling for a long time, or such as displayed special skill and bravery, were presented with a wooden sword (rudis), and discharged from further service.
Both the estimation in which gladiatorial games were held by Roman moralists, and the influence that they exercised upon the morals and genius of the nation, deserve notice. The Roman was essentially cruel, not so much from spite or vindictiveness as from callousness and defective sympathies. This element of inhumanity and brutality must have been deeply ingrained in the national character to have allowed the games to become popular, but there can be no doubt that it was fed and fostered by the savage form which their amusements took. That the sight of bloodshed provokes a love of bloodshed and cruelty is a commonplace of morals. To the horrors of the arena we may attribute in part, not only the brutal treatment of their slaves and prisoners, but the frequency of suicide among the Romans. On the other hand, we should be careful not to exaggerate the effects or draw too sweeping inferences from the prevalence of this degrading amusement. Human nature is happily illogical; and we know that many of the Roman statesmen who gave these games, and themselves enjoyed these sights of blood, were in every other department of life irreproachable—indulgent fathers, humane generals and mild rulers of provinces. In the present state of society it is difficult to conceive how a man of taste can have endured to gaze upon a scene of human butchery. Yet we should remember that it is not so long since bear-baiting was prohibited in England, and we are only now attaining that stage of morality in respect of cruelty to animals that was reached in the 5th century, by the help of Christianity, in respect of cruelty to men. We shall not then be greatly surprised if hardly one of the Roman moralists is found to raise his voice against this amusement, except on the score of extravagance. Cicero in a well-known passage commends the gladiatorial games as the best discipline against the fear of death and suffering that can be presented to the eye. The younger Pliny, who perhaps of all Romans approaches nearest to our ideal of a cultured gentleman, speaks approvingly of them. Marcus Aurelius, though he did much to mitigate their horrors, yet in his writings condemns the monotony rather than the cruelty. Seneca is indeed a splendid exception, and his letter to Lentulus is an eloquent protest against this inhuman sport. But it is without a parallel till we come to the writings of the Christian fathers, Tertullian, Lactantius, Cyprian and Augustine. In the Confessions of the last there occurs a narrative which is worth quoting as a proof of the strange fascination which the games exercised even on a religious man and a Christian. He tells us how his friend Alipius was dragged against his will to the amphitheatre, how he strove to quiet his conscience by closing his eyes, how at some exciting crisis the shouts of the whole assembly aroused his curiosity, how he looked and was lost, grew drunk with the sight of blood, and returned again and again, knowing his guilt yet unable to abstain. The first Christian emperor was persuaded to issue an edict abolishing gladiatorial games (325), yet in 404 we read of an exhibition of gladiators to celebrate the triumph of Honorius over the Goths, and it is said that they were not totally extinct in the West till the time of Theodoric.
Gladiators formed admirable models for the sculptor. One of the finest pieces of ancient sculpture that has come down to us is the “Wounded Gladiator” of the National Museum at Naples. The so-called “Fighting Gladiator” of the Borghese collection, now in the Museum of the Louvre, and the “Dying Gladiator” of the Capitoline Museum, which inspired the famous stanza of Childe Harold, have been pronounced by modern antiquaries to represent, not gladiators, but warriors. In this connexion we may mention the admirable picture of Gérome which bears the title, “Ave, Caesar, morituri te salutant.”
The attention of archaeologists has been recently directed to the tesserae of gladiators. These tesserae, of which about sixty exist in various museums, are small oblong tablets of ivory or bone, with an inscription on each of the four sides. The first line contains a name in the nominative case, presumably that of the gladiator; the second line a name in the genitive, that of the patronus or dominus; the third line begins with the letters SP (for spectatus = approved), which shows that the gladiator had passed his preliminary trials; this is followed by a day of a Roman month; and in the fourth line are the names of the consuls of a particular year.
Authorities.—All needful information on the subject will be found in L. Friedländer’s Darstellungen aus der Sittengeschichte Roms, (part ii, 6th ed., 1889), and in the section by him on “The Games” in Marquardt’s Römische Staatsverwaltung, iii. (1885) p. 554; see also article by G. Lafaye in Daremberg and Saglio, Dictionnaire des antiquités. See also F. W. Ritschl, Tesserae gladiatoriae (1864) and P. J. Meier, De gladiatura Romana quaestiones selectae (1881). The articles by Lipsius on the Saturnalia and amphitheatrum in Graevius, Thesaurus antiquitatum Romanarum, ix., may still be consulted with advantage.
See A. E. Housman on the passage in Classical Review (November 1904).
A different account is given by Mayor on Juvenal iii. 36, who says: “Those who wished the death of the conquered gladiator turned their thumbs towards their breasts, as a signal to his opponents to stab him; those who wished him to be spared, turned their thumbs downwards, as a signal for dropping the sword.”
GLADIOLUS, a genus of monocotyledonous plants, belonging to the natural order Iridaceae. They are herbaceous plants growing from a solid fibrous-coated bulb (or corm), with long narrow plaited leaves and a terminal one-sided spike of generally bright-coloured irregular flowers. The segments of the limb of the perianth are very unequal, the perianth tube is curved, funnel-shaped and widening upwards, the segments equalling or exceeding the tube in length. There are about 150 known species, a large number of which are South African, but the genus extends into tropical Africa, forming a characteristic feature of the mountain vegetation, and as far north as central Europe and western Asia. One species G. illyricus (sometimes regarded as a variety of G. communis) is found wild in England, in the New Forest and the Isle of Wight. Some of the species have been cultivated for a long period in English flower-gardens, where both the introduced species and the modern varieties bred from them are very ornamental and popular. G. segetum has been cultivated since 1596, and G. byzantinus since 1629, while many additional species were introduced during the latter half of the 18th century. One of the earlier of the hybrids originated in gardens was the beautiful G. Colvillei, raised in the nursery of Mr Colville of Chelsea in 1823 from G. tristis fertilized by G. cardinalis. In the first decade of the 19th century, however, the Hon. and Rev. W. Herbert had successfully crossed the showy G. cardinalis with the smaller but more free-flowering G. blandus, and the result was the production of a race of great beauty and fertility. Other crosses were made with G. tristis, G. oppositiflorus, G. hirsutus, G. alatus and G. psittacinus; but it was not till after the production of G. gandavensis that the gladiolus really became a general favourite in gardens. This fine hybrid was raised in 1837 by M. Bedinghaus, gardener to the duc d’Aremberg, at Enghien, crossing G. psittacinus and G. cardinalis. There can, however, be little doubt that before the gandavensis type had become fairly fixed the services of other species were brought into force, and the most likely of these were G. oppositiflorus (which shows in the white forms), G. blandus and G. ramosus. Other species may also have been used, but in any case the gandavensis gladiolus, as we now know it, is the result of much crossing and inter-crossing between the best forms as they developed (J. Weathers, Practical Guide to Garden Plants). Since that time innumerable varieties have appeared only to sink into oblivion upon being replaced by still finer productions.
The modern varieties of gladioli have almost completely driven the natural species out of gardens, except in botanical collections. The most gorgeous groups—in addition to the gandavensis type—are those known under the names of Lemoinei, Childsi, nanceianus and brenchleyensis. The last-named was raised by a Mr Hooker at Brenchley in 1848, and although quite distinct in appearance from gandavensis, it undoubtedly had that variety as one of its parents. Owing to the brilliant scarlet colour of the flowers, this is always a great favourite for planting in beds. The Lemoinei forms originated at Nancy, in France, by fertilizing G. purpureo-auratus with pollen from G. gandavensis, the first flower appearing in 1877, and the plants being put into commerce in 1880. The Childsi gladioli first appeared in 1882, having been raised at Baden-Baden by Herr Max Leichtlin from the best forms of G. gandavensis and G. Saundersi. The flowers of the best varieties are of great size and substance, often measuring 7 to 9 in. across, while the range of colour is marvellous, with shades of grey, purple, scarlet, salmon, crimson, rose, white, pink, yellow, &c., often beautifully mottled and blotched in the throat. The plants are vigorous in growth, often reaching a height of 4 to 5 ft. G. nanceianus was raised at Nancy by MM. Lemoine and were first put into commerce in 1889. Next to the Childsi group they are the most beautiful, and have the blood of the best forms of G. Saundersi and G. Lemoinei in their veins. The plants are quite as hardy as the gandavensis hybrids, and the colours of the flowers are almost as brilliant and varied in hue as those of the Childsi section.
A deep and rather stiff sandy loam is the best soil for the gladiolus, and this should be trenched up in October and enriched with well-decomposed manure, consisting partly of cow dung, the manure being disposed altogether below the corms, a layer at the bottom of the upper trench, say 9 in. from the surface, and another layer at double that depth. The corms should be planted in succession at intervals of two or three weeks through the months of March, April and May; about 3 to 5 in. deep and at least 1 ft. apart, a little pure soil or sand being laid over each before the earth is closed in about them, an arrangement which may be advantageously followed with bulbous plants generally. In hot summer weather they should have a good mulching of well-decayed manure, and, as soon as the flower spikes are produced, liquid manure may occasionally be given them with advantage.
The gladiolus is easily raised from seeds, which should be sown in March or April in pots of rich soil placed in slight heat, the pots being kept near the glass after they begin to grow, and the plants being gradually hardened to permit their being placed out-of-doors in a sheltered spot for the summer. Modern growers often grow the seeds in the open in April on a nicely prepared bed in drills about 6 in. apart and ½ in. deep, covering them with finely sifted gritty mould. The seed bed is then pressed down evenly and firmly, watered occasionally and kept free from weeds during the summer. In October they will have ripened off, and must be taken out of the soil, and stored in paper bags in a dry room secure from frost. They will have made little bulbs from the size of a hazel nut downwards, according to their vigour. In the spring they should be planted like the old bulbs, and the larger ones will flower during the season, while the smaller ones must be again harvested and planted out as before. The time occupied from the sowing of the seed until the plant attains its full strength is from three to four years. The approved sorts, which are identified by name, are multiplied by means of bulblets or offsets or “spawn,” which form around the principal bulb or corm; but in this they vary greatly, some kinds furnishing abundant increase and soon becoming plentiful, while others persistently refuse to yield offsets. The stately habit and rich glowing colours of the modern gladioli render them exceedingly valuable as decorative plants during the late summer months. They are, moreover, very desirable and useful flowers for cutting for the purpose of room decoration, for while the blossoms themselves last fresh for some days if cut either early in the morning or late in the evening, the undeveloped buds open in succession, if the stalks are kept in water, so that a cut spike will go on blooming for some time.
GLADSHEIM (Old Norse Gladsheimr), in Scandinavian mythology, the region of joy and home of Odin. Valhalla, the paradise whither the heroes who fell in battle were escorted, was situated there.
GLADSTONE, JOHN HALL (1827-1902), English chemist, was born at Hackney, London, on the 7th of March 1827. From childhood he showed great aptitude for science; geology was his favourite subject, but since this in his father’s opinion did not afford a career of promise, he devoted himself to chemistry, which he studied under Thomas Graham at University College, London, and Liebig at Giessen, where he graduated as Ph.D. in 1847. In 1850 he became chemical lecturer at St Thomas’s hospital, and three years later was elected a fellow of the Royal Society at the unusually early age of twenty-six. From 1858 to 1861 he served on the royal commission on lighthouses, and from 1864 to 1868 was a member of the war office committee on gun-cotton. From 1874 to 1877 he was Fullerian professor of chemistry at the Royal Institution, in 1874 he was chosen first president of the Physical Society, and in 1877-1879 he was president of the Chemical Society. In 1897 the Royal Society recognized his fifty years of scientific work by awarding him the Davy medal. Dr Gladstone’s researches were large in number and wide in range, dealing to a great extent with problems that lie on the border-line between physics and chemistry. Thus a number of his inquiries, and those not the least important, were partly chemical, partly optical. He determined the optical constants of hundreds of substances, with the object of discovering whether any of the elements possesses more than one atomic refraction. Again, he investigated the connexion between the optical behaviour, density and chemical composition of ethereal oils, and the relation between molecular magnetic rotation and the refraction and dispersion of nitrogenous compounds. So early as 1856 he showed the importance of the spectroscope in chemical research, and he was one of the first to notice that the Fraunhofer spectrum at sunrise and sunset differs from that at midday, his conclusion being that the earth’s atmosphere must be responsible for many of its absorption lines, which indeed were subsequently traced to the oxygen and water-vapour in the air. Another portion of his work was of an electro-chemical character. His studies, with Alfred Tribe (1840-1885) and W. Hibbert, in the chemistry of the storage battery, have added largely to our knowledge, while the “copper-zinc couple,” with which his name is associated together with that of Tribe, among other things, afforded a simple means of preparing certain organo-metallic compounds, and thus promoted research in branches of organic chemistry where those bodies are especially useful. Mention may also be made of his work on phosphorus, on explosive substances, such as iodide of nitrogen, gun-cotton and the fulminates, on the influence of mass in the process of chemical reactions, and on the effect of carbonic acid on the germination of plants. Dr Gladstone always took a great interest in educational questions, and from 1873 to 1894 he was a member of the London School Board. He was also a member of the Christian Evidence Society, and an early supporter of the Young Men’s Christian Association. His death occurred suddenly in London on the 6th of October 1902.
GLADSTONE, WILLIAM EWART (1809-1898), British statesman, was born on the 29th of December 1809 at No. 62 Rodney Street, Liverpool. His forefathers were Gledstanes of Gledstanes, in the upper ward of Lanarkshire; or in Scottish phrase, Gledstanes of that Ilk. As years went on their estates dwindled, and by the beginning of the 17th century Gledstanes was sold. The adjacent property of Arthurshiel remained in the hands of the family for nearly a hundred years longer. Then the son of the last Gledstanes of Arthurshiel removed to Biggar, where he opened the business of a maltster. His grandson, Thomas Gladstone (for so the name was modified), became a corn-merchant at Leith. He happened to send his eldest son, John, to Liverpool to sell a cargo of grain there, and the energy and aptitude of the young man attracted the favourable notice of a leading corn-merchant of Liverpool, who recommended him to settle in that city. Beginning his commercial career as a clerk in his patron’s house, John Gladstone lived to become one of the merchant-princes of Liverpool, a baronet and a member of parliament. He died in 1851 at the age of eighty-seven. Sir John Gladstone was a pure Scotsman, a Lowlander by birth and descent. He married Anne, daughter of Andrew Robertson of Stornoway, sometime provost of Dingwall. Provost Robertson belonged to the Clan Donachie, and by this marriage the robust and business-like qualities of the Lowlander were blended with the poetic imagination, the sensibility and fire of the Gael.
John and Anne Gladstone had six children. The fourth son, William Ewart, was named after a merchant of Liverpool who was his father’s friend. He seems to have been a remarkably good child, and much beloved at home. In 1818 or 1819 Mrs Gladstone, who belonged to the Evangelical school, said in a letter to a friend, that she believed her son William had been “truly converted to God.” After some tuition at the vicarage of Seaforth, a watering-place near Liverpool, the boy went to Eton in 1821. His tutor was the Rev. Henry Hartopp Knapp. His brothers, Thomas and Robertson Gladstone, were already at Eton. Thomas was in the fifth form, and William, who was placed in the middle remove of the fourth form, became his eldest brother’s fag. He worked hard at his classical lessons, and supplemented the ordinary business of the school by studying mathematics in the holidays. Mr Hawtrey, afterwards headmaster, commended a copy of his Latin verses, and “sent him up for good”; and this experience first led the young student to associate intellectual work with the ideas of ambition and success. He was not a fine scholar, in that restricted sense of the term which implies a special aptitude for turning English into Greek and Latin, or for original versification in the classical languages. “His composition,” we read, “was stiff,” but he was imbued with the substance of his authors; and a contemporary who was in the sixth form with him recorded that “when there were thrilling passages of Virgil or Homer, or difficult passages in the Scriptores Graeci, to translate, he or Lord Arthur Hervey was generally called up to edify the class with quotation or translation.” By common consent he was pre-eminently God-fearing, orderly and conscientious. “At Eton,” said Bishop Hamilton of Salisbury, “I was a thoroughly idle boy, but I was saved from some worse things by getting to know Gladstone.” His most intimate friend was Arthur Hallam, by universal acknowledgment the most remarkable Etonian of his day; but he was not generally popular or even widely known. He was seen to the greatest advantage, and was most thoroughly at home, in the debates of the Eton Society, learnedly called “The Literati,” and vulgarly “Pop,” and in the editorship of the Eton Miscellany. He left Eton at Christmas 1827. He read for six months with private tutors, and in October 1828 went up to Christ Church, where, in the following year, he was nominated to a studentship.
At Oxford Gladstone read steadily, but not laboriously, till he neared his final schools. During the latter part of his undergraduate career he took a brief but brilliant share in the proceedings of the Union, of which he was successively secretary and president. He made his first speech on the 11th of February 1830. Brought up in the nurture and admonition of Canning, he defended Roman Catholic emancipation, and thought the duke of Wellington’s government unworthy of national confidence. He opposed the removal of Jewish disabilities, arguing, we are told by a contemporary, “on the part of the Evangelicals,” and pleaded for the gradual extinction, in preference to the immediate abolition, of slavery. But his great achievement was a speech against the Whig Reform Bill. One who heard this famous discourse says: “Most of the speakers rose, more or less, above their usual level, but when Mr Gladstone sat down we all of us felt that an epoch in our lives had occurred. It certainly was the finest speech of his that I ever heard.” Bishop Charles Wordsworth said that his experience of Gladstone at this time “made me (and I doubt not others also) feel no less sure than of my own existence that Gladstone, our then Christ Church undergraduate, would one day rise to be prime minister of England.” In December 1831 Gladstone crowned his career by taking a double first-class. Lord Halifax (1800-1885) used to say, with reference to the increase in the amount of reading requisite for the highest honours: “My double-first must have been a better thing than Peel’s; Gladstone’s must have been better than mine.”
Now came the choice of a profession. Deeply anxious to make the best use of his life, Gladstone turned his thoughts to holy orders. But his father had determined to make him a politician. Quitting Oxford in the spring of 1832, Gladstone spent six months in Italy, learning the language and studying art. In the following September he was suddenly recalled to England, to undertake his first parliamentary campaign. The fifth duke of Newcastle was one of the chief potentates of the High Tory party. His frank claim to “do what he liked with his own” in the representation of Newark has given him a place in political history. But that claim had been rudely disputed by the return of a Radical lawyer at the election of 1831. The Duke was anxious to obtain a capable candidate to aid him in regaining his ascendancy over the rebellious borough. His son, Lord Lincoln, had heard Gladstone’s speech against the Reform Bill delivered in the Oxford Union, and had written home that “a man had uprisen in Israel.” At his suggestion the duke invited Gladstone to stand for Newark in the Tory interest against Mr Serjeant Wilde, afterwards Lord Chancellor Truro. The last of the Unreformed parliaments was dissolved on the 3rd of December 1832. Gladstone, addressing the electors of Newark, said that he was bound by the opinions of no man and no party, but felt it a duty to watch and resist that growing desire for change which threatened to produce “along with partial good a melancholy preponderance of mischief.” The first principle to which he looked for national salvation was, that the “duties of governors are strictly and peculiarly religious, and that legislatures, like individuals, are bound to carry throughout their acts the spirit of the high truths they have acknowledged.” The condition of the poor demanded special attention; labour should receive adequate remuneration; and he thought favourably of the “allotment of cottage grounds.” He regarded slavery as sanctioned by Holy Scripture, but the slaves ought to be educated and gradually emancipated. The contest resulted in his return at the head of the poll.
The first Reformed parliament met on the 29th of January 1833, and the young member for Newark took his seat for the first time in an assembly which he was destined to adorn, delight and astonish for more than half a century. His maiden speech was delivered on the 3rd of June in reply to what was almost a personal challenge. The colonial secretary, Mr Stanley, afterwards Lord Derby, brought forward a series of resolutions in favour of the extinction of slavery in the British colonies. On the first night of the debate Lord Howick, afterwards Lord Grey, who had been under-secretary for the Colonies, and who opposed the resolutions as proceeding too gradually towards abolition, cited certain occurrences on Sir John Gladstone’s plantation in Demerara to illustrate his contention that the system of slave-labour in the West Indies was attended by great mortality among the slaves. Gladstone in his reply—his first speech in the House—avowed that he had a pecuniary interest in the question, “and, if he might say so much without exciting suspicion, a still deeper interest in it as a question of justice, of humanity and of religion.” If there had recently been a high mortality on his father’s plantation, it was due to the age of the slaves rather than to any peculiar hardship in their lot. It was true that the particular system of cultivation practised in Demerara was more trying than some others; but then it might be said that no two trades were equally conducive to health. Steel-grinding was notoriously unhealthy, and manufacturing processes generally were less favourable to life than agricultural. While strongly condemning cruelty, he declared himself an advocate of emancipation, but held that it should be effected gradually, and after due preparation. The slaves must be religiously educated, and stimulated to profitable industry. The owners of emancipated slaves were entitled to receive compensation from parliament, because it was parliament that had established this description of property. “I do not,” said Gladstone, “view property as an abstract thing; it is the creature of civil society. By the legislature it is granted, and by the legislature it is destroyed.” On the following day King William IV. wrote to Lord Althorp: “The king rejoices that a young member has come forward in so promising a manner as Viscount Althorp states Mr W. E. Gladstone to have done.” In the same session Gladstone spoke on the question of bribery and corruption at Liverpool, and on the temporalities of the Irish Church. In the session of 1834 his most important performance was a speech in opposition to Hume’s proposal to throw the universities open to Dissenters.
On the 10th of November 1834 Lord Althorp succeeded to his father’s peerage, and thereby vacated the leadership of the House of Commons. The prime minister, Lord Melbourne, submitted to the king a choice of names for the chancellorship of the exchequer and leadership of the House of Commons; but his majesty announced that, having lost the services of Lord Althorp as leader of the House of Commons, he could feel no confidence in the stability of Lord Melbourne’s government, and that it was his intention to send for the duke of Wellington. The duke took temporary charge of affairs, but Peel was felt to be indispensable. He had gone abroad after the session, and was now in Rome. As soon as he could be brought back he formed an administration, and appointed Gladstone to a junior lordship of the treasury. Parliament was dissolved on the 29th of December. Gladstone was returned unopposed, this time in conjunction with the Liberal lawyer whom he had beaten at the last election. The new parliament met on the 19th of February 1835. The elections had given the Liberals a considerable majority. Immediately after the meeting of parliament Gladstone was promoted to the under-secretaryship for the colonies, where his official chief was Lord Aberdeen. The administration was not long-lived. On the 30th of March Lord John Russell moved a resolution in favour of an inquiry into the temporalities of the Irish Church, with the intention of applying the surplus to general education without distinction of religious creed. This was carried against ministers by a majority of thirty-three. On the 8th of April Sir Robert Peel resigned, and the under-secretary for the colonies of course followed his chief into private life.
Released from the labours of office, Gladstone, living in chambers in the Albany, practically divided his time between his parliamentary duties and study. Then, as always, his constant companions were Homer and Dante, and it is recorded that he read the whole of St Augustine, in twenty-two octavo volumes. He used to frequent the services at St James’s, Piccadilly, and Margaret chapel, since better known as All Saints’, Margaret Street. On the 20th of June 1837 King William IV. died, and Parliament, having been prorogued by the young queen in person, was dissolved on the 17th of the following month. Simply on the strength of his parliamentary reputation Gladstone was nominated, without his consent, for Manchester, and was placed at the bottom of the poll; but, having been at the same time nominated at Newark, was again returned. The year 1838 claims special note in a record of Gladstone’s life, because it witnessed the appearance of his famous work on The State in its Relations with the Church. He had left Oxford just before the beginning of that Catholic revival which has transfigured both the inner spirit and the outward aspect of the Church of England. But the revival was now in full strength. The Tracts for the Times were saturating England with new influences. The movement counted no more enthusiastic or more valuable disciple than Gladstone. Its influence had reached him through his friendships, notably with two Fellows of Merton—Mr James Hope, who became Mr Hope-Scott of Abbotsford, and the Rev. H. E. Manning, afterwards cardinal archbishop. The State in its Relations with the Church was his practical contribution to a controversy in which his deepest convictions were involved. He contended that the Church, as established by law, was to be “maintained for its truth,” and that this principle, if good for England, was good also for Ireland.
On the 25th of July 1839 Gladstone was married at Hawarden to Miss Catherine Glynne, sister, and in her issue heir, of Sir Stephen Glynne, ninth and last baronet of that name. In 1840 he published Church Principles considered in their Results.
Parliament was dissolved in June 1841. Gladstone was again returned for Newark. The general election resulted in a Tory majority of eighty. Sir Robert Peel became prime minister, and made the member for Newark vice-president of the Board of Trade. An inevitable change is from this time to be traced in the topics of Gladstone’s parliamentary speaking. Instead of discoursing on the corporate conscience of the state and the endowments of the Church, the importance of Christian education, and the theological unfitness of the Jews to sit in parliament, he is solving business-like problems about foreign tariffs and the exportation of machinery; waxing eloquent over the regulation of railways, and a graduated tax on corn; subtle on the monetary merits of half-farthings, and great in the mysterious lore of quassia and cocculus indicus. In 1842 he had a principal hand in the preparation of the revised tariff, by which duties were abolished or sensibly diminished in the case of 1200 duty-paying articles. In defending the new scheme he spoke incessantly, and amazed the House by his mastery of detail, his intimate acquaintance with the commercial needs of the country, and his inexhaustible power of exposition. In 1843 Gladstone, succeeding Lord Ripon as president of the Board of Trade, became a member of the cabinet at the age of thirty-three. He has recorded the fact that “the very first opinion which he ever was called upon to give in cabinet” was an opinion in favour of withdrawing the bill providing education for children in factories, to which vehement opposition was offered by the Dissenters, on the ground that it was too favourable to the Established Church.
At the opening of the session of 1845 the government, in pursuance of a promise made to Irish members that they would deal with the question of academical education in Ireland, proposed to establish non-sectarian colleges in that country and to make a large addition to the grant to the Roman Catholic College of Maynooth. Gladstone resigned office, in order, as he announced in the debate on the address, to form “not only an honest, but likewise an independent and an unsuspected judgment,” on the plan to be submitted by the government with respect to Maynooth. His subsequent defence of the proposed grant, on the ground that it would be improper and unjust to exclude the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland from a “more indiscriminating support” which the state might give to various religious beliefs, was regarded by men of less sensitive conscience as only proving that there had been no adequate cause for his resignation. Before he resigned he completed a second revised tariff, carrying considerably further the principles on which he had acted in the earlier revision of 1842.
In the autumn of 1845 the failure of the potato crop in Ireland threatened a famine, and convinced Sir Robert Peel that all restrictions on the importation of food must be at once suspended. He was supported by only three members of the cabinet, and resigned on the 5th of December. Lord John Russell, who had just announced his conversion to total and immediate repeal of the Corn Laws, declined the task of forming an administration, and on the 20th of December Sir Robert Peel resumed office. Lord Stanley refused to re-enter the government, and his place as secretary of state for the colonies was offered to and accepted by Gladstone. He did not offer himself for re-election at Newark, and remained outside the House of Commons during the great struggle of the coming year. It was a curious irony of fate which excluded him from parliament at this crisis, for it seems unquestionable that he was the most advanced Free Trader in Sir Robert Peel’s Cabinet. The Corn Bill passed the House of Lords on the 28th of June 1846, and on the same day the government were beaten in the House of Commons on an Irish Coercion Bill. Lord John Russell became prime minister, and Gladstone retired for a season into private life. Early in 1847 it was announced that one of the two members for the university of Oxford intended to retire at the general election, and Gladstone was proposed for the vacant seat. The representation of the university had been pronounced by Canning to be the most coveted prize of public life, and Gladstone himself confessed that he “desired it with an almost passionate fondness.” Parliament was dissolved on the 23rd of July 1847. The nomination at Oxford took place on the 29th of July, and at the close of the poll Sir Robert Inglis stood at the head, with Gladstone as his colleague.
The three years 1847, 1848, 1849 were for Gladstone a period of mental growth, of transition, of development. A change was silently proceeding, which was not completed for twenty years. “There have been,” he wrote in later days to Bishop Wilberforce, “two great deaths, or transmigrations of spirit, in my political existence—one, very slow, the breaking of ties with my original party.” This was now in progress. In the winter of 1850-1851 Gladstone spent between three and four months at Naples, where he learned that more than half the chamber of deputies, who had followed the party of Opposition, had been banished or imprisoned; that a large number, probably not less than 20,000, of the citizens had been imprisoned on charges of political disaffection, and that in prison they were subjected to the grossest cruelties. Having made careful investigations, Gladstone, on the 7th of April 1851, addressed an open letter to Lord Aberdeen, bringing an elaborate, detailed and horrible indictment against the rulers of Naples, especially as regards the arrangements of their prisons and the treatment of persons confined in them for political offences. The publication of this letter caused a wide sensation in England and abroad, and profoundly agitated the court of Naples. In reply to a question in the House of Commons, Lord Palmerston accepted and adopted Gladstone’s statement, expressed keen sympathy with the cause which he had espoused, and sent a copy of his letter to the queen’s representative at every court of Europe. A second letter and a third followed, and their effect, though for a while retarded, was unmistakably felt in the subsequent revolution which created a free and united Italy.
In February 1852 the Whig government was defeated on a Militia Bill, and Lord John Russell was succeeded by Lord Derby, formerly Lord Stanley, with Mr Disraeli, who now entered office for the first time, as chancellor of the exchequer and leader of the House of Commons. Mr Disraeli introduced and carried a makeshift budget, and the government tided over the session, and dissolved parliament on the 1st of July 1852. There was some talk of inducing Gladstone to join the Tory government, and on the 29th of November Lord Malmesbury dubiously remarked, “I cannot make out Gladstone, who seems to me a dark horse.” In the following month the chancellor of the exchequer produced his second budget. The government redeemed their pledge to do something for the relief of the agricultural interest by reducing the duty on malt. This created a deficit, which they repaired by doubling the duty on inhabited houses. The voices of criticism were heard simultaneously on every side. The debate waxed fast and furious. In defending his proposals Mr Disraeli gave full scope to his most characteristic gifts; he pelted his opponents right and left with sarcasms, taunts and epigrams. Gladstone delivered an unpremeditated reply, which has ever since been celebrated. Tradition says that he “foamed at the mouth.” The speech of the chancellor of the exchequer, he said, must be answered “on the moment.” It must be “tried by the laws of decency and propriety.” He indignantly rebuked his rival’s language and demeanour. He tore his financial scheme to ribbons. It was the beginning of a duel which lasted till death removed one of the combatants from the political arena. “Those who had thought it impossible that any impression could be made upon the House after the speech of Mr Disraeli had to acknowledge that a yet greater impression was produced by the unprepared reply of Mr Gladstone.” The House divided, and the government were left in a minority of nineteen. Lord Derby resigned.
The new government was a coalition of Whigs and Peelites. Lord Aberdeen became prime minister, and Gladstone chancellor of the exchequer. Having been returned again for the university of Oxford, he entered on the active duties of a great office for which he was pre-eminently fitted by an unique combination of financial, administrative and rhetorical gifts. His first budget was introduced on the 18th of April 1853. It tended to make life easier and cheaper for large and numerous classes; it promised wholesale remissions of taxation; it lessened the charges on common processes of business, on locomotion, on postal communication, and on several articles of general consumption. The deficiency thus created was to be met by a “succession-duty,” or application of the legacy-duty to real property; by an increase of the duty on spirits; and by the extension of the income-tax, at 5d. in the pound, to all incomes between £100 and £150. The speech in which these proposals were introduced held the House spellbound. Here was an orator who could apply all the resources of a burnished rhetoric to the elucidation of figures; who could sweep the widest horizon of the financial future, and yet stoop to bestow the minutest attention on the microcosm of penny stamps and post-horses. Above all, the chancellor’s mode of handling the income-tax attracted interest and admiration. It was a searching analysis of the financial and moral grounds on which the impost rested, and a historical justification and eulogy of it. Yet, great as had been the services of the tax at a time of national danger, Gladstone could not consent to retain it as a part of the permanent and ordinary finances of the country. It was objectionable on account of its unequal incidence, of the harassing investigation into private affairs which it entailed, and of the frauds to which it inevitably led. Therefore, having served its turn, it was to be extinguished in 1860. The scheme astonished, interested and attracted the country. The queen and Prince Albert wrote to congratulate the chancellor of the exchequer. Public authorities and private friends joined in the chorus of eulogy. The budget demonstrated at once its author’s absolute mastery over figures and the persuasive force of his expository gift. It established the chancellor of the exchequer as the paramount financier of his day, and it was only the first of a long series of similar performances, different, of course, in detail, but alike in their bold outlines and brilliant handling. Looking back on a long life of strenuous exertion, Gladstone declared that the work of preparing his proposals about the succession-duty and carrying them through Parliament was by far the most laborious task which he ever performed.
War between Great Britain and Russia was declared on the 27th of March 1854, and it thus fell to the lot of the most pacific of ministers, the devotee of retrenchment, and the anxious cultivator of all industrial arts, to prepare a war budget, and to meet as well as he might the exigencies of a conflict which had so cruelly dislocated all the ingenious devices of financial optimism. No amount of skill in the manipulation of figures, no ingenuity in shifting fiscal burdens, could prevent the addition of forty-one millions to the national debt, or could countervail the appalling mismanagement at the seat of war. Gladstone declared that the state of the army in the Crimea was a “matter for weeping all day and praying all night.” As soon as parliament met in January 1855 J. A. Roebuck, the Radical member for Sheffield, gave notice that he would move for a select committee “to inquire into the condition of our army before Sevastopol, and into the conduct of those departments of the government whose duty it has been to minister to the wants of that army.” On the same day Lord John Russell, without announcing his intention to his colleagues, resigned his office as president of the council sooner than attempt the defence of the government. Gladstone, in defending the government against Roebuck, rebuked in dignified and significant terms the conduct of men who, “hoping to escape from punishment, ran away from duty.” On the division on Mr Roebuck’s motion the government was beaten by the unexpected majority of 157.
Lord Palmerston became prime minister. The Peelites joined him, and Gladstone resumed office as chancellor of the exchequer. A shrewd observer at the time pronounced him indispensable. “Any other chancellor of the exchequer would be torn in bits by him.” The government was formed on the understanding that Mr Roebuck’s proposed committee was to be resisted. Lord Palmerston soon saw that further resistance was useless; his Peelite colleagues stuck to their text, and, within three weeks after resuming office, Gladstone, Sir James Graham and Mr Sidney Herbert resigned. Gladstone once said of himself and his Peelite colleagues, during the period of political isolation, that they were like roving icebergs on which men could not land with safety, but with which ships might come into perilous collision. He now applied himself specially to financial criticism, and was perpetually in conflict with the chancellor of the exchequer, Sir George Cornewall Lewis.
In 1858 Lord Palmerston was succeeded by Lord Derby at the head of a Conservative administration, and Gladstone accepted the temporary office of high commissioner extraordinary to the Ionian Islands. Returning to England for the session of 1859, he found himself involved in the controversy which arose over a mild Reform Bill introduced by the government. They were defeated on the second reading of the bill, Gladstone voting with them. A dissolution immediately followed, and Gladstone was again returned unopposed for the university of Oxford. As soon as the new parliament met a vote of want of confidence in the ministry was moved in the House of Commons. In the critical division which ensued Gladstone voted with the government, who were left in a minority. Lord Derby resigned. Lord Palmerston became prime minister, and asked Gladstone to join him as chancellor of the exchequer. To vote confidence in an imperilled ministry, and on its defeat to take office with the rivals who have defeated it, is a manœuvre which invites the reproach of tergiversation. But Gladstone risked the reproach, accepted the office and had a sharp tussle for his seat. He emerged from the struggle victorious, and entered on his duties with characteristic zeal. The prince consort wrote: “Gladstone is now the real leader in the House of Commons, and works with an energy and vigour altogether incredible.”
The budget of 1860 was marked by two distinctive features. It asked the sanction of parliament for the commercial treaty which Cobden had privately arranged with the emperor Napoleon, and it proposed to abolish the duty on paper. The French treaty was carried, but the abolition of the paper-duty was defeated in the House of Lords. Gladstone justly regarded the refusal to remit a duty as being in effect an act of taxation, and therefore as an infringement of the rights of the House of Commons. The proposal to abolish the paper-duty was revived in the budget of 1861, the chief proposals of which, instead of being divided, as in previous years, into several bills, were included in one. By this device the Lords were obliged to acquiesce in the repeal of the paper-duty.
During Lord Palmerston’s last administration, which lasted from 1859 to 1865, Gladstone was by far the most brilliant and most conspicuous figure in the cabinet. Except in finance, he was not able to accomplish much, for he was met and thwarted at every turn by his chief’s invincible hostility to change; but the more advanced section of the Liberal party began to look upon him as their predestined leader. In 1864, in a debate on a private member’s bill for extending the suffrage, he declared that the burden of proof lay on those “who would exclude forty-nine fiftieths of the working-classes from the franchise.” In 1865, in a debate on the condition of the Irish Church Establishment, he declared that the Irish Church, as it then stood, was in a false position, inasmuch as it ministered only to one-eighth or one-ninth of the whole community. But just in proportion as Gladstone advanced in favour with the Radical party he lost the confidence of his own constituents. Parliament was dissolved in July 1865, and the university elected Mr Gathorne Hardy in his place.
Gladstone at once turned his steps towards South Lancashire, where he was returned with two Tories above him. The result of the general election was to retain Lord Palmerston’s government in power, but on the 18th of October the old prime minister died. He was succeeded by Lord Russell, and Gladstone, retaining the chancellorship of the exchequer, became for the first time leader of the House of Commons. Lord Russell, backed by Gladstone, persuaded his colleagues to consent to a moderate Reform Bill, and the task of piloting this measure through the House of Commons fell to Gladstone. The speech in which he wound up the debate on the second reading was one of the finest, if not indeed the very finest, which he ever delivered. But it was of no practical avail. The government were defeated on an amendment in committee, and thereupon resigned. Lord Derby became prime minister, with Disraeli as chancellor of the exchequer and leader of the House of Commons. On the 18th of March 1867 the Tory Reform Bill, which ended in establishing Household Suffrage in the boroughs, was introduced, and was read a second time without a division. After undergoing extensive alterations in committee at the hands of the Liberals and Radicals, the bill became law in August.
At Christmas 1867 Lord Russell announced his final retirement from active politics, and Gladstone was recognized by acclamation as leader of the Liberal party. Nominally he was in Opposition; but his party formed the majority of the House of Commons, and could beat the government whenever they chose to mass their forces. Gladstone seized the opportunity to give effect to convictions which had long been forming in his mind. Early in the session he brought in a bill abolishing compulsory church-rates, and this passed into law. On the 16th of March, in a debate raised by an Irish member, he declared that in his judgment the Irish Church, as a State Church, must cease to exist. Immediately afterwards he embodied this opinion in a series of resolutions concerning the Irish Church Establishment, and carried them against the government. Encouraged by this triumph, he brought in a Bill to prevent any fresh appointments in the Irish Church, and this also passed the Commons, though it was defeated in the Lords. Parliament was dissolved on the 11th of November. A single issue was placed before the country—Was the Irish Church to be, or not to be, disestablished? The response was an overwhelming affirmative. Gladstone, who had been doubly nominated, was defeated in Lancashire, but was returned for Greenwich. He chose this moment for publishing a Chapter of Autobiography, in which he explained and justified his change of opinion with regard to the Irish Church.
On the 2nd of December Disraeli, who had succeeded Lord Derby as premier in the preceding February, announced that he and his colleagues, recognizing their defeat, had resigned without waiting for a formal vote of the new parliament. On the following day Gladstone was summoned to Windsor, and commanded by the queen to form an administration. The great task to which the new prime minister immediately addressed himself was the disestablishment of the Irish Church. The queen wrote to Archbishop Tait that the subject of the Irish Church “made her very anxious,” but that Mr Gladstone “showed the most conciliatory disposition.” “The government can do nothing that would tend to raise a suspicion of their sincerity in proposing to disestablish the Irish Church, and to withdraw all state endowments from all religious communions in Ireland; but, were these conditions accepted, all other matters connected with the question might, the queen thinks, become the subject of discussion and negotiation.” The bill was drawn and piloted on the lines thus indicated, and became law on the 26th of July. In the session of 1870 Gladstone’s principal work was the Irish Land Act, of which the object was to protect the tenant against eviction as long as he paid his rent, and to secure to him the value of any improvements which his own industry had made. In the following session Religious Tests in the universities were abolished, and a bill to establish secret voting was carried through the House of Commons. This was thrown out by the Lords, but became law a year later. The House of Lords threw out a bill to abolish the purchase of commissions in the army. Gladstone found that purchase existed only by royal sanction, and advised the queen to issue a royal warrant cancelling, on and after the 1st of November following, all regulations authorizing the purchase of commissions.
In 1873 Gladstone set his hand to the third of three great Irish reforms to which he had pledged himself. His scheme for the establishment of a university which should satisfy both Roman Catholics and Protestants met with general disapproval. The bill was thrown out by three votes, and Gladstone resigned. The queen sent for Disraeli, who declined to take office in a minority of the House of Commons, so Gladstone was compelled to resume. But he and his colleagues were now, in Disraelitish phrase, “exhausted volcanoes.” Election after election went wrong. The government had lost favour with the public, and was divided against itself. There were resignations and rumours of resignations. When the session of 1873 had come to an end Gladstone took the chancellorship of the exchequer, and, as high authorities contended, vacated his seat by doing so. The point was obviously one of vital importance; and we learn from Lord Selborne, who was lord chancellor at the time, that Gladstone “was sensible of the difficulty of either taking his seat in the usual manner at the opening of the session, or letting ... the necessary arrangements for business in the House of Commons be made in the prime minister’s absence. A dissolution was the only escape.” On the 23rd of January 1874 Gladstone announced the dissolution in an address to his constituents, declaring that the authority of the government had now “sunk below the point necessary for the due defence and prosecution of the public interest.” He promised that, if he were returned to power, he would repeal the income-tax. This bid for popularity failed, the general election resulting in a Tory majority of forty-six. Gladstone kept his seat for Greenwich, but was only second on the poll. Following the example of Disraeli in 1868, he resigned without meeting parliament.
For some years he had alluded to his impending retirement from public life, saying that he was “strong against going on in politics to the end.” He was now sixty-four, and his life had been a continuous experience of exhausting labour. On the 12th of March 1874 he informed Lord Granville that he could give only occasional attendance in the House of Commons during the current session, and that he must “reserve his entire freedom to divest himself of all the responsibilities of leadership at no distant date.” His most important intervention in the debates of 1874 was when he opposed Archbishop Tait’s Public Worship Bill. This was read a second time without a division, but in committee Gladstone enjoyed some signal triumphs over his late solicitor-general, Sir William Harcourt, who had warmly espoused the cause of the government and the bill. At the beginning of 1875 Gladstone carried into effect the resolution which he had announced a year before, and formally resigned the leadership of the Liberal party. He was succeeded by Lord Hartington, afterwards duke of Devonshire. The learned leisure which Gladstone had promised himself when released from official responsibility was not of long duration. In the autumn of 1875 an insurrection broke out in Bulgaria, and the suppression of it by the Turks was marked by massacres and outrages. Public indignation was aroused by what were known as the “Bulgarian atrocities,” and Gladstone flung himself into the agitation against Turkey with characteristic zeal. At public meetings, in the press, and in parliament he denounced the Turkish government and its champion, Disraeli, who had now become Lord Beaconsfield. Lord Hartington soon found himself pushed aside from his position of titular leadership. For four years, from 1876 to 1880, Gladstone maintained the strife with a courage, a persistence and a versatility which raised the enthusiasm of his followers to the highest pitch. The county of Edinburgh, or Midlothian, which he contested against the dominant influence of the duke of Buccleuch, was the scene of the most astonishing exertions. As the general election approached the only question submitted to the electors was—Do you approve or condemn Lord Beaconsfield’s foreign policy? The answer was given at Easter 1880, when the Liberals were returned by an overwhelming majority over Tories and Home Rulers combined. Gladstone was now member for Midlothian, having retired from Greenwich at the dissolution.
When Lord Beaconsfield resigned, the queen sent for Lord Hartington, the titular leader of the Liberals, but he and Lord Granville assured her that no other chief than Gladstone would satisfy the party. Accordingly, on the 23rd of April he became prime minister for the second time. His second administration, of which the main achievement was the extension of the suffrage to the agricultural labourers, was harassed by two controversies, relating to Ireland and Egypt, which proved disastrous to the Liberal party. Gladstone alienated considerable masses of English opinion by his efforts to reform the tenure of Irish land, and provoked the Irish people by his attempts to establish social order and to repress crime. A bill to provide compensation for tenants who had been evicted by Irish landlords passed the Commons, but was shipwrecked in the Lords, and a ghastly record of outrage and murder stained the following winter. A Coercion Bill and a Land Bill passed in 1881 proved unsuccessful. On the 6th of May 1882 the newly appointed chief secretary for Ireland, Lord Frederick Cavendish, and his under-secretary, Mr Burke, were stabbed to death in the Phoenix Park at Dublin. A new Crimes Act, courageously administered by Lord Spencer and Sir George Trevelyan, abolished exceptional crime in Ireland, but completed the breach between the British government and the Irish party in parliament.
The bombardment of the forts at Alexandria and the occupation of Egypt in 1882 were viewed with great disfavour by the bulk of the Liberal party, and were but little congenial to Gladstone himself. The circumstances of General Gordon’s untimely death awoke an outburst of indignation against those who were, or seemed to be, responsible for it. Frequent votes of censure were proposed by the Opposition, and on the 8th of June 1885 the government were beaten on the budget. Gladstone resigned. The queen offered him the dignity of an earldom, which he declined. He was succeeded by Lord Salisbury.
The general election took place in the following November. When it was over the Liberal party was just short of the numerical strength which was requisite to defeat the combination of Tories and Parnellites. A startling surprise was at hand. Gladstone had for some time been convinced of the expediency of conceding Home Rule to Ireland in the event of the Irish constituencies giving unequivocal proof that they desired it. His intentions were made known only to a privileged few, and these, curiously, were not his colleagues. The general election of 1885 showed that Ireland, outside Ulster, was practically unanimous for Home Rule. On the 17th of December an anonymous paragraph was published, stating that if Mr Gladstone returned to office he was prepared to “deal in a liberal spirit with the demand for Home Rule.” It was clear that if Gladstone meant what he appeared to mean, the Parnellites would support him, and the Tories must leave office. The government seemed to accept the situation. When parliament met they executed, for form’s sake, some confused manœuvres, and then they were beaten on an amendment to the address in favour of Municipal Allotments. On the 1st of February 1886 Gladstone became, for the third time, prime minister. Several of his former colleagues declined to join him, on the ground of their absolute hostility to the policy of Home Rule; others joined on the express understanding that they were only pledged to consider the policy, and did not fetter their further liberty of action. On the 8th of April Gladstone brought in his bill for establishing Home Rule, and eight days later the bill for buying out the Irish landlords. Meanwhile two members of his cabinet, feeling themselves unable to support these measures, resigned. Hostility to the bills grew apace. Gladstone was implored to withdraw them, or substitute a resolution in favour of Irish autonomy; but he resolved to press at least the Home Rule Bill to a second reading. In the early morning of the 8th of June the bill was thrown out by thirty. Gladstone immediately advised the queen to dissolve parliament. Her Majesty strongly demurred to a second general election within seven months; but Gladstone persisted, and she yielded. Parliament was dissolved on the 26th of June. In spite of Gladstone’s skilful appeal to the constituencies to sanction the principle of Home Rule, as distinct from the practical provisions of his late bill, the general election resulted in a majority of considerably over 100 against his policy, and Lord Salisbury resumed office. Throughout the existence of the new parliament Gladstone never relaxed his extraordinary efforts, though now nearer eighty than seventy, on behalf of the cause of self-government for Ireland. The fertility of argumentative resource, the copiousness of rhetoric, and the physical energy which he threw into the enterprise, would have been remarkable at any stage of his public life; continued into his eighty-fifth year they were little less than miraculous. Two incidents of domestic interest, one happy and the other sad, belong to that period of political storm and stress. On the 25th of July 1889 Gladstone celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of his marriage, and on the 4th of July 1891 his eldest son, William Henry, a man of fine character and accomplishments, died, after a lingering illness, in his fifty-second year.
The crowning struggle of Gladstone’s political career was now approaching its climax. Parliament was dissolved on the 28th of June 1892. The general election resulted in a majority of forty for Home Rule, heterogeneously composed of Liberals, Labour members and Irish. As soon as the new parliament met a vote of want of confidence in Lord Salisbury’s government was moved and carried. Lord Salisbury resigned, and on the 15th of August 1892 Gladstone kissed hands as first lord of the treasury. He was the first English statesman that had been four times prime minister. Parliament reassembled in January 1893. Gladstone brought in his new Home Rule Bill on the 13th of February. It passed the House of Commons, but was thrown out by the House of Lords on the second reading on the 8th of September 1893. Gladstone’s political work was now, in his own judgment, ended. He made his last speech in the House of Commons on the 1st of March 1894, acquiescing in some amendments introduced by the Lords into the Parish Councils Bill; and on the 3rd of March he placed his resignation in the queen’s hands. He never set foot again in the House of Commons, though he remained a member of it till the dissolution of 1895. He paid occasional visits to friends in London, Scotland and the south of France; but the remainder of his life was spent for the most part at Hawarden. He occupied his leisure by writing a rhymed translation of the Odes of Horace, and preparing an elaborately annotated edition of Butler’s Analogy and Sermons. He had also contemplated some addition to the Homeric studies which he had always loved, but this design was never carried into effect, for he was summoned once again from his quiet life of study and devotion to the field of public controversy. The Armenian massacres in 1894 and 1895 revived all his ancient hostility to “the governing Turk.” He denounced the massacres and their perpetrators at public meetings held at Chester on the 6th of August 1895, and at Liverpool on the 24th of September 1896. In March 1897 he recapitulated the hideous history in an open letter to the duke of Westminster.
But the end, though not yet apprehended, was at hand. Since his retirement from office Gladstone’s physical vigour, up to that time unequalled, had shown signs of impairment. Towards the end of the summer of 1897 he began to suffer from an acute pain, which was attributed to facial neuralgia, and in November he went to Cannes. In February 1898 he returned to England and went to Bournemouth. There he was informed that the pain had its origin in a disease which must soon prove fatal. He received the information with simple thankfulness, and only asked that he might die at home. On the 22nd of March he returned to Hawarden, and there he died on the 19th of May 1898. During the night of the 25th of May his body was conveyed from Hawarden to London and the coffin was placed on a bier in Westminster Hall. Throughout the 26th and 27th a vast train of people, officially estimated at 250,000, and drawn from every rank and class, moved in unbroken procession past the bier. On the 28th of May the coffin, preceded by the two Houses of Parliament and escorted by the chief magnates of the realm, was carried from Westminster Hall to Westminster Abbey. The heir-apparent and his son, the prime minister and the leader of the House of Commons, were among those who bore the pall. The body was buried in the north transept of the abbey, where, on the 19th of June 1900, Mrs Gladstone’s body was laid beside it.
Mr and Mrs Gladstone had four sons and four daughters, of whom one died in infancy. The eldest son, W. H. Gladstone (1840-1891), was a member of parliament for many years, and married the daughter of Lord Blantyre, his son William (b. 1885) inheriting the family estates. The fourth son, Herbert John (b. 1854), sat in parliament for Leeds from 1880 to 1910, and filled various offices, being home secretary 1905-1910; in 1910 he was created Viscount Gladstone, on being appointed governor-general of united South Africa. The eldest daughter, Agnes, married the Rev. E. C. Wickham, headmaster of Wellington, 1873-1893, and later Dean of Lincoln. Another daughter married the Rev. Harry Drew, rector of Hawarden. The youngest, Helen, was for some years vice-principal of Newnham College, Cambridge.
After a careful survey of Mr Gladstone’s life, enlightened by personal observation, it is inevitable to attempt some analysis of his character. First among his moral attributes must be placed his religiousness. From those early days when a fond mother wrote of him as having been “truly converted to God,” down to the verge of ninety years, he lived in the habitual contemplation of the unseen world, and regulated his private and public action by reference to a code higher than that of mere prudence or worldly wisdom. A second characteristic, scarcely less prominent than the first, was his love of power. His ambition had nothing in common with the vulgar eagerness for place and pay and social standing. Rather it was a resolute determination to possess that control over the machine of state which should enable him to fulfil without let or hindrance the political mission with which he believed that Providence had charged him. The love of power was supported by a splendid fearlessness. No dangers were too threatening for him to face, no obstacles too formidable, no tasks too laborious, no heights too steep. The love of power and the supporting courage were allied with a marked imperiousness. Of this quality there was no trace in his manner, which was courteous, conciliatory and even deferential; nor in his speech, which breathed an almost exaggerated humility. But the imperiousness showed itself in the more effectual form of action; in his sudden resolves, his invincible insistence, his recklessness of consequences to himself and his friends, his habitual assumption that the civilized world and all its units must agree with him, his indignant astonishment at the bare thought of dissent or resistance, his incapacity to believe that an overruling Providence would permit him to be frustrated or defeated. He had by nature what he himself called a “vulnerable temper and impetuous moods.” But so absolute was his lifelong self-mastery that he was hardly ever betrayed into saying that which, on cooler reflection, needed to be recalled. It was easy enough to see the “vulnerable temper” as it worked within, but it was never suffered to find audible expression. It may seem paradoxical, but it is true, to say that Mr Gladstone was by nature conservative. His natural bias was to respect things as they were. In his eyes, institutions, customs, systems, so long as they had not become actively mischievous, were good because they were old. It is true that he was sometimes forced by conviction or fate or political necessity to be a revolutionist on a large scale; to destroy an established Church; to add two millions of voters to the electorate; to attack the parliamentary union of the kingdoms. But these changes were, in their inception, distasteful to their author. His whole life was spent in unlearning the prejudices in which he was educated. His love of freedom steadily developed, and he applied its principles more and more courageously to the problems of government. But it makes some difference to the future of a democratic state whether its leading men are eagerly on the look-out for something to revolutionize, or approach a constitutional change by the gradual processes of conviction and conversion.
Great as were his eloquence, his knowledge and his financial skill, Gladstone was accustomed to say of himself that the only quality in which, so far as he knew, he was distinguished from his fellow-men was his faculty of concentration. Whatever were the matter in hand, he so concentrated himself on it, and absorbed himself in it, that nothing else seemed to exist for him.
A word must be said about physical characteristics. In his prime Gladstone was just six feet high, but his inches diminished as his years increased, and in old age the unusual size of his head and breadth of his shoulders gave him a slightly top-heavy appearance. His features were strongly marked; the nose trenchant and hawk-like, and the mouth severely lined. His flashing eyes were deep-set, and in colour resembled the onyx with its double band of brown and grey. His complexion was of an extreme pallor, and, combined with his jet-black hair, gave in earlier life something of an Italian aspect to his face. His dark eyebrows were singularly flexible, and they perpetually expanded and contracted in harmony with what he was saying. He held himself remarkably upright, and even from his school-days at Eton had been remarked for the rapid pace at which he habitually walked. His voice was a baritone, singularly clear and far-reaching. In the Waverley Market at Edinburgh, which is said to hold 20,000 people, he could be heard without difficulty; and as late as 1895 he said to the present writer: “What difference does it make to me whether I speak to 400 or 4000 people?” His physical vigour in old age earned him the popular nickname of the Grand Old Man.
Lord Morley of Blackburn’s Life of Gladstone was published in 1903.
(G. W. E. R.)
GLADSTONE, a seaport of Clinton county, Queensland, Australia, 328 m. by rail N.E. of Brisbane. Pop. (1901) 1566. It possesses a fine, well-sheltered harbour reputed one of the best in Queensland, at the mouth of the river Boyne. Gold, manganese, copper and coal are found in the neighbourhood. Gladstone, founded in 1847, became a municipality in 1863.
See J. F. Hogan, The Gladstone Colony (London, 1898).
GLAGOLITIC, an early Slavonic alphabet: also the liturgy written therein, and the people (Dalmatians and Roman Catholic Montenegrins) among whom it has survived by special licence of the Pope (see Slavs for table of letters).
GLAIR (from Fr. glaire, probably from Lat. clarus, clear, bright), the white of an egg, and hence a term used for a preparation made of this and used, in bookbinding and in gilding, to retain the gold and as a varnish. The adjective “glairy” is used of substances having the viscous and transparent consistency of the white of an egg.
GLAISHER, JAMES (1809-1903); English meteorologist and aeronaut, was born in London on the 7th of April 1809. After serving for a few years on the Ordnance Survey of Ireland, he acted as an assistant at the Cambridge and Greenwich observatories successively, and when the department of meteorology and magnetism was formed at the latter, he was entrusted with its superintendence, which he continued to exercise for thirty-four years, until his retirement from the public service. In 1845 he published his well-known dew-point tables, which have gone through many editions. In 1850 he established the Meteorological Society, acting as its secretary for many years, and in 1866 he assisted in the foundation of the Aeronautical Society of Great Britain. He was appointed a member of the royal commission on the warming and ventilation of dwellings in 1875, and for twelve years from 1880 acted as chairman of the executive committee of the Palestine Exploration Fund. But his name is best known in connexion with the series of balloon ascents which he made between 1862 and 1866, mostly in company with Henry Tracey Coxwell. Many of these ascents were arranged by a committee of the British Association, of which he was a member, and were strictly scientific in character, the object being to carry out observations on the temperature, humidity, &c., of the atmosphere at high elevations. In one of them, that which took place at Wolverhampton on the 5th of September 1862, Glaisher and his companion attained the greatest height that had been reached by a balloon carrying passengers. As no automatically recording instruments were available, and Glaisher was unable to read the barometer at the highest point owing to loss of consciousness, the precise altitude can never be known, but it is estimated at about 7 m. from the earth. He died on the 7th of February 1903 at Croydon.
GLAMIS, a village and parish of Forfarshire, Scotland, 5¾ m. W. by S. of Forfar by the Caledonian railway. Pop. of parish (1901) 1351. The name is sometimes spelled Glammis and the i is mute: it is derived from the Gaelic, glamhus, “a wide gap,” “a vale.” The chief object in the village is the sculptured stone, traditionally supposed to be a memorial of Malcolm II., although Fordun’s statement that the king was slain in the castle is now rejected. About a mile from the station stands Glamis Castle, the seat of the earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne, a fine example of the Scottish Baronial style, enriched with certain features of the French château. In its present form it dates mostly from the 17th century, but the original structure was as old as the 11th century, for Macbeth was Thane of Glamis. Several of the early Scots kings, especially Alexander III., used it occasionally as a residence. Robert II. bestowed the thanedom on John Lyon, who had married the king’s second daughter by Elizabeth Mure and was thus the founder of the existing family. Patrick Lyon became hostage to England for James I. in 1424. When, in 1537, Janet Douglas, widow of the 6th Lord Glamis, was burned at Edinburgh as a witch, for conspiring to procure James V.’s death, Glamis was forfeited to the crown, but it was restored to her son six years later when her innocence had been established. The 3rd earl of Strathmore entertained the Old Chevalier and eighty of his immediate followers in 1715. After discharging the duties of hospitality the earl joined the Jacobites at Sheriffmuir and fell on the battlefield. Sir Walter Scott spent a night in the “hoary old pile” when he was about twenty years old, and gives a striking relation of his experiences in his Demonology and Witchcraft. The hall has an arched ceiling and several historical portraits, including those of Claverhouse, Charles II. and James II. of England. At Cossans, in the parish of Glamis, there is a remarkable sculptured monolith, and other examples occur at the Hunters’ Hill and in the old kirkyard of Eassie.
GLAMORGANSHIRE (Welsh Morganwg), a maritime county occupying the south-east corner of Wales, and bounded N.W. by Carmarthenshire, N. by Carmarthenshire and Breconshire, E. by Monmouthshire and S. and S.W. by the Bristol Channel and Carmarthen Bay. The contour of the county is largely determined by the fact that it lies between the mountains of Breconshire and the Bristol Channel. Its extreme breadth from the sea inland is 29 m., while its greatest length from east to west is 53 m. Its chief rivers, the Rhymney, Taff, Neath (or Nêdd) and Tawe or Tawy, have their sources in the Breconshire mountains, the two first trending towards the south-east, while the two last trend to the south-west, so that the main body of the county forms a sort of quarter-circle between the Taff and the Neath. Near the apex of the angle formed by these two rivers is the loftiest peak in the county, the great Pennant scarp of Craig y Llyn or Carn Moesyn, 1970 ft. high, which in the Glacial period diverted the ice-flow from the Beacons into the valley on either side of it. To the south and south-east of this peak extend the great coal-fields of mid-Glamorgan, their surface forming an irregular plateau with an average elevation of 600 to 1200 ft. above sea-level, but with numerous peaks about 1500 ft. high, or more; Mynydd y Caerau, the second highest being 1823 ft. Out of this plateau have been carved, to the depth of 500 to 800 ft. below its general level, three distinct series of narrow valleys, those in each series being more or less parallel. The rivers which give their names to these valleys include the Cynon, the Great and Lesser Rhondda (tributaries of the Taff) and the Ely flowing to the S.E., the Ogwr or Ogmore (with its tributaries the Garw and Llynfi) flowing south through Bridgend, and the Avan bringing the waters of the Corwg and Gwynfi to the south-west into Swansea Bay at Aberavon. To the south of this central hill country, which is wet, cold and sterile, and whose steep slopes form the southern edge of the coal-field, there stretches out to the sea a gently undulating plain, compendiously known as the “Vale of Glamorgan,” but in fact consisting of a succession of small vales of such fertile land and with such a mild climate that it has been styled, not inaptly, the “Garden of Wales.” To the east of the central area referred to and divided from it by a spur of the Brecknock mountains culminating in Carn Bugail, 1570 ft. high, is the Rhymney, which forms the county’s eastern boundary. On the west other spurs of the Beacons divide the Neath from the Tawe (which enters the sea at Swansea), and the Tawe from the Loughor, which, with its tributary the Amman, separates the county on the N.W. from Carmarthenshire, in which it rises, and falling into Carmarthen Bay forms what is known as the Burry estuary, so called from a small stream of that name in the Gower peninsula. The rivers are all comparatively short, the Taff, in every respect the chief river, being only 33 m. long.
Down to the middle of the 19th century most of the Glamorgan valleys were famous for their beautiful scenery, but industrial operations have since destroyed most of this beauty, except in the so-called “Vale of Glamorgan,” the Vale of Neath, the “combes” and limestone gorges of Gower and the upper reaches of the Taff and the Tawe. The Vale of Neath is par excellence the waterfall district of South Wales, the finest falls being the Cilhepste fall, the Sychnant and the three Clungwyns on the Mellte and its tributaries near the Vale of Neath railway from Neath to Hirwaun, Scwd Einon Gam and Scwd Gladys on the Pyrddin on the west side of the valley close by, with Melin Court and Abergarwed still nearer Neath. There are also several cascades on the Dulais, and in the same district, though in Breconshire, is Scwd Henrhyd on the Llech near Colbren Junction. Almost the only part of the county which is now well timbered is the Vale of Neath. There are three small lakes, Llyn Fawr and Llyn Fach near Craig y Llyn and Kenfig Pool amid the sand-dunes of Margam. The rainfall of the county varies from an average of about 25 in. at Porthcawl and other parts of the Vale of Glamorgan to about 37 in. at Cardiff, 40 in. at Swansea and to upwards of 70 in. in the northern part of the county, the fall being still higher in the adjoining parts of Breconshire whence Cardiff, Swansea, Merthyr and a large area near Neath draw their main supplies of water.
The county has a coast-line of about 83 m. Its two chief bays are the Burry estuary and Swansea, one on either side of the Gower Peninsula, which has also a number of smaller inlets with magnificent cliff scenery. The rest of the coast is fairly regular, the chief openings being at the mouths of the Ogmore and the Taff respectively. The most conspicuous headlands are Whiteford Point, Worms Head and Mumbles Head in Gower, Nash Point and Lavernock Point on the eastern half of the coast.
Geology.—The Silurian rocks, the oldest in the county, form a small inlier about 2 sq. m. in area at Rumney and Pen-y-lan, north of Cardiff, and consist of mudstones and sandstones of Wenlock and Ludlow age; a feeble representative of the Wenlock Limestone also is present. They are conformably succeeded by the Old Red Sandstone which extends westwards as far as Cowbridge as a deeply eroded anticline largely concealed by Trias and Lias. The Old Red Sandstone consists in the lower parts of red marls and sandstones, while the upper beds are quartzitic and pebbly, and form bold scarps which dominate the low ground formed by the softer beds below. Cefn-y-bryn, another anticline of Old Red Sandstone (including small exposures of Silurian rocks), forms the prominent backbone of the Gower peninsula. The next formation is the Carboniferous Limestone which encircles and underlies the great South Wales coal-field, on the south of which, west of Cardiff, it forms a bold escarpment of steeply-dipping beds surrounding the Old Red Sandstone anticline. It shows up through the Trias and Lias in extensive inliers near Bridgend, while in Gower it dips away from the Old Red Sandstone of Cefn-y-bryn. On the north of the coal-field it is just reached near Merthyr Tydfil. The Millstone Grit, which consists of grits, sandstones and shales, crops out above the limestone and serves to introduce the Coal Measures, which lie in the form of a great trough extending east and west across the county and occupying most of its surface. The coal seams are most numerous in the lower part of the series; the Pennant Sandstone succeeds and occupies the inner parts of the basin, forming an elevated moorland region deeply trenched by the teeming valleys (e.g. the Rhondda) which cross the coal-field from north to south. Above the Pennant Sandstone still higher coals come in. Taken generally, the coals are bituminous in the south-east and anthracitic in the north-west.
After the Coal Measures had been deposited, the southern part of the region was subjected to powerful folding; the resulting anticlines were worn down during a long period of detrition, and then submerged slowly beneath a Triassic lake in which accumulated the Keuper conglomerates and marls which spread over the district west of Cardiff and are traceable on the coast of Gower. The succeeding Rhaetic and Lias which form most of the coastal plain (the fertile Vale of Glamorgan) from Penarth to near Bridgend were laid down by the Jurassic sea. A well-marked raised beach is traceable in Gower. Sand-dunes are present locally around Swansea Bay. Moraines, chiefly formed of gravel and clay, occupy many of the Glamorgan valleys; and these, together with the striated surfaces which may be observed at higher levels, are clearly glacial in origin. In the Coal Measures and the newer Limestones and Triassic, Rhaetic and Liassic conglomerates, marls and shales, many interesting fossils have been disinterred: these include the remains of an air-breathing reptile (Anthracespeton). Bones of the cave-bear, lion, mammoth, reindeer, rhinoceros, along with flint weapons and tools, have been discovered in some caves of the Gower peninsula.
Agriculture.—The low-lying land on the south from Caerphilly to Margam is very fertile, the soil being a deep rich loam; and here the standard of agriculture is fairly high, and there prevails a well-defined tenant-right custom, supposed to be of ancient origin but probably dating only from the beginning of the 19th century. Everywhere on the Coal Measures the soil is poor, while vegetation is also injured by the smoke from the works, especially copper smoke. Leland (c. 1535) describes the lowlands as growing good corn and grass but little wood, while the mountains had “redde dere, kiddes plenty, oxen and sheep.” The land even in the “Vale” seems to have been open and unenclosed till the end of the 15th or beginning of the 16th century, while enclosure spread to the uplands still later. About one-fifth of the total area is still common land, more than half of which is unsuitable for cultivation. The total area under cultivation in 1905 was 269,271 acres or about one-half of the total area of the county. The chief crops raised (giving them in the order of their respective acreages) are oats, barley, turnips and swedes, wheat, potatoes and mangolds. A steady decrease of the acreage under grain-crops, green-crops and clover has been accompanied by an increase in the area of pasture. Dairying has been largely abandoned for stock-raising, and very little “Caerphilly cheese” is now made in that district. In 1905 Glamorgan had the largest number of horses in agriculture of any Welsh county except those of Carmarthen and Cardigan. Good sheep and ponies are reared in the hill-country. Pig-keeping is much neglected, and despite the mild climate very little fruit is grown. The average size of holdings in 1905 was 47.3 acres, there being only 46 holdings above 300 acres, and 1719 between 50 and 500 acres.
Mining and Manufactures.—Down to the middle of the 18th century the county had no industry of any importance except agriculture. The coal which underlies practically the whole surface of the county except the Vale of Glamorgan and West Gower was little worked till about 1755, when it began to be used instead of charcoal for the smelting of iron. By 1811, when there were 25 blast furnaces in the county, the demand for coal for this purpose had much increased, but it was in the most active period of railway construction that it reached its maximum. Down to about 1850, if not later, the chief collieries were owned by the ironmasters and were worked for their own requirements, but when the suitability of the lower seams in the district north of Cardiff for steam purposes was realized, an export trade sprang up and soon assumed enormous proportions, so that “the port of Cardiff” (including Barry and Penarth), from which the bulk of the steam coal was shipped, became the first port in the world for the shipment of coal. The development of the anthracite coal-field lying to the north and west of Swansea (from which port it is mostly shipped) dates mainly from the closing years of the 19th century, when the demand for this coal grew rapidly. There are still large areas in the Rhymney Valley on the east, and in the districts of Neath and Swansea on the west, whose development has only recently been undertaken. In connexion with the coal industry, patent fuel (made from small coal and tar) is largely manufactured at Cardiff, Port Talbot and Swansea, the shipments from Swansea being the largest in the kingdom. Next in importance to coal are the iron, steel and tin-plate industries, and in the Swansea district the smelting of copper and a variety of other ores.
The manufacture of iron and steel is carried on at Dowlais, Merthyr Tydfil, Cardiff, Port Talbot, Briton Ferry, Pontardawe, Swansea, Gorseinon and Gowerton. During the last quarter of the 19th century the use of the native ironstone was almost wholly given up, and the necessary ore is now imported, mainly from Spain. As a result several of the older inland works, such as those of Aberdare, Ystalyfera and Brynaman have been abandoned, and new works have been established on or near the sea-board; e.g. the Dowlais company in 1891 opened large works at Cardiff. The tin-plate industry is mainly confined to the west of the county, Swansea being the chief port for the shipment of tin-plates, though there are works near Llantrisant and at Melin Griffith near Cardiff, the latter being the oldest in the county. Copper-smelting is carried on on a large scale in the west of the county, at Port Talbot, Cwmavon, Neath and Swansea, and on a small scale at Cardiff, the earliest works having been established at Neath in 1584 and at Swansea in 1717. There are nickel works at Clydach near Swansea, the nickel being imported in the form of “matte” from Canada. Swansea has almost a monopoly of the manufacture of spelter or zinc. Lead, silver and a number of other metals or their by-products are treated in or near Swansea, which is often styled the “metallurgical capital of Wales.” Limestone and silica quarries are worked, while sandstone and clay are also raised. Swansea and Nantgarw were formerly famous for their china, coarse ware is still made chiefly at Ewenny and terra-cotta at Pencoed. Large numbers of people are employed in engineering works and in the manufacture of machines, chains, conveyances, tools, paper and chemicals. The textile factories are few and unimportant.
Fisheries.—Fisheries exist all along the coast; by lines, draught-nets, dredging, trawling, fixed nets and by hand. There is a fleet of trawlers at Swansea. The principal fish caught are cod, herring, pollock, whiting, flukes, brill, plaice, soles, turbot, oysters, mussels, limpets, cockles, shrimps, crabs and lobsters. There are good fish-markets at Swansea and Cardiff.
Communications.—The county has ample dock accommodation. The various docks of Cardiff amount to 210 acres, including timber ponds; Penarth has a dock and basin of 26 acres and a tidal harbour of 55 acres. Barry docks cover 114 acres; Swansea has 147 acres, including its new King’s Dock; and Port Talbot 90 acres. There are also docks at Briton Ferry and Porthcawl, but they are not capable of admitting deep-draft vessels.
Besides its ports, Glamorgan has abundant means of transit in many railways, of which the Great Western is the chief. Its trunk line traversing the country between the mountains and the sea passes through Cardiff, Bridgend and Landore (on the outskirts of Swansea), and throws off numerous branches to the north. The Taff Vale railway serves all the valley of the Taff and its tributaries, and has also extensions to Barry and (through Llantrisant and Cowbridge) to Aberthaw. The Rhymney railway likewise serves the Rhymney Valley, and has a joint service with the Great Western between Cardiff and Merthyr Tydfil—the latter town being also the terminus of the Brecon and Merthyr and a branch of the North-Western from Abergavenny. The Barry railway visits Cardiff and then travels in a north-westerly direction to Pontypridd and Porth, while it sends another branch along the coast through Llantwit Major to Bridgend. Swansea is connected with Merthyr by the Great Western, with Brecon by the Midland, with Craven Arms and Mid-Wales generally by the London & North-Western, with the Rhondda Valley by the Rhondda and Swansea Bay (now worked by the Great Western) and with Mumbles by the Mumbles railway. The Port Talbot railway runs to Blaengarw, and the Neath and Brecon railway (starting from Neath) joins the Midland at Colbren Junction. The canals of the county are the Glamorgan canal from Cardiff to Merthyr Tydfil (25½ m.), with a branch (7 m.) to Aberdare, the Neath canal (13 m.) from Briton Ferry to Abernant, Glyn Neath (whence a tramway formerly connected it with Aberdare), the Tennant canal connecting the rivers Neath and Tawe, and the Swansea canal (16½ m.), running up the Swansea Valley from Swansea to Abercrave in Breconshire. Comparatively little use is now made of these canals, excepting the lower portions of the Glamorgan canal.
Population and Administration.—The area of the ancient county with which the administrative county is conterminous is 518,863 acres, with a population in 1901 of 859,931 persons. In the three decades between 1831 and 1861 it increased 35.2, 35.4 and 37.1% respectively, and in 1881-1891, 34.4, its average increase in the other decennial periods subsequent to 1861 being about 25%. The county is divided into five parliamentary divisions (viz. Glamorganshire East, South and Middle, Gower and Rhondda); it also includes the Cardiff district of boroughs (consisting of Cardiff, Cowbridge and Llantrisant), which has one member; the greater part of the parliamentary borough of Merthyr Tydfil (which mainly consists of the county borough of Merthyr, the urban district of Aberdare and part of Mountain Ash), and returns two members; and the two divisions of Swansea District returning one member each, one division consisting of the major part of Swansea town, the other comprising the remainder of Swansea and the boroughs of Aberavon, Kenfig, Llwchwr and Neath. There are six municipal boroughs: Aberavon (pop. in 1901, 7553), Cardiff (164,333), Cowbridge (1202), Merthyr Tydfil (69,228), Neath (13,720) and Swansea (94,537). Cardiff (which in 1905 was created a city), Merthyr Tydfil and Swansea are county boroughs. The following are urban districts: Aberdare (43,365), Barry (27,030), Bridgend (6062), Briton Ferry (6973), Caerphilly (15,835), Glyncorrwg (6452), Maesteg (15,012), Margam (9014), Mountain Ash (31,093); Ogmore and Garw (19,907), Oystermouth (4461), Penarth (14,228), Pontypridd (32,316); Porthcawl (1872) and Rhondda, previously known as Ystradyfodwg (113,735). Glamorgan is in the S. Wales circuit, and both assizes and quarter-sessions are held at Cardiff and Swansea alternately. All the municipal boroughs have separate commissions of the peace, and Cardiff and Swansea have also separate courts of quarter-sessions. The county has thirteen other petty sessional divisions, Cardiff, the Rhondda (with Pontypridd) and the Merthyr and Aberdare district have stipendiary magistrates. There are 165 civil parishes. Excepting the districts of Gower and Kilvey, which are in the diocese of St David’s, the whole county is in the diocese of Llandaff. There are 159 ecclesiastical parishes or districts situated wholly or partly within the county.
History.—The earliest known traces of man within the area of the present county are the human remains found in the famous bone-caves of Gower, though they are scanty as compared with the huge deposits of still earlier animal remains. To a later stage, perhaps in the Neolithic period, belongs a number of complete skeletons discovered in 1903 in sand-blown tumuli at the mouth of the Ogmore, where many flint implements were also found. Considerably later, and probably belonging to the Bronze Age (though finds of bronze implements have been scanty), are the many cairns and tumuli, mainly on the hills, such as on Garth Mountain near Cardiff, Crug-yr-avan and a number east of the Tawe; the stone circles often found in association with the tumuli, that of Carn Llecharth near Pontardawe being one of the most complete in Wales; and the fine cromlechs of Cefn Bryn in Gower (known as Arthur’s Stone), of St Nicholas and of St Lythan’s near Cardiff.
In Roman times the country from the Neath to the Wye was occupied by the Silures, a pre-Celtic race, probably governed at that time by Brythonic Celts. West of the Neath and along the fringe of the Brecknock Mountains were probably remnants of the earlier Goidelic Celts, who have left traces in the place-names of the Swansea valley (e.g. llwch, “a lake”) and in the illegible Ogham inscription at Loughor, the only other Ogham stone in the county being at Kenfig, a few miles to the east of the Neath estuary. The conquest of the Silures by the Romans was begun about A.D. 50 by Ostorius Scapula and completed some 25 years later by Julius Frontinus, who probably constructed the great military road, called Via Julia Maritima, from Gloucester to St David’s, with stations at Cardiff, Bovium (variously identified with Boverton, Cowbridge and Ewenny), Nidum (identified with Neath) and Leucarum or Loughor. The important station of Gaer on the Usk near Brecon was connected by two branch roads, one running from Cardiff through Gelligaer (where there was a strong hill fort) and Merthyr Tydfil, and another from Neath through Capel Colbren. Welsh tradition credits Glamorgan with being the first home of Christianity, and Llandaff the earliest bishopric in Britain, the name of three reputed missionaries of the 2nd century being preserved in the names of parishes in south Glamorgan. What is certain, however, is that the first two bishops of Llandaff, St Dubricius and St Teilo, lived during the first half of the 6th century, to which period also belongs the establishment of the great monastic settlements of Llancarvan by Cadoc, of Llandough by Oudoceus and of Llantwit Major by Illtutus, the last of which flourished as a seat of learning down to the 12th century. A few moated mounds such as at Cardiff indicate that, after the withdrawal of the Romans, the coasts were visited by sporadic bands of Saxons, but the Scandinavians who came in the 9th and succeeding centuries left more abundant traces both in the place-names of the coast and in such camps as that on Sully Island, the Bulwarks at Porthkerry and Hardings Down in Gower. Meanwhile the native tribes of the district had regained their independence under a line of Welsh chieftains, whose domain was consolidated into a principality known as Glywyssing, till about the end of the 10th century when it acquired the name of Morganwg, that is the territory of Morgan, a prince who died in A.D. 980; it then comprised the whole country from the Neath to the Wye, practically corresponding to the present diocese of Llandaff. Gwlad Morgan, later softened into Glamorgan, never had much vogue and meant precisely the same as Morganwg, though the two terms became differentiated a few centuries later.
The Norman conquest of Morganwg was effected in the closing years of the 11th century by Robert Fitzhamon, lord of Gloucester. His followers settled in the low-lying lands of the “Vale,” which became known as the “body” of the shire, while in the hill country, which consisted of ten “members,” corresponding to its ancient territorial divisions, the Welsh retained their customary laws and much of their independence. Glamorgan, whose bounds were now contracted between the Neath and the Rhymney, then became a lordship marcher, its status and organization being that of a county palatine; its lord possessed jura regalia, and his chief official was from the first a vice-comes, or sheriff, who presided over a county court composed of his lord’s principal tenants. The inhabitants of Cardiff in which, as the caput baroniae, this court was held (though sometimes ambulatory), were soon granted municipal privileges, and in time Cowbridge, Kenfig, Llantrisant, Aberavon and Neath also became chartered market-towns. The manorial system was introduced throughout the “Vale,” the manor in many cases becoming the parish, and the owner building for its protection first a castle and then a church. The church itself became Normanized, and monasteries were established—the Cistercian abbey of Neath and Margam in 1129 and 1147 respectively, the Benedictine priory of Ewenny in 1141 and that of Cardiff in 1147. Dominican and Franciscan houses were also founded at Cardiff in the following century.
Gower (with Kilvey) or the country west of the morass between Neath and Swansea had a separate history. It was conquered about 1100 by Henry de Newburgh, 1st earl of Warwick, by whose descendants and the powerful family of De Breos it was successively held as a marcher lordship, organized to some extent on county lines, till 1469. Swansea (which was the caput baroniae of Gower) and Loughor received their earlier charters from the lords of Gower (see Gower).
For the first two centuries after Fitzhamon’s time the lordship of Glamorgan was held by the earls of Gloucester, a title conferred by Henry I. on his natural son Robert, who acquired Glamorgan by marrying Fitzhamon’s daughter. To the 1st earl’s patronage of Geoffrey of Monmouth and other men of letters, at Cardiff Castle of which he was the builder, is probably due the large place which Celtic romance, especially the Arthurian cycle, won for itself in medieval literature. The lordship passed by descent through the families of Clare (who held it from 1217 to 1317), Despenser, Beauchamp and Neville to Richard III., on whose fall it escheated to the crown. From time to time, the Welsh of the hills, often joined by their countrymen from other parts, raided the Vale, and even Cardiff Castle was seized about 1153 by Ivor Bach, lord of Senghenydd, who for a time held its lord a prisoner. At last Caerphilly Castle was built to keep them in check, but this provoked an invasion in 1270 by Prince Llewelyn ap Griffith, who besieged the castle and refused to retire except on conditions. In 1316 Llewelyn Bren headed a revolt in the same district, but being defeated was put to death by Despenser, whose great unpopularity with the Welsh made Glamorgan less safe as a retreat for Edward II. a few years later. In 1404 Glendower swept through the county, burning castles and laying waste the possessions of the king’s supporters. By the Act of Union of 1535 the county of Glamorgan was incorporated as it now exists, by the addition to the old county of the lordship of Gower and Kilvey, west of the Neath. By another act of 1542 the court of great sessions was established, and Glamorgan, with the counties of Brecon and Radnor, formed one of its four Welsh circuits from thence till 1830, when the English assize system was introduced into Wales. In the same year the county was given one parliamentary representative, increased to two in 1832 and to five in 1885. The boroughs were also given a member. In 1832 Cardiff (with Llantrisant and Cowbridge), the Swansea group of boroughs and the parliamentary borough of Merthyr Tydfil were given one member each, increased to two, in the case of Merthyr Tydfil in 1867. In 1885 the Swansea group was divided into two constituencies with a member each.
The lordship of Glamorgan, shorn of its quasi-regal status, was granted by Edward VI. to William Herbert, afterwards 1st earl of Pembroke, from whom it has descended to the present marquess of Bute.
The rule of the Tudors promoted the rapid assimilation of the inhabitants of the county, and by the reign of Elizabeth even the descendants of the Norman knights had largely become Welsh both in speech and sentiment. Welsh continued to be the prevalent speech almost throughout the county, except in the peninsular part of Gower and perhaps Cardiff, till the last quarter of the 19th century. Since then it has lost ground in the maritime towns and the south-east corner of the county generally, while fairly holding its own, despite much English migration, in the industrial districts to the north. In 1901 about 56% of the total population above three years of age was returned as speaking English only, 37% as speaking both English and Welsh, and about 6½% as speaking Welsh only.
In common with the rest of Wales the county was mainly Royalist in the Civil War, and indeed stood foremost in its readiness to pay ship-money, but when Charles I. visited Cardiff in July 1645 he failed to recruit his army there, owing to the dissatisfaction of the county, which a few months later declared for the parliament. There was, however, a subsequent Royalist revolt in Glamorgan in 1648, but it was signally crushed by Colonel Horton at the battle of St Fagan’s (8th of May).
The educational gap caused by final disappearance of the great university of Llantwit Major, founded in the 6th century, and by the dissolution of the monasteries was to some extent filled by the foundation, by the Stradling family, of a grammar school at Cowbridge which, refounded in 1685 by Sir Leoline Jenkins, is still carried on as an endowed school. The only other ancient grammar school is that of Swansea, founded by Bishop Gore in 1682, and now under the control of the borough council. Besides the University College of South Wales and Monmouthshire established at Cardiff in 1883, and a technical college at Swansea, there is a Church of England theological college (St Michael’s) at Llandaff (previously at Aberdare), a training college for school-mistresses at Swansea, schools for the blind at Cardiff and Swansea and for the deaf at Cardiff, Swansea and Pontypridd.
Antiquities.—The antiquities of the county not already mentioned include an unusually large number of castles, all of which, except the castles of Morlais (near Merthyr Tydfil), Castell Coch and Llantrisant, are between the hill country and the sea. The finest specimen is that of Caerphilly, but there are also more or less imposing ruins at Oystermouth, Coity, Newcastle (at Bridgend), Llanblethian, Pennard and Swansea. Among the restored castles, resided in by their present owners, are St Donat’s, “the latest and most complete of the structures built for defence,” Cardiff, the residence of the marquess of Bute, St Fagan’s, Dunraven, Fonmon and Penrice. Of the monastic buildings, that of Ewenny is best preserved, Neath and Margam are mere ruins, while all the others have disappeared. Almost all the older churches possess towers of a somewhat military character, and most of them, except in Gower, retain some Norman masonry. Coity, Coychurch and Ewenny (all near Bridgend) are fine examples of cross churches with embattled towers characteristic of the county. There are interesting monumental effigies at St Mary’s, Swansea, Oxwich, Ewenny, Llantwit Major, Llantrisant, Coity and other churches in the Vale. There are from twenty-five to thirty sculptured stones, of which some sixteen are both ornamented and inscribed, five of the latter being at Margam and three at Llantwit Major, and dating from the 9th century if not earlier.
Authorities.—The records of the Curia comitatus or County Court of Glamorgan are supposed to have perished, so also have the records of Neath. With these exceptions, the records of the county have been well preserved. A collection edited by G. T. Clark under the title Cartae et alia munimenta quae ad dominium de Glamorgan pertinent was privately printed by him in four volumes (1885-1893). A Descriptive Catalogue of the Penrice and Margam Abbey MSS. in the Possession of Miss Talbot of Margam (6 vols.) was privately issued (1893-1905) under the editorship of Dr de Gray Birch, who has also published histories of the Abbeys of Neath and Margam. The Book of Llan Dâf (edited by Dr Gwenogvryn Evans, 1903) contains documents illustrative of the early history of the diocese of Llandaff. Cardiff has published its Records in 5 vols., and there is a volume of Swansea charters. There is no complete history of the county, except a modest but useful one in Welsh—Hanes Morganwg, by D. W. Jones (Dafydd Morganwg) (1874); the chief contributions are Rice Merrick’s Booke of Glamorganshire’s Antiquities, written in 1578; The Land of Morgan (1883) (a history of the lordship of Glamorgan), by G. T. Clark, whose Genealogies of Glamorgan (1886) and Medieval Military Architecture (1884) are also indispensable; see also T. Nicholas, Annals and Antiquities of the Counties and County Families of Wales (2 vols., 1872). For Gower, see Gower.
(D. Ll. T.)
GLANDERS, or Farcy (Equinia), a specific infective and contagious disease, caused by a tissue parasite (Bacillus mallei), to which certain animals, chiefly the horse, ass and mule, are liable, and which is communicable from them to man. Glanders in the domesticated animals is dealt with under Veterinary Science; it is happily a rare form of disease in man, there being evidently less affinity for its development in the human subject than in the equine species. For the pathology see the article Parasitic Diseases. It occurs chiefly among those who from their occupation are frequently in contact with horses, such as grooms, coachmen, cavalry soldiers, veterinary surgeons, &c.; the bacillus is communicated from a glandered animal either through a wound or scratch or through application to the mucous membrane of the nose or mouth. A period of incubation, lasting from three to five days, generally follows the introduction of the virus into the human system. This period, however, appears sometimes to be of much longer duration, especially where there has been no direct inoculation of the poison. The first symptoms are a general feeling of illness, accompanied with pains in the limbs and joints resembling those of acute rheumatism. If the disease has been introduced by means of an abraded surface, pain is felt at that point, and inflammatory swelling takes place there, and extends along the neighbouring lymphatics. An ulcer is formed at the point of inoculation which discharges an offensive ichor, and blebs appear in the inflamed skin, along with diffuse abscesses, as in phlegmonous erysipelas. Sometimes the disease stops short with these local manifestations, but more commonly goes on rapidly accompanied with symptoms of grave constitutional disturbance. Over the whole surface of the body there appear numerous red spots or pustules, which break and discharge a thick mucous or sanguineous fluid. Besides these there are larger swellings lying deeper in the subcutaneous tissue, which at first are extremely hard and painful, and to which the term farcy “buds” or “buttons” is applied. These ultimately open and become extensive sloughing ulcers.
The mucous membranes participate in the same lesions as are present in the skin, and this is particularly the case with the interior of the nose, where indeed, in many instances, the disease first of all shows itself. This organ becomes greatly swollen and inflamed, while from one or both nostrils there exudes a copious discharge of highly offensive purulent or sanguineous matter. The lining membrane of the nostrils is covered with papules similar in character to those on the skin, which form ulcers, and may lead to the destruction of the cartilaginous and bony textures of the nose. The diseased action extends into the throat, mouth and eyes, while the whole face becomes swollen and erysipelatous, and the lymphatic glands under the jaws inflame and suppurate. Not unfrequently the bronchial tubes become affected, and cough attended with expectoration of matter similar to that discharged from the nose is the consequence. The general constitutional symptoms are exceedingly severe, and advance with great rapidity, the patient passing into a state of extreme prostration. In the acute form of the disease recovery rarely if ever occurs, and the case generally terminates fatally in a period varying from two or three days to as many weeks.
A chronic form of glanders and farcy is occasionally met with, in which the symptoms, although essentially the same as those above described, advance much more slowly, and are attended with relatively less urgent constitutional disturbance. Cases of recovery from this form are on record; but in general the disease ultimately proves fatal by exhaustion of the patient, or by a sudden supervention, which is apt to occur, of the acute form. On the other hand, acute glanders is never observed to become chronic.
In the treatment of this malady in human beings reliance is mainly placed on the maintenance of the patient’s strength by strong nourishment and tonic remedies. Cauterization should be resorted to if the point of infection is early known. Abscesses may be opened and antiseptic lotions used. In all cases of the outbreak of glanders it is of the utmost consequence to prevent the spread of the disease by the destruction of affected animals and the cleansing and disinfection of infected localities.
GLANVILL (or Glanvil), JOSEPH (1636-1680); English philosopher, was born at Plymouth in 1636, and was educated at Exeter and Lincoln colleges, Oxford, where he graduated as M.A. in 1658. After the Restoration he was successively rector of Wimbush, Essex, vicar of Frome Selwood, Somersetshire, rector of Streat and Walton. In 1666 he was appointed to the abbey church, Bath; in 1678 he became prebendary of Worcester Cathedral, and acted as chaplain in ordinary to Charles II. from 1672. He died at Bath in November 1680. Glanvill’s first work (a passage in which suggested the theme of Matthew Arnold’s Scholar Gipsy), The Vanity of Dogmatizing, or Confidence in Opinions, manifested in a Discourse of the shortness and uncertainty of our Knowledge, and its Causes, with Reflexions on Peripateticism, and an Apology for Philosophy (1661), is interesting as showing one special direction in which the new method of the Cartesian philosophy might be developed. Pascal had already shown how philosophical scepticism might be employed as a bulwark for faith, and Glanvill follows in the same track. The philosophic endeavour to cognize the whole system of things by referring all events to their causes appears to him to be from the outset doomed to failure. For if we inquire into this causal relation we find that though we know isolated facts, we cannot perceive any such connexion between them as that the one should give rise to the other. In the words of Hume, “they seem conjoined but never connected.” All causes then are but secondary, i.e. merely the occasions on which the one first cause operates. It is singular enough that Glanvill who had not only shown, but even exaggerated, the infirmity of human reason, himself provided an example of its weakness; for, after having combated scientific dogmatism, he not only yielded to vulgar superstitions, but actually endeavoured to accredit them both in his revised edition of the Vanity of Dogmatizing, published as Scepsis scientifica (1665, ed. Rev. John Owen, 1885), and in his Philosophical Considerations concerning the existence of Sorcerers and Sorcery (1666). The latter work appears to have been based on the story of the drum which was alleged to have been heard every night in a house in Wiltshire (Tedworth, belonging to a Mr Mompesson), a story which made much noise in the year 1663, and which is supposed to have furnished Addison with the idea of his comedy the Drummer. At his death Glanvill left a piece entitled Sadducismus Triumphatus (printed in 1681, reprinted with some additions in 1682, German trans. 1701). He had there collected twenty-six relations or stories of the same description as that of the drum, in order to establish, by a series of facts, the opinion which he had expressed in his Philosophical Considerations. Glanvill supported a much more honourable cause when he undertook the defence of the Royal Society of London, under the title of Plus Ultra, or the Progress and Advancement of Science since the time of Aristotle (1668), a work which shows how thoroughly he was imbued with the ideas of the empirical method.
Besides the works already noticed, Glanvill wrote Lux orientalis (1662); Philosophia pia (1671); Essays on Several Important Subjects in Philosophy and Religion (1676); An Essay concerning Preaching; and Sermons. See C. Rémusat, Hist. de la phil. en Angleterre, bk. iii. ch. xi.; W. E. H. Lecky, Rationalism in Europe (1865), i. 120-128; Hallam’s Literature of Europe, iii. 358-362; Tulloch’s Rational Theology, ii. 443-455.
GLANVILL, RANULF DE (sometimes written Glanvil, Glanville) (d. 1190), chief justiciar of England and reputed author of a book on English law, was born at Stratford in Suffolk, but in what year is unknown. There is but little information regarding his early life. He first comes to the front as sheriff of Yorkshire from 1163 to 1170. In 1173 he became sheriff of Lancashire and custodian of the honour of Richmond. In 1174 he was one of the English leaders at the battle of Alnwick, and it was to him that the king of the Scots, William the Lion, surrendered. In 1175 he was reappointed sheriff of Yorkshire, in 1176 he became justice of the king’s court and a justice itinerant in the northern circuit, and in 1180 chief justiciar of England. It was with his assistance that Henry II. completed his judicial reforms, though the principal of them had been carried out before he came into office. He became the king’s right-hand man, and during Henry’s frequent absences was in effect viceroy of England. After the death of Henry in 1189, Glanvill was removed from his office by Richard I., and imprisoned till he had paid a ransom, according to one authority, of £15,000. Shortly after obtaining his freedom he took the cross, and he died at the siege of Acre in 1190. At the instance, it may be, of Henry II., Glanvill wrote or superintended the writing of the Tractatus de legibus et consuetudinibus regni Angliae, which is a practical treatise on the forms of procedure in the king’s court. As the source of our knowledge regarding the earliest form of the curia regis, and for the information it affords regarding ancient customs and laws, it is of great value to the student of English history. It is now generally agreed that the work of Glanvill is of earlier date than the Scottish law book known from its first words as Regiam Majestatem, a work which bears a close resemblance to his.
The treatise of Glanvill was first printed in 1554. An English translation, with notes and introduction by John Beames, was published at London in 1812. A French version is found in various MSS., but has not yet been printed. (See also English Law: History of.)
GLAPTHORNE, HENRY (fl. 1635-1642), English poet and dramatist, wrote in the reign of Charles I. All that is known of him is gathered from his own work. He published Poëms (1639), many of them in praise of an unidentified “Lucinda”; a poem in honour of his friend Thomas Beedome, whose Poems Divine and Humane he edited in 1641; and Whitehall (1642), dedicated to his “noble friend and gossip, Captain Richard Lovelace.” The first volume contains a poem in honour of the duke of York, and Whitehall is a review of the past glories of the English court, containing abundant evidences of the writer’s devotion to the royal cause. Argalus and Parthenia (1639) is a pastoral tragedy founded on an episode in Sidney’s Arcadia; Albertus Wallenstein (1639), his only attempt at historical tragedy, represents Wallenstein as a monster of pride and cruelty. His other plays are The Hollander (written 1635; printed 1640), a romantic comedy of which the scene is laid in Genoa; Wit in a Constable (1640), which is probably a version of an earlier play, and owes something to Shakespeare’s Much Ado about Nothing; and The Ladies Priviledge (1640). The Lady Mother (1635) has been identified (Fleay, Biog. Chron. of the Drama) with The Noble Trial, one of the plays destroyed by Warburton’s cook, and Mr A. H. Bullen prints it in vol. ii. of his Old English Plays as most probably Glapthorne’s work. The Paraside, or Revenge for Honour (1654), entered at Stationers’ Hall in 1653 as Glapthorne’s, was printed in the next year with George Chapman’s name on the title-page. It should probably be included among Glapthorne’s plays, which, though they hardly rise above the level of contemporary productions, contain many felicitous isolated passages.
The Plays and Poems of Henry Glapthorne (1874) contains an unsigned memoir, which, however, gives no information about the dramatist’s life. There is no reason for supposing that the George Glapthorne of whose trial details are given was a relative of the poet.
GLARUS (Fr. Glaris), one of the Swiss cantons, the name being taken from that of its chief town. Its area is 266.8 sq. m., of which 173.1 sq. m. are classed as “productive” (forests covering 41 sq. m.), but it also contains 13.9 sq. m. of glaciers, ranking as the fifth Swiss canton in this respect. It is thus a mountain canton, the loftiest point in it being the Tödi (11,887 ft.), the highest summit that rises to the north of the upper Aar and Vorder Rhine valleys. It is composed of the upper valley of the Linth, that is the portion which lies to the south of a line drawn from the Lake of Zürich to the Walensee. This river rises in the glaciers of the Tödi, and has carved out for itself a deep bed, so that the floor of the valley is comparatively level, and therefore is occupied by a number of considerable villages. Glacier passes only lead from its head to the Grisons, save the rough footpath over the Kisten Pass, while a fine new carriage road over the Klausen Pass gives access to the canton of Uri. The upper Linth valley is sometimes called the Grossthal (main valley) to distinguish it from its chief (or south-eastern) tributary, the Sernf valley or Kleinthal, which joins it at Schwanden, a little above Glarus itself. At the head of the Kleinthal a mule track leads to the Grisons over the Panixer Pass, as also a footpath over the Segnes Pass. Just below Glarus town, another glen (coming from the south-west) joins the main valley, and is watered by the Klön, while from its head the Pragel Pass (a mule path, converted into a carriage road) leads over to the canton of Schwyz. The Klön glen (uninhabited save in summer) is separated from the main glen by the fine bold mass of the Glärnisch (9580 ft.), while the Sernf valley is similarly cut off from the Grossthal by the high ridge running northwards from the Hausstock (10,342 ft.) over the Kärpfstock (9177 ft.). The principal lakes, the Klönthalersee and the Muttensee, are of a thoroughly Alpine character, while there are several fine waterfalls near the head of the main valley, such as those formed by the Sandbach, the Schreienbach and the Fätschbach. The Pantenbrücke, thrown over the narrow cleft formed by the Linth, is one of the grandest sights of the Alps below the snow-line. There is a sulphur spring at Stachelberg, near Linthal village, and an iron spring at Elm, while in the Sernf valley there are the Plattenberg slate quarries, and just south of Elm those of the Tschingelberg, whence a terrific landslip descended to Elm (11th September 1881), destroying many houses and killing 115 persons. A railway runs through the whole canton from north to south past Glarus to Linthal village (16¼ m.), while from Schwanden there is an electric line (opened in 1905) up to Elm (8¾ m.).
In 1900 the population of the canton was 32,349 (a decrease on the 33,825 of 1888, this being the only Swiss canton which shows a decrease), of whom 31,797 were German-speaking, while there were 24,403 Protestants, 7918 Romanists (many in Näfels) and 3 Jews. After the capital, Glarus (q.v.), the largest villages are Näfels (2557 inhabitants), Ennenda (2494 inhabitants, opposite Glarus, of which it is practically a suburb), Netstal (2003 inhabitants), Mollis (1912 inhabitants) and Linththal (1894 inhabitants). The slate industry is now the most important as the cotton manufacture has lately very greatly fallen off, this being the real reason of the diminution in the number of the population. There is little agriculture, for it is a pastoral region (owing to its height) and contains 87 mountain pastures (though the finest of all within the limits of the canton, the Urnerboden, or the Glarus side of the Klausen Pass, belongs to Uri), which can support 8054 cows, and are of an estimated capital value of about £246,000. One of the most characteristic products (though inferior qualities are manufactured elsewhere in Switzerland) is the cheese called Schabzieger, Kräuterkäse, or green cheese, made of skim milk (Zieger or sérac), whether of goats or cows, mixed with buttermilk and coloured with powdered Steinklee (Melilotus officinalis) or blauer Honigklee (Melilotus caerulea). The curds are brought down from the huts on the pastures, and, after being mixed with the dried powder, are ground in a mill, then put into shapes and pressed. The cheese thus produced is ripe in about a year, keeps a long time and is largely exported, even to America. The ice formed on the surface of the Klönthalersee in winter is stored up on its shore and exported. A certain number of visitors come to the canton in the summer, either to profit by one or other of the mineral springs mentioned above, or simply to enjoy the beauties of nature, especially at Obstalden, above the Walensee. The canton forms but a single administrative district and contains 28 communes. It sends to the Federal Ständerath 2 representatives (elected by the Landsgemeinde) and 2 also to the Federal Nationalrath. The canton still keeps its primitive democratic assembly or Landsgemeinde (meeting annually in the open air at Glarus on the first Sunday in May), composed of all male citizens of 20 years of age. It acts as the sovereign body, so that no “referendum” is required, while any citizen can submit a proposal. It names the executive of 6 members, besides the Landammann or president, all holding office for three years. The communes (forming 18 electoral circles) elect for three years the Landrath, a sort of standing committee composed of members in the proportion of 1 for every 500 inhabitants or fraction over 250. The present constitution dates from 1887.
(W. A. B. C.)
GLARUS (Fr. Glaris), the capital of the Swiss canton of the same name. It is a clean, modern little town, built on the left bank of the Linth (opposite it is the industrial suburb of Ennenda on the right bank), at the north-eastern foot of the imposing rock peak of the Vorder Glärnisch (7648 ft.), while on the east rises the Schild (6400 ft.). It now contains but few houses built before 1861, for on the 10/11 May 1861 practically the whole town was destroyed by fire that was fanned by a violent Föhn or south wind, rushing down from the high mountains through the natural funnel formed by the Linth valley. The total loss is estimated at about half a million sterling, of which about £100,000 were made up by subscriptions that poured in from every side. It possesses the broad streets and usual buildings of a modern town, the parish church being by far the most stately and well-situated building; it is used in common by the Protestants and Romans. Zwingli, the reformer, was parish priest here from 1506 to 1516, before he became a Protestant. The town is 1578 ft. above the sea-level, and in 1900 had a population of 4877, almost all German-speaking, while 1248 were Romanists. For the Linth canals (1811 and 1816) see Linth.
The District of Glarus is said to have been converted to Christianity in the 6th century by the Irish monk, Fridolin, whose special protector was St Hilary of Poitiers; the former was the founder, and both were patrons, of the Benedictine nunnery of Säckingen, on the Rhine between Constance and Basel, that about the 9th century became the owner of the district which was then named after St Hilary. The Habsburgs, protectors of the nunnery, gradually drew to themselves the exercise of all the rights of the nuns, so that in 1352 Glarus joined the Swiss Confederation. But the men of Glarus did not gain their complete freedom till after they had driven back the Habsburgs in the glorious battle of Näfels (1388), the complement of Sempach, so that the Habsburgers gave up their rights in 1398, while those of Säckingen were bought up in 1395, on condition of a small annual payment. Glarus early adopted Protestantism, but there were many struggles later on between the two parties, as the chief family, that of Tschudi, adhered to the old faith. At last it was arranged that, besides the common Landsgemeinde, each party should have its separate Landsgemeinde (1623) and tribunals (1683), while it was not till 1798 that the Protestants agreed to accept the Gregorian calendar. The slate-quarrying industry appeared early in the 17th century, while cotton-spinning was introduced about 1714, and calico-printing by 1750. In 1798, in consequence of the resistance of Glarus to the French invaders, the canton was united to other districts under the name of canton of the Linth, though in 1803 it was reduced to its former limits. In 1799 it was traversed by the Russian army, under Suworoff, coming over the Pragel Pass, but blocked by the French at Näfels, and so driven over the Panixer to the Grisons. The old system of government was set up again in 1814. But in 1836 by the new Liberal constitution one single Landsgemeinde was restored, despite the resistance (1837) of the Romanist population at Näfels.
Authorities.—J. Bäbler, Die Alpwirtschaft im Kant. G. (Soleure, 1898); J. J. Blumer, article on the early history of the canton in vol. iii. (Zürich, 1844) of the Archiv f. schweiz. Geschichte; E. Buss and A. Heim, Der Bergsturz von Elm (1881) (Zürich, 1881); W. A. B. Coolidge, The Range of the Tödi (London, 1894); J. G. Ebel, Schilderung der Gebirgsvölker d. Schweiz, vol. ii. (Leipzig, 1798); Gottfried Heer, Geschichte d. Landes Glarus (to 1830) (2 vols., Glarus, 1898-1899), Glarnerische Reformationsgeschichte (Glarus, 1900), Zur 500 jährigen Gedächtnisfeier der Schlacht bei Näfels (1388) (Glarus, 1888) and Die Kirchen d. Kant. Glarus (Glarus, 1890); Oswald Heer and J. J. Blumer-Heer, Der Kant. Glarus (St Gall, 1846); J. J. Hottinger, Conrad Escher von der Linth (Zürich, 1852); Jahrbuch, published annually since 1865 by the Cantonal Historical Society; A. Jenny-Trümpy, “Handel u. Industrie d. Kant. G.” (article in vol. xxxiii., 1899, of the Jahrbuch); M. Schuler, Geschichte d. Landes Glarus (Zürich, 1836); E. Näf-Blumer, Clubführer durch die Glarner-Alpen (Schwanden, 1902); Aloys Schulte, article on the true and legendary early history of the Canton, published in vol. xviii., 1893, of the Jahrbuch f. schweiz. Geschichte (Zürich); J. J. Blumer, Staats- und Rechtsgeschichte d. schweiz. Demokratien (3 vols., St Gall, 1850-1859); H. Ryffel, Die schweiz. Landsgemeinden (Zürich, 1903); R. von Reding-Biberegg, Der Zug Suworoffs durch die Schweiz in 1799 (Stans, 1895).
(W. A. B. C.)
GLAS, GEORGE (1725-1765); Scottish seaman and merchant adventurer in West Africa, son of John Glas the divine, was born at Dundee in 1725, and is said to have been brought up as a surgeon. He obtained command of a ship which traded between Brazil, the N.W. coasts of Africa and the Canary Islands. During his voyages he discovered on the Saharan seaboard a river navigable for some distance inland, and here he proposed to found a trading station. The exact spot is not known with certainty, but it is plausibly identified with Gueder, a place in about 29° 10’ N., possibly the haven where the Spaniards had in the 15th and 16th centuries a fort called Santa Cruz de Mar Pequeña. Glas made an arrangement with the Lords of Trade whereby he was granted £15,000 if he obtained free cession of the port he had discovered to the British crown; the proposal was to be laid before parliament in the session of 1765. Having chartered a vessel, Glas, with his wife and daughter, sailed for Africa in 1764, reached his destination and made a treaty with the Moors of the district. He named his settlement Port Hillsborough, after Wills Hill, earl of Hillsborough (afterwards marquis of Downshire), president of the Board of Trade and Plantations, 1763-1765. In November 1764 Glas and some companions, leaving his ship behind, went in the longboat to Lanzarote, intending to buy a small barque suitable for the navigation of the river on which was his settlement. From Lanzarote he forwarded to London the treaty he had concluded for the acquisition of Port Hillsborough. A few days later he was seized by the Spaniards, taken to Teneriffe and imprisoned at Santa Cruz. In a letter to the Lords of Trade from Teneriffe, dated the 15th of December 1764, Glas said he believed the reason for his detention was the jealousy of the Spaniards at the settlement at Port Hillsborough “because from thence in time of war the English might ruin their fishery and effectually stop the whole commerce of the Canary Islands.” The Spaniards further looked upon the settlement as a step towards the conquest of the islands. “They are therefore contriving how to make out a claim to the port and will forge old manuscripts to prove their assertion” (Calendar of Home Office Papers, 1760-1765). In March 1765 the ship’s company at Port Hillsborough was attacked by the natives and several members of it killed. The survivors, including Mrs and Miss Glas, escaped to Teneriffe. In October following, through the representations of the British government, Glas was released from prison. With his wife and child he set sail for England on board the barque “Earl of Sandwich.” On the 30th of November Spanish and Portuguese members of the crew, who had learned that the ship contained much treasure, mutinied, killing the captain and passengers. Glas was stabbed to death, and his wife and daughter thrown overboard. (The murderers were afterwards captured and hanged at Dublin.) After the death of Glas the British government appears to have taken no steps to carry out his project.
In 1764 Glas published in London The History of the Discovery and Conquest of the Canary Islands, which he had translated from the MS. of an Andalusian monk named Juan Abreu de Galindo, then recently discovered at Palma. To this Glas added a description of the islands, a continuation of the history and an account of the manners, customs, trade, &c., of the inhabitants, displaying considerable knowledge of the archipelago.
GLAS, JOHN (1695-1773), Scottish divine, was born at Auchtermuchty, Fife, where his father was parish minister, on the 5th of October 1695. He was educated at Kinclaven and the grammar school, Perth, graduated A.M. at the university of St Andrews in 1713, and completed his education for the ministry at Edinburgh. He was licensed as a preacher by the presbytery of Dunkeld, and soon afterwards ordained by that of Dundee as minister of the parish of Tealing (1719), where his effective preaching soon secured a large congregation. Early in his ministry he was “brought to a stand” while lecturing on the “Shorter Catechism” by the question “How doth Christ execute the office of a king?” This led to an examination of the New Testament foundation of the Christian Church, and in 1725, in a letter to Francis Archibald, minister of Guthrie, Forfarshire, he repudiated the obligation of national covenants. In the same year his views found expression in the formation of a society “separate from the multitude” numbering nearly a hundred, and drawn from his own and neighbouring parishes. The members of this ecclesiola in ecclesia pledged themselves “to join together in the Christian profession, to follow Christ the Lord as the righteousness of his people, to walk together in brotherly love, and in the duties of it, in subjection to Mr Glas as their overseer in the Lord, to observe the ordinance of the Lord’s Supper once every month, to submit themselves to the Lord’s law for removing offences,” &c. (Matt. xviii. 15-20). From the scriptural doctrine of the essentially spiritual nature of the kingdom of Christ, Glas in his public teaching drew the conclusions: (1) that there is no warrant in the New Testament for a national church; (2) that the magistrate as such has no function in the church; (3) that national covenants are without scriptural grounds; (4) that the true Reformation cannot be carried out by political and secular weapons but by the word and spirit of Christ only.
This argument is most fully exhibited in a treatise entitled The Testimony of the King of Martyrs (1729). For the promulgation of these views, which were confessedly at variance with the doctrines of the standards of the national church of Scotland, he was summoned (1726) before his presbytery, where in the course of the investigations which followed he affirmed still more explicitly his belief that “every national church established by the laws of earthly kingdoms is antichristian in its constitution and persecuting in its spirit,” and further declared opinions upon the subject of church government which amounted to a repudiation of Presbyterianism and an acceptance of the puritan type of Independency. For these opinions he was in 1728 suspended from the discharge of ministerial functions, and finally deposed in 1730. The members of the society already referred to, however, for the most part continued to adhere to him, thus constituting the first “Glassite” or “Glasite” church. The seat of this congregation was shortly afterwards transferred to Dundee (whence Glas subsequently removed to Edinburgh), where he officiated for some time as an “elder.” He next laboured in Perth for a few years, where he was joined by Robert Sandeman (see Glasites), who became his son-in-law, and eventually was recognized as the leader and principal exponent of Glas’s views; these he developed in a direction which laid them open to the charge of antinomianism. Ultimately in 1730 Glas returned to Dundee, where the remainder of his life was spent. He introduced in his church the primitive custom of the “osculum pacis” and the “agape” celebrated as a common meal with broth. From this custom his congregation was known as the “kail kirk.” In 1739 the General Assembly, without any application from him, removed the sentence of deposition which had been passed against him, and restored him to the character and function of a minister of the gospel of Christ, but not that of a minister of the Established Church of Scotland, declaring that he was not eligible for a charge until he should have renounced principles inconsistent with the constitution of the church.
A collected edition of his works was published at Edinburgh in 1761 (4 vols., 8vo), and again at Perth in 1782 (5 vols., 8vo). He died in 1773.
Glas’s published works bear witness to his vigorous mind and scholarly attainments. His reconstruction of the True Discourse of Celsus (1753), from Origen’s reply to it, is a competent and learned piece of work. The Testimony of the King of Martyrs concerning His Kingdom (1729) is a classic repudiation of erastianism and defence of the spiritual autonomy of the church under Jesus Christ. His common sense appears in his rejection of Hutchinson’s attempt to prove that the Bible supplies a complete system of physical science, and his shrewdness in his Notes on Scripture Texts (1747). He published a volume of Christian Songs (Perth, 1784).
(D. Mn.)
GLASER, CHRISTOPHER, a pharmaceutical chemist of the 17th century, was a native of Basel, became demonstrator of chemistry at the Jardin du Roi in Paris and apothecary to Louis XIV. and to the duke of Orleans. He is best known by his Traité de la chymie (Paris, 1663), which went through some ten editions in about five-and-twenty years, and was translated into both German and English. It has been alleged that he was an accomplice in the notorious poisonings carried out by the marchioness de Brinvilliers, but the extent of his complicity is doubtful. He appears to have died some time before 1676. The sal polychrestum Glaseri is normal potassium sulphate which he prepared and used medicinally.
GLASGOW, a city, county of a city, royal burgh and port of Lanarkshire, Scotland, situated on both banks of the Clyde, 401½ m. N.W. of London by the West Coast railway route, and 47 m. W.S.W. of Edinburgh by the North British railway. The valley of the Clyde is closely confined by hills, and the city extends far over these, the irregularity of its site making for picturesqueness. The commercial centre of Glasgow, with the majority of important public buildings, lies on the north bank of the river, which traverses the city from W.S.W. to E.N.E., and is crossed by a number of bridges. The uppermost is Dalmarnock Bridge, dating from 1891, and next below it is Rutherglen Bridge, rebuilt in 1896, and superseding a structure of 1775. St Andrew’s suspension bridge gives access to the Green to the inhabitants of Hutchesontown, a district which is approached also by Albert Bridge, a handsome erection, leading from the Saltmarket. Above this bridge is the tidal dam and weir. Victoria Bridge, of granite, was opened in 1856, taking the place of the venerable bridge erected by Bishop Rae in 1345, which was demolished in 1847. Then follows a suspension bridge (dating from 1853) by which foot-passengers from the south side obtain access to St Enoch Square and, finally, the most important bridge of all is reached, variously known as Glasgow, Jamaica Street, or Broomielaw Bridge, built of granite from Telford’s designs and first used in 1835. Towards the close of the century it was reconstructed, and reopened in 1899. At the busier periods of the day it bears a very heavy traffic. The stream is spanned between Victoria and Albert Bridges by a bridge belonging to the Glasgow & South-Western railway and by two bridges carrying the lines of the Caledonian railway, one below Dalmarnock Bridge and the other a massive work immediately west of Glasgow Bridge.
Buildings.—George Square, in the heart of the city, is an open space of which every possible advantage has been taken. On its eastern side stand the municipal buildings, a palatial pile in Venetian renaissance style, from the designs of William Young, a native of Paisley. They were opened in 1889 and cost nearly £600,000. They form a square block four storeys high and carry a domed turret at each end of the western façade, from the centre of which rises a massive tower. The entrance hall and grand staircase, the council chamber, banqueting hall and reception rooms are decorated in a grandiose style, not unbecoming to the commercial and industrial metropolis of Scotland. Several additional blocks have been built or rented for the accommodation of the municipal staff. Admirably equipped sanitary chambers were opened in 1897, including a bacteriological and chemical laboratory. Up till 1810 the town council met in a hall adjoining the old tolbooth. It then moved to the fine classical structure at the foot of the Saltmarket, which is now used as court-houses. This was vacated in 1842 for the county buildings in Wilson Street. Growth of business compelled another migration to Ingram Street in 1875, and, fourteen years later, it occupied its present quarters. On the southern side of George Square the chief structure is the massive General Post Office. On the western side stand two ornate Italian buildings, the Bank of Scotland and the Merchants’ House, the head of which (the dean of gild), along with the head of the Trades’ House (the deacon-convener of trades) has been de facto member of the town council since 1711, an arrangement devised with a view to adjusting the frequent disputes between the two gilds. The Royal Exchange, a Corinthian building with a fine portico of columns in two rows, is an admired example of the work of David Hamilton (1768-1843), a native of Glasgow, who designed several of the public buildings and churches, and gained the second prize for a design for the Houses of Parliament. The news-room of the exchange is a vast apartment, 130 ft. long, 60 ft. wide, 130 ft. high, with a richly-decorated roof supported by Corinthian pillars. Buchanan Street, the most important and handsome street in the city, contains the Stock Exchange, the Western Club House (by David Hamilton) and the offices of the Glasgow Herald. In Sauchiehall Street are the Fine Art Institute and the former Corporation Art Gallery. Argyll Street, the busiest thoroughfare, mainly occupied with shops, leads to Trongate, where a few remains of the old town are now carefully preserved. On the south side of the street, spanning the pavement, stands the Tron Steeple, a stunted spire dating from 1637. It is all that is left of St Mary’s church, which was burned down in 1793 during the revels of a notorious body known as the Hell Fire Club. On the opposite side, at the corner of High Street, stood the ancient tolbooth, or prison, a turreted building, five storeys high, with a fine Jacobean crown tower. The only remnant of the structure is the tower known as the Cross Steeple.
Although almost all the old public buildings of Glasgow have been swept away, the cathedral remains in excellent preservation. It stands in the north-eastern quarter of the city at a height of 104 ft. above the level of the Clyde. It is a beautiful example of Early English work, impressive in its simplicity. Its form is that of a Latin cross, with imperfect transepts. Its length from east to west is 319 ft., and its width 63 ft.; the height of the choir is 93 ft., and of the nave 85 ft. At the centre rises a fine tower, with a short octagonal spire, 225 ft. high. The choir, locally known as the High Church, serves as one of the city churches, and the extreme east end of it forms the Lady chapel. The rich western doorway is French in design but English in details. The chapter-house projects from the north-eastern corner and somewhat mars the harmony of the effect. It was built in the 15th century and has a groined roof supported by a pillar 20 ft. high. Many citizens have contributed towards filling the windows with stained glass, executed at Munich, the government providing the eastern window in recognition of their enterprise. The crypt beneath the choir is not the least remarkable part of the edifice, being without equal in Scotland. It is borne on 65 pillars and lighted by 41 windows. The sculpture of the capitals of the columns and bosses of the groined vaulting is exquisite and the whole is in excellent preservation. Strictly speaking, it is not a crypt, but a lower church adapted to the sloping ground of the right bank of the Molendinar burn. The dripping aisle is so named from the constant dropping of water from the roof. St Mungo’s Well in the south-eastern corner was considered to possess therapeutic virtues, and in the crypt a recumbent effigy, headless and handless, is faithfully accepted as the tomb of Kentigern. The cathedral contains few monuments of exceptional merit, but the surrounding graveyard is almost completely paved with tombstones. In 1115 an investigation was ordered by David, prince of Cumbria, into the lands and churches belonging to the bishopric, and from the deed then drawn up it is clear that at that date a cathedral had already been endowed. When David ascended the throne in 1124 he gave to the see of Glasgow the lands of Partick, besides restoring many possessions of which it had been deprived. Jocelin (d. 1199), made bishop in 1174, was the first great bishop, and is memorable for his efforts to replace the cathedral built in 1136 by Bishop John Achaius, which had been destroyed by fire. The crypt is his work, and he began the choir, Lady chapel, and central tower. The new structure was sufficiently advanced to be dedicated in 1197. Other famous bishops were Robert Wishart (d. 1316), appointed in 1272, who was among the first to join in the revolt of Wallace, and received Robert Bruce when he lay under the ban of the church for the murder of Comyn; John Cameron (d. 1446), appointed in 1428, under whom the building as it stands was completed; and William Turnbull (d. 1454), appointed in 1447, who founded the university in 1450. James Beaton or Bethune (1517-1603) was the last Roman Catholic archbishop. He fled to France at the reformation in 1560, and took with him the treasures and records of the see, including the Red Book of Glasgow dating from the reign of Robert III. The documents were deposited in the Scots College in Paris, were sent at the outbreak of the Revolution for safety to St Omer, and were never recovered. This loss explains the paucity of the earlier annals of the city. The zeal of the Reformers led them to threaten to mutilate the cathedral, but the building was saved by the prompt action of the craftsmen, who mustered in force and dispersed the fanatics.
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Excepting the cathedral, none of the Glasgow churches possesses historical interest; and, speaking generally, it is only the buildings that have been erected since the beginning of the 19th century that have pronounced architectural merit. This was due largely to the long survival of the severe sentiment of the Covenanters, who discouraged, if they did not actually forbid, the raising of temples of beautiful design. Representative examples of later work are found in the United Free churches in Vincent Street, in Caledonia Road and at Queen’s Park, designed by Alexander Thomson (1817-1875), an architect of distinct originality; St George’s church, in West George Street, a remarkable work by William Stark, erected in the beginning of the 19th century; St Andrew’s church in St Andrew’s Square off the Saltmarket, modelled after St Martin’s-in-the-Fields, London, with a fine Roman portico; some of the older parish churches, such as St Enoch’s, dating from 1780, with a good spire (the saint’s name is said to be a corruption of Tanew, mother of Kentigern); the episcopal church of St Mary (1870), in Great Western Road, by Sir G. G. Scott; the Roman Catholic cathedral of St Andrew, on the river-bank between Victoria and Broomielaw bridges; the Barony church, replacing the older kirk in which Norman Macleod ministered; and several admirable structures, well situated, on the eastern confines of Kelvingrove Park.
The principal burying-ground is the Necropolis, occupying Fir Park, a hill about 300 ft. high in the northern part of the city. It provides a not inappropriate background to the cathedral, from which it is approached by a bridge, known as the “Bridge of Sighs,” over the Molendinar ravine. The ground, which once formed portion of the estate of Wester Craigs, belongs to the Merchants’ House, which purchased it in 1650 from Sir Ludovic Stewart of Minto. A Doric column to the memory of Knox, surmounted by a colossal statue of the reformer, was erected by public subscription on the crown of the height in 1824, and a few years later the idea arose of utilizing the land as a cemetery. The Jews have reserved for their own people a detached area in the north-western corner of the cemetery.
Education.—The university, founded in 1450 by Bishop Turnbull under a bull of Pope Nicholas V., survived in its old quarters till far in the 19th century. The paedagogium, or college of arts, was at first housed in Rottenrow, but was moved in 1460 to a site in High Street, where Sir James Hamilton of Cadzow, first Lord Hamilton (d. 1479), gave it four acres of land and some buildings. Queen Mary bestowed upon it thirteen acres of contiguous ground, and her son granted it a new charter and enlarged the endowments. Prior to the Revolution its fortunes fluctuated, but in the 18th century it became very famous. By the middle of the 19th century, however, its surroundings had deteriorated, and in 1860 it was decided to rebuild it elsewhere. The ground had enormously increased in value and a railway company purchased it for £100,000. In 1864 the university bought the Gilmore Hill estate for £65,000, the adjacent property of Dowan Hill for £16,000 and the property of Clayslaps for £17,400. Sir G. G. Scott was appointed architect and selected as the site of the university buildings the ridge of Gilmore Hill—the finest situation in Glasgow. The design is Early English with a suggestion in parts of the Scots-French style of a much later period. The main structure is 540 ft. long and 300 ft. broad. The principal front faces southwards and consists of a lofty central tower with spire and corner blocks with turrets, between which are buildings of lower height. Behind the tower lies the Bute hall, built on cloisters, binding together the various departments and smaller halls, and dividing the massive edifice into an eastern and western quadrangle, on two sides of which are ranged the class-rooms in two storeys. The northern façade comprises two corner blocks, besides the museum, the library and, in the centre, the students’ reading-room on one floor and the Hunterian museum on the floor above. On the south the ground falls in terraces towards Kelvingrove Park and the Kelvin. On the west, but apart from the main structure, stand the houses of the principal and professors. The foundation stone was laid in 1868 and the opening ceremony was held in 1870. The total cost of the university buildings amounted to £500,000, towards which government contributed £120,000 and public subscription £250,000. The third marquess of Bute (1847-1900) gave £40,000 to provide the Bute or common hall, a room of fine proportions fitted in Gothic style and divided by a beautiful Gothic screen from the Randolph hall, named after another benefactor, Charles Randolph (1809-1878), a native of Stirling, who had prospered as shipbuilder and marine engineer and left £60,000 to the university. The graceful spire surmounting the tower was provided from the bequest of £5000 by Mr A. Cunningham, deputy town-clerk, and Dr John M’Intyre erected the Students’ Union at a cost of £5000, while other donors completed the equipment so generously that the senate was enabled to carry on its work, for the first time in its history, in almost ideal circumstances. The library includes the collection of Sir William Hamilton, and the Hunterian museum, bequeathed by William Hunter, the anatomist, is particularly rich in coins, medals, black-letter books and anatomical preparations. The observatory on Dowan Hill is attached to the chair of astronomy. An interesting link with the past are the exhibitions founded by John Snell (1629-1679), a native of Colmonell in Ayrshire, for the purpose of enabling students of distinction to continue their career at Balliol College, Oxford. Amongst distinguished exhibitioners have been Adam Smith, John Gibson Lockhart, John Wilson (“Christopher North”), Archbishop Tait, Sir William Hamilton and Professor Shairp. The curriculum of the university embraces the faculties of arts, divinity, medicine, law and science. The governing body includes the chancellor, elected for life by the general council, the principal, also elected for life, and the lord rector elected triennially by the students voting in “nations” according to their birthplace (Glottiana, natives of Lanarkshire; Transforthana, of Scotland north of the Forth; Rothseiana, of the shires of Bute, Renfrew and Ayr; and Loudonia, all others). There are a large number of well-endowed chairs and lectureships and the normal number of students exceeds 2000. The universities of Glasgow and Aberdeen unite to return one member to parliament. Queen Margaret College for women, established in 1883, occupies a handsome building close to the botanic gardens, has an endowment of upwards of £25,000, and was incorporated with the university in 1893. Muirhead College is another institution for women.
Elementary instruction is supplied at numerous board schools. Higher, secondary and technical education is provided at several well-known institutions. There are two educational endowments boards which apply a revenue of about £10,000 a year mainly to the foundation of bursaries. Anderson College in George Street perpetuates the memory of its founder, John Anderson (1726-1796), professor of natural philosophy in the university, who opened a class in physics for working men, which he conducted to the end of his life. By his will he provided for an institution for the instruction of artisans and others unable to attend the university. The college which bears his name began in 1796 with lectures on natural philosophy and chemistry by Thomas Garnett (1766-1802). Two years later mathematics and geography were added. In 1799 Dr George Birkbeck (1776-1841) succeeded Garnett and began those lectures on mechanics and applied science which, continued elsewhere, ultimately led to the foundation of mechanics’ institutes in many towns. In later years the college was further endowed and its curriculum enlarged by the inclusion of literature and languages, but ultimately it was determined to limit the scope of its work to medicine (comprising, however, physics, chemistry and botany also). The lectures of its medical school, incorporated in 1887 and situated near the Western Infirmary, are accepted by Glasgow and other universities. The Glasgow and West of Scotland Technical College, formed in 1886 out of a combination of the arts side of Anderson College, the College of Science and Arts, Allan Glen’s Institution and the Atkinson Institution, is subsidized by the corporation and the endowments board, and is especially concerned with students desirous of following an industrial career. St Mungo’s College, which has developed from an extra-mural school in connexion with the Royal Infirmary, was incorporated in 1889, with faculties of medicine and law. The United Free Church College, finely situated near Kelvingrove Park, the School of Art and Design, and the normal schools for the training of teachers, are institutions with distinctly specialized objects.
The High school in Elmbank is the successor of the grammar school (long housed in John Street) which was founded in the 14th century as an appanage of the cathedral. It was placed under the jurisdiction of the school board in 1873. Other secondary schools include Glasgow Academy, Kelvinside Academy and the girls’ and boys’ schools endowed by the Hutcheson trust. Several of the schools under the board are furnished with secondary departments or equipped as science schools, and the Roman Catholics maintain elementary schools and advanced academies.
Art Galleries, Libraries and Museums.—Glasgow merchants and manufacturers alike have been constant patrons of art, and their liberality may have had some influence on the younger painters who, towards the close of the 19th century, broke away from tradition and, stimulated by training in the studios of Paris, became known as the “Glasgow school.” The art gallery and museum in Kelvingrove Park, which was built at a cost of £250,000 (partly derived from the profits of the exhibitions held in the park in 1888 and 1901), is exceptionally well appointed. The collection originated in 1854 in the purchase of the works of art belonging to Archibald M’Lellan, and was supplemented from time to time by numerous bequests of important pictures. It was housed for many years in the Corporation galleries in Sauchiehall Street. The Institute of Fine Arts, in Sauchiehall Street, is mostly devoted to periodical exhibitions of modern art. There are also pictures on exhibition in the People’s Palace on Glasgow Green, which was built by the corporation in 1898 and combines an art gallery and museum with a conservatory and winter garden, and in the museum at Camphill, situated within the bounds of Queen’s Park. The library and Hunterian museum in the university are mostly reserved for the use of students. The faculty of procurators possess a valuable library which is housed in their hall, an Italian Renaissance building, in West George Street. In Bath Street there are the Mechanics’ and the Philosophical Society’s libraries, and the Physicians’ is in St Vincent Street. Miller Street contains the headquarters of the public libraries. The premises once occupied by the water commission have been converted to house the Mitchell library, which grew out of a bequest of £70,000 by Stephen Mitchell, largely reinforced by further gifts of libraries and funds, and now contains upwards of 100,000 volumes. It is governed by the city council and has been in use since 1877. Another building in this street accommodates both the Stirling and Baillie libraries. The Stirling, with some 50,000 volumes, is particularly rich in tracts of the 16th and 17th centuries, and the Baillie was endowed by George Baillie, a solicitor who, in 1863, gave £18,000 for educational objects. The Athenaeum in St George’s Place, an institution largely concerned with evening classes in various subjects, contains an excellent library and reading-room.
Charities.—The old Royal Infirmary, designed by Robert Adam and opened in 1794, adjoining the cathedral, occupies the site of the archiepiscopal palace, the last portion of which was removed towards the close of the 18th century. The chief architectural feature of the infirmary is the central dome forming the roof of the operating theatre. On the northern side are the buildings of the medical school attached to the institution. The new infirmary commemorates the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria. A little farther north, in Castle Street, is the blind asylum. The Western Infirmary is to some extent used for the purposes of clinical instruction in connexion with the university, to which it stands in immediate proximity. Near it is the Royal hospital for sick children. To the south of Queen’s Park is Victoria Infirmary, and close to it the deaf and dumb institution. On the bank of the river, not far from the south-eastern boundary of the city, is the Belvedere hospital for infectious diseases, and at Ruchill, in the north, is another hospital of the same character opened in 1900. The Royal asylum at Gartnavel is situated near Jordanhill station, and the District asylum at Gartloch (with a branch at West Muckroft) lies in the parish of Cadder beyond the north-eastern boundary. There are numerous hospitals exclusively devoted to the treatment of special diseases, and several nursing institutions and homes. Hutcheson’s Hospital, designed by David Hamilton and adorned with statues of the founders, is situated in Ingram Street, and by the increase in the value of its lands has become a very wealthy body. George Hutcheson (1580-1639), a lawyer in the Trongate near the tolbooth, who afterwards lived in the Bishop’s castle, which stood close to the spot where the Kelvin enters the Clyde, founded the hospital for poor old men. His brother Thomas (1589-1641) established in connexion with it a school for the lodging and education of orphan boys, the sons of burgesses. The trust, through the growth of its funds, has been enabled to extend its educational scope and to subsidize schools apart from the charity.
Monuments.—Most of the statues have been erected in George Square. They are grouped around a fluted pillar 80 ft. high, surmounted by a colossal statue of Sir Walter Scott by John Ritchie (1809-1850), erected in 1837, and include Queen Victoria and the Prince Consort (both equestrian) by Baron Marochetti; James Watt by Chantrey; Sir Robert Peel, Thomas Campbell the poet, who was born in Glasgow, and David Livingstone, all by John Mossman; Sir John Moore, a native of Glasgow, by Flaxman, erected in 1819; James Oswald, the first member returned to parliament for the city after the Reform Act of 1832; Lord Clyde (Sir Colin Campbell), also a native, by Foley, erected in 1868; Dr Thomas Graham, master of the mint, another native, by Brodie; Robert Burns by G. E. Ewing, erected in 1877, subscribed for in shillings by the working men of Scotland; and William Ewart Gladstone by Hamo Thornycroft, unveiled by Lord Rosebery in 1902. In front of the Royal Exchange stands the equestrian monument of the duke of Wellington. In Cathedral Square are the statues of Norman Macleod, James White and James Arthur, and in front of the Royal infirmary is that of Sir James Lumsden, lord provost and benefactor. Nelson is commemorated by an obelisk 143 ft. high on the Green, which was erected in 1806 and is said to be a copy of that in the Piazza del Popolo at Rome. One of the most familiar statues is the equestrian figure of William III. in the Trongate, which was presented to the town in 1735 by James Macrae (1677-1744), a poor Ayrshire lad who had amassed a fortune in India, where he was governor of Madras from 1725 to 1730.
Recreations.—Of the theatres the chief are the King’s in Bath Street, the Royal and the Grand in Cowcaddens, the Royalty and Gaiety in Sauchiehall Street, and the Princess’s in Main Street. Variety theatres, headed by the Empire in Sauchiehall Street, are found in various parts of the town. There is a circus in Waterloo Street, a hippodrome in Sauchiehall Street and a zoological garden in New City Road. The principal concert halls are the great hall of the St Andrew’s Halls, a group of rooms belonging to the corporation; the City Hall in Candleriggs, the People’s Palace on the Green, and Queen’s Rooms close to Kelvingrove Park. Throughout winter enormous crowds throng the football grounds of the Queen’s Park, the leading amateur club, and the Celtic, the Rangers, the Third Lanark and other prominent professional clubs.
Parks and Open Spaces.—The oldest open space is the Green (140 acres), on the right bank of the river, adjoining a densely-populated district. It once extended farther west, but a portion was built over at a time when public rights were not vigilantly guarded. It is a favourite area for popular demonstrations, and sections have been reserved for recreation or laid out in flower-beds. Kelvingrove Park, in the west end, has exceptional advantages, for the Kelvin burn flows through it and the ground is naturally terraced, while the situation is beautified by the adjoining Gilmore Hill with the university on its summit. The park was laid out under the direction of Sir Joseph Paxton, and contains the Stewart fountain, erected to commemorate the labours of Lord Provost Stewart and his colleagues in the promotion of the Loch Katrine water scheme. The other parks on the right bank are, in the north, Ruchill (53 acres), acquired in 1891, and Springburn (53¼ acres), acquired in 1892, and, in the east, Alexandra Park (120 acres), in which is laid down a nine-hole golf-course, and Tollcross (82¾ acres), beyond the municipal boundary, acquired in 1897. On the left bank Queen’s Park (130 acres), occupying a commanding site, was laid out by Sir Joseph Paxton, and considerably enlarged in 1894 by the enclosure of the grounds of Camphill. The other southern parks are Richmond (44 acres), acquired in 1898, and named after Lord Provost Sir David Richmond, who opened it in 1899; Maxwell, which was taken over on the annexation of Pollokshields in 1891; Bellahouston (176 acres), acquired in 1895; and Cathkin Braes (50 acres), 3½m. beyond the south-eastern boundary, presented to the city in 1886 by James Dick, a manufacturer, containing “Queen Mary’s stone,” a point which commands a view of the lower valley of the Clyde. In the north-western district of the town 40 acres between Great Western Road and the Kelvin are devoted to the Royal Botanic Gardens, which became public property in 1891. They are beautifully laid out, and contain a great range of hothouses. The gardens owed much to Sir William Hooker, who was regius professor of botany in Glasgow University before his appointment to the directorship of Kew Gardens.
Communications.—The North British railway terminus is situated in Queen Street, and consists of a high-level station (main line) and a low-level station, used in connexion with the City & District line, largely underground, serving the northern side of the town, opened in 1886. The Great Northern and North-Eastern railways use the high-level line of the N.B.R., the three companies forming the East Coast Joint Service. The Central terminus of the Caledonian railway in Gordon Street, served by the West Coast system (in which the London & North-Western railway shares), also comprises a high-level station for the main line traffic and a low-level station for the Cathcart District railway, completed in 1886 and made circular for the southern side and suburbs in 1894, and also for the connexion between Maryhill and Rutherglen, which is mostly underground. Both the underground lines communicate with certain branches of the main line, either directly or by change of carriage. The older terminus of the Caledonian railway in Buchanan Street now takes the northern and eastern traffic. The terminus of the Glasgow & South-Western railway company in St Enoch Square serves the country indicated in its title, and also gives the Midland railway of England access to the west coast and Glasgow. The Glasgow Subway—an underground cable passenger line, 6½ m. long, worked in two tunnels and passing below the Clyde twice—was opened in 1896. Since no more bridge-building will be sanctioned west of the railway bridge at the Broomielaw, there are at certain points steam ferry boats or floating bridges for conveying vehicles across the harbour, and at Stobcross there is a subway for foot and wheeled traffic. Steamers, carrying both goods and passengers, constantly leave the Broomielaw quay for the piers and ports on the river and firth, and the islands and sea lochs of Argyllshire. The city is admirably served by tramways which penetrate every populous district and cross the river by Glasgow and Albert bridges.
Trade.—Natural causes, such as proximity to the richest field of coal and ironstone in Scotland and the vicinity of hill streams of pure water, account for much of the great development of trade in Glasgow. It was in textiles that the city showed its earliest predominance, which, however, has not been maintained, owing, it is alleged, to the shortage of female labour. Several cotton mills are still worked, but the leading feature in the trade has always been the manufacture of such light textures as plain, striped and figured muslins, ginghams and fancy fabrics. Thread is made on a considerable scale, but jute and silk are of comparatively little importance. The principal varieties of carpets are woven. Some factories are exclusively devoted to the making of lace curtains. The allied industries of bleaching, printing and dyeing, on the other hand, have never declined. The use of chlorine in bleaching was first introduced in Great Britain at Glasgow in 1787, on the suggestion of James Watt, whose father-in-law was a bleacher; and it was a Glasgow bleacher, Charles Tennant, who first discovered and made bleaching powder (chloride of lime). Turkey-red dyeing was begun at Glasgow by David Dale and George M‘Intosh, and the colour was long known locally as Dale’s red. A large quantity of grey cloth continues to be sent from Lancashire and other mills to be bleached and printed in Scottish works. These industries gave a powerful impetus to the manufacture of chemicals, and the works at St Rollox developed rapidly. Among prominent chemical industries are to be reckoned the alkali trades—including soda, bleaching powder and soap-making—the preparation of alum and prussiates of potash, bichromate of potash, white lead and other pigments, dynamite and gunpowder. Glass-making and paper-making are also carried on, and there are several breweries and distilleries, besides factories for the making of aerated waters, starch, dextrine and matches. Many miscellaneous trades flourish, such as clothing, confectionery, cabinet-making, bread and biscuit making, boot and shoe making, flour mills and saw mills, pottery and india-rubber. Since the days of the brothers Robert Foulis (1705-1776) and Andrew Foulis (1712-1775), printing, both letterpress and colour, has been identified with Glasgow, though in a lesser degree than with Edinburgh. The tobacco trade still flourishes, though much lessened. But the great industry is iron-founding. The discovery of the value of blackband ironstone, till then regarded as useless “wild coal,” by David Mushet (1772-1847), and Neilson’s invention of the hot-air blast threw the control of the Scottish iron trade into the hands of Glasgow ironmasters, although the furnaces themselves were mostly erected in Lanarkshire and Ayrshire. The expansion of the industry was such that, in 1859, one-third of the total output in the United Kingdom was Scottish. During the following years, however, the trade seemed to have lost its elasticity, the annual production averaging about one million tons of pig-iron. Mild steel is manufactured extensively, and some crucible cast steel is made. In addition to brass foundries there are works for the extraction of copper and the smelting of lead and zinc. With such resources every branch of engineering is well represented. Locomotive engines are built for every country where railways are employed, and all kinds of builder’s ironwork is forged in enormous quantities, and the sewing-machine factories in the neighbourhood are important. Boiler-making and marine engine works, in many cases in direct connexion with the shipbuilding yards, are numerous. Shipbuilding, indeed, is the greatest of the industries of Glasgow, and in some years more than half of the total tonnage in the United Kingdom has been launched on the Clyde, the yards of which extend from the harbour to Dumbarton on one side and Greenock on the other side of the river and firth. Excepting a trifling proportion of wooden ships, the Clyde-built vessels are of iron and steel, the trade having owed its immense expansion to the prompt adoption of this material. Every variety of craft is turned out, from battleships and great liners to dredging-plant and hopper barges.
The Port.—The harbour extends from Glasgow Bridge to the point where the Kelvin joins the Clyde, and occupies 206 acres. For the most part it is lined by quays and wharves, which have a total length of 8¼ m., and from the harbour to the sea vessels drawing 26 ft. can go up or down on one tide. It is curious to remember that in the middle of the 18th century the river was fordable on foot at Dumbuck, 12 m. below Glasgow and 1½ m. S.E. of Dumbarton. Even within the limits of the present harbour Smeaton reported to the town council in 1740 that at Pointhouse ford, just east of the mouth of the Kelvin, the depth at low water was only 15 in. and at high water 39 in. The transformation effected within a century and a half is due to the energy and enterprise of the Clyde Navigation Trust. The earliest shipping-port of Glasgow was Irvine in Ayrshire, but lighterage was tedious and land carriage costly, and in 1658 the civic authorities endeavoured to purchase a site for a spacious harbour at Dumbarton. Being thwarted by the magistrates of that burgh, however, in 1662 they secured 13 acres on the southern bank at a spot some 2 m. above Greenock, which became known as Port Glasgow, where they built harbours and constructed the first graving dock in Scotland. Sixteen years later the Broomielaw quay was built, but it was not until the tobacco merchants appreciated the necessity of bringing their wares into the heart of the city that serious consideration was paid to schemes for deepening the waterway. Smeaton’s suggestion of a lock and dam 4 m. below the Broomielaw was happily not accepted. In 1768 John Golborne advised the narrowing of the river and the increasing of the scour by the construction of rubble jetties and the dredging of sandbanks and shoals. After James Watt’s report in 1769 on the ford at Dumbuck, Golborne succeeded in 1775 in deepening the ford to 6 ft. at low water with a width of 300 ft. By Rennie’s advice in 1799, following up Golborne’s recommendation, as many as 200 jetties were built between Glasgow and Bowling, some old ones were shortened and low rubble walls carried from point to point of the jetties, and thus the channel was made more uniform and much land reclaimed. By 1836 there was a depth of 7 or 8 ft. at the Broomielaw at low water, and in 1840 the whole duty of improving the navigation was devolved upon the Navigation Trust. Steam dredgers were kept constantly at work, shoals were removed and rocks blasted away. Two million cubic yards of matter are lifted every year and dumped in Loch Long. By 1900 the channel had been deepened to a minimum of 22 ft., and, as already indicated, the largest vessels make the open sea in one tide, whereas in 1840 it took ships drawing only 15 ft. two and even three tides to reach the sea. The debt of the Trust amounts to £6,000,000, and the annual revenue to £450,000. Long before these great results had been achieved, however, the shipping trade had been revolutionized by the application of steam to navigation, and later by the use of iron for wood in shipbuilding, in both respects enormously enhancing the industry and commerce of Glasgow. From 1812 to 1820 Henry Bell’s “Comet,” 30 tons, driven by an engine of 3 horse-power, plied between Glasgow and Greenock, until she was wrecked, being the first steamer to run regularly on any river in the Old World. Thus since the appearance of that primitive vessel phenomenal changes had taken place on the Clyde. When the quays and wharves ceased to be able to accommodate the growing traffic, the construction of docks became imperative. In 1867 Kingston Dock on the south side, of 51⁄3 acres, was opened, but soon proved inadequate, and in 1880 Queen’s Dock (two basins) at Stobcross, on the north side, of 30 acres, was completed. Although this could accommodate one million tons of shipping, more dock space was speedily called for, and in 1897 Prince’s Dock (three basins) on the opposite side, of 72 acres, was opened, fully equipped with hydraulic and steam cranes and all the other latest appliances. There are, besides, three graving docks, the longest of which (880 ft.) can be made at will into two docks of 417 ft. and 457 ft. in length. The Caledonian and Glasgow & South-Western railways have access to the harbour for goods and minerals at Terminus Quay to the west of Kingston Dock, and a mineral dock has been constructed by the Trust at Clydebank, about 3½ m. below the harbour. The shipping attains to colossal proportions. The imports consist chiefly of flour, fruit, timber, iron ore, live stock and wheat; and the exports principally of cotton manufactures, manufactured iron and steel, machinery, whisky, cotton yarn, linen fabrics, coal, jute, jam and foods, and woollen manufactures.
Government.—By the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1889 the city was placed entirely in the county of Lanark, the districts then transferred having previously belonged to the shires of Dumbarton and Renfrew. In 1891 the boundaries were enlarged to include six suburban burghs and a number of suburban districts, the area being increased from 6111 acres to 11,861 acres. The total area of the city and the conterminous burghs of Govan, Partick and Kinning Park—which, though they successfully resisted annexation in 1891, are practically part of the city—is 15,659 acres. The extreme length from north to south and from east to west is about 5 m. each way, and the circumference measures 27 m. In 1893 the municipal burgh was constituted a county of a city. Glasgow is governed by a corporation consisting of 77 members, including 14 bailies and the lord provost. In 1895 all the powers which the town council exercised as police commissioners and trustees for parks, markets, water and the like were consolidated and conferred upon the corporation. Three years later the two parish councils of the city and barony, which administered the poor law over the greater part of the city north of the Clyde, were amalgamated as the parish council of Glasgow, with 31 members. As a county of a city Glasgow has a lieutenancy (successive lords provost holding the office) and a court of quarter sessions, which is the appeal court from the magistrates sitting as licensing authority. Under the corporation municipal ownership has reached a remarkable development, the corporation owning the supplies of water, gas and electric power, tramways and municipal lodging-houses. The enterprise of the corporation has brought its work prominently into notice, not only in the United Kingdom, but in the United States of America and elsewhere. In 1859 water was conveyed by aqueducts and tunnels from Loch Katrine (364 ft. above sea-level, giving a pressure of 70 or 80 ft. above the highest point in the city) to the reservoir at Mugdock (with a capacity of 500,000,000 gallons), a distance of 27 m., whence after filtration it was distributed by pipes to Glasgow, a further distance of 7 m., or 34 m. in all. During the next quarter of a century it became evident that this supply would require to be augmented, and powers were accordingly obtained in 1895 to raise Loch Katrine 5 ft. and to connect with it by tunnel Loch Arklet (455 ft. above the sea), with storage for 2,050,000,000 gallons, the two lochs together possessing a capacity of twelve thousand million gallons. The entire works between the loch and the city were duplicated over a distance of 23½ m., and an additional reservoir, holding 694,000,000 gallons, was constructed, increasing the supply held in reserve from 12½ days’ to 30½ days’. In 1909 the building of a dam was undertaken 1¼ m. west of the lower end of Loch Arklet, designed to create a sheet of water 2½ m. long and to increase the water-supply of the city by ten million gallons a day. The water committee supplies hydraulic power to manufacturers and merchants. In 1869 the corporation acquired the gasworks, the productive capacity of which exceeds 70 million cub. ft. a day. In 1893 the supply of electric light was also undertaken, and since that date the city has been partly lighted by electricity. The corporation also laid down the tramways, which were leased by a company for twenty-three years at a rental of £150 a mile per annum. When the lease expired in 1894 the town council took over the working of the cars, substituting overhead electric traction for horse-power. One of the most difficult problems that the corporation has had to deal with was the housing of the poor. By the lapse of time and the congestion of population, certain quarters of the city, in old Glasgow especially, had become slums and rookeries of the worst description. The condition of the town was rapidly growing into a byword, when the municipality obtained parliamentary powers in 1866 enabling it to condemn for purchase over-crowded districts, to borrow money and levy rates. The scheme of reform contemplated the demolition of 10,000 insanitary dwellings occupied by 50,000 persons, but the corporation was required to provide accommodation for the dislodged whenever the numbers exceeded 500. In point of fact they never needed to build, as private enterprise more than kept pace with the operations of the improvement. The work was carried out promptly and effectually, and when the act expired in 1881 whole localities had been recreated and nearly 40,000 persons properly housed. Under the amending act of 1881 the corporation began in 1888 to build tenement houses in which the poor could rent one or more rooms at the most moderate rentals; lodging-houses for men and women followed, and in 1896 a home was erected for the accommodation of families in certain circumstances. The powers of the improvement trustees were practically exhausted in 1896, when it appeared that during twenty-nine years £1,955,550 had been spent in buying and improving land and buildings, and £231,500 in building tenements and lodging-houses; while, on the other side, ground had been sold for £1,072,000, and the trustees owned heritable property valued at £692,000, showing a deficiency of £423,050. Assessment of ratepayers for the purposes of the trust had yielded £593,000, and it was estimated that these operations, beneficial to the city in a variety of ways, had cost the citizens £24,000 a year. In 1897 an act was obtained for dealing in similar fashion with insanitary and congested areas in the centre of the city, and on the south side of the river, and for acquiring not more than 25 acres of land, within or without the city, for dwellings for the poorest classes. Along with these later improvements the drainage system was entirely remodelled, the area being divided into three sections, each distinct, with separate works for the disposal of its own sewage. One section (authorized in 1891 and doubled in 1901) comprises 11 sq. m.—one-half within the city north of the river, and the other in the district in Lanarkshire—with works at Dalmarnock; another section (authorized in 1896) includes the area on the north bank not provided for in 1891, as well as the burghs of Partick and Clydebank and intervening portions of the shires of Renfrew and Dumbarton, the total area consisting of 14 sq. m., with works at Dalmuir, 7 m. below Glasgow; and the third section (authorized in 1898) embraces the whole municipal area on the south side of the river, the burghs of Rutherglen, Pollokshaws, Kinning Park and Govan, and certain districts in the counties of Renfrew and Lanark—14 sq. m. in all, which may be extended by the inclusion of the burghs of Renfrew and Paisley—with works at Braehead, 1 m. east of Renfrew. Among other works in which it has interests there may be mentioned its representation on the board of the Clyde Navigation Trust and the governing body of the West of Scotland Technical College. In respect of parliamentary representation the Reform Act of 1832 gave two members to Glasgow, a third was added in 1868 (though each elector had only two votes), and in 1885 the city was split up into seven divisions, each returning one member.
Population.—Throughout the 19th century the population grew prodigiously. Only 77,385 in 1801, it was nearly doubled in twenty years, being 147,043 in 1821, already outstripping Edinburgh. It had become 395,503 in 1861, and in 1881 it was 511,415. In 1891, prior to extension of the boundary, it was 565,839, and, after extension, 658,198, and in 1901 it stood at 761,709. The birth-rate averages 33, and the death-rate 21 per 1000, but the mortality before the city improvement scheme was carried out was as high as 33 per 1000. Owing to its being convenient of access from the Highlands, a very considerable number of Gaelic-speaking persons live in Glasgow, while the great industries attract an enormous number of persons from other parts of Scotland. The valuation of the city, which in 1878-1879 was £3,420,697, now exceeds £5,000,000.
History.—There are several theories as to the origin of the name of Glasgow. One holds that it comes from Gaelic words meaning “dark glen,” descriptive of the narrow ravine through which the Molendinar flowed to the Clyde. But the more generally accepted version is that the word is the Celtic Cleschu, afterwards written Glesco or Glasghu, meaning “dear green spot” (glas, green; cu or ghu, dear), which is supposed to have been the name of the settlement that Kentigern found here when he came to convert the Britons of Strathclyde. Mungo became the patron-saint of Glasgow, and the motto and arms of the city are wholly identified with him—“Let Glasgow Flourish by the Preaching of the Word,” usually shortened to “Let Glasgow Flourish.” It is not till the 12th century, however, that the history of the city becomes clear. About 1178 William the Lion made the town by charter a burgh of barony, and gave it a market with freedom and customs. Amongst more or less isolated episodes of which record has been preserved may be mentioned the battle of the Bell o’ the Brae, on the site of High Street, in which Wallace routed the English under Percy in 1300; the betrayal of Wallace to the English in 1305 in a barn situated, according to tradition, in Robroyston, just beyond the north-eastern boundary of the city; the ravages of the plague in 1350 and thirty years later; the regent Arran’s siege, in 1544, of the bishop’s castle, garrisoned by the earl of Glencairn, and the subsequent fight at the Butts (now the Gallowgate) when the terms of surrender were dishonoured, in which the regent’s men gained the day. Most of the inhabitants were opposed to Queen Mary and many actively supported Murray in the battle of Langside—the site of which is now occupied by the Queen’s Park—on the 13th of May 1568, in which she lost crown and kingdom. A memorial of the conflict was erected on the site in 1887. Under James VI. the town became a royal burgh in 1636, with freedom of the river from the Broomielaw to the Cloch. But the efforts to establish episcopacy aroused the fervent anti-prelatical sentiment of the people, who made common cause with the Covenanters to the end of their long struggle. Montrose mulcted the citizens heavily after the battle of Kilsyth in 1645, and three years later the provost and bailies were deposed for contumacy to their sovereign lord. Plague and famine devastated the town in 1649, and in 1652 a conflagration laid a third of the burgh in ashes. Even after the restoration its sufferings were acute. It was the headquarters of the Whiggamores of the west and its prisons were constantly filled with rebels for conscience’ sake. The government scourged the townsfolk with an army of Highlanders, whose brutality only served to strengthen the resistance at the battles of Drumclog and Bothwell Brig. With the Union, hotly resented as it was at the time, the dawn of almost unbroken prosperity arose. By the treaty of Union Scottish ports were placed, in respect of trade, on the same footing as English ports, and the situation of Glasgow enabled it to acquire a full share of the ever-increasing Atlantic trade. Its commerce was already considerable and in population it was now the second town in Scotland. It enjoyed a practical monopoly of the sale of raw and refined sugars, had the right to distil spirits from molasses free of duty, dealt largely in cured herring and salmon, sent hides to English tanners and manufactured soap and linen. It challenged the supremacy of Bristol in the tobacco trade—fetching cargoes from Virginia, Maryland and Carolina in its own fleet—so that by 1772 its importations of tobacco amounted to more than half of the whole quantity brought into the United Kingdom. The tobacco merchants built handsome mansions and the town rapidly extended westwards. With the surplus profits new industries were created, which helped the city through the period of the American War. Most, though not all, of the manufactures in which Glasgow has always held a foremost place date from this period. It was in 1764 that James Watt succeeded in repairing a hitherto unworkable model of Newcomen’s fire (steam) engine in his small workshop within the college precincts. Shipbuilding on a colossal scale and the enormous developments in the iron industries and engineering were practically the growth of the 19th century. The failure of the Western bank in 1857, the Civil War in the United States, the collapse of the City of Glasgow bank in 1878, among other disasters, involved heavy losses and distress, but recovery was always rapid.
Authorities.—J. Cleland, Annals of Glasgow (Glasgow, 1816); Duncan, Literary History of Glasgow (Glasgow, 1886); Registrum Episcopatus Glasgow (Maitland Club, 1843); Pagan, Sketch of the History of Glasgow (Glasgow, 1847); Sir J. D. Marwick, Extracts from the Burgh Records of Glasgow (Burgh Records Society); Charters relating to Glasgow (Glasgow, 1891); River Clyde and Harbour of Glasgow (Glasgow, 1898); Glasgow Past and Present (Glasgow, 1884); Munimenta Universitatis Glasgow (Maitland Club, 1854); J. Strang, Glasgow and its Clubs (Glasgow, 1864); Reid (“Senex”), Old Glasgow (Glasgow, 1864); A. Macgeorge, Old Glasgow (Glasgow, 1888); Deas, The River Clyde (Glasgow, 1881); Gale, Loch Katrine Waterworks (Glasgow, 1883); Mason, Public and Private Libraries of Glasgow (Glasgow, 1885); J. Nicol, Vital, Social and Economic Statistics of Glasgow (1881); J. B. Russell, Life in One Room (Glasgow, 1888); Ticketed Houses (Glasgow, 1889); T. Somerville, George Square (Glasgow, 1891); J. A. Kilpatrick, Literary Landmarks of Glasgow (Glasgow, 1898); J. K. M’Dowall, People’s History of Glasgow (Glasgow, 1899); Sir J. Bell and J. Paton, Glasgow: Its Municipal Organization and Administration (Glasgow, 1896); Sir D. Richmond, Notes on Municipal Work (Glasgow, 1899); J. M. Lang, Glasgow and the Barony (Glasgow, 1895); Old Glasgow (Glasgow, 1896); J. H. Muir, Glasgow in 1901.
GLASITES, or Sandemanians, a Christian sect, founded in Scotland by John Glas (q.v.). It spread into England and America, but is now practically extinct. Glas dissented from the Westminster Confession only in his views as to the spiritual nature of the church and the functions of the civil magistrate. But his son-in-law Robert Sandeman added a distinctive doctrine as to the nature of faith which is thus stated on his tombstone: “That the bare death of Jesus Christ without a thought or deed on the part of man, is sufficient to present the chief of sinners spotless before God.” In a series of letters to James Hervey, the author of Theron and Aspasia, he maintained that justifying faith is a simple assent to the divine testimony concerning Jesus Christ, differing in no way in its character from belief in any ordinary testimony. In their practice the Glasite churches aimed at a strict conformity with the primitive type of Christianity as understood by them. Each congregation had a plurality of elders, pastors or bishops, who were chosen according to what were believed to be the instructions of Paul, without regard to previous education or present occupation, and who enjoy a perfect equality in office. To have been married a second time disqualified for ordination, or for continued tenure of the office of bishop. In all the action of the church unanimity was considered to be necessary; if any member differed in opinion from the rest, he must either surrender his judgment to that of the church, or be shut out from its communion. To join in prayer with any one not a member of the denomination was regarded as unlawful, and even to eat or drink with one who had been excommunicated was held to be wrong. The Lord’s Supper was observed weekly; and between forenoon and afternoon service every Sunday a love feast was held at which every member was required to be present. Mutual exhortation was practised at all the meetings for divine service, when any member who had the gift of speech (χάρισμα) was allowed to speak. The practice of washing one another’s feet was at one time observed; and it was for a long time customary for each brother and sister to receive new members, on admission, with a holy kiss. “Things strangled” and “blood” were rigorously abstained from; the lot was regarded as sacred; the accumulation of wealth they held to be unscriptural and improper, and each member considered his property as liable to be called upon at any time to meet the wants of the poor and the necessities of the church. Churches of this order were founded in Paisley, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Leith, Arbroath, Montrose, Aberdeen, Dunkeld, Cupar, Galashiels, Liverpool and London, where Michael Faraday was long an elder. Their exclusiveness in practice, neglect of education for the ministry, and the antinomian tendency of their doctrine contributed to their dissolution. Many Glasites joined the general body of Scottish Congregationalists, and the sect may now be considered extinct. The last of the Sandemanian churches in America ceased to exist in 1890.
See James Ross, History of Congregational Independency in Scotland (Glasgow, 1900).
(D. Mn.)
The name Glasites or Glassites was generally used in Scotland; in England and America the name Sandemanians was more common.
GLASS (O.E. glæs, cf. Ger. Glas, perhaps derived from an old Teutonic root gla-, a variant of glo-, having the general sense of shining, cf. “glare,” “glow”), a hard substance, usually transparent or translucent, which from a fluid condition at a high temperature has passed to a solid condition with sufficient rapidity to prevent the formation of visible crystals. There are many varieties of glass differing widely in chemical composition and in physical qualities. Most varieties, however, have certain qualities in common. They pass through a viscous stage in cooling from a state of fluidity; they develop effects of colour when the glass mixtures are fused with certain metallic oxides; they are, when cold, bad conductors both of electricity and heat, they are easily fractured by a blow or shock and show a conchoidal fracture; they are but slightly affected by ordinary solvents, but are readily attacked by hydrofluoric acid.
The structure of glass has been the subject of repeated investigations. The theory most widely accepted at present is that glass is a quickly solidified solution, in which silica, silicates, borates, phosphates and aluminates may be either solvents or solutes, and metallic oxides and metals may be held either in solution or in suspension. Long experience has fixed the mixtures, so far as ordinary furnace temperatures are concerned, which produce the varieties of glass in common use. The essential materials of which these mixtures are made are, for English flint glass, sand, carbonate of potash and red lead; for plate and sheet glass, sand, carbonate or sulphate of soda and carbonate of lime; and for Bohemian glass, sand, carbonate of potash and carbonate of lime. It is convenient to treat these glasses as “normal” glasses, but they are in reality mixtures of silicates, and cannot rightly be regarded as definite chemical compounds or represented by definite chemical formulae.
The knowledge of the chemistry of glass-making has been considerably widened by Dr F. O. Schott’s experiments at the Jena glass-works. The commercial success of these works has demonstrated the value of pure science to manufactures.
The recent large increase in the number of varieties of glass has been chiefly due to developments in the manufacture of optical glass. Glasses possessing special qualities have been required, and have been supplied by the introduction of new combinations of materials. The range of the specific gravity of glasses from 2.5 to 5.0 illustrates the effect of modified compositions. In the same way glass can be rendered more or less fusible, and its stability can be increased both in relation to extremes of temperature and to the chemical action of solvents.
The fluidity of glass at a high temperature renders possible the processes of ladelling, pouring, casting and stirring. A mass of glass in a viscous state can be rolled with an iron roller like dough; can be rendered hollow by the pressure of the human breath or by compressed air; can be forced by air pressure, or by a mechanically driven plunger, to take the shape and impression of a mould; and can be almost indefinitely extended as solid rod or as hollow tube. So extensible is viscous glass that it can be drawn out into a filament sufficiently fine and elastic to be woven into a fabric.
Glasses are generally transparent but may be translucent or opaque. Semi-opacity due to crystallization may be induced in many glasses by maintaining them for a long period at a temperature just insufficient to cause fusion. In this way is produced the crystalline, devitrified material, known as Réaumur’s porcelain. Semi-opacity and opacity are usually produced by the addition to the glass-mixtures of materials which will remain in suspension in the glass, such as oxide of tin, oxide of arsenic, phosphate of lime, cryolite or a mixture of felspar and fluorspar.
Little is known about the actual cause of colour in glass beyond the fact that certain materials added to and melted with certain glass-mixtures will in favourable circumstances produce effects of colour. The colouring agents are generally metallic oxides. The same oxide may produce different colours with different glass-mixtures, and different oxides of the same metal may produce different colours. The purple-blue of cobalt, the chrome green or yellow of chromium, the dichroic canary-colour of uranium and the violet of manganese, are constant. Ferrous oxide produces an olive green or a pale blue according to the glass with which it is mixed. Ferric oxide gives a yellow colour, but requires the presence of an oxidizing agent to prevent reduction to the ferrous state. Lead gives a pale yellow colour. Silver oxide, mixed as a paint and spread on the surface of a piece of glass and heated, gives a permanent yellow stain. Finely divided vegetable charcoal added to a soda-lime glass gives a yellow colour. It has been suggested that the colour is due to sulphur, but the effect can be produced with a glass mixture containing no sulphur, free or combined, and by increasing the proportion of charcoal the intensity of the colour can be increased until it reaches black opacity. Selenites and selenates give a pale pink or pinkish yellow. Tellurium appears to give a pale pink tint. Nickel with a potash-lead glass gives a violet colour, and a brown colour with a soda-lime glass. Copper gives a peacock-blue which becomes green if the proportion of the copper oxide is increased. If oxide of copper is added to a glass mixture containing a strong reducing agent, a glass is produced which when first taken from the crucible is colourless but on being reheated develops a deep crimson-ruby colour. A similar glass, if its cooling is greatly retarded, produces throughout its substance minute crystals of metallic copper, and closely resembles the mineral called avanturine. There is also an intermediate stage in which the glass has a rusty red colour by reflected light, and a purple-blue colour by transmitted light. Glass containing gold behaves in almost precisely the same way, but the ruby glass is less crimson than copper ruby glass. J. E. C. Maxwell Garnett, who has studied the optical properties of these glasses, has suggested that the changes in colour correspond with changes effected in the structure of the metals as they pass gradually from solution in the glass to a state of crystallization.
Owing to impurities contained in the materials from which glasses are made, accidental coloration or discoloration is often produced. For this reason chemical agents are added to glass mixtures to remove or neutralize accidental colour. Ferrous oxide is the usual cause of discoloration. By converting ferrous into ferric oxide the green tint is changed to yellow, which is less noticeable. Oxidation may be effected by the addition to the glass mixture of a substance which gives up oxygen at a high temperature, such as manganese dioxide or arsenic trioxide. With the same object, red lead and saltpetre are used in the mixture for potash-lead glass. Manganese dioxide not only acts as a source of oxygen, but develops a pink tint in the glass, which is complementary to and neutralizes the green colour due to ferrous oxide.
Glass is a bad conductor of heat. When boiling water is poured into a glass vessel, the vessel frequently breaks, on account of the unequal expansion of the inner and outer layers. If in the process of glass manufacture a glass vessel is suddenly cooled, the constituent particles are unable to arrange themselves and the vessel remains in a state of extreme tension. The surface of the vessel may be hard, but the vessel is liable to fracture on receiving a trifling shock. M. de la Bastie’s process of “toughening” glass consisted in dipping glass, raised to a temperature slightly below the melting-point, into molten tallow. The surface of the glass was hardened, but the inner layers remained in unstable equilibrium. Directly the crust was pierced the whole mass was shattered into minute fragments. In all branches of glass manufacture the process of “annealing,” i.e. cooling the manufactured objects sufficiently slowly to allow the constituent particles to settle into a condition of equilibrium, is of vital importance. The desired result is obtained either by moving the manufactured goods gradually away from a constant source of heat, or by placing them in a heated kiln and allowing the heat gradually to die out.
The furnaces (fig. 15) employed for melting glass are usually heated with gas on the “Siemens,” or some similar system of regenerative heating. In the United States natural gas is used wherever it is available. In some English works coal is still employed for direct heating with various forms of mechanical stokers. Crude petroleum and a thin tar, resulting from the process of enriching water-gas with petroleum, have been used both with compressed air and with steam with considerable success. Electrical furnaces have not as yet been employed for ordinary glass-making on a commercial scale, but the electrical plants which have been erected for melting and moulding quartz suggest the possibility of electric heating being employed for the manufacture of glass. Many forms of apparatus have been tried for ascertaining the temperature of glass furnaces. It is usually essential that some parts of the apparatus shall be made to acquire a temperature identical with the temperature to be measured. Owing to the physical changes produced in the material exposed prolonged observations of temperature are impossible. In the Féry radiation pyrometer this difficulty is obviated, as the instrument may be placed at a considerable distance from the furnace. The radiation passing out from an opening in the furnace falls upon a concave mirror in a telescope and is focused upon a thermoelectric couple. The hotter the furnace the greater is the rise of temperature of the couple. The electromotive force thus generated is measured by a galvanometer, the scale of which is divided and figured so that the temperature may be directly read. (See Thermometry.)
In dealing with the manufacture of glass it is convenient to group the various branches in the following manner:
Manufactured Glass.
I. Optical Glass
II. Blown Glass A. Table glass.
B. Tube. Special glasses for thermometers, and other special glasses.
C. Sheet and crown glass.
D. Bottles.
III. Mechanically Pressed Glass A. Plate and rolled plate glass.
B. Pressed table glass.
I. Optical Glass.—As regards both mode of production and essential properties optical glass differs widely from all other varieties. These differences arise primarily from the fact that glass for optical uses is required in comparatively large and thick pieces, while for most other purposes glass is used in the form of comparatively thin sheets; when, therefore, as a consequence of Dollond’s invention of achromatic telescope objectives in 1757, a demand first arose for optical glass, the industry was unable to furnish suitable material. Flint glass particularly, which appeared quite satisfactory when viewed in small pieces, was found to be so far from homogeneous as to be useless for lens construction. The first step towards overcoming this vital defect in optical glass was taken by P. L. Guinand, towards the end of the 18th century, by introducing the process of stirring the molten glass by means of a cylinder of fireclay. Guinand was induced to migrate from his home in Switzerland to Bavaria, where he worked at the production of homogeneous flint glass, first with Joseph von Utzschneider and then with J. Fraunhofer; the latter ultimately attained considerable success and produced telescope disks up to 28 centimetres (11 in.) diameter. Fraunhofer further initiated the specification of refraction and dispersion in terms of certain lines of the spectrum, and even attempted an investigation of the effect of chemical composition on the relative dispersion produced by glasses in different parts of the spectrum. Guinand’s process was further developed in France by Guinand’s sons and subsequently by Bontemps and E. Feil. In 1848 Bontemps was obliged to leave France for political reasons and came to England, where he initiated the optical glass manufacture at Chance’s glass works near Birmingham, and this firm ultimately attained a considerable reputation in the production of optical glass, especially of large disks for telescope objectives. Efforts at improving optical glass had, however, not been confined to the descendants and successors of Guinand and Fraunhofer. In 1824 the Royal Astronomical Society of London appointed a committee on the subject, the experimental work being carried out by Faraday. Faraday independently recognized the necessity for mechanical agitation of the molten glass in order to ensure homogeneity, and to facilitate his manipulations he worked with dense lead borate glasses which are very fusible, but have proved too unstable for ordinary optical purposes. Later Máes of Clichy (France) exhibited some “zinc crown” glass in small plates of optical quality at the London Exhibition of 1851; and another French glass-maker, Lamy, produced a dense thallium glass in 1867. In 1834 W. V. Harcourt began experiments in glass-making, in which he was subsequently joined by G. G. Stokes. Their object was to pursue the inquiry begun by Fraunhofer as to the effect of chemical composition on the distribution of dispersion. The specific effect of boric acid in this respect was correctly ascertained by Stokes and Harcourt, but they mistook the effect of titanic acid. J. Hopkinson, working at Chance’s glass works, subsequently made an attempt to produce a titanium silicate glass, but nothing further resulted.
The next and most important forward step in the progress of optical glass manufacture was initiated by Ernst Abbe and carried out jointly by him and O. Schott at Jena in Germany. Aided by grants from the Prussian government, these workers systematically investigated the effect of introducing a large number of different chemical substances (oxides) into vitreous fluxes. As a result a whole series of glasses of novel composition and optical properties were produced. A certain number of the most promising of these, from the purely optical point of view, had unfortunately to be abandoned for practical use owing to their chemical instability, and the problem of Fraunhofer, viz. the production of pairs of glasses of widely differing refraction and dispersion, but having a similar distribution of dispersion in the various regions of the spectrum, was not in the first instance solved. On the other hand, while in the older crown and flint glasses the relation between refraction and dispersion had been practically fixed, dispersion and refraction increasing regularly with the density of the glass, in some of the new glasses introduced by Abbe and Schott this relation is altered and a relatively low refractive index is accompanied by a relatively high dispersion, while in others a high refractive index is associated with low dispersive power.
The initiative of Abbe and Schott, which was greatly aided by the resources for scientific investigation available at the Physikalische Reichsanstalt (Imperial Physical Laboratory), led to such important developments that similar work was undertaken in France by the firm of Mantois, the successors of Feil, and somewhat later by Chance in England. The manufacture of the new varieties of glass, originally known as “Jena” glasses, is now carried out extensively and with a considerable degree of commercial success in France, and also to a less extent in England, but none of the other makers of optical glass has as yet contributed to the progress of the industry to anything like the same extent as the Jena firm.
The older optical glasses, now generally known as the “ordinary” crown and flint glasses, are all of the nature of pure silicates, the basic constituents being, in the case of crown glasses, lime and soda or lime and potash, or a mixture of both, and in the case of flint glasses, lead and either (or both) soda and potash. With the exception of the heavier flint (lead) glasses, these can be produced so as to be free both from noticeable colour and from such defects as bubbles, opaque inclusions or “striae,” but extreme care in the choice of all the raw materials and in all the manipulations is required to ensure this result. Further, these glasses, when made from properly proportioned materials, possess a very considerable degree of chemical stability, which is amply sufficient for most optical purposes. The newer glasses, on the other hand, contain a much wider variety of chemical constituents, the most important being the oxides of barium, magnesium, aluminium and zinc, used either with or without the addition of the bases already named in reference to the older glasses, and—among acid bodies—boric anhydride (B2O3) which replaces the silica of the older glasses to a varying extent. It must be admitted that, by the aid of certain of these new constituents, glasses can be produced which, as regards purity of colour, freedom from defects and chemical stability are equal or even superior to the best of the “ordinary” glasses, but it is a remarkable fact that when this is the case the optical properties of the new glass do not fall very widely outside the limits set by the older glasses. On the other hand, the more extreme the optical properties of these new glasses, i.e. the further they depart from the ratio of refractive index to dispersive power found in the older glasses, the greater the difficulty found in obtaining them of either sufficient purity or stability to be of practical use. It is, in fact, admitted that some of the glasses, most useful optically, the dense barium crown glasses, which are so widely used in modern photographic lenses, cannot be produced entirely free either from noticeable colour or from numerous small bubbles, while the chemical nature of these glasses is so sensitive that considerable care is required to protect the surfaces of lenses made from them if serious tarnishing is to be avoided. In practice, however, it is not found that the presence either of a decidedly greenish-yellow colour or of numerous small bubbles interferes at all seriously with the successful use of the lenses for the majority of purposes, so that it is preferable to sacrifice the perfection of the glass in order to secure valuable optical properties.
It is a further striking fact, not unconnected with those just enumerated, that the extreme range of optical properties covered even by the relatively large number of optical glasses now available is in reality very small. The refractive indices of all glasses at present available lie between 1.46 and 1.90, whereas transparent minerals are known having refractive indices lying considerably outside these limits; at least one of these, fluorite (calcium fluoride), is actually used by opticians in the construction of certain lenses, so that probably progress is to be looked for in a considerable widening of the limits of available optical materials; possibly such progress may lie in the direction of the artificial production of large mineral crystals.
The qualities required in optical glasses have already been partly referred to, but may now be summarized:—
1. Transparency and Freedom from Colour.—These qualities can be readily judged by inspection of the glass in pieces of considerable thickness, and they may be quantitatively measured by means of the spectro-photometer.
2. Homogeneity.—The optical desideratum is uniformity of refractive index and dispersive power throughout the mass of the glass. This is probably never completely attained, variations in the sixth significant figure of the refractive index being observed in different parts of single large blocks of the most perfect glass. While such minute and gradual variations are harmless for most optical purposes, sudden variations which generally take the form of striae or veins are fatal defects in all optical glass. In their coarsest forms such striae are readily visible to the unaided eye, but finer ones escape detection unless special means are taken for rendering them visible; such special means conveniently take the form of an apparatus for examining the glass in a beam of parallel light, when the striae scatter the light and appear as either dark or bright lines according to the position of the eye. Plate glass of the usual quality, which appears to be perfectly homogeneous when looked at in the ordinary way, is seen to be a mass of fine striae, when a considerable thickness is examined in parallel light. Plate glass is, nevertheless, considerably used for the cheaper forms of lenses, where the scattering of the light and loss of definition arising from these fine striae is not readily recognized.
Bubbles and enclosures of opaque matter, although more readily observed, do not constitute such serious defects; their presence in a lens, to a moderate extent, does not interfere with its performance (see above).
3. Hardness and Chemical Stability.—These properties contribute to the durability of lenses, and are specially desirable in the outer members of lens combinations which are likely to be subjected to frequent handling or are exposed to the weather. As a general rule, to which, however, there are important exceptions, both these qualities are found to a greater degree, the lower the refractive index of the glass. The chemical stability, i.e. the power of resisting the disintegrating effects of atmospheric moisture and carbonic acid, depends largely upon the quantity of alkalis contained in the glass and their proportion to the lead, lime or barium present, the stability being generally less the higher the proportion of alkali. A high silica-content tends towards both hardness and chemical stability, and this can be further increased by the addition of small proportions of boric acid; in larger quantities, however, the latter constituent produces the opposite effect.
4. Absence of Internal Strain.—Internal strain in glass arises from the unequal contraction of the outer and inner portions of masses of glass during cooling. Processes of annealing, or very gradual cooling, are intended to relieve these strains, but such processes are only completely effective when the cooling, particularly through those ranges of temperature where the glass is just losing the last traces of plasticity, is extremely gradual, a rate measured in hours per degree Centigrade being required. The existence of internal strains in glass can be readily recognized by examination in polarized light, any signs of double refraction indicating the existence of strain. If the glass is very badly annealed, the lenses made from it may fly to pieces during or after manufacture, but apart from such extreme cases the optical effects of internal strain are not readily observed except in large optical apparatus. Very perfectly annealed optical glass is now, however, readily obtainable.
5. Refraction and Dispersion.—The purely optical properties of refraction and dispersion, although of the greatest importance, cannot be dealt with in any detail here; for an account of the optical properties required in glasses for various forms of lenses see the articles Lens and Aberration: II. In Optical Systems. As typical of the range of modern optical glasses Table I. is given, which constituted the list of optical glasses exhibited by Messrs Chance at the Optical Convention in London in 1905. In this table n is the refractive index of the glass for sodium light (the D line of the solar spectrum), while the letters C, F and G′ refer to lines in the hydrogen spectrum by which dispersion is now generally specified. The symbol ν represents the inverse of the dispersive power, its value being (nD − 1)/(C − F). The very much longer lists of German and French firms contain only a few types not represented in this table.
Table I.—Optical Properties.
Factory
Number. Name. nD. ν. Medium
Dispersion.
C − F. Partial and Relative Partial Dispersions.
C − D. C − D
C − F. D − F. D − F
C − F. F − G′. F − G′
C − F.
C. 644 Extra Hard Crown 1.4959 64.4 .00770 .00228 .296 .00542 .704 .00431 .560
B. 646 Boro-silicate Crown 1.5096 63.3 .00803 .00236 .294 .00562 .700 .00446 .555
A. 605 Hard Crown 1.5175 60.5 .00856 .00252 .294 .00604 .706 .00484 .554
C. 577 Medium Barium Crown 1.5738 57.9 .00990 .00293 .296 .00697 .704 .00552 .557
C. 579 Densest Barium Crown 1.6065 57.9 .01046 .00308 .294 .00738 .705 .00589 .563
A. 569 Soft Crown. 1.5152 56.9 .00906 .00264 .291 .00642 .708 .00517 .570
B. 563 Medium Barium Crown 1.5660 56.3 .01006 .00297 .295 .00709 .704 .00576 .572
B. 535 Barium Light Flint 1.5452 53.5 .01020 .00298 .292 .00722 .701 .00582 .570
A. 490 Extra Light Flint 1.5316 49.0 .01085 .00313 .288 .00772 .711 .00630 .580
A. 485 Extra Light Flint 1.5333 48.5 .01099 .00322 .293 .00777 .707 .00643 .582
C. 474 Boro-silicate Flint 1.5623 47.4 .01187 .00343 .289 .00844 .711 .00693 .584
B. 466 Barium Light Flint 1.5833 46.6 .01251 .00362 .288 .00889 .711 .00721 .576
B. 458 Soda Flint 1.5482 45.8 .01195 .00343 .287 .00852 .713 .00690 .577
A. 458 Light Flint 1.5472 45.8 .01196 .00348 .291 .00848 .709 .00707 .591
A. 432 Light Flint 1.5610 43.2 .01299 .00372 .287 .00927 .713 .00770 .593
A. 410 Light Flint 1.5760 41.0 .01404 .00402 .286 .01002 .713 .00840 .598
B. 407 Light Flint 1.5787 40.7 .01420 .00404 .284 .01016 .715 .00840 .591
A. 370 Dense Flint 1.6118 36.9 .01657 .00470 .284 .01187 .716 .01004 .606
A. 361 Dense Flint 1.6214 36.1 .01722 .00491 .285 .01231 .715 .01046 .608
A. 360 Dense Flint 1.6225 36.0 .01729 .00493 .286 .01236 .715 .01054 .609
A. 337 Extra Dense Flint 1.6469 33.7 .01917 .00541 .285 .01376 .720 .01170 .655
A. 299 Densest Flint 1.7129 29.9 .02384 .00670 .281 .01714 .789 .01661 .678
Manufacture of Optical Glass.—In its earlier stages, the process for the production of optical glass closely resembles that used in the production of any other glass of the highest quality. The raw materials are selected with great care to assure chemical purity, but whereas in most glasses the only impurities to be dreaded are those that are either infusible or produce a colouring effect upon the glass, for optical purposes the admixture of other glass-forming bodies than those which are intended to be present must be avoided on account of their effect in modifying the optical constants of the glass. Constancy of composition of the raw materials and their careful and thorough admixture in constant proportions are therefore essential to the production of the required glasses. The materials are generally used in the form either of oxides (lead, zinc, silica, &c.) or of salts readily decomposed by heat, such as the nitrates or carbonates. Fragments of glass of the same composition as that aimed at are generally incorporated to a limited extent with the mixed raw materials to facilitate their fusion. The crucibles or pots used for the production of optical glass very closely resemble those used in the manufacture of flint glass for other purposes; they are “covered” and the molten materials are thus protected from the action of the furnace gases by the interposition of a wall of fireclay, but as crucibles for optical glass are used for only one fusion and are then broken up, they are not made so thick and heavy as those used in flint-glass making, since the latter remain in the furnace for many weeks. On the other hand, the chemical and physical nature of the fireclays used in the manufacture of such crucibles requires careful attention in order to secure the best results. The furnace used for the production of optical glass is generally constructed to take one crucible only, so that the heat of the furnace may be accurately adjusted to the requirements of the particular glass under treatment. These small furnaces are frequently arranged for direct coal firing, but regenerative gas-fired furnaces are also employed. The empty crucible, having first been gradually dried and heated to a bright red heat in a subsidiary furnace, is taken up by means of massive iron tongs and introduced into the previously heated furnace, the temperature of which is then gradually raised. When a suitable temperature for the fusion of the particular glass in question has been attained, the mixture of raw materials is introduced in comparatively small quantities at a time. In this way the crucible is gradually filled with a mass of molten glass, which is, however, full of bubbles of all sizes. These bubbles arise partly from the air enclosed between the particles of raw materials and partly from the gaseous decomposition products of the materials themselves. In the next stage of the process, the glass is raised to a high temperature in order to render it sufficiently fluid to allow of the complete elimination of these bubbles; the actual temperature required varies with the chemical composition of the glass, a bright red heat sufficing for the most fusible glasses, while with others the utmost capacity of the best furnaces is required to attain the necessary temperature. With these latter glasses there is, of course, considerable risk that the partial fusion and consequent contraction of the fireclay of the crucible may result in its destruction and the entire loss of the glass. The stages of the process so far described generally occupy from 36 to 60 hours, and during this time the constant care and watchfulness of those attending the furnace is required. This is still more the case in the next stage. The examination of small test-pieces of the glass withdrawn from the crucible by means of an iron rod having shown that the molten mass is free from bubbles, the stirring process may be begun, the object of this manipulation being to render the glass as homogeneous as possible and to secure the absence of veins or striae in the product. For this purpose a cylinder of fireclay, provided with a square axial hole at the upper end, is heated in a small subsidiary furnace and is then introduced into the molten glass. Into the square axial hole fits the square end of a hooked iron bar which projects several yards beyond the mouth of the furnace; by means of this bar a workman moves the fireclay cylinder about in the glass with a steady circular sweep. Although the weight of the iron bar is carried by a support, such as an overhead chain or a swivel roller, this operation is very laborious and trying, more especially during the earlier stages when the heat radiated from the open mouth of the crucible is intense. The men who manipulate the stirring bars are therefore changed at short intervals, while the bars themselves have also to be changed at somewhat longer intervals, as they rapidly become oxidized, and accumulated scale would tend to fail off them, thus contaminating the glass below. The stirring process is begun when the glass is perfectly fluid at a temperature little short of the highest attained in its fusion, but as the stirring proceeds the glass is allowed to cool gradually and thus becomes more and more viscous until finally the stirring cylinder can scarcely be moved. When the glass has acquired this degree of consistency it is supposed that no fresh movements can occur within its mass, so that if homogeneity has been attained the glass will preserve it permanently. The stirring is therefore discontinued and the clay cylinder is either left embedded in the glass, or by the exercise of considerable force it may be gradually withdrawn. The crucible with the semi-solid glass which it contains is now allowed to cool considerably in the melting furnace, or it may be removed to another slightly heated furnace. When the glass has cooled so far as to become hard and solid, the furnace is hermetically sealed up and allowed to cool very gradually to the ordinary temperature. If the cooling is very gradual—occupying several weeks—it sometimes happens that the entire contents of a large crucible, weighing perhaps 1000 ℔, are found intact as a single mass of glass, but more frequently the mass is found broken up into a number of fragments of various sizes. From the large masses great lenses and mirrors may be produced, while the smaller pieces are used for the production of the disks and slabs of moderate size, in which the optical glass of commerce is usually supplied. In order to allow of the removal of the glass, the cold crucible is broken up and the glass carefully separated from the fragments of fireclay. The pieces of glass are then examined for the detection of the grosser defects, and obviously defective pieces are rejected. As the fractured surfaces of the glass in this condition are unsuitable for delicate examination a good deal of glass that passes this inspection has yet ultimately to be rejected. The next stage in the preparation of the glass is the process of moulding and annealing. Lumps of glass of approximately the right weight are chosen, and are heated to a temperature just sufficient to soften the glass, when the lumps are caused to assume the shape of moulds made of iron or fireclay either by the natural flow of the softened glass under gravity, or by pressure from suitable tools or presses. The glass, now in its approximate form, is placed in a heated chamber where it is allowed to cool very gradually—the minimum time of cooling from a dull red heat being six days, while for “fine annealing” a much longer period is required (see above). At the end of the annealing process the glass issues in the shape of disks or slabs slightly larger than required by the optician in each case. The glass is, however, by no means ready for delivery, since it has yet to be examined with scrupulous care, and all defective pieces must be rejected entirely or at least the defective part must be cut out and the slab remoulded or ground down to a smaller size. For the purpose of rendering this minute examination possible, opposite plane surfaces of the glass are ground approximately flat and polished, the faces to be polished being so chosen as to allow of a view through the greatest possible thickness of glass; thus in slabs the narrow edges are polished.
It will be readily understood from the above account of the process of production that optical glass, relatively to other kinds of glass, is very expensive, the actual price varying from 3s. to 30s. per ℔ in small slabs or disks. The price, however, rapidly increases with the total bulk of perfect glass required in one piece, so that large disks of glass suitable for telescope objectives of wide aperture, or blocks for large prisms, become exceedingly costly. The reason for this high cost is to be found partly in the fact that the yield of optically perfect glass even in large and successful meltings rarely exceeds 20% of the total weight of glass melted. Further, all the subsequent processes of cutting, moulding and annealing become increasingly difficult, owing to the greatly increased risk of breakage arising from either external injury or internal strain, as the dimensions of the individual piece of glass increase. Nevertheless, disks of optical glass, both crown and flint, have been produced up to 39 in. in diameter.
II. Blown Glass. (A) Table-ware and Vases.—The varieties of glass used for the manufacture of table-ware and vases are the potash-lead glass, the soda-lime glass and the potash-lime glass. These glasses may be colourless or coloured. Venetian glass is a soda-lime glass; Bohemian glass is a potash-lime glass. The potash-lead glass, which was first used on a commercial scale in England for the manufacture of table-ware, and which is known as “flint” glass or “crystal,” is also largely used in France, Germany and the United States. Table II. shows the typical composition of these glasses.
Table II.
SiO2. K2O. PbO. Na2O. CaO. MgO. Fe2O3
and
Al2O3.
Potash-lead (flint) glass 53.17 13.88 32.95 .. .. .. ..
Soda-lime (Venetian) glass 73.40 .. .. 18.58 5.06 .. 2.48
Potash-lime (Bohemian) glass 71.70 12.70 .. 2.50 10.30 .. 0.90
For melting the leadless glasses, open, bowl-shaped crucibles are used, ranging from 12 to 40 in. in diameter. Glass mixtures containing lead are melted in covered, beehive-shaped crucibles holding from 12 to 18 cwt. of glass. They have a hooded opening on one side near the top. This opening serves for the introduction of the glass-mixture, for the removal of the melted glass and as a source of heat for the processes of manipulation.
The Venetian furnaces in the island of Murano are small low structures heated with wood. The heat passes from the melting furnace into the annealing kiln. In Germany, Austria and the United States, gas furnaces are generally used. In England directly-heated coal furnaces are still in common use, which in many cases are stoked by mechanical feeders. There are two systems of annealing. The manufactured goods are either removed gradually from a constant source of heat by means of a train of small iron trucks drawn along a tramway by an endless chain, or are placed in a heated kiln in which the fire is allowed gradually to die out. The second system is especially used for annealing large and heavy objects. The manufacture of table-ware is carried on by small gangs of men and boys. In England each “gang” or “chair” consists of three men and one boy. In works, however, in which most of the goods are moulded, and where less skilled labour is required, the proportion of boy labour is increased. There are generally two shifts of workmen, each shift working six hours, and the work is carried on continuously from Monday morning until Friday morning. Directly work is suspended the glass remaining in the crucibles is ladled into water, drained and dried. It is then mixed with the glass mixture and broken glass (“cullet”), and replaced in the crucibles. The furnaces are driven to a white heat in order to fuse the mixture and expel bubbles of gas and air. Before work begins the temperature is lowered sufficiently to render the glass viscous. In the viscous state a mass of glass can be coiled upon the heated end of an iron rod, and if the rod is hollow can be blown into a hollow bulb. The tools used are extremely primitive—hollow iron blowing-rods, solid rods for holding vessels during manipulation, spring tools, resembling sugar-tongs in shape, with steel or wooden blades for fashioning the viscous glass, callipers, measure-sticks, and a variety of moulds of wood, carbon, cast iron, gun-metal and plaster of Paris (figs. 16 and 17). The most important tool, however, is the bench or “chair” on which the workman sits, which serves as his lathe. He sits between two rigid parallel arms, projecting forwards and backwards and sloping slightly from back to front. Across the arms he balances the iron rod to which the glass bulb adheres, and rolling it backwards and forwards with the fingers of his left hand fashions the glass between the blades of his sugar-tongs tool, grasped in his right hand. The hollow bulb is worked into the shape it is intended to assume, partly by blowing, partly by gravitation, and partly by the workman’s tool. If the blowing iron is held vertically with the bulb uppermost the bulb becomes flattened and shallow, if the bulb is allowed to hang downwards it becomes elongated and reduced in diameter, and if the end of the bulb is pierced and the iron is held horizontally and sharply trundled, as a mop is trundled, the bulb opens out into a flattened disk.
d, “Sugar-tongs” tool with wooden ends.
e,e, “Sugar-tongs” tools with cutting edges.
f, Pincers.
g, Scissors.
h, Battledore.
i, Marking compass.
During the process of manipulation, whether on the chair or whilst the glass is being reheated, the rod must be constantly and gently trundled to prevent the collapse of the bulb or vessel. Every natural development of the spherical form can be obtained by blowing and fashioning by hand. A non-spherical form can only be produced by blowing the hollow bulb into a mould of the required shape. Moulds are used both for giving shape to vessels and also for impressing patterns on their surface. Although spherical forms can be obtained without the use of moulds, moulds are now largely used for even the simplest kinds of table-ware in order to economize time and skilled labour. In France, Germany and the United States it is rare to find a piece of table-ware which has not received its shape in a mould. The old and the new systems of making a wine-glass illustrate almost all the ordinary processes of glass working. Sufficient glass is first “gathered” on the end of a blowing iron to form the bowl of the wine-glass. The mere act of coiling an exact weight of molten glass round the end of a rod 4 ft. in length requires considerable skill. The mass of glass is rolled on a polished slab of iron, the “marvor,” to solidify it, and it is then slightly hollowed by blowing. Under the old system the form of the bowl is gradually developed by blowing and by shaping the bulb with the sugar-tongs tool. The leg is either pulled out from the substance of the base of the bowl, or from a small lump of glass added to the base. The foot starts as a small independent bulb on a separate blowing iron. One extremity of this bulb is made to adhere to the end of the leg, and the other extremity is broken away from its blowing iron. The fractured end is heated, and by the combined action of heat and centrifugal force opens out into a flat foot. The bowl is now severed from its blowing iron and the unfinished wine-glass is supported by its foot, which is attached to the end of a working rod by a metal clip or by a seal of glass. The fractured edge of the bowl is heated, trimmed with scissors and melted so as to be perfectly smooth and even, and the bowl itself receives its final form from the sugar-tongs tool.
Under the new system the bowl is fashioned by blowing the slightly hollowed mass of glass into a mould. The leg is formed and a small lump of molten glass is attached to its extremity to form the foot. The blowing iron is constantly trundled, and the small lump of glass is squeezed and flattened into the shape of a foot, either between two slabs of wood hinged together, or by pressure against an upright board. The bowl is severed from the blowing iron, and the wine-glass is sent to the annealing oven with a bowl, longer than that of the finished glass, and with a rough fractured edge. When the glass is cold the surplus is removed either by grinding, or by applying heat to a line scratched with a diamond round the bowl. The fractured edge is smoothed by the impact of a gas flame.
In the manufacture of a wine-glass the ductility of glass is illustrated on a small scale by the process of pulling out the leg. It is more strikingly illustrated in the manufacture of glass cane and tube. Cane is produced from a solid mass of molten glass, tube from a mass hollowed by blowing. One workman holds the blowing iron with the mass of glass attached to it, and another fixes an iron rod by means of a seal of glass to the extremity of the mass. The two workmen face each other and walk backwards. The diameter of the cane or tube is regulated by the weight of glass carried, and by the distance covered by the two workmen. It is a curious property of viscous glass that whatever form is given to the mass of glass before it is drawn out is retained by the finished cane or tube, however small its section may be. Owing to this property, tubes or canes can be produced with a square, oblong, oval or triangular section. Exceedingly fine canes of milk-white glass play an important part in the masterpieces produced by the Venetian glass-makers of the 16th century. Vases and drinking cups were produced of extreme lightness, in the walls of which were embedded patterns rivalling lace-work in fineness and intricacy. The canes from which the patterns are formed are either simple or complex. The latter are made by dipping a small mass of molten colourless glass into an iron cup around the inner wall of which short lengths of white cane have been arranged at regular intervals. The canes adhere to the molten glass, and the mass is first twisted and then drawn out into fine cane, which contains white threads arranged in endless spirals. The process can be almost indefinitely repeated and canes formed of extreme complexity. A vase decorated with these simple or complex canes is produced by embedding short lengths of the cane on the surface of a mass of molten glass and blowing and fashioning the mass into the required shape.
Table-ware and vases may be wholly coloured or merely decorated with colour. Touches of colour may be added to vessels in course of manufacture by means of seals of molten glass, applied like sealing-wax; or by causing vessels to wrap themselves round with threads or coils of coloured glass. By the application of a pointed iron hook, while the glass is still ductile, the parallel coils can be distorted into bends, loops or zigzags. The surface of vessels may be spangled with gold or platinum by rolling the hot glass on metallic leaf, or iridescent, by the deposition of metallic tin, or by the corrosion caused by the chemical action of acid fumes. Gilding and enamel decoration are applied to vessels when cold, and fixed by heat.
Cutting and engraving are mechanical processes for producing decorative effects by abrading the surface of the glass when cold. The abrasion is effected by pressing the glass against the edge of wheels, or disks, of hard material revolving on horizontal spindles. The spindles of cutting wheels are driven by steam or electric power. The wheels for making deep cuts are made of iron, and are fed with sand and water. The wheels range in diameter from 18 in. to 3 in. Wheels of carborundum are also used. Wheels of fine sandstone fed with water are used for making slighter cuts and for smoothing the rough surface left by the iron wheels. Polishing is effected by wooden wheels fed with wet pumice-powder and rottenstone and by brushes fed with moistened putty-powder. Patterns are produced by combining straight and curved cuts. Cutting brings out the brilliancy of glass, which is one of its intrinsic qualities. At the end of the 18th century English cut glass was unrivalled for design and beauty. Gradually, however, the process was applied without restraint and the products lost all artistic quality. At the present time cut glass is steadily regaining favour.
Engraving is a process of drawing on glass by means of small copper wheels. The wheels range from ½ in. to 2 in. in diameter, and are fed with a mixture of fine emery and oil. The spindles to which the wheels are attached revolve in a lathe worked by a foot treadle. The true use of engraving is to add interest to vessels by means of coats of arms, crests, monograms, inscriptions and graceful outlines. The improper use of engraving is to hide defective material. There are two other processes of marking patterns on glass, but they possess no artistic value. In the “sandblast” process the surface of the glass is exposed to a stream of sharp sand driven by compressed air. The parts of the surface which are not to be blasted are covered by adhesive paper. In the “etching” process the surface of the glass is etched by the chemical action of hydrofluoric acid, the parts which are not to be attacked being covered with a resinous paint. The glass is first dipped in this protective liquid, and when the paint has set the pattern is scratched through it with a sharp point. The glass is then exposed to the acid.
Glass stoppers are fitted to bottles by grinding. The mouth of the bottle is ground by a revolving iron cone, or mandrel, fed with sand and water and driven by steam. The head of the stopper is fastened in a chuck and the peg is ground to the size of the mouth of the bottle by means of sand and water pressed against the glass by bent strips of thin sheet iron. The mouth of the bottle is then pressed by hand on the peg of the stopper, and the mouth and peg are ground together with a medium of very fine emery and water until an air-tight joint is secured.
The revival in recent years of the craft of glass-blowing in England must be attributed to William Morris and T.G. Jackson, R.A. (Pl. II. figs. 11 and 12). They, at any rate, seem to have been the first to grasp the idea that a wine-glass is not merely a bowl, a stem and a foot, but that, whilst retaining simplicity of form, it may nevertheless possess decorative effect. They, moreover, suggested the introduction for the manufacture of table-glass of a material similar in texture to that used by the Venetians, both colourless and tinted.
The colours previously available for English table-glass were ruby, canary-yellow, emerald-green, dark peacock-green, light peacock-blue, dark purple-blue and a dark purple. About 1870 the “Jackson” table-glass was made in a light, dull green glass. The dull green was followed successively by amber, white opal, blue opal, straw opal, sea-green, horn colour and various pale tints of soda-lime glass, ranging from yellow to blue. Experiments were also tried with a violet-coloured glass, a violet opal, a transparent black and with glasses shading from red to blue, red to amber and blue to green.
In the Paris Exhibition of 1900 surface decoration was the prominent feature of all the exhibits of table-glass. The carved or “cameo” glass, introduced by Thomas Webb of Stourbridge in 1878, had been copied with varying success by glass-makers of all nations. In many specimens there were three or more layers of differently coloured glass, and curious effects of blended colour were obtained by cutting through, or partly through, the different layers. The surface of the glass had usually been treated with hydrofluoric acid so as to have a satin-like gloss. Some vases of this character, shown by Émile Gallé and Daum Frères of Nancy, possessed considerable beauty. The “Favrile” glass of Louis C. Tiffany of New York (Pl. II. fig. 13) owes its effect entirely to surface colour and lustre. The happiest specimens of this glass almost rival the wings of butterflies in the brilliancy of their iridescent colours. The vases of Karl Koepping of Berlin are so fantastic and so fragile that they appear to be creations of the lamp rather than of the furnace. An illustration is also given of some of Powell’s “Whitefriars” glass, shown at the St Louis Exhibition, 1904 (Pl. II. fig. 14). The specimens of “pâte de verre” exhibited by A. L. Dammouse, of Sèvres, in the Musée des Arts décoratifs in Paris, and at the London Franco-British Exhibition in 1908, deserve attention. They have a semi-opaque body with an “egg-shell” surface and are delicately tinted with colour. The shapes are exceedingly simple, but some of the pieces possess great beauty. The material and technique suggest a close relationship to porcelain.
(B) Tube.—The process of making tube has already been described. Although the bore of the thermometer-tube is exceedingly small, it is made in the same way as ordinary tube. The white line of enamel, which is seen in some thermometers behind the bore, is introduced before the mass of glass is pulled out. A flattened cake of viscous glass-enamel is welded on to one side of the mass of glass after it has been hollowed by blowing. The mass, with the enamel attached, is dipped into the crucible and covered with a layer of transparent glass; the whole mass is then pulled out into tube. If the section of the finished tube is to be a triangle, with the enamel and bore at the base, the molten mass is pressed into a V-shaped mould before it is pulled out.
In modern thermometry instruments of extreme accuracy are required, and researches have been made, especially in Germany and France, to ascertain the causes of variability in mercurial thermometers, and how such variability is to be removed or reduced. In all mercurial thermometers there is a slight depression of the ice-point after exposure to high temperatures; it is also not uncommon to find that the readings of two thermometers between the ice- and boiling-points fail to agree at any intermediate temperature, although the ice- and boiling-points of both have been determined together with perfect accuracy, and the intervening spaces have been equally divided. It has been proved that these variations depend to a great extent on the chemical nature of the glass of which the thermometer is made. Special glasses have therefore been produced by Tonnelot in France and at the Jena glass-works in Germany expressly for the manufacture of thermometers for accurate physical measurements; the analyses of these are shown in Table III.
Table III.
SiO2. Na2O. K2O. CaO. Al2O3. MgO. B2O3. ZnO. Depression
of
Ice-point.
Tonnelot’s “Verre dur” 70.96 12.02 0.56 14.40 1.44 0.40 .. .. 0.07
Jena glass—
XVI.-111 67.5 14.0 .. 7.0 2.5 .. 2.0 7.0 0.05
59-111 72.0 11.0 .. 5.0 5.0 .. 12.0 .. 0.02
Since the discovery of the Röntgen rays, experiments have been made to ascertain the effects of the different constituents of glass on the transparency of glass to X-rays. The oxides of lead, barium, zinc and antimony are found perceptibly to retard the rays. The glass tubes, therefore, from which the X-ray bulbs are to be fashioned, must not contain any of these oxides, whereas the glass used for making the funnel-shaped shields, which direct the rays upon the patient and at the same time protect the hands of the operator from the action of the rays, must contain a large proportion of lead.
Among the many developments of the Jena Works, not the least important are the glasses made in the form of a tube, from which gas-chimneys, gauge-glasses and chemical apparatus are fashioned, specially adapted to resist sudden changes of temperature. One method is to form the tube of two layers of glass, one being considerably more expansible than the other.
(C) Sheet and Crown-glass.—Sheet-glass is almost wholly a soda-lime-silicate glass, containing only small quantities of iron, alumina and other impurities. The raw materials used in this manufacture are chosen with considerable care, since the requirements as to the colour of the product are somewhat stringent. The materials ordinarily employed are the following: sand, of good quality, uniform in grain and free from any notable quantity of iron oxide; carbonate of lime, generally in the form of a pure variety of powdered limestone; and sulphate of soda. A certain proportion of soda ash (carbonate of soda) is also used in some works in sheet-glass mixtures, while “decolorizers” (substances intended to remove or reduce the colour of the glass) are also sometimes added, those most generally used being manganese dioxide and arsenic. Another essential ingredient of all glass mixtures containing sulphate of soda is some form of carbon, which is added either as coke, charcoal or anthracite coal; the carbon so introduced aids the reducing substances contained in the atmosphere of the furnace in bringing about the reduction of the sulphate of soda to a condition in which it combines more readily with the silicic acid of the sand. The proportions in which these ingredients are mixed vary according to the exact quality of glass required and with the form and temperature of the melting furnace employed. A good quality of sheet-glass should show, on analysis, a composition approximating to the following: silica (SiO2), 72%; lime (CaO), 13%; soda (Na2O), 14%; and iron and alumina (Fe2O3, Al2O3), 1%. The actual composition, however, of a mixture that will give a glass of this composition cannot be directly calculated from these figures and the known composition of the raw materials, owing to the fact that considerable losses, particularly of alkali, occur during melting.