whose names they bear. It is allowed by those who have reduced the genuine apostolic works to the narrowest limits, that, from the time of Irenæus, the New Testament was composed essentially of the same books as we receive at present; and that they were regarded with the same reverence as is now shewn to them.'-Westcott, History of Canon. The evidence upon which we accept as undoubtedly genuine the productions of many classic authors, is not to be compared in clearness and fulness to the evidence for the genuineness of the Gospels at this stage. Any difficulties that the subject involves begin at a point higher up than this.

The age of Irenæus is the fifth generation from the beginning of the apostolic era-the third from the termination of it. The ascending generations may be characterised as those (4) of Justin Martyr, and (3) of Ignatius and Papias; and (2) of St John, or the later apostolic age. It is within these three generations, and especially within the third and fourth, that the subject of the genuineness of the Gospels gives any cause for hesitation and discussion.

Such writers as Justin Martyr and Ignatius nowhere quote the Gospels by name. In a fragment of Papias preserved by Eusebius, there is mention of Matthew and Mark having written accounts of the actions and discourses of our Lord; but with this exception, there is no mention of the Gospels, or of their authors by name, in these earlier Christian writers. Not only so, but Justin Martyr appeals constantly to sources of information which he styles not Gospels' of St Matthew, St Luke, or St John, but Memoirs of the Apostles (apomně moneumata ton apostolon). The phrase a kaleitai euaggelia (which are called gospels), which follows the former in the common versions of Justin's text, is supposed by many to be an interpolation. This has given rise to a good deal of discussion as to the effect of Justin Martyr's evidence on this subject. The discussion has been of this nature. Were these Memoirs of the Apostles our Gospels, or were they some other books of information as to Christ's sayings and doings to which he had access? Many German critics have been confident they were not our Gospels; and Bishop Marsh has gone the length of saying, that Justin did not quote our Gospels. The question, therefore, as to whether Justin Martyr quotes our Gospels, may be said to be the turning-point in the evidence for their genuineness. Although not altogether free from difficulty, it appears to us that no reasonable doubt can be entertained that the Memoirs of the Apostles to which Justin constantly refers were no other than our Gospels. This appears conclusively established by the three following considerations: (1) The degree of coincidence which exists between the numerous passages which Justin quotes from his Memoirs, and the corresponding passages in the Gospels.-The verbal coincidence with the text of the Gospels is sometimes exact, and sometimes so nearly so as to appear exact in a translation. The want of entire verbal coincidence is just what might be expected in a writer like Justin, who quotes the Old Testament in the same general manner, and is the very same as we find in other writers both before and after him. Further, the account which he gives of the origin of the Memoirs corresponds with the origin of the Gospels -viz, that two were written by apostles, and two by companions of the apostles. (2) The extreme improbability that there could have been other books besides the Gospels of the same apparently authoritative character, all trace of which have disappeared, and of which, in fact, we find no indication save in Justin Martyr.-Everything seems

against such a supposition. The books of which Justin speaks were read in the assemblies of the Christians on Sundays; they were regarded with respect and veneration; they were evidently looked upon as authoritative. It is wholly inconceivable, that if there were such books other than the Gospels, they should not have been mentioned by other writers as well as Justin; or that they should have utterly perished. (3) The certainty, from the statements of such writers as Irenæus in the generation immediately following him, that Justin must have known our Gospels.-In this later generation we find the Gospels everywhere diffused: received and reverenced alike at Alexandria, Lyons, and Carthage; by Clemens Alexandrinus, Irenæus, and Tertullian. They could not all at once have attained this wide diffusion, or started into this position of authority. The manner in which Irenæus speaks of them can only be accounted for by the fact, that he had received them from his teachers; that they had been handed down to him as inspired authorities from the first ages. We must take the light of such a statement with us in ascending to the age of Justin Martyr; and in this light it is unintelligible that the Gospels should not have been known to Justin, and consulted by him. The mere fact of his calling his authorities by the peculiar name of Memoirs cannot be set against all this evidence. The name of Memoirs, indeed, rather than Gospels, was only a natural one for this writer to use, with his classical predilections and philosophical training, and considering that he was addressing a heathen emperor, and through him the Gentile world at large.

When we ascend beyond the age of Justin to Ignatius and Papias, we find in a fragment of the latter, as has been already stated, mention of Matthew and Mark having written accounts of the life of the Lord; while in the letters of the former, as in the still earlier Epistle of Clemens Romanus and the so-called Epistle of Barnabas-both of which belong to the 1st c., and consequently reach the apostolic age itself-we find various quotations that seem to be made from the Gospels. The quotations from St Matthew are the most numerous. If these quotations stood by themselves, it might be doubtful how far they constituted evidence of the existence of the Gospels at this early period. They might possibly indicate merely a uniformity of oral tradition as to the sayings of our Lord; but when we regard them in connection with the position of the writers, and the whole train of thought and association in which they occur, they seem to bear out the widest conclusion we could wish to found on them. The existence and character of such men as Ignatius and Clemens are unintelligible save in the light of the Gospel history.

In addition to this chain of direct Catholic evidence for the genuineness of the Gospels, the fragments which have been preserved of heretical writers furnish important, and in some respects singularly conclusive evidence. The Gnostic Basilides quotes the Gospels of St John and St Luke about the year 120. The heretics appealed to them as well as the Catholic writers, and in this fact there is a strong guarantee that no fictions or inventions could have been palmed off upon the church in the 2d c., as the most renowned German theory as to the origin of the Gospels virtually supposes. Upon a review of all the evidence from the apostolic Fathers down to the council of Laodicea, when the four Gospels are reckoned as part of the canon of Scripture, there can hardly be room for any candid person to doubt,' it has been said, ‘that from the beginning the four Gospels were recognised as genuine and inspired-that a line of distinction was drawn between them and the so-called

apocryphal Gospels.' As a mere question of literary history, the genuineness of the Gospels certainly rests on far higher evidence than that on which we receive, without hesitation, many ancient writings. 2. Internal Character and Contrast.-After the genuineness of the Gospels, the next point of importance regarding them is the relation which they bear to one another in respect of their contents and arrangement-the coincidences and discrepancies with one another which they present. The most obvious distinction among the Gospels as a whole is between the Gospel of St John and the three Synoptical Gospels, as they are called. Matthew, Mark, and Luke, in narrating the ministry, discourses, and miracles of our Lord, confine themselves exclusively to what took place in Galilee until the last journey to Jerusalem. We should not know from them of the successive journeys that our Lord made to Jerusalem. John, on the contrary, brings into view prominently his relation to Judea; and of the discourses delivered in Galilee, he only records one, that, namely, in the 6th chapter. It is obvious, on a superficial glance, that John had a special object in writing his Gospel, an object in some respects more dogmatical than historical; and it is probable that, having seen the preceding Gospels, he purposely abstained from writing what they had already recorded, and sought to supply such deficiencies as appeared to exist in their records. When we have no knowledge of the subject, this at least seems as probable a supposition as any other. A comparison of the three Synoptical Gospels reveals some interesting results. If we suppose them respectively divided into 100 sections, we shall find that they coincide in about 53 of them; that Matthew and Luke further coincide in 21; Matthew and Mark in 20; and Mark and Luke in 6. This, of course, applies to the substantial coincidence of fact and narrative in each case. The relative verbal coincidence is by no means so marked; it is, however, very considerable, and presents some interesting features, which Professor Andrew Norton has set forth clearly in his admirable work on the Genuineness of the Gospels.

It is not desirable to go into further details in this place; but the result of the extremely critical and minute scrutiny to which the text of the Gospels has been subjected may be stated as follows. There is a singular coincidence in substance in the three Synoptic Gospels. 'Substantial unity with circumstantial variety,' is a saying strictly true of them more true of them than of any authors professing to narrate the same circumstances. The coincidence is greatly more apparent in the discourses than in the narrative parts of the Gospels, most of all apparent in the spoken words of our Lord. At the same time, there are certain portions of narrative of great importance, that shew in the several evangelists almost a verbal coincidence, as in the call of the first four disciples and the accounts of the Transfiguration. The agreement in the narrative portions of the Gospels begins with the baptism of John, and reaches its highest point in the account of the passion of our Lord, and the facts that preceded it; so that a direct ratio might be laid between the amount of agreement and the nearness of the facts related to the Passion. After this event, in the account of his burial and resurrection, the coincidences are few.' There are no parts that furnish more difficulty, in the way of formal harmony, than the narratives of the Resurrection.

The language of all the Gospels is well known to be Greek with Hebrew idioms, or what has been called Hellenistic Greek. The tradition, however, of a Hebrew original of St Matthew's gospel is

uniform. In the fragment of Papias, and in the statement of Irenæus-the earliest sources in which we have any distinct mention of the Gospels-it is plainly asserted that Matthew wrote his Gospel in the Hebrew dialect. The fact is made a mark of distinction between his Gospel and the others. The same uniformity of tradition ascribes the Gospel of St Mark to the teaching of St Peter. The Gospel of St Mark is the most summary of the three, yet, in some respects, it is stamped with a special individuality and originality. It describes scenes and acts of our Lord and others with a minutely graphic detail, throwing in particulars omitted by others, and revealing throughout the observant eye-witness and independent historian.

3. Origin of the Gospels.-This is a separate inquiry from their genuineness, although intimately connected with it, and springs immediately out of those facts as to the internal agreement and disagreement of the Gospels of which we have been speaking. The inquiry has been treated in an extremely technical manner by many critics, and it would not suit our purpose to enumerate and examine the various theories which have been propounded on the subject. We may only state generally, that the object of these theories has been to find a common original for the Gospels. Some profess to find such an original in one of the three Gospels, from which the others have been more or less copied, and each of them in turn has been taken as the basis of the other two. The more elaborate theories of Eichhorn and Bishop Marsh, however, presume an original document, differing from any of the existing Gospels, and which is supposed to pass through various modifications, into the threefold form which it now bears in them. It appeared to Eichhorn that the portions which are common to all the three Gospels were contained in a certain common document from which they all drew. It had been already assumed that copies of such a document had got into circulation, and had been altered and annotated by different hands. But Eichhorn works out an elaborate hypothesis on such a presumption. He requires for his purpose no fewer than five supposititious documents. The conditions of the problem cannot be met otherwise. These are in order: 1. An original document; 2. An altered copy which St Matthew used; 3. An altered copy which St Luke used; 4. A third copy made from the two preceding, used by St Mark; 5. A fourth altered copy used by St Matthew and St Luke in common. Bishop Marsh, in following out the same process of construction, finds it necessary to increase the supposititious documents to eight, which we need not describe. There is not the slightest external evidence of the existence of such documents; and theories of this kind, which, in order to explain difficulties, call into existence at every stage an imaginary solution, do not require serious refutation.

Another and more probable supposition is, that the Gospels sprang out of a common oral tradition. The preaching of the apostles was necessarily, to a great extent, a preaching of facts; and so zealously did they give themselves to the task of promulgating the wondrous life and death of Christ, that they early divested themselves of the labour of ministering to any of the lower wants of the congregations of disciples that they gradually gathered round them. It is obvious that, in the course of their active 'ministry of the word,' the facts of our Lord's life and death, of which they had been eye-witnesses, would gradually assume a regular outline. What the reading of the Gospels is to us, the preaching of the apostles would be very much to the early Christians. The sermon of

of transit from place to place than the employment of the legs of the animal. As to the gossamers in the air, conjecture is still more at a loss. They are certainly not accidentally wafted up from the ground, as might be supposed; the spiders which produce them are wafted up along with them; but whether for the mere enjoyment of an aerial excursion, or in order to find insect prey in the air, is not clear, although the latter supposition is, on the whole, the most probable. The threads of gossamer are so delicate that a single one cannot be seen unless the sun shines on it; but being driven about by the wind, they often become beaten together into thicker threads and flakes. They are often to be felt on the face when they are scarcely visible. The spiders which produce these threads shoot them out from their spinnerets, a viscid fluid being ejected with great force, which presently becomes a thread; sometimes several such threads are produced at once in a radiating form, and these being caught by the ascending current of heated air, are borne up, and the spider along with them. It would seem that the spider has even some power of guiding in the air the web by which it is wafted up.

GOSSYPIUM. See COTTON.

GOʻTHA, a town of Germany, capital of the duchy of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, is situated on an elevation in a beautiful district on the right bank of the Leine, 18 miles west of Erfurt, by the Thuringian Railway. It is a handsome, well-built town, is quadrilateral in form, and was formerly surrounded by walls, which, however, have been thrown down, and public walks laid out in their place. The principal public building is the large ducal palace of Friedenstein, with two large side-wings, and two towers of 144 feet in height. This palace contains a picture-gallery, in which Cranach, V. Eyck, Holbein, Rubens, and Rembrandt are represented; a cabinet of engravings (a very valuable collection); a library (founded by Ernst the Pious in 1640) of 150,000 volumes and 6000 manuscripts, among which are 2000 Arabic, and from 300 to 400 Persian and Turkish; a collection of about 80,000 coins and 13,000 medals, one of the finest collections in Europe; and a Japanese and Chinese museum. G. has also an arsenal, a new and old town-hall, and numerous educational and benevolent institutions. The principal manufactures are muslins, cottons, porcelain, coloured paper, cloth, linen, tobacco, musical and surgical instruments, &c. Gotha sausages have a widespread celebrity. Several hundreds of designers, engravers, printers, and colourers of maps are employed here in Justus Perthes's large geographical establishment. Pop. (1871) 20,591.

GOTHA, ALMANACH DE, a universal political register, is published annually at Gotha (q. v.). The publication of this almanac commenced in 1764, in the German language, in which it was continued until Napoleon I. became emperor, when it was changed to the French language; it has recently been published in both tongues. The almanac is a small pocket volume, containing at present nearly one thousand pages of small type, and recording the sovereigns and royal families of every civilised country, with the civil, diplomatic, military, and naval officers, a great amount of statistical information, a compact summary of historical events, obituary notices of the most distinguished persons, and other matters of political interest. No book ever printed contains so much political and statistical information in so small a compass. The boundaries of states are given according to the latest treaties, with their extent, population, and revenues. The annuaire diplomatique contains the name of every diplomatic

representative and attaché of Europe and America. The pay of officers of governments, national expenditures and debts, with the interest, the number of representatives, under representative governments, and their proportion to the population, are carefully given. As a work of such an extent cannot be brought down to the end of the year, the date of publication is stated, and in some instances a date has been given to each page, as completed, to shew that the editor is not answerable for subsequent changes. When the Almanach de G. was commenced, there was but one republic in existencethat of Switzerland. It was then little more than a register of the crowned heads and royal families of Europe. It has been slow to recognise political changes, and for years after the French Revolution, continued to print under the head of France,' Louis XVII. as the reigning monarch. It was not until Napoleon became emperor that his name found a place in its pages, and then his whole family was given, as with the other royal houses. It was at this period that it began to be printed in French, which, being the recognised language of courts, is found the most convenient, and has been ever since retained. During the Empire, Napoleon I. considered this little publication so important, that he exercised over it a rigid supervision, and in 1808, an entire edition, which had just been worked off, was seized by a body of French gendarmes. The editor hurried to Paris, and found that his error was in his alphabetical arrangement, by which Anhalt, of the Ernestinian line of Saxon princes, took precedence of Napoleon, who claimed the right to be placed at the head of the nobility of the Rhine. To secure this re-arrangement of the alphabet, the edition of that year was printed at Paris. It is probable that a similar supervision of the press kept out of the historic pages the successes of the allies against the Empire in the succeeding numbers, in which there was no mention of the campaigns of the Peninsula and the victory of Trafalgar. On the restoration of the Bourbons, however, these events were recorded in a resumé, which made up for the previous omissions.

GOTHA, DUCHY OF. See SAXE-COBURG-GOTHA. GOTHARD, ST, a mountain group in the Helvetian Alps, reaches in its highest peaks the height of 12,000 feet. See ALPS. St G., however, is chiefly famous for the pass over the Alps, which at its summit rises to the height of 6800 feet. By means of this pass, the high-road from Fluelen, on Lake Lucerne, is carried without interruption in a south-south-east direction to Lago Maggiore, in the north of Italy. The construction of the road was commenced in 1820, and opened in 1832. In 1834, nearly one-third of the road, with numerous bridges and terraces, was swept away by the violence of a most terrific storm which burst on the summit of the pass; and in 1839 a similar occurrence took place. Since that time, however, the road has been in a good state of repair. It is one of the best and most convenient of the Alpine carriage-ways, is free from snow for four or five months of the year, beginning with June, and is equal, if not superior, to any other in the interest and grandeur of its

scenery.

GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE. Under this title are comprised the various styles of architecture which prevailed in Western Europe from the middle of the 12th c. to the revival of classic architecture in the 16th century. The term Gothic was at first bestowed by the Renaissance architects on the medieval styles as a term of reproach. This epithet they applied to every kind of medieval art which had existed from the decline of the classic styles

till their revival, all else being by them considered as barbarous and Gothic. The name has now, however, become generally adopted, and has outlived the reproach at first implied in it. It has also become limited and defined in its application. During the present century, the arts of the middle ages have been attentively studied, and their origin and history carefully traced; and as the knowledge of these styles has increased, a feeling of admiration has succeeded to that of contempt, and Gothic now ranks as one of the noblest and completest styles of architecture ever invented.

Origin. The origin of Gothic architecture has given rise to many very ingenious speculations. It has been said that the style was copied directly from nature; that the pointed arches and groins of the vaults were imitated from the overarching branches of trees; and that the stems of an avenue were the originals of the pillars of the Gothic aisles. Others have strenuously maintained that the invention of the pointed arch was a mere accident, arising from this form having been observed in the interlacing of the circular arches of a Norman arcade. It has also been stated that the style was imported from the East during the Crusades, and that the medieval architects had but little to do with its origin.

More careful study of the Gothic buildings which remain to us, has dispelled these fanciful ideas, and settled the origin and progress of the art on historical as well as internal evidence.

To trace Gothic up to its primary elements, we should have to go far back in the world's history. Some maintain that there are only two styles of architecture of which we have any knowledgeviz., Greek architecture and Gothic architecture; that these are the two typical styles, and that in them are contained all the elements of which all other styles are composed.

This is no doubt to some extent true, just as it is also true that all things in nature are derived from a few primary elements. But as there are many varieties in nature, so there are many developments of the two typical forms of architecture, all of which deserve to be classed as styles.

Greek architecture is the type of the trabeated style-i. e., the style whose principal feature is the straight lintel; Gothic is the type of arcuated architecture, in which the voids are spanned by arches. Of these typical forms there are many varieties. Roman Architecture (q. v.) is the transition form between them. The Romans adopted the Greek form of decoration and the Gothic form of construction; they decorated their exteriors with columns crowned by straight architraves and cornices, and inside these they formed the real construction with arches and vaults. The use of the latter gradually extended, especially in the construction of interiors, and by means of vaults the Romans were able to roof in large areas without encumbering the floor with pillars. This was found to be a very advantageous system of construction, and was carried out in many important examples, as, for instance, in the baths of Caracalla and Diocletian (see BATHS), the Basilica of Constantine, &c. In their works of public utility, where use, not decoration, was the chief object, the Romans always adopted the arch as the fittest mode of construction-as in their aqueducts (q. v.), bridges, &c. The arch thus came gradually more and more into use; and about the time when the barbarians first overran the provinces, the arcuated form of construction was universal, and some attempts had been made to conform the Greek decoration to the circular arches by bending the entablature round the curve-as in the palace of Diocletian at Spalato, in Dalmatia.

To the Romans, therefore, is due the introduction of an arcuated construction with a well developed internal, and a partially developed external decoration. The early Christians adopted their forms of construction and decoration from the Romans. They were also indebted to them for the plans of the buildings, which became the types of the Christian sacred edifices during the middle ages. The Basilica (q. v.), or Roman court-house and market-place, was found to be admirably adapted for early Christian worship, and the circular temples were the prototypes of the Christian Baptisteries (q. v.) which usually accompanied the basilicas. In erecting their buildings, the Christians not only adopted the plans and mode of construction, but used the actual materials of the buildings of the Romans, many of which had been destroyed by the barbarians. Where such materials were abundant as in Rome and Central Italy-the early Christian architecture very closely resembled that of the Roman buildings which had preceded it. But in more remote districts the builders, finding no ready-made materials at hand, had to design and prepare new ones. In doing so they followed as closely as they could the Roman originals, but their buildings partook more of the constructional than the decorative elements of Roman architecture. The Roman ornament thus dropped out of use; and when, in process of time, decoration was desired, each new people followed its own ideas. The traditional Roman decoration thus became to a great extent lost, and new styles introduced. These new styles each retained some of the original Roman forms and modes of construction; and each style depended for its peculiar character on the particular Roman forms it retained and developed. Thus Constantine, and the architects of the East, seized upon the dome as the distinguishing feature of their style, and the architects of Lombardy adopted the plain tunnelvault. The former style is called Byzantine (q. v.), and has been the type of all Eastern medieval architecture; and the latter Romanesque (q. v.), and has been the origin of all the western architecture of medieval Europe.

History. From Lombardy-in those ages part of the German empire-the Romanesque style readily passed into Germany and Switzerland, and was also most naturally adopted in the south of France, where examples of Roman architecture abounded. This architecture was carried out with various modifications in these different countries, all of which may have contributed to the general progress of the art; but as might be expected, it is to the banks of the Rhine where the successors of Charlemagne chiefly dwelt, that we must look for the first step in the development of Gothic architecture. The following short sketch of the development of vaulting will shew how this occurred.

The Roman basilicas, and, like them, the early Christian churches (fig. 1), were divided into a central nave with two side-aisles, the former separated from the latter by a row of columns on each side. These columns carried arches on which rested the side walls of the nave, which were carried sufficiently high to clear the roofs of the side-aisles, and admit windows to light the central nave. This row of windows afterwards became the Gothic Clerestory (q. v.). The apse at the end of the nave was semicircular on plan, and was usually roofed with a vault in the form of a semi-dome. This feature was also afterwards more fully developed in the chapels of Gothic churches. The nave and sideaisles were originally roofed with wood, but, owing to their frequent destruction by fire, it became necessary to cover the churches with a more enduring kind of construction. Vaulting was then