sur les Girondins (2 vols., ib. 1873); Ducos, Les Trois Girondines
(Madame Roland, Charlotte Corday, Madame Bouquey) et les
Girondins (ib. 1896); Edmond Biré, La Légende des Girondins (Paris,
1881, new ed. 1896); also Helen Maria Williams, State of Manners
and Opinions in the French Republic towards the close of the 18th
Century (2 vols., London, 1801). Memoirs or fragments of memoirs
also exist by particular Girondists, e.g. Barbaroux, Pétion, Louvet,
Madame Roland. See, further, the bibliography to the article French Revolution. (W. A. P.)
GIRTIN, THOMAS (1775–1802), English painter and etcher,
was the son of a well-to-do cordage maker in Southwark, London.
His father died while Thomas was a child, and his widow married
Mr Vaughan, a pattern-draughtsman. Girtin learnt drawing
as a boy, and was apprenticed to Edward Doyes (1763–1804),
the mezzotint engraver, and he soon made J. M. W. Turner’s
acquaintance. His architectural and topographical sketches
and drawings soon established his reputation, his use of water-colour
for landscapes being such as to give him the credit of
having created modern water-colour painting, as opposed to
mere “tinting.” His etchings also were characteristic of his
artistic genius. His early death from consumption (9th of
November 1802) led indeed to Turner saying that “had Tom
Girtin lived I should have starved.” From 1794 to his death
he was an exhibitor at the Royal Academy; and some fine
examples of his work have been bequeathed by private owners
to the British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum.
GIRVAN, a police burgh, market and fishing town of Ayrshire, Scotland, at the mouth of the Girvan, 21 m. S.W. of Ayr, and 63 m. S.W. of Glasgow by the Glasgow & South-Western railway. Pop. (1901) 4024. The principal industry was weaving, but the substitution of the power-loom for the hand-loom nearly put an end to it. The herring fishery has developed to considerable proportions, the harbour having been enlarged and protected by piers and a breakwater. Moreover, the town has grown in repute as a health and holiday resort, its situation being one of the finest in the west of Scotland. There is excellent sea-bathing, and a good golf-course. The vale of Girvan, one of the most fertile tracts in the shire, is made so by the Water of Girvan, which rises in the loch of Girvan Eye, pursues a very tortuous course of 36 m. and empties into the sea. Girvan is the point of communication with Ailsa Craig. About 13 m. S.W. at the mouth of the Stinchar is the fishing village of Ballantrae (pop. 511).
GIRY (Jean Marie Joseph), ARTHUR (1848–1899), French
historian, was born at Trévoux (Ain) on the 29th of February
1848. After rapidly completing his classical studies at the lycée
at Chartres, he spent some time in the administrative service
and in journalism. He then entered the École des Chartes,
where, under the influence of J. Quicherat, he developed a strong
inclination to the study of the middle ages. The lectures at the
École des Hautes Études, which he attended from its foundation
in 1868, revealed his true bent; and henceforth he devoted
himself almost entirely to scholarship. He began modestly by
the study of the municipal charters of St Omer. Having been
appointed assistant lecturer and afterwards full lecturer at the
École des Hautes Études, it was to the town of St Omer that he
devoted his first lectures and his first important work, Histoire
de la ville de Saint-Omer et de ses institutions jusqu’au XIV e
siècle (1877). He, however, soon realized that the charters of
one town can only be understood by comparing them with those
of other towns, and he was gradually led to continue the work
which Augustin Thierry had broadly outlined in his studies on
the Tiers État. A minute knowledge of printed books and a
methodical examination of departmental and communal archives
furnished him with material for a long course of successful
lectures, which gave rise to some important works on municipal
history and led to a great revival of interest in the origins and
significance of the urban communities in France. Giry himself
published Les Établissements de Rouen (1883–1885), a study, based
on very minute researches, of the charter granted to the capital
of Normandy by Henry II., king of England, and of the diffusion
of similar charters throughout the French dominions of the
Plantagenets; a collection of Documents sur les relations de
la royauté avec les villes de France de 1180 à 1314 (1885); and
Étude sur les origines de la commune de Saint-Quentin (1887).
About this time personal considerations induced Giry to devote the greater part of his activity to the study of diplomatic, which had been much neglected at the École des Chartes, but had made great strides in Germany. As assistant (1883) and successor (1885) to Louis de Mas Latrie, Giry restored the study of diplomatic, which had been founded in France by Dom Jean Mabillon, to its legitimate importance. In 1894 he published his Manuel de diplomatique, a monument of lucid and well-arranged erudition, which contained the fruits of his long experience of archives, original documents and textual criticism; and his pupils, especially those at the École des Hautes Études, soon caught his enthusiasm. With their collaboration he undertook the preparation of an inventory and, subsequently, of a critical edition of the Carolingian diplomas. By arrangement with E. Mühlbacher and the editors of the Monumenta Germaniae historica, this part of the joint work was reserved for Giry. Simultaneously with this work he carried on the publication of the annals of the Carolingian epoch on the model of the German Jahrbücher, reserving for himself the reign of Charles the Bald. Of this series his pupils produced in his lifetime Les Derniers Carolingiens (by F. Lot, 1891), Eudes, comte de Paris et roi de France (by E. Favre, 1893), and Charles le Simple (by Eckel, 1899). The biographies of Louis IV. and Hugh Capet and the history of the kingdom of Provence were not published until after his death, and his own unfinished history of Charles the Bald was left to be completed by his pupils. The preliminary work on the Carolingian diplomas involved such lengthy and costly researches that the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres took over the expenses after Giry’s death.
In the midst of these multifarious labours Giry found time for extensive archaeological researches, and made a special study of the medieval treatises dealing with the technical processes employed in the arts and industries. He prepared a new edition of the monk Theophilus’s celebrated treatise, Diversarum artium schedula, and for several years devoted his Saturday mornings to laboratory research with the chemist Aimé Girard at the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers, the results of which were utilized by Marcellin Berthelot in the first volume (1894) of his Chimie au moyen âge. Giry took an energetic part in the Collection de textes relatifs à l’histoire du moyen âge, which was due in great measure to his initiative. He was appointed director of the section of French history in La Grande Encyclopédie, and contributed more than a hundred articles, many of which, e.g. “Archives” and “Diplomatique,” were original works. In collaboration with his pupil André Réville, he wrote the chapters on “L’Émancipation des villes, les communes et les bourgeoisies” and “Le Commerce et l’industrie au moyen âge” for the Histoire générale of Lavisse and Rambaud. Giry took a keen interest in politics, joining the republican party and writing numerous articles in the republican newspapers, mainly on historical subjects. He was intensely interested in the Dreyfus case, but his robust constitution was undermined by the anxieties and disappointments occasioned by the Zola trial and the Rennes court-martial, and he died in Paris on the 13th of November 1899.
For details of Giry’s life and works see the funeral orations published in the Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes, and afterwards in a pamphlet (1899). See also the biography by Ferdinand Lot in the Annuaire de l’École des Hautes Études for 1901; and the bibliography of his works by Henry Maistre in the Correspondance historique et archéologique (1899 and 1900).
GISBORNE, a seaport of New Zealand, in Cook county, provincial district of Auckland, on Poverty Bay of the east coast of North Island. Pop. (1901) 2733; (1906) 5664. Wool, frozen mutton and agricultural produce are exported from the rich district surrounding. Petroleum has been discovered in the neighbourhood, and about 40 m. from the town there are warm medicinal springs. Near the site of Gisborne Captain Cook landed in 1769, and gave Poverty Bay its name from his inability to obtain supplies owing to the hostility of the natives. Young Nick’s Head, the southern horn of the bay, was named from Nicholas Young, his ship’s boy, who first observed it.
