27,758. It is situated at the confluence of the Raab with the Danube, and is composed of the inner town and three suburbs. Györ is a well-built town, and is the seat of a Roman Catholic bishop. Amongst its principal buildings are the cathedral, dating from the 12th century, and rebuilt in 1639–1654; the bishop’s palace; the town hall; the Roman Catholic seminary for priests and several churches. There are manufactures of cloth, machinery and tobacco, and an active trade in grain and horses. Twenty miles by rail W. S. W. of the town is situated Csorna, a village with a Premonstratensian abbey, whose archives contain numerous valuable historical documents.
Györ is one of the oldest towns in Hungary and occupies the site of the Roman Arabona. It was already a place of some importance in the 10th century, and its bishopric was created in the 11th century. It was a strongly fortified town which resisted successfully the attacks of the Turks, into whose hands it fell by treachery in 1594, but they retained possession of it only for four years. Montecucculi made Györ a first-class fortress, and it remained so until 1783, when it was abandoned. At the beginning of the 19th century, the fortifications were re-erected, but were easily taken by the French in 1809, and were again stormed by the Austrians on the 28th of June 1849.
About 11 m. S.E. of Györ on a spur of the Bakony Forest lies the famous Benedictine abbey of Pannonhalma (Ger. St Martinsberg; Lat. Mons Sancti Martini), one of the oldest and wealthiest abbeys of Hungary. It was founded by King St Stephen, and the original deed from 1001 is preserved in the archives of the abbey. The present building is a block of palaces, containing a beautiful church, some of its parts dating from the 12th century, and lies on a hill 1200 ft. high. The church has a tower 130 ft. high. In the convent there are a seminary for priests, a normal school, a gymnasium and a library of 120,000 vols. The chief abbot has the rank of a bishop, and is a member of the Upper House of the Hungarian parliament, while in spiritual matters he is subordinate immediately to the Roman curia.
GYP, the pen name of Sibylle Gabrielle Marie Antoinette
Riqueti de Mirabeau, Comtesse de Martel de Janville (1850– )
French writer, who was born at the château of Koetsal in
the Morbihan. Her father, who was the grandson of the vicomte
de Mirabeau and great-nephew of the orator, served in the Papal
Zouaves, and died during the campaign of 1860. Her mother,
the comtesse de Mirabeau, in addition to some graver compositions,
contributed to the Figaro and the Vie parisienne, under
various pseudonyms, papers in the manner successfully developed
by her daughter. Under the pseudonym of “Gyp” Madame
de Martel, who was married in 1869, sent to the Vie parisienne,
and later to the Revue des deux mondes, a large number of social
sketches and dialogues, afterwards reprinted in volumes. Her
later work includes stories of a more formal sort, essentially
differing but little from the shorter studies. The following list
includes some of the best known of Madame de Martel’s publications,
nearly seventy in number: Petit Bob (1882); Autour du
mariage (1883); Ce que femme veut (1883); Le Monde à
côté (1884), Sans voiles (1885); Autour du divorce (1886);
Dans le train (1886); Mademoiselle Loulou (1888); Bob au salon
(1888–1889); L’Education d’un prince (1890); Passionette
(1891); Ohé! la grande vie (1891); Une Élection à Tigre-sur-mer
(1890), an account of “Gyp’s” experiences in support of a
Boulangist candidate; Mariage civil (1892); Ces bons docteurs
(1892); Du haut en bas (1893); Mariage de chiffon (1894);
Leurs âmes (1895); Le Cœur d’Ariane (1895); Le Bonheur de
Ginette (1896); Totote (1897); Lune de miel (1898); Israël
(1898); L’Entrevue (1899); Le Pays des champs (1900); Trop de
chic (1900); Le Friquet (1901); La Fée (1902); Un Mariage chic
(1903); Un Ménage dernier cri (1903); Maman (1904); Le
Cœur de Pierrette (1905). From the first “Gyp,” writing of a
society to which she belonged, displayed all the qualities which
have given her a distinct, if not pre-eminent, position among
writers of her class. Those qualities included an intense faculty
of observation, much skill in innuendo, a mordant wit combined
with some breadth of humour, and a singular power of animating
ordinary dialogues without destroying the appearance of reality.
Her Parisian types of the spoiled child, of the precocious schoolgirl,
of the young bride, and of various masculine figures in the
gay world, have become almost classical, and may probably
survive as faithful pictures of luxurious manners in the 19th
century. Some later productions, inspired by a violent anti-Semitic
and Nationalist bias, deserve little consideration. An
earlier attempt to dramatize Autour du mariage was a failure,
not owing to the audacities which it shares with most of its
author’s works, but from lack of cohesion and incident. More
successful was Mademoiselle Ève (1895), but indeed “Gyp’s”
successes are all achieved without a trace of dramatic faculty.
In 1901 Madame de Martel furnished a sensational incident in the
Nationalist campaign during the municipal elections in Paris.
She was said to have been the victim of a kidnapping outrage
or piece of horseplay provoked by her political attitude, but
though a most circumstantial account of the outrages committed
on her and of her adventurous escape was published, the affair
was never clearly explained or verified.
GYPSUM, a common mineral consisting of hydrous calcium
sulphate, named from the Gr. γύψος, a word used by Theophrastus
to denote not only the raw mineral but also the product
of its calcination, which was employed in ancient times, as
it still is, as a plaster. When crystallized, gypsum is often called
selenite, the σεληνίτης of Dioscorides, so named from σελήνη,
“the moon,” probably in allusion to the soft moon-like reflection
of light from some of its faces, or, according to a legend, because
it is found at night when the moon is on the increase. The
granular, marble-like gypsum is termed alabaster (q.v.).
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| Fig. 1 | Fig. 2 |
Gypsum crystallizes in the monoclinic system, the habit of the crystals being usually either prismatic or tabular; in the latter case the broad planes are parallel to the faces of the clinopinacoid. The crystals may become lenticular by curvature of certain faces. In the characteristic type represented in fig. 1, f represents the prism, l the hemi-pyramid and P the clinopinacoid. Twins are common, as in fig. 2, forming in some cases arrow-headed and swallow-tailed crystals. Cleavage is perfect parallel to the clinopinacoid, yielding thin plates, often diamond-shaped, with pearly lustre; these flakes are usually flexible, but may be brittle, as in the gypsum of Montmartre. Two other cleavages are recognized, but they are imperfect. Crystals of gypsum, when occurring in clay, may enclose much muddy matter; in other cases a large proportion of sand may be mechanically entangled in the crystals without serious disturbance of form; whilst certain crystals occasionally enclose cavities with liquid and an air-bubble. Gypsum not infrequently becomes fibrous. This variety occurs in veins, often running through gypseous marls, with the fibres disposed at right angles to the direction of the vein. Such gypsum when cut and polished has a pearly opalescence, or satiny sheen, whence it is called satin-spar (q.v.).
Gypsum is so soft as to be scratched even by the finger-nail (H = 1.5 to 2). Its specific gravity is about 2.3. The mineral is slightly soluble in water, one part of gypsum being soluble, according to G. K. Cameron, in 372 parts of pure water at 26° C. Waters percolating through gypseous strata, like the Keuper marls, dissolve the calcium sulphate and thus become permanently hard or “selenitic.” Such water has special value for brewing pale ale, and the water used by the Burton breweries is of this character; hence the artificial dissolving of gypsum in water for brewing purposes is known as “burtonization.” Deposits of gypsum are formed in boilers using selenitic water.
Pure gypsum is colourless or white, but it is often tinted, especially in the alabaster variety, grey, yellow or pink. Gypsum crystallizes with two molecules of water, equal to about 21% by
