Greenock, 11th April, 1839, in the 60th year of his age. Mr. Galt possessed a Herculean frame, upwards of six feet in height, with jet black hair, small but piercing eyes, and a manly striking countenance, slightly marked with the small-pox. He was a man of untiring industry, as well as of strong congenial powers. He had an acute and discriminative judgment, a lively fancy, a keen sense of humour, and an open, generous, and unselfish disposition. But it must be admitted, that he was somewhat ambitious, impetuous, and self-willed. He was a sanguine projector, and his schemes and inventions were endless. The fault of his life, and the main cause of his failure in the pursuit of fortune, was his want of some one definite aim. His writings are as varied as his projects. He has written poetry, history, dramas, biographies, and essays, as well as novels. The list of his works, as given by himself, is very large, comprising about fifty volumes of novels, more than twenty dramas, independently of his biographical and miscellaneous writings. Many of these are already forgotten, but his delineations of familiar Scottish , clothed in the simple yet expressive old Doric of his native land, have secured a permanent place in the literature of the country; and it may be safely predicted, that his sketches of the primitive, simple-hearted, yet instinctively acute and sagacious Micah Balwhidder, with his homely annals, in which pathos, a quaint shrewd humour, and picturesque description, alternate—the keen-witted, thrifty, managing Mrs. Pringle, of whom Galt's own mother was the prototype—the pawky "Provost," with the stories of his wiles and jocosities—Leddy Grippy, and her son poor Watty, the innocent imbecile, and his Betty Bodle—and other Scottish characters belonging to the middle and lower classes—will last as long as the language.—(Autobiography of John Galt; Literary Life and Miscellanies. Memoirs by Delta, prefixed to "Annals of the Parish.")—J. T.
GALUPPI, Baldessaro, a musician, often called Buranello, from the name of his birthplace, Burano, an island in the Venetian archipelago, where he was born in 1703; he died at Venice in 1785. His father was his first teacher; but when very young he was placed in the Conservatorio degli Incurabili at Venice, where he received the instructions of Lotti, the unsuccessful opponent of Buononcini in London. The first of Galuppi's numerous operas, "La Fède nell Inconstanza," was produced at Brescia in 1722, and in the same year, another called "Gli Amici Rivali," was brought out in Venice. Both of these met with indifferent success, discouraged by which the composer applied himself assiduously to practising the harpsichord, and he became a remarkable proficient on this instrument. He resumed his dramatic career in 1729 with the opera of "Dorinda," which had a very different fortune from its predecessors, and fully established the popularity of its author, who proved his fertility by the production of nearly seventy other works of the same class, besides many masses and different pieces of church music. In 1741 Galuppi came to London, was engaged as composer to the king's theatre, when it was opened by the earl of Middlesex in rivalry of Handel, who, in consequence paid his memorable visit to Dublin. Galuppi inaugurated his London appointment with the opera of "Penelope" which was successful at first, and revived in several subsequent seasons. In 1762 he was made maestro di capella in the cathedral of S. Marco, and director of the conservatorio in which he had received his education. At the invitation of the Empress Catherine II. he went in 1766 to Petersburg, where he effected wonders in the improvement of the orchestra there, and thus rendered a great service to the progress of music in Russia. After the successful performance of his opera, "Didone abbandonata," the empress presented him with a gold snuff-box set with diamonds, telling him that it was bequeathed to him by the queen of Carthage. He returned to Venice in 1768, and was there reinstated in his former offices, which he discharged with ceaseless activity and constant liveliness and affability of manner, until the end of his very long life. It was the peculiar merit of this composer to keep pace with the advancement of his art; thus his style underwent considerable modification, and his music always fitting the taste of the time, was always well received.—G. A. M.
GALUPPI, Pasquale, an Italian philosopher of some celebrity, born at Tropea (Calabria Ulteriore) in 1770, died in 1846. Though belonging to a period in which the influence of French scepticism and materialism, particularly as developed by Condillac and Tracy, was rampant in Italy, Galuppi unswervingly gave himself to the service of the spiritualistic school of philosophy; and his works are a series of essays demonstrating and illustrating the operation of the inner principle of intellectual and moral life in the soul. His principal productions are an essay, "Sull' Analisi e la Sintesi;" "Saggio sulla Conoscenza;" "Elementi di Filosofia;" "Lettere filosofiche sulle vicende della Filosofia;" "Filosofia della volonta;" "Considerazioni sull' idealismo trascendentale di Kant e sul razionalismo assoluto;" "Lezioni di Logica e Metafisica;" "Storia della Filosofia;" "Elementi di Teologia naturale."—A. S., O.
GALVANI, Aloisio, a celebrated Italian, who shares with Volta the honour of having given his name to an important department of electrical science, was born at Bologna in 1737. In his younger days he studied theology; but having been dissuaded by his friends from entering into an order of monks, he applied himself with characteristic zeal to the study of medicine. His proficiency and his excellent moral character secured the esteem of his masters; and in 1762, after reading a thesis "On the bones, their nature, and their formation," which attracted favourable notice, he obtained the appointment of public lecturer in the university of Bologna, and reader in anatomy to the institute in that city. As a teacher he justified the expectations excited by his success as a student; his lectures were attended by crowded audiences; and he soon established a high reputation, not only by his skill as a surgeon and accoucheur, but also by the value of his original researches in comparative anatomy. It was chiefly, however, to a singular accident that Galvani was indebted for the discovery which has rendered his name immortal. According to one account, Galvani's attention was directed to the incident which led to his important discovery, by his wife Lucia, a daughter of Professor Galeazzi, and a pupil who, in his absence, had observed the limb of a frog convulsed when touched by a knife near an electrical machine; and Madame Galvani is made more conspicuous in the matter by the assertion that she was an invalid, and that the presence of the limbs of frogs in the dissecting-room was owing to her having ordered frog-soup as a delicacy for her dinner. That the lady was at the time of the discovery in feeble health there is no reason to doubt, for it occurred about the year 1790, and Madame Galvani died, to the unspeakable grief of her husband, very soon afterwards. Indeed, there is nothing whatever improbable in the popular version of the story; but Galvani himself, in his first publication on the subject, which was printed for the institute at Bologna in 1791, and entitled "Aloysii Galvani de viribus Electricitatis in motu musculari commentarius," simply states that he was dissecting a frog on a table whereon stood an electrical machine, when the limbs suddenly became convulsed by one of his pupils touching the crural nerve with a dissecting knife at the instant that a spark was taken from the prime-conductor of the machine. The experiment was repeated several times, and it was found to succeed in all cases when a metal conductor was connected with the nerve, but not otherwise. Galvani, who had long entertained a favourite theory that muscular action is attributable to animal electricity, looked on this phenomenon as a striking confirmation of that opinion; he believed that he had actually discovered the nervous fluid. He then attached the legs of frogs and of warm-blooded animals to a pointed conductor fixed at the top of his house, and found that they were violently convulsed at every flash of lightning. In the prosecution of these researches he happened to suspend some frogs on copper hooks fixed in the spine; and with this arrangement he observed the muscular contractions in all states of the weather when he connected the copper hooks with the iron rails. Inferring that the same effect might be produced independently of the atmosphere, he found, on experimenting with a frog in his room, that whenever a connection was made by means of two dissimilar metals between the external muscle and the crural nerve, the limbs became convulsed. It was only when this experiment had been made that the discovery of galvanism was accomplished; in all the preceding cases the effects were produced by the inductive action either of frictional or atmospheric electricity. The theory which Galvani formed was, that all animals possessed an electricity inherent in their organization, secreted by the brain, and communicated by the nerves to the whole body; he considered the muscle as an animal condenser charged on the inside with positive, on the outside with negative electricity, so as to constitute a kind of Leyden jar, which was discharged through the
