tical chemist, and the first successful inventor of machinery for spinning flax, was the descendant of an old French family of landowners, and was born in 1775 at his father's ancestral seat, the chateau of Lourmarin, in what is now called the department of Vancluse. He was the youngest of four brothers, of whom the three eldest were named Joseph, Camille, and Frédéric. Philippe is said to have shown a genius for practical science from his childhood. During the first French revolution, the whole family emigrated to Italy, and were for a time supported, while living at Genoa in 1793, by the labours of Philippe as a painter. Soon afterwards he established a manufactory of soap at Leghorn. So great was the esteem and affection with which the Girard family were regarded in the neighbourhood of Lourmarin, that the inhabitants of the district made interest with the younger Robespierre to grant a safe-conduct for Philippe to return to France. Having revisited his birthplace, he set up a chemical work at Marseilles for that most important branch of manufacture—the preparation of carbonate of soda by the decomposition of common salt; and the undertaking proved perfectly successful. Having been suspected by the authorities of political disaffection, he was obliged to remove his residence to Nice, as a place where his presence was considered less dangerous than at Marseilles; and he there obtained the appointment of professor of physics and chemistry at the central school of the department of the Maritime Alps, and afterwards that of professor of natural history. In 1800, soon after the establishment of the consulate, and the consequent removal of the disabilities and restraints under which emigrants had lived, Girard returned to Marseilles, and thence proceeded to Paris. He established there a manufactory of soda and one of sheet-iron, in the management of which he was assisted by his brother Frédéric. He contrived and executed in the course of a few years afterwards many ingenious pieces of mechanism, one of which—the fountain-lamp—continues to be used under various modifications. He made an expansive one-cylindered direct-acting steam-engine, to which a gold medal was awarded at the exposition of 1806. It has been represented by some writers as the first of its class, but erroneously. On the 11th of May, 1810, Napoleon I. offered a reward of one million francs to the inventor who should first bring into successful operation a method of spinning flax by machinery. Girard immediately began to make experiments on the subject, and had so far succeeded that he applied for a patent for his flax-spinning machine in the following July. After many trials and gradual improvements, he established, in the year 1813, in partnership with Constant Prevost, two flax mills, with machinery made by Laurent—one in Paris and the other at Charonne. Although those works produced a profit, it was quite insufficient to repay Girard for the great expense to which he had been put in experimenting and in gradually perfecting his invention. Shortly afterwards the soda manufactory of Girard ceased to be profitable, owing to the imposition of a tax on salt, the principal raw material of the manufacture. In 1814 Girard, in conjunction with Laurent, invented and made a steam gun which discharged thirty shots per minute. His pecuniary difficulties now became serious. During the reign of a Hundred Days he obtained a faint prospect of relief by the issue of a decree of the emperor, declaring him entitled to the reward of one million francs which had been offered five years before; but the overthrow of Napoleon rendered that decree inoperative. In 1815 Girard was for a time imprisoned for debt. At length, having sold all his machinery in France, which was afterwards worked by others with a profitable result, he went to the Austrian dominions, and established a flax mill at Hirtenberg, on land belonging to the ex-king Jerôme Bonaparte. Here he carried on the flax manufacture successfully for about ten years, exerting himself at the same time for the advancement of various branches of practical mechanics. In particular he invented, in 1818, the first tubular boiler, and established the first line of steam-boats on the Danube. In 1819 an Austrian commission reported in favour of, and a French commission against, the merits of his machinery for spinning flax. In 1825, by invitation of the government of the Emperor Alexander I., he went to Warsaw to act as engineer-in-chief of the Polish mines, and to establish the flax manufacture in the Russian dominions. In 1831, with a view to the assistance of the patriot Poles, he contrived and executed machinery for making gunstocks. On the capture of Warsaw he expected to be punished as an insurgent, but was treated instead with great favour by the Emperor Nicholas, who presented him with the cross of St. Stanislaus. The works of Girard in various branches of manufactures, metallurgy, and practical engineering, now became so extensive that a small town near Warsaw, called Girardow, was formed by the habitations of the workmen in his employment. In 1842 the gold medal of the French Sociéte pour l'Encouragement de l'Industrie Nationale was awarded to him for his inventions in flax-spinning. In 1844 he visited Paris, where he was received with great distinction, and exhibited various machines at the Exposition of that year. The government were strongly urged to give him the long-promised reward of a million francs, but in vain. In May, 1845, the Society of Inventors and Manufacturers bestowed on him a pension of six thousand francs. Girard died on the 26th of August, 1845, and was buried with extraordinary honours. His services to the industry and prosperity of France and of the world seemed for a long time afterwards to be forgotten, until, in 1853, the Emperor Napoleon III., in acknowledgment of them, conferred a pension of six thousand francs on his only surviving brother Joseph, and a similar pension on his niece, the countess de Vernède de Corneillan, daughter of his brother Frédéric, with a reversion of both pensions to the daughter of that lady.—W. J. M. R.
GIRARD, Pierre Simon, a distinguished French civil engineer, was born at Caen on the 4th of November, 1765, and died in Paris on the 21st of November, 1835. He was educated at the place of his birth, and afterwards went to Paris to practise engineering. In 1792 he was brought into public notice by an essay on "Locks for Navigation," to which a prize was awarded by the Academy of Sciences; and, in 1798, he was appointed one of the scientific commissioners who accompanied Bonaparte to Egypt. In 1802 he was appointed engineer-in-chief of that celebrated work the Canal de l'Ourcq. In 1819 he superintended the first establishment of works for lighting the streets and theatres of Paris with gas. He wrote several books on engineering subjects, chiefly connected with hydraulics, which were published in Paris in 1830 and the two following years, forming four volumes quarto.—W. J. M. R.
GIRARD, Stephen, was born at Perigueux in France in 1750. He was the son of poor parents; and having at an early age been thrust out into the world to seek his fortune, he entered as a cabin-boy on board a vessel bound for New York. Though friendless and penniless, and in a strange country, he soon began to make his way in life. He commenced by hawking spirituous liquors among the workmen in the harbour; and by steady industry and indomitable perseverance, combined with the most miserable parsimony, accumulated an immense fortune, the greater part of which, at his death in 1831, he bequeathed to the city of Philadelphia for charitable purposes. Upwards of £40,000 were devoted to the erection of a college for the support and education of poor children. Clergymen of every sect were expressly forbidden, by Girard's will, from entering the building on any pretext whatever.—J. T.
GIRARDET, Abraham, Swiss engraver, was born at Locle in Neufchâtel in 1764, and studied under Nicolet of Paris. He executed many very beautiful prints; wanting, perhaps, in vigour, but carefully drawn, admirably finished, and full of refinement. Girardet died at Paris in 1823.—A younger brother, Charles, born in 1780, was one of the ablest lithographers in Paris prior to retiring from the profession; and three sons of Charles—Edouard, Charles, and Paul—now hold honorable rank among French artists.—J. T—e.
GIRARDIN, Delphine Gay de, was born at Aix-la-Chapelle, 26th January, 1804. When only seventeen years of age she contended for a prize poem; and although she did not obtain the victory, the piece was deemed of sufficient merit to be worthy of the honour of a public reading in the French Academy. Encouraged by this comparative success, she published several poems, and was rewarded by seeing a pension conferred upon her mother, who took her to Rome, where her presence excited so much enthusiasm that she was crowned in the capitol. The poetical genius of Mademoiselle Gay was enhanced by her personal beauty, which, at the time, was said to be unsurpassed. Regular features, brilliant complexion, and fair hair in profusion, combined, as it were, the grave dignity of the north with the vivacity and grace of the south. In 1831 she accepted Emile de Girardin; neither was rich, but both were full of hope and courage. While he entered upon his newspaper enterprises, she published some half dozen novels that were all well received. When her husband launched La Presse in 1836, madame de Girardin commenced a
