The art of goldbeating is of great antiquity, being referred to by Homer; and Pliny states that one ounce of gold was extended to 750 leaves, each leaf being four fingers square, which is three times the thickness of the ordinary leaf gold of the present time. The ancient Peruvians made very thin sheets of gold, and nailed them together on the walls of their temples of worship; on the coffins of the Theban mummies specimens of original leaf-gilding are met with where the gold is in so thin a state that it resembles modern gilding. The art seems to have been practised in India, judging from the rude specimens of gilding at Tippo Sahib's palace at Bangalore.

In modern times it has been practised in the capitals of the principal commercial countries of Europe. In England it was confined to London until within the present century. It has been introduced into Scotland and the United States of America within that period. It is now practised in several towns in England, and to a small extent in Ireland, at Dublin only.

The manufacture being attendant upon an advanced state of the arts, it is only found in old established countries, and is not yet practised in any of the British colonies.

From the existence here of some now obsolete-fashioned tools, similar to those at present in use at Paris, it would appear to have travelled to England from that quarter. The art has nowhere been so perfected as in London; but of late years, from intercourse with English goldbeaters, efforts have been made on the Continent, with the aid of English goldbeaters' skin, to rival the extreme fineness of the English product.

The ordinary size of a leaf of gold is 3 inches and 3-8ths, for the production of 2000 leaves of which from 18 to 19 dwts. of gold were allowed to the workman fifty years since in London, but now, owing to the improvement in the quality of the skin and superior skill on the part of the workmen, not more than an average of 16 dwts. are required, and with very skilful workmen it is sometimes accomplished with 14 dwts. This, however, is not to be taken as any test of the extreme malleability of gold; it is only the point to which it is desirable to attain for commercial purposes.

Experiments have been made to ascertain to what degree of thinness gold and silver could be reduced: it was found that one grain of gold was spread to the extent of 75 square inches, and the same weight of silver to the still more extraordinary dimension of 98 square inches. Taking one cubic inch of gold at 4900 grains, it will be found that the gold was the 367,650th part of an inch in thickness, or about 1200 times thinner than ordinary printing paper. Thus, if this number of leaves of gold were placed on one another, they would constitute a pile an inch high; the same number of leaves of paper would form a pile half the height of the Monument of London. The silver, though spread over a much larger surface, was thickest, owing to the difference in its specific gravity; but, calculated by weight, silver is the most malleable metal with which we are acquainted, considerably exceeding that of gold. This experiment does not, however, determine the extent of the malleability of either metal, as the means employed to test it were found to fail before there was any appearance of the malleability of the metals being exhausted.

The gold used by the goldbeater is variously alloyed according to the variety of colour required. Fine gold is commonly supposed to be incapable of being reduced to thin leaves. This is an error. It is objectionable for commercial purposes on account of its greater cost. It also adheres on one part of a leaf touching another, thus causing a waste of labour by the leaves being spoiled; but for work exposed to the weather it is much preferable, as it is more durable, and does not tarnish or change colour.

The specimens of gold leaf exhibited by Mr E. S. Marshall, goldbeater of London, at the Great Exhibition of 1851, and for which the prize medal was awarded to him, were twelve in number, and embraced a regular gradation in colour from red down to nearly white, viz.—red, pale red, extra deep, deep, orange, lemon, deep pale, pale, pale pale, deep party, party, and fine gold. The deeper colours were alloyed with from 12 to 16 grs. of copper per oz., but without any silver, as any alloy of silver with this quantity of copper would considerably impair the malleability. The middle colours contained from 12 to 20 grs. of silver, and from 6 to 8 grs. of copper to the ounce; the paler golds contained from 2 to 20 dwt. of silver to the ounce, but no copper, for the same reason that the silver was omitted in the red-golds.

The process of goldbeating is thus conducted. The gold having been alloyed according to the colour desired, it is melted into a crucible, at a higher temperature than is simply necessary to fuse it, as its malleability is improved by exposure to a greater heat; sudden cooling does not interfere with its malleable properties, differing in this property from some other metals. It is then cast into an ingot, and flattened into a ribbon of 1½ inch wide and 10 feet in length to the ounce. After being flattened it is annealed and cut into small pieces of about 6 grs. each, and placed between the leaves of a catch, which is about half an inch thick and 3½ inches square, containing about 160 leaves of a tough paper manufactured in France. Formerly fine vellum was used for this purpose. The catch is beaten on for about 20 minutes with a 17-pound hammer, which rebounds by the elasticity of the skin, and saves the labour of lifting, by which the gold is spread to the size of the catch; each leaf is then taken out, and cut into four pieces, and put between the skins of a shoder 4½ inches square and ¾ths of an inch thick, containing about 700 skins, which have been worn out in the finishing process. The shoder requires about two hours' beating upon with a 9-pound hammer. As the gold will spread unequally, the shoder is beaten upon after the larger leaves have reached the edges. The effect of this is, that the larger leaves come out of the edges in a state of dust. This allows time for the smaller leaves to reach the full size of the shoder, thus producing a general evenness of size in the leaves.

Each leaf is again cut into four pieces, and placed between the leaves of a mould composed of about 900 of the finest skins, five inches square and three-quarters of an inch thick; this is the last and most difficult stage of the process; and on the fineness of the skin and judgment of the workman the perfection and thinness of the leaf of gold depend. During the first hour the hammer is allowed to fall principally upon the centre of the mould. This causes gaping cracks upon the edges of the leaves, the sides of which readily coalesce and unite without leaving any trace of the union after being beaten upon. At the second hour, when the gold is about the 150,000 of an inch in thickness, it for the first time permits the transmission of the rays of light. In pure gold, or gold but slightly alloyed, the green rays are transmitted; and in gold highly alloyed with silver the pale violet rays pass. The mould requires in all about four hours' beating with a 7 lb. hammer, when the gold will have arrived at the ordinary thinness for the gold leaf of commerce. It is then taken out of the mould, and the rough edges are cut off by slips of the rattan fixed in parallel grooves of an instrument called a waggon, the leaf being laid upon a feather cushion for that purpose. The leaves thus prepared are placed into a book capable of holding twenty-five leaves each, which have been rubbed over with red ochre to prevent the gold clinging to the paper, and is used for gilding picture-frames, books, and for numerous other ornamental purposes.

The dryness of the catch, shoder, and mould is a matter of extreme delicacy. They require to be hot-pressed every time they are used, although they may be used daily, to remove the moisture which they acquire from the atmosphere, except in extremely frosty weather, when they acquire so little moisture that then a difficulty arises from their over-dryness; the brilliancy of the gold is diminished, and it spreads very slowly under the hammer. On the contrary, if the catch or shoder be damp, the gold will become that which is technically termed hollow or sieve-like; that is, it is pierced with innumerable small microscopical holes; and in the moulds in its more attenuated state it will become reduced to a pulverulent state. This condition is more easily produced in alloyed golds than in fine gold.

It is necessary that each skin of the mould should be rubbed over with calcined gypsum (the fibrated variety) each time the mould may be used, in order to prevent the adhesion of the gold to the surface of the skin in the process of beating.

Dentist gold is gold leaf carried no farther in the process than that of the catch, and should be perfectly pure gold.

By the above process silver is beaten, but not so thin, the inferior value of the metal not rendering it commercially desirable to bestow so much labour upon it. Copper, tin, zinc, palladium, lead, cadmium, platinum, and aluminium can be beaten into thin leaves, but not to the extent of gold or silver.

Shell Gold, used in painting and illuminating, is made by grinding gold leaves with honey, and afterwards separating the honey from the powdered gold by means of water. When the honey is washed away, the gold may be put on paper or kept in shells. When used, it is commonly diluted with gum-water. The German gold powder, prepared in this manner from the Dutch gold leaf, is generally used; and when it is well secured with varnish, it answers the end in japanners' gilding tolerably well.

Gold Size, for burnished gilding, is prepared of one pound and a half of pipe clay, half an ounce of red chalk, a quarter of an ounce of black lead, forty drops of sweet oil, and three drams of pure tallow. The clay, chalk, and black lead are to be ground very fine, separately, in water, then mixed together; the oil and tallow are next added, and the mixture is ground to a due consistence.

Gold Thread is formed of flattened gold wire wrapped closely over a thread of yellow silk, by means of a wheel and iron bobbins.

Gold Wire is made by taking a cylindrical ingot of silver which has been superficially coated with gold, and drawing it successively through a series of holes in a hardened steel plate, each of which is a degree smaller than the preceding hole, and proceeding thus until the requisite degree of fine- Gold Coast ness is attained. It may be observed that in this process, however fine be the wire, its gilded surface exhibits no flaw even when viewed by the microscope. *Flattened gold wire* is the same wire after it has been passed between rollers of polished steel.

**GOLD COAST.** See Guinea.

**GOLDAPP,** a town, capital of a cognominal circle, in the province of East Prussia and government of Gumbinnen. It stands on a small river of the same name, 20 miles S. of Gumbinnen; and has several tanneries and breweries, and some trade in cattle. Pop. (1849) 3754.

**GOLDAU,** a village of Switzerland, canton of Schwyz, in a valley between the Rigi and the Rossberg. The former village of this name was entirely destroyed by a landslide of the Rossberg on 2d Sept. 1806; together with those of Bussingen, Rother, and part of Lowerz.

**GOLDBERG,** a town, capital of a cognominal circle, in the Prussian province of Silesia, government of and 14 miles S.W. of Liegnitz, on the Katzbach, an affluent of the Oder. It received its name from a gold mine in the neighbourhood, formerly productive, but now abandoned. Wallenstein was educated at the gymnasium of this town. The chief manufactures are woollen cloth, flannel, stockings, &c. At the hamlet of Wahlstadt, six miles E. of the town, the French were defeated by the Prussians on the 26th August 1813. Pop. (1849) 7119.

**GOLDEN FLEECE,** in Mythology, the fleece of the ram upon which Phrixus and Helle crossed the sea to Colchis, and which, being sacrificed to Jupiter, was hung upon a tree in the grove of Mars, guarded by two brazen-hoofed bulls, and a monstrous dragon that never slept. The fleece was carried off by Jason and the Argonauts. See Argonauts.

Many authors have endeavoured to show that this fable is an allegorical representation of some real history; while others explain it by the profit of the wool trade to Colchis, or the gold which was gathered in the rivers of that country by means of fleeces.

**Golden Fleece, Order of The.** See Fleece.

**GOLDEN NUMBER,** in Chronology, a number showing what year of the moon's cycle any given year is. See Calendar, vol. vi., p. 81.

**GOLDONI,** Carlo, a celebrated comic poet of Italy, whom his countrymen delight to call the Italian Molière, was born at Venice in 1707. His life falls naturally into three distinct parts: the strange career of his youth, the more sober era of his toils and struggles in middle age, and his old age of moderate independence and well-earned fame. Goldoni was brought up in the midst of fetes and theatrical performances by his grandfather, a man of pleasure, whose chief amusement was in the society of players and musicians. In this company his mind received a bent which afterwards decided his course. He went through the usual studies of the young Italians of those days; but he gained little at the various schools and colleges to which he was sent, except a knowledge of life in all its varieties. This knowledge he enlarged by often exchanging the dull routine of work for the rambling life and reckless gaiety of a strolling player. His friends, little dreaming that he was in this way educating himself for his future calling, besought him to reform, to study law or medicine, and to bring no discredit on the family name. He chose the profession of medicine, and had no sooner made his choice than he abandoned it. He next tried the law, graduated after various mishaps at Padua, and began to practise at Pisa as an advocate with every prospect of success. In an evil hour he wrote a comedy, which was played by a strolling company at Venice amidst overwhelming applause. From that time he became a stage-poet; and though the companies for which he wrote were all itinerant and held in no high respect, yet Goldoni was too much of a Gil Blas to exchange a life so congenial to his temper for the tame monotony of burgher respectability. Being now in a sphere in all respects suited to him, he resolved to turn its capabilities to account. He found the stage occupied either by the opera, or by that species of comedy called the "commedia dell' arte," or "a soggetto,"—a kind of comic acting peculiar to Italy, and long the only pretender to the title of national. These plays were not written out in full. The plot was sketched, and the actors filled in the dialogue as they went along. The chief characters in these plays wore masks, thence called maschere, and caricatured the local humours and salient weaknesses of the various states of Italy. The success of such plays depended of course on the cleverness of the individual actors; and in the hands of good performers they became amusing enough. The majority of strolling players, however, had to conceal their lack of genuine wit and humour under personal scurrility or obscene innuendoes. Goldoni determined to reform the stage,—and as there was no drama at that time in Italy suited to the modern manners of the people, he wrote a vast number of plays descriptive of the life and habits of his countrymen. His reform he was obliged to effect by degrees. He began by writing only the more serious parts of his plays; then he wrote parts for the masks, which he strove to raise out of the region of the mere burlesque; then he discarded the masks almost entirely, aimed at a higher style, and besides criticising the manners, lashed the follies and vices of his countrymen. He was a keen observer of men, and wrote with much case and variety. The best of his works are those written in the Venetian dialect, which are therefore not very readily appreciable by foreigners. To most Englishmen, indeed, the fine aroma of Goldoni's diction is as much lost as the peculiar zest of broad Scotch or the local dialects of Yorkshire are thrown away upon an Italian. But all native critics agree in pronouncing them remarkable for raciness of humour and felicity of diction. He revels especially in descriptions of low life in Venice, where the national manners have longest preserved their most striking peculiarities; and these descriptions are sometimes so broad as to be quite inadmissible even on a French stage. As he wrote for bread, he often wrote in great haste, a fact which accounts for the inequality of his works and the mistakes into which he often falls, especially when he trenches upon foreign manners and customs. Despite these faults, however, it is hardly too much to call Goldoni the father, or at least the restorer, of the Italian comedy. His works are still highly popular among his countrymen; and though a reaction in favour of the "commedia dell'arte" was effected by his rival Gozzi, it ended with the life of that powerful but ill-regulated genius; and such comic writers as have since attained distinction in Italy profess themselves followers of Goldoni. The rivalry between Gozzi and Goldoni made a great noise in its day, and as a fact of considerable importance in the literary history of Italy is still interesting to us. It is pretty fully discussed by Ugioni in his Letteratura Italiana, and by Baretti in his Manners and Customs of Italy. The third and happiest portion of Goldoni's life was that spent in Paris. In 1761 he was invited to that city by the Italian company playing there, and wrote a number of plays, some of which were eminently successful. Among these may be numbered Le Bourru Bienfaisant, in French, which still maintains its ground as a standard play on the French stage. This play made him known at court (1771), where he was appointed teacher of Italian to the three daughters of Louis XV., and finally rewarded with a pension of 4000 francs. When the revolution broke out he was deprived of it. On the motion of Chénier, however, a decree was passed restoring it and paying up the arrears. But Goldoni died the very day after this decree was passed, January 8, 1793. The arrears and a small additional pension were paid to his widow. There have been countless editions of Goldoni's works, among which may be Goldsmith specified that of Venice in 44 vols. 8vo, 1794-5; and that of Lucca in 26 vols. 1809. Selections from his best plays still appear from time to time in Italy. He wrote in French, besides his play of "Le Bourru Bienfaisant," a number of minor pieces, and a very interesting biography of himself under the title of "Mémoires pour servir à l'Histoire de sa vie, et à celle de son Théâtre," which appeared in 1787, when the author was in his 81st year.

GOLDSMITH or SILVERSMITH, one who makes vessels and ornaments of gold or silver. The goldsmith's work is either performed in the mould, or beat out with the hammer or other instrument. Works which have raised figures are cast in a mould, and afterwards polished and finished; plates or dishes of silver or gold are beaten out from flat plates; and tunkards and other vessels of the kind are formed of plates soldered together, their mouldings being beaten out, not cast. The business of the goldsmith formerly involved the hammering of the metal from the ingot to the degree of thinness required; but the necessity for this laborious process is now entirely obviated by the flating mill.