The peoples known in his- Gothofred, tory under the names of Musogoths, Ostrogoths, and Visigoths, were all of the same race, and spoke different but closely similar idioms of the same language. This language differed very little from the ancient dialects of Germany; and during successive ages it spread with the Goths over all southern Europe, and occupied for a considerable time Spain and Italy, where but feeble effects have been left in the vernaculars of these countries. The case has been very different, however, in the northern countries of Europe, where the Goths firmly and permanently established themselves, and have perpetuated their race with their language. From the Gothic has sprung the Scandinavian, which is found in its greatest purity in Iceland; and, in more modified forms, in the Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian. The similarity between the remains of the ancient relics of Gothic and Sanscrit is very striking.

**Example of Declension in Sanscrit and Gothic.**

| Sanscrit | Gothic | |----------|--------| | **Singular** | | | Nom. Sūnum, son | Nom. Sūnum, son | | Acc. Sūnum | Acc. Sūnum | | Instr. Sūnumā | Instr. Sūnumā | | Genit. Sūnumā | Genit. Sūnumā | | Voc. Sūnum | Voc. Sūnum |

| **Plural** | | | Nom. Sūnumās | Nom. Sūnumās | | Acc. Sūnumās | Acc. Sūnumās | | Instr. Sūnumās | Instr. Sūnumās | | Genit. Sūnumās | Genit. Sūnumās |

The affinity between the Sanscrit and the Gothic appears equally striking in conjugation as well as in declension. The terminations which in the verbs designate the same persons, are the same in both languages. The Gothic has even preserved in conjugation the dual which has been lost in declension, and like the Sanscrit, the Greek and the Latin, it has a particular form to express the passive.

**Example of Conjugation in Sanscrit and Gothic.**

| Sanscrit | Gothic | |----------|--------| | **Singular** | | | 1. Barāmi | 1. Bairā | | 2. Barasi | 2. Bairās | | 3. Barati | 3. Bairāt |

| **Dual** | | | 1. Barāmis | 1. Bairās | | 2. Baratis | 2. Bairāts |

| **Plural** | | | 1. Barāvas | 1. Bairās | | 2. Baratas | 2. Bairāts | | 3. Barantī | 3. Bairantī |

As to the variety of grammatical forms the Gothic holds a middle place between Sanscrit and Latin; and without possessing the richness of the former or the conciseness of the latter, it rivals both in precision and energy of expression. See Gothis.

(A. F. F.)

**Gothofred**, or Godefroy, Denis or Dionysius, the most celebrated jurisconsult of his age, was born at Paris in 1549. After having completed his classical studies he applied himself to that of law, which he prosecuted at the universities of Louvain, Cologne, and Heidelberg. On his return to France, in consequence of his profession of the Reformed faith, he found himself obliged to retire to Geneva, where, in 1580, he was nominated to a chair of law. Henri IV. appointed him magistrate of Gex in 1589; but this city having the year after been taken by the Duke of Savoy, his house was pillaged, and no resource remained for him but to pass into Germany. He, however, proceeded no farther than Strasbourg, where he taught the Pandects from 1591 till 1600, when the elector palatine called him to Heidelberg. But the proceedings of his colleagues forced him six months afterwards to return to Strasbourg, where he remained three years more; at the end of which time he consented to resume his functions at Heidelberg, upon an assurance which was given him that he should have nothing to apprehend from the jealousy of the other professors. It was only then that his countrymen became sensible of the fault which had been committed in not endeavouring to retain in France a man of such distinguished merit, and he was offered the chair which Cujas had just left vacant at Bourges; but he declined the offer upon the ground of his age, and alleged the same excuse in opposition to all the instances which were made to draw him to Angers, to Valence, and to other universities of France and Germany. In 1618 he was sent as deputy by the elector palatine to Louis XIII., who received him well, and solicited him to remain in Paris; but Godefroy had become attached to Heidelberg, where he enjoyed all the consideration due to his talents, and where he desired to end his days. In this expectation, however, he was disappointed. The war, which extended to the palatinate, forced him to return a third time to Strasbourg, where, oppressed with grief and infirmities, he expired on the 7th of September 1622, in the seventy-third year of his age. His friend Bernegger pronounced his funeral oration, which is printed in the Opuscula of Loisel. Of all the works of Godefroy, that which does him the greatest honour, and ensures him a permanent rank amongst jurists, is his edition of the Corpus Juris Civilis, the publication of which forms an epoch in the history of the science. His text is that which has been adopted for ordinary reading in the universities and at the bar, and his notes are much esteemed. The Corpus of Godefroy has passed through a number of editions, but the most valuable are those of Paris, Vitre, 1628, in two vols. folio, and Amsterdam, Elzevir, 1663, also in two vols. folio. Among the other works of Godefroy may be mentioned, Notæ in Ciceroem, Lyons, 1588 and 1591, in 4to; Antiquæ Historia ex xxvii, auctorisbus contextæ libri sex, Basil, 1590, in 8vo; Conjecturae, variae lectiones, et loci communes in Seneca, printed at the end of the works of Seneca; Auctores Latinae linguae in unum redacti corpus, adjectis notis, Geneva, 1595 and 1602, in 4to; Maintenue et Défense des Princes souverains et Églises Chrétiennes contre les attenants et excommunications des Papes de Rome, 1594, in 8vo; Dissertatio de Nobilitate, Spire, 1611, in 4to; Statuta Galliae juxta Francorum, Burgundiorum, Gothorum, et Anglorum in ea dominantium Consuetudines, Frankfort, 1611, in folio. Godefroy was the author of a very large number of works besides those here mentioned. A complete list of them will be found in Séchier's Histoire Littéraire de Genève, which also gives a biographical memoir of Godefroy himself and of his son James, who, as a jurist and general scholar, was hardly, if at all, inferior to his father. The son's name will be long remembered by his edition of the Theodosian Code, which Gibbon pronounced "a full and capacious repository of the political state of the empire during the 4th and 5th centuries."

(J. B.—E.)

**Goths** (in Latin Goti, Gothi, Gothones, or Guttones), a great branch of the Germanic family of nations, who, on their first appearance in history, are described as occupying the country about the mouth of the Vistula, north of the Lygii. They are spoken of under the name of Guttones, and as inhabiting the coast of the Baltic as early as the time of Pytheas, the Massilian navigator, who seems to have been a contemporary of Alexander the Great. After this, several centuries pass away, during which we hear nothing of the Goths, until we find them mentioned in the Germania of Tacitus, under the name of Gothones, and as still inhabiting the coast of the Baltic. After the time of Tacitus they are not mentioned again until the reign of Caracalla, when Spartanus speaks of them under the name of Gothi, from which our Goth is formed, and which is evidently a more correct form of the name, as we know from the Gothic bishop, Ulphilas, who lived in the fourth century of the Christian era, that the Goths called themselves by the name Goths.

But what is more interesting and important than all this, is the fact, that under Caracalla we find them no longer on the Baltic but on the coast of the Black Sea, about the mouths of the Danube, in a country which many centuries before had been occupied by the Getæ, a Thracian people. This circumstance has given rise to much confusion both with ancient and modern writers, who, identifying the Goths with the Getæ, or at least calling the former by the name of the latter, led many to the belief that the Goths were a Thracian or even a Sarmatian tribe. But all we know of the history and the language of the Goths does not leave a shadow of a doubt as to their Germanic character; they had no connection whatever with the Getæ, whether we regard these latter as Thracians or as Sarmatians. Some again have identified them with the Gothini, and believed them to be Celts, because Tacitus describes the Gothini as speaking a Celtic dialect. But Tacitus is innocent of this confusion, as he speaks of the Gothini and Gothones in the same chapter as two distinct tribes, calling the former Celts and the latter Germans. We must therefore assume that during the period between Tacitus and Caracalla the Goths had migrated from the coasts of the Baltic southwards to those of the Black Sea. Caracalla, during an expedition to the east, is said to have defeated them several times. For some time after this they appear to have remained quiet, but the Emperor Alexander Severus (A.D. 222-235) found them to be very troublesome neighbours, and endangering the safety of the province of Dacia, for they were animated by the same hostile feelings towards the empire as the more western German tribes on the Upper Danube and the Rhine. In the reign of the Emperor Philipps (A.D. 244-249) they not only succeeded in conquering the province of Dacia, but even penetrated into Moesia, where they laid siege to the city of Marcianopolis, and compelled it to pay a large sum of money for their departure. Not long after this they invaded Moesia a second time, and although they were at first (B.C. 250) obliged to retreat before the legions of Decius, they soon after returned and destroyed the whole Roman army, and sacked the town of Nicopolis at the foot of Mount Haemus (Balkan). Without thinking of the possibility of their return being cut off, the Goths pushed forward into Macedonia, and advanced as far as the pass of Thermopylae in Greece; but here they met a most determined resistance, and were forced to return to the north. Near the town of Abrutum in Moesia, they met Decius with a fresh army; but the emperor was slain and his army annihilated, A.D. 251. Meanwhile the Goths extended their dominion on the coasts of the Black Sea, and having made themselves masters of the Crimea, they formed a formidable navy consisting of numerous flat boats. With this they boldly sailed to all parts of the Euxine and took possession of the towns of Pityus and Trapezus, in the harbour of which latter city they captured many vessels, with which they sailed to the sea of Azov, A.D. 258. In the following year they directed their attacks against the wealthy cities on the Thracian Bosporus, and conquered Chalcedon, Nicaea, Nicea, Prusa, Apamea, and Cius. A third expedition which they undertook with 500 ships was still more disastrous to the empire; they attacked and destroyed Cyzicus, crossed the Ægean Sea, and landed at the port of Athens; all the country from the south of Peloponnesus as far as Thessaly and Epirus was fearfully ravaged, and the whole of the Illyrian peninsula was devastated. At length, wearied of their long toils and dangers, a portion of them returned by land through Moesia to their own country; the remainder returned by sea along the coast of Asia Minor, spreading devastation wherever they appeared. But they found it impossible to remain inactive for any length of time, and, in A.D. 268, entered upon a still larger maritime enterprise, during which, although they made unsuccessful attacks on Tomi and Marcianopolis, and although they sustained great losses in the Thracian Bosporus and on the coasts of Asia Minor, they yet succeeded in devastating Crete and Cyprus, and produced great distress at Cassandra and Thessalonica, which were besieged by them. At length, however, the Emperor Claudius, in A.D. 269, gained a great victory over the Goths near the town of Naissus, whence he obtained the honourable surname of Gothicus. Few only returned to their country on the Black Sea, but under the two following emperors they nevertheless continued to harass the adjacent parts of the empire, and in A.D. 272 Aurelian thought it proper to give up to them the large province of Dacia. There now followed a period of nearly 50 years during which the Goths did not engage in any fresh undertaking against the empire, except that in the reign of Tacitus they undertook an unsuccessful expedition into Colchis and Asia Minor. About the time when Constantine had overcome all his opponents the Goths again took the field against the Romans; their king, Araric, in A.D. 331, crossed the Danube, and although he gained some advantages in the first engagement, he was worsted in a second; and, as at the same time the Goths had to quell an insurrection of their own subjects in the Crimea, Araric concluded peace with Constantine. This peace was faithfully kept, and as long as the family of Constantine occupied the imperial throne the Goths never molested the empire, and Hermanric, the successor of Araric, was never engaged in war against the Romans. It was not till the reign of Valens that both parties were again involved in a war, which lasted three years, from A.D. 367 to 369, and in which the Goths appear to have gained some advantages over their enemies. At the time when the Huns appeared, the south-western portion of the Goths, alarmed at the approach of the savage hordes, implored the emperor of the East to allow them to settle in the empire, and place themselves under his protection. The request was granted, and in A.D. 375 these Goths, commanded by two of their chiefs, crossed the Danube and entered the empire; the eastern portion of the Goths, who had made the same request, were refused admission into the empire. If the emperor had kept his promise, the western Goths (or, as they are more commonly called, the Visigoths) might have become useful subjects; but being provoked by the ill treatment they experienced at the hands of their pretended protectors, they took up arms, defeated the Roman legions, and, having formed connections with a division of Goths engaged in the service of the emperor, and with a portion of the eastern Goths or Ostrogoths, fought a great battle near Adrianople, in which the Emperor Valens lost his life. The Goths then marched upon Constantinople, which, however, was well defended; and then turning westwards, advanced as far as the Julian Alps. In the reign of Theodosius I. (A.D. 379-395) the Goths continued their ravaging expeditions both in the north and south; and although they sustained many a defeat, still they maintained themselves in Thrace as well as in Dacia, and their strength was repeatedly increased by the arrival of kindred tribes from the north. The court of Constantinople perceiving the impossibility of subduing these formidable barbarians, at last formed the plan of winning them over, and amalgamating them with the empire. Whole swarms of Goths now entered the armies of the empire; but after the death of Theodosius these who were stationed in Thrace, commanded by their bold chief, Alaric, broke up, and without meeting with any great obstacle, advanced through the pass of Thermopylae towards Thebes and Athens, Corinth, Argos, and Sparta, all of which were plundered. When the work of destruction was complete they turned northward towards Epirus, where they remained. During this same period the Ostrogoths, under their chief, Gainas, made an attempt to seize Constantinople, and place their own leader upon the imperial throne, but they were forced to retreat across the Danube. Notwith- standing the acts of hostility committed by Alaric in Greece, he was invested by the emperor with the dignity of Duke of Illyricum, in which capacity he made his first invasions of Italy in the years A.D. 400–404. His example was followed by Radagaisus, who crossed the Alps with an immense host of Goths. Alaric even advanced as far as Rome, and penetrated into southern Italy, where his career terminated. The emperor of the West then purchased peace of the Visigoths by ceding to them, in B.C. 412, the southern part of Gaul. They accordingly evacuated Italy, and, after a short period of rest, Athaulf, the successor of Alaric, led his Goths across the Pyrenees into Spain; there he was assassinated. His successor, Wallia, assisted the Romans in their struggles against the Vandals and Alani in Spain, and was rewarded by the whole of Aquitania from Tolosa to the ocean being given up to him. The empire of the Visigoths now gained consistency on both sides of the Pyrenees during the reigns of their kings Theodoric I., Thorismund, and Theodoric II.; and in the second half of the fifth century king Euric raised it to its highest prosperity. The kings of the Visigoths, now ruling over Spain and a great portion of Gaul (France), resided sometimes at Toulouse, sometimes at Arles, and sometimes at Bordeaux; but, after the death of Euric, the Visigoths in Gaul were gradually driven across the Pyrenees by another set of German conquerors—the Franks—who ultimately succeeded in making themselves masters of the country, and giving it the name which it still bears. In Spain, however, the Visigoths maintained themselves for two centuries longer, until, in the end, the Moors overthrew their kingdom, and established Mohammedanism in the south of Spain. The institutions and language of the Goths in Spain have completely disappeared, and at the present moment there are scarcely any traces of the dominion of the Goths in Spain.

We have already observed that the Emperor Valens refused to allow the Ostrogoths to enter the empire in A.D. 375; but the terror of the Huns, and the desire to take revenge, soon after tempted the Ostrogoths to take by force of arms what had been denied to their request. Accordingly they crossed the Danube in defiance of the Romans, and many made of them common cause with the ill-treated Visigoths. But when the latter turned southward, the Ostrogoths marched into Pannonia. At the time when the Visigoths were establishing their power in Gaul and Spain, about A.D. 386, a new swarm of Ostrogoths under a chief, Ēdótheus, was in commotion in the country about the Lower Danube, but while attempting to cross the river they were completely defeated. During the ascendancy of the Huns, the Ostrogoths, with the exception of some bands following Attila into Gaul, committed no act of hostility against Rome; but after the destruction of the power of the Huns, we find them, commanded by three brothers, Walamar, Theodemir, and Widimir, in Pannonia, which was ceded to them by the Romans. The Eastern empire was obliged several times to purchase peace of the barbarians; and in one of these transactions Theodoric, a son of Theodemir, then a boy of seven years old, was given up to the court of Constantinople as a pledge that the peace should not again be disturbed. After the death of Walamar, Widimir led his hosts into Italy, where he maintained himself a long time; his son, however, on succeeding his father, was induced by the Emperor Glycerius to quit Italy and join the Visigoths in the west. Theodoric and his son Theodoric, who had in the meantime returned from Constantinople, harassed the Eastern empire by repeated predatory incursions, after which the country between the Lower Danube and Mount Balkan—that is, Lower Moesia—was given up to them. Theodoric was now the ruler of his nation, and his capital seems to have been the town of Nova. For a time things went on tolerably well; but when the western empire was overturned, and Odoacer had set himself up as the ruler of Italy, Theodoric was induced by Zeno, emperor of Constantinople, to invade Italy and expel the usurper. Accordingly, in A.D. 489, Theodoric led his hosts from Lower Moesia to the west, and was successful in establishing an Ostrogothic kingdom on the ruins of that of Odoacer in Italy. The power thus formed and recognized by the court of Constantinople was irresistible, and the prestige of Theodoric's name secured his kingdom, as long as he lived, against all foreign aggression. But the approach of his death, A.D. 526, was the signal for the dissolution of his empire. His family was distracted by internal feuds; and being at the same time attacked from without, the kingdom, though bravely defended, in the end fell into the hands of the emperor of the East, and the Ostrogoths ceased to be an independent kingdom, A.D. 555. The Longobards and other German tribes, who had assisted in the destruction of the Ostrogothic kingdom, now established themselves in their turn in the north of Italy, and founded the Longobardic or Lombardic kingdom.

During the migrations of the Goths from north to south, and from east to west, some branches of the nation having during their residence in a country become aware of the advantages of a settled mode of life, remained behind, while their brethren went forth in search of new adventures. The most celebrated among the former were the Mæsogoths, a branch of the Visigoths, who remained behind in Moesia at the time when the great body of their nation migrated westward; but they were by no means quiet neighbours of the empire; for under their king, Theodoric (not to be confounded with the Ostrogoth), they extorted money and honours from the Roman emperor. The Gothic Tetraxtae were a branch of the Ostrogoths who remained behind about the Lower Danube, and preserved their national peculiarities for a long time. Besides these, however, there are several other tribes, such as the Gepidae, Taifalæ, Guthruni, Greutungi or Grutungi, and others, which, notwithstanding their distinctive names, must be regarded as belonging to the great nation of the Goths. In fact, the nation appears to have been divided into a great number of subdivisions with special names, each of which was at first governed by its own chief. Some of these smaller tribes forming a closer connection among themselves ultimately united into larger bodies under one common ruler. This gave rise to the two great divisions into which we afterwards find the nation divided—the western and the eastern Goths, the former occupying the fertile and woody districts of the west, and the latter the sandy steppes of the east. The western Goths are called by the ancient writers Visigothi, Vuisigothi, Wesegothæ, or Wesigothæ, and the eastern Austrogothi or Ostrogothi. Zosimus and Amianus Marcellinus apparently did not know these names and divisions of the Gothic people; Jornandes, on the other hand, goes too far in assuming that the distinction of Visigoths and Ostrogoths existed even at the time when the nation still dwelt on the Vistula. The complete separation of the two branches did not take place until the power of the Ostrogothic king, Hermanric, was crushed by the Huns who came from the distant east.

As the Goths were unquestionably Germans, their religion and language were in all points of importance the same as those of the other German tribes. Christianity was gradually introduced among them even before the time of Constantine the Great, for, at the council of Nicaea, A.D. 325, a Gothic bishop of the name of Theophilus was present. This fact would seem to suggest, that they belonged to the orthodox or Catholic Christians; but it is quite certain that, in the reign of the Emperor Valens, Arianism predominated among them. Attempts, however, to crush Christianity were still made from time to time by their rulers. Thus, Athanaric, the chief of the Thervingi, the principal tribe among the Visigoths, did all he could to exterminate the new religion, and cruelly persecuted those who disobeyed his commands. But no man did more firmly to establish Christianity among his countrymen than the Mosogothic bishop Ulphilas, about the middle of the fourth century, who invented a Gothic alphabet, by a combination of those of the Greeks and Romans, adapting it to the Gothic language. When this was accomplished, he translated the Scriptures into the Mosogothic, a translation which is still extant in part, and is the most ancient written specimen of any of the various German dialects. A somewhat incomplete MS. of this work, which was probably written about 150 years after the time of Ulphilas, and is known under the name of Codex Argentens, exists in the library at Upsala in Sweden; another likewise imperfect MS. is preserved in the library of Wolfenbüttel, under the name of the Codex Carolinus. This translation and separate portions of it have often been printed, and are invaluable to the student of philology. The best edition is that of Gabelentz and Löwe, bearing the title, Ulfilae Veteris et Novi Testamenti Vers. Goth. Fragmenta quae supersunt cum Commentario et Glossario, Altenburg, 1836, 4to. Besides this translation of the Bible, there are a few other literary productions, which show that the connection of the Goths with the Greeks and Romans was not without a considerable influence in inspiring the barbarians with a love of literature. It is owing to this influence that, independently of the radical identity between the classical and Gothic languages, a number of Greek and Latin words are found in the work of Ulphilas. Another Goth who distinguished himself as a writer, though he composed his work in Greek, was the priest Jornandes, who, according to some, was Bishop of Ravenna, and wrote a history of the Goths—De Rebus Geticis—from the earliest times, down to the year A.D. 552. This work is the most important we have on the history of the Goths. He regards the nation as having come from Scandinavia, which, he says, was their original home. The fact of there having been Goths in the country now called Sweden, is sufficiently well established, and is evident from several local names, as Gothland, Gothenburg, and others; but it is much more probable to suppose that Goths migrated or sailed to Scandinavia at the time when they still occupied the country about the Vistula, than that Scandinavia should have been their original home. The literary character, or rather their aptitude for literature, is further attested by the fact, that the Visigoths had written laws as early as the time of Euric, when no other German tribes can be supposed to have been even acquainted with the art of writing. It is probably this superiority of the Goths over all other German tribes, that has led some modern writers to apply the term Gothic to all things connected with the ancient Germans; and even to speak of Saxons and other tribes as members of the Gothic stock; but such a usage is not warranted by anything we know about the Goths. In order to give the reader some idea of the Gothic language in the fourth century of our era, we shall here quote the Lord's Prayer from Ulphilas' translation, with a literal translation, which cannot fail to show the relationship of the Gothic to other German dialects:

Atta unser tha in himinum veitnai namo thina. Quonai Father our thou in heaven, hallowed name thin. Come thidinamus thina. Wairhah ujios thina, sue in himina jak ana kingdom thin. Be done will thinse, as in heaven as on earth. Hlaf umorona thona sntianum give uns earth. Bread our the perpetual or daily give us himadagai. Jak aftai war thotei skulna ejosina, suance jak to-day. And forgive us what guilty we are, as also weis ofetan thain skulna umercroin. Jak ni brignais uns in we forgive the trespasses ours. And not bring us into fruitmbai, ak laueri uns of thosena ublin, unte theina ist temptation, but deliver us of the evil, for thine is thidinapardi jak matha jak wulne in avina. Amen.

There are also some documents belonging to the Ostrogoths of the time of their dominion in Italy, especially one which is preserved at Naples, and another at Arezzo; both were composed about the end of the fifth, and the beginning of the sixth century. Among the numerous modern works which the reader may consult are, Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire; Aschbach, Geschichte der Westgoten; Manso, Geschichte der Ostgoten in Italien; Zeuss, Die Deutschen und die Nachbarstämme. (L.S.)

GOTENBURG. See Gothenburg.

GÖTTINGEN, a town of Hanover, province of Hildesheim, and capital of a cognominal principality, is situated in the fertile valley of the Leine, at the foot of the Hainberg, 60 miles south of Hanover. It consists of three parts, the Altstadt, Neustadt, and Masch, the first being separated from the two latter by the New Leine, an artificial arm of the Leine. The ramparts which surround the town have been planted and converted into agreeable promenades. The town itself is generally well built, and the streets are mostly wide and spacious. Neither the trade nor manufactures are important, the town being chiefly dependent on its famous university. This institution, entitled the "Georgia Augusta," was founded by George II. in 1734. Previous to 1831 it was among the first of German universities, and from 1822 to 1826 the average annual number of students was 1481. Since then, in consequence of political disturbances at Göttingen, in which the professors and students were implicated, the university has fallen into dispute, and from 1831 to 1837 the average annual number of students was only 868. The dismissal of some of the ablest professors in 1837 by the king, for political reasons, reduced the number still lower, so that in 1845 it was only 633. The number now averages about 700. The faculties are theology, law, medicine, and philosophy. The library contains upwards of 400,000 volumes and 5000 MSS. The museum contains extensive and valuable specimens in zoology, geology, &c., with models, instruments, coins, &c. There is also a botanic garden, a chemical laboratory, anatomical theatre, observatory, lying-in-hospital, two infirmaries for medical and surgical cases. The Spruch Kollegium is a judicial society, for whose decision questions are brought from all parts of Germany. Pop. (1849) 10,174.

GÖTTLAND, a large island in the Baltic belonging to Sweden, and lying about 55 miles E. of the nearest Swedish mainland, between N. Lat. 56.55. and 58., and E. Long. 18. 10. and 19. 10. It is of an irregular form, tapering from the centre towards the N. and S. extremities. From N. to S. it is about 80 miles in length, and its greatest breadth is about 34 miles. Area 1227 square miles. It presents the appearance of a large plateau rising from 80 to 130 feet above the sea, and is traversed by ranges of rocky heights, which, however, nowhere rise to more than 200 feet above the sea. The coasts are for the most part rocky and precipitous, but in some parts they slope gradually to the sea. They are deeply indented by bays forming numerous excellent harbours, of which those of Kapellhamn on the N., and Slite on the N.E., are the best. The soil is fertile, but indifferently cultivated. A great part of it is wooded, and swamps occur in some places. The climate is comparatively temperate; the chief products are wheat, barley, oats, turnips, potatoes, and hops; and in favourable situations the walnut, mulberry, and grape, ripen in the open air. The chief articles of exportation are timber, marble, sandstone, and lime. Game is abundant; and the rearing of cattle receives a considerable degree of attention. Gotland was taken from the Swedes in 1361 by Vladimir III., king of Denmark. By the treaty of 1644 it was restored to the Swedes, and has since remained in their possession, with the exception of a short period in 1807, when it was occupied by the Russians. Its chief town, Wisby, was, in the middle ages, the seat of an extensive trade. It GOU

gives name to a land of Sweden, comprising Gotland and several of the adjacent islets, containing a population of (1850) 44,672. The town of Wisby contains about 4000 inhabitants.

GOUDA or TERGOUW, a town of Holland, province of South Holland, on the Yssel, at the influx of the Gouw, 11 miles N.E. of Rotterdam. It is generally well built, and has five churches, one of which, St John's, is celebrated for its organ and its splendid painted windows. The town-house is a spacious and substantial edifice, with a tower and spire. It has breweries, gin-distilleries, brickworks, and potteries; but the manufacture for which it is chiefly known is that of tobacco pipes, which affords employment to nearly one-half of the population. Gouda is also famous as a cheese market, the well-known Gouda cheese being brought here to the market and sold. Pop. (1850) 13,791.

GOUUDOK, a rustic kind of viola with three strings, used by the Russian peasantry. Another name for it is Balalayka.