Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 11.djvu/260

246 illustrated in a simple but effective way the force of atmo- spheric pressure. lacing side by side two hollow hemi- spheres of copper, he exhausted the air from between them by means of pump and stopcock, and it is recorded that thirty horses, fifteen back to back, were unable to pull them asunder. The apparatus used on this occasion is still preserved in the imperial and royal library at Berlin. Guericke further demonstrated, by the aid of the air- pump, that in a vacuum all bodies fall equally fast, that animals cannot exist therein, and other phenomena. He also invented the air-balance, and the anemoscope, a species of weathercock. The discovery of the property of electro- repulsion is also attributed to him; and he made successful researches in astronomy, predicting the pericdicity of the return of comets. In 1681 he gave up office, and retired to Hamburg, where he died May 11, 1686.

1em  GUÉRIN, (1810–1839), a French poet, whose few compositions in prose and verse, published posthumously, show him to have possessed a true and rare genius, was descended from a noble but poor family, and was born at the chateau of Le Cayla in Languedoc, 4th August 1810. He was educated with a view to the church at a religious seminary at Toulouse, and then at the Collége Stanislas, Paris, after which he procured entrance to the society at La Chesnaye in Brittany, founded by Lamennais, bishop of Rennes. Here his most intimate companions were persons whose tastes were literary rather than ecclesi- astical ; and his dreamy and meditative temperament found its solace and happiness mcre in intercourse with nature than in theological study or the exercises of piety. It was therefore only after great hesitation, and without being satisfied as to his religious vocation, that under the influ- ence of Lamennais he joined the new religious order in August 1833 ; and when, in September of the same year, Lamennais, who had come under the displeasure of Rome, severed connexion with the society, Guérin’s doubts as to his vocation returned in full force, and on the 7th October he renounced his novitiate. Early in the following year he went to Paris, where he obtained an engagement on the periodical press, but finding it impossible to submit to the mental drudgery of continuous literary work he became a teacher at the Cullége Stanislas. In November 1838 he married a Creole lady of some fortune; but a few months afterwards he was attacked by a malady which proved to be consumption, and which terminated by death his short period of leisure and happiness, 19th July 1839. In the Revue des Deux Mondes for May 15, 1840, there appeared a notice of Guérin by George Sand, to which she added two fragments of his writings—one a composition in prose entitled the Centaur, and the other a short poem. His Reliquice, including the Centaur, his journal, a number of his letters, and several poems edited by G. 8. Trébutien, and accompanied with a biographical and critical notice by Sainte-Beuve, appeared in 1860 in two volumes; and a translation of it was published at New York in 1867. Though Guérin was essentially a poet, his prose is more striking and original than his poetry. Its peculiar and unique charm arises from his strong and absorbing passion for nature, a passion whose intensity reached almost to adoration and worship, but in which the pagan was more prominent than the moral element. According to Sainte- Beuve, “no French poct or painter has rendered so well the feeling for nature—the fecling not so much for details as for the ensemble and the divine universality, the feeling for the origin of things and the sovereign principle of life.” The name of Evcinie pe Guérin (1805–1848), the sister of Maurice, cannot be omitted from any notice of him, if only on account of the ties of love that united them; but her Journals, published in 1861, English translation 1865, and her Lettres, published in 1864, English transla tion 1865, indicated the possession of gifts of ag rare an order as those of her brother, though of a somewhat differ- ent kind. In her case mysticism assumed a form more strictly religious, and she continued to mourn her brother’s loss of his early Catholic faith, Five years older than he, she cherished a love for him which was blended with a somewhat motherly anxiety. In him she centred her chief earthly hopes, and after his death her only remaining earthly purpose was to rescue his name from oblivion by the collection and publication of the scattered fragments of his writings. She died, however, on the 31st May 1848, before her task was completed.

1em  GUÉRIN, (1783–1855), French painter, belongs to the group who specially represent the Restoration. Born at Toulon, on the 25th March 1783, of poor parents, he learnt, as a lad, his father’s trade of a lock- smith, whilst, at the same time, he followed the classes of the free school of art. Having sold some copies to a local amateur, Guerin started for Paris, where he came under the notice of Vincent, whose counsels were of material service. In 1810 Guérin made his first appearance at the Salon with some portraits, which had a certain success. In 1812 he exhibited Cain after the murder of Abel (formerly in Luxembourg), and, on the return of the Bourbons, was much employed in works of restoration and decoration at Versailles. His Dead Christ (Cathedral, Baltimore) ob- tained a medal in 1817, and this success was followed up by a long series of works, of which the following are the more noteworthy :—Christ on the knees of the Virgin, 1819; Anchises and Venus, 1822 (formerly in Luxem- bourg) ; Ulysses and Minerva, 1824 (Musée de Rennes) ; the Holy Family, 1829 (Cathedral, Toulon); and Saint Catherine, 1838 (St Roch). In his treatment of subject, Guérin attempted to realize rococo graces of conception, the liveliness of which was lost in the strenuous effort to be correct. His chief successes were attained by portraits, and those of Charles Nodier and the Abbé Lamennais became widely popular. Guérin died January 19, 1855. We possess no account of his life and works beyond that which is afforded by brief notices in contemporary biographical dictionaries.  GUÉRIN, (1774–1833), French painter, was born at Paris, May 13,1774. The artistic ideal of the first empire found complete expression in his work, the most famous examples of which show a peculiar combination of the dry pseudo-classic style, then popular, with stage pathos of a highly exaggerated character ; yet from his atelier went forth, as if in necessary protest against the defects of their master, the leaders of the Romantic and Realistic movements,—Delacroix and Géricault. The first teacher of Guérin was Nicolas Brenet, whom he left to place himself under Jean Baptiste Regnault, the representative, as contrasted with David, of a distinct form of the classic re- action modified by a tincture of Italian tradition. Guérin became the most distinguished of his pupils, and carried off one of the three “grands prix” offered in 1796, in con- sequence of the competition not having taken place since 1793. The pension was not indeed re-established, but Guérin fulfilled at Paris the conditions imposed upon a pensionnaire,