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GAL * GALIANO,, a Spanish politician and man of letters, born on 22nd July, 1789. His father was a distinguished naval officer, who fell at Trafalgar, just as his son was preparing to enter the military profession. On the fall of Godoy and the brief assumption of power by Ferdinand VII. in 1808, Galiano was promised preferment; but he refused to acknowledge the authority of Joseph Bonaparte, and retired to Cadiz, not, however, before he had contracted a marriage, which did not prove happy. Galiano soon distinguished himself as a writer of newspaper articles, and in 1812 obtained an appointment as attaché to the Spanish embassy in London, but was prevented from occupying his post. In 1813 he was appointed secretary of the Spanish legation at Stockholm, but returned to Spain in 1814. The military insurrection of the Isla de Leon was the first occasion on which Galiano can be said to have taken an important part in public affairs. He it was who prepared the proclamations of General Quiroga, and edited, at the risk of his life, the Gazette of the Insurrection. Rewarded for these services by a post in the office of the secretary of state, Galiano removed to Madrid, and soon distinguished himself in common with Riego and others as a leading orator of the ultra-liberal club, which took the title of "The Friends of Order." On this ground he was obliged to resign his post; but in 1821 he was returned to the cortes for Cadiz, and became prominent in opposition to the government of Martinez de la Rosa. It was Galiano who proposed the violent message to the king on the note of the great powers after the congress of Verona in January, 1823. When the French invasion compelled the king and the cortes to retire to Seville, Galiano proposed the celebrated decree by which the king, on refusing to follow the cortes to Cadiz, was declared to be insane, and a regency appointed. On the fall of Cadiz, Galiano, with others, was sentenced to death and confiscation of all his property, but succeeded in making his escape to England. Here, possessing a competent knowledge of our language, he was enabled to achieve an honourable place in literature as a contributor to the Westminster, the Foreign Quarterly, and other periodicals. In 1828 he was chosen the first professor of the Spanish language and literature at University college, London; and his introductory lecture, delivered on the 15th November in that year, has been published. On the outbreak of the French revolution of 1830, he resigned his professorship, and lived for some time in Paris and Tours. A series of articles on Spanish literature, in the Athenæum for 1834, is well deserving of republication, as forming the best compendium of the subject extant. The amnesty of 1832, and that which followed the death of Ferdinand VII. in 1833, did not permit Galiano to return to Spain, he being among the persons specially excepted. But in 1834, under the ministry of Martinez de la Rosa, he returned to Madrid, and resumed his career as a journalist, writing in the Observador and the Revista Mensagero. He was nominated secretary of the admiralty in the Isturiz ministry of 1836; but, after the revolution of La Granja, he was obliged to flee for his life, and entered France denounced as an enemy to the constitution, after suffering so long an exile for his fidelity to it. In 1837 Galiano returned to Madrid with his second wife and child; took his place in the cortes as deputy for Cadiz, and acted with his friends Martinez de la Rosa and Toreno, in support of the ministry. At the same time he continued to write in the Correo Nacional, España, and the Piloto, and filled the chair of law in the athenæum of Madrid. To the cortes of 1839 he was not elected; and in 1840 he sat for the province of Pontevedra, not being chosen for Cadiz. He took a prominent part in the discussion of the law of "ayuntamientos," and in the measures relating to church property. In the latter part of 1840 he was obliged to leave Madrid; and, on the outbreak in the Basque provinces in 1841, he placed himself at the head of the junta. We next find him a fugitive in France; and in 1842 he returned to London, and published "An Appeal to the good sense of the British Nation in favour of the moderate Spanish liberals." Since then his activity has taken a literary rather than a political direction, although in 1851 he accepted from the Brabo Murillo ministry the post of ambassador at Lisbon. He has since that time translated into Spanish Dunham's valuable History of Spain, and Thiers' History of the Consulate and the Empire. He has also given to the world a series of lectures on English, French, and Spanish literature in his native language.—F. M. W.  GALIGAI,, a remarkable woman, who, from the humble position of daughter of a joiner and washer-woman in Italy, became virtually queen of France. She was foster-sister to Mary de Medicis, who is said to have loved her with great affection. She was extremely plain in person, but possessed great talents and most fascinating manners. The favour which she enjoyed at court induced Concino to offer her marriage; and through her influence he was created Marquis d'Ancre, and afterwards marshal of France. She completely governed Mary de Medicis, and, during the regency of that queen, she enjoyed supreme dominion in France. But, not having sufficient self-command to bear her elevation, and having exhibited great insolence of manner, as well as abused the favours shown to her, she drew upon herself the hatred of the court, and more particularly that of the young Louis XIII. Her husband was assassinated in April, 1617. In the following July she was charged with sorcery, and executed. When asked by what magic she had so fascinated the queen, she replied—"By that power which strong minds naturally possess over the weak." She had one son and a daughter. The former returned to Italy with a large fortune accumulated by his parents.—W. H. P. G.  GALILEI,, a distinguished natural philosopher, son of Vincenzo Galilei, was born at Pisa on the 10th of February, 1564, and was the eldest of three sons and three daughters. His ancestors were noble, and under the name of Bonajuti, subsequently changed to Galilei, had filled high offices at Florence. Like Newton and other great men, young Galileo amused himself when a boy in the construction of toys and pieces of machinery; but this passion did not prevent him from acquiring the elements of classical literature, and from making great progress in music, drawing, and painting. He was a skilful performer on the lute and other musical instruments; and artists considered him as a connoisseur in art. Though desirous of following painting as a profession, his father persuaded him to study medicine, and he accordingly entered the university of Pisa on the 5th November, 1581, where he studied under the celebrated botanist, Andrew Cæsalpinus, who continued to teach medicine till 1592, when he became physician to Clement VIII. While engaged in the study of music, along with medicine, he was allowed to read Euclid under Ostilio Ricci, a professor in the university; but the love of geometry overbore his taste for medicine, and after many fruitless attempts to keep this new passion in abeyance, his father was obliged to give the fullest scope to the genius of his son. The young geometer accordingly made a quick transition from Euclid to Archimedes, and while studying his treatise, "De Insidentibus in fluido," he composed his essay on the "Hydrostatic Balance," which gained him the esteem of Guide Ubaldi, who induced him to investigate the subject of the centre of gravity in solids. This treatise, through the influence of cardinal del Monte, the father-in-law of Ubaldi, obtained for him from the grand-duke, in 1589, the place of lecturer in mathematics at Pisa, with the small salary of sixty crowns, which he eked out by the profits of private teaching. When he entered the university at the age of seventeen, he had conceived a great antipathy to the Aristotelian philosophy, then universally prevalent. This antipathy increased as he advanced in his studies, and he denounced, with perhaps undue severity, the mechanical philosophy which he had been taught. By experiments made from the leaning tower of Pisa he demonstrated the blunders of the Aristotelian doctrine, and created such a host of enemies, that he willingly accepted in 1592, for a period of six years, the vacant chair of mathematics in the university of Padua, which the republic of Venice had resolved to fill up after a vacancy of five years. Having lost his father in 1591, the support of the family devolved upon him as the eldest son, and as his salary amounted only to one hundred and ten florins, he was again obliged to increase this inadequate income by the labours of tuition. When Galileo had scarcely finished his course of philosophy at college, a German from Rostock, Christian Vurstisius (Wurteisen), a follower of Copernicus, delivered two or three lectures at Pisa. One of the audience, in opposition to the general denunciation of the Copernican system which the lecturer advocated, assured Galileo, who was not present, that the doctrine was not wholly ridiculous. This led him to question other individuals of the audience, and he thus "became," as he says, "very curious to penetrate to the very bottom of the subject." It appears, on his own confession, that, in compliance with the prejudices of the day, he had taught the Ptolemaic system after he had embraced the Copernican 