e
Vale, through which the Severn runs, in the centre; the Forest of Dean
(the largest in England) in the W.; coal is wrought in two large fields,
but agricultural and dairy-farming are the main industries; antiquities
abound; the principal rivers are the Wye, Severn, Lower and Upper Avon,
and Thames; BRISTOL (q. v.) is the largest town.

GLUeCK, CHRISTOPH VON, a German musical composer and reformer of the
opera; made his first appearance in Vienna; studied afterwards for some
years under San-Martini of Milan, and brought out his first opera
"Artaxerxes," followed by seven others in the Italian style; invited to
London, he studied Haendel, attained a loftier ideal, and returned to the
Continent, where, especially at Vienna and Paris, he achieved his
triumphs, becoming founder of a new era in operatic music; in Paris he
had a rival in Piccini, and the public opinion was for a time divided,
but the production by him of "Iphigenie en Aulide" established his
superiority, and he carried off the palm (1714-1787).

GNOMES, a set of imaginary beings misshapen in form and of
diminutive size, viewed as inhabiting the interior of the earth and
presiding over its secret treasures.

GNOSTICS, heretics, consisting of various sects that arose in the
Apostolic age of Christianity, and that sought, agreeably to the
philosophic opinions which they had severally embraced, to extract an
esoteric meaning out of the letter of Scripture and the facts especially
of the Gospel history, such as only those of superior speculative insight
could appreciate; they set a higher value on Knowledge (_gnosis_, whence
their name) than Faith; thus their understanding of Christianity was
speculative, not spiritual, and their knowledge of it the result of
thinking, not of life; like the Jews they denied the possibility of the
Word becoming flesh and of a realisation of the infinite in the finite;
indeed, Gnosticism was at once a speculative and a practical denial that
Christ was God manifest in the flesh, and that participation in
Christianity was, as He presented it (John vi. 53), participation in His
flesh. See CHRISTIANITY.

GOA (495), a Portuguese possession in W. India, lying between the
Western Ghats and the sea-coast, 250 m. SE. of Bombay; large quantities
of rice are raised in it; is hilly on the E. and covered with forests; it
was captured in 1510 by Albuquerque. Old Goa, the former capital, has
fallen from a populous and wealthy city int