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incident to his purpose, much ingenuity and labour has been wasted which might have been employed otherwise with better results. The success of this work led to his being engaged as artistic contributor to various periodicals such as La Silhouette, L'Artiste, La Caricature, Le Charivari, and his political caricatures, which were characterized by marvellous fertility of satirical humour, soon came to enjoy a general popularity which never diminished. Besides supplying illustrations for various standard works, such as the songs of Béranger, the fables of La Fontaine, Don Quixote, Gulliver's Travels, Robinson Crusoe, he also continued the issue of various lithographic collections, among which may be mentioned La vie privée et publique des animaux, Les cult proverbes, L'autre monde, and Les fleurs animées. Though the designs of Gérard are occasionally unnatural and absurd, they usually display keen analysis of character and marvellous inventive ingenuity, and his humour is always tempered and refined by delicacy of sentiment and a vein of sober thoughtfulness. He died of mental disease 17th March 1847.

Gerard, John (1545–1608), herbalist and surgeon, was born towards the end of 1545 at Nantwich in Cheshire. He was educated at Wisterson, or Willaston, 2 miles from Nantwich, and eventually, after spending some time in travelling, took up his abode in London, where he exercised his profession. For more than twenty years he also acted as superintendent of the gardens of Lord Burghley, secretary of state to Queen Elizabeth. In 1596 he published a catalogue of plants cultivated in his own garden, 1039 in number, inclusive of varieties of the same species. Their English as well as their Latin names are given in a revised edition of the catalogue issued in 1599. In 1597 appeared Gerard's well-known Herball, described by him in its preface as "the first fruits of these mine own labours," but more truly an adaptation of the Stirpium historiæ pemptades of Rembert Dodoens, published in 1583, or rather of a translation of the whole or part of the same by Dr Priest, with L'Obel's arrangement. Of the numerous illustrations of the Herball sixteen appear to be original, the remainder are mostly impressions from the wood blocks employed by Jacob Theodorus (Tabernæemontanus) in his Icones Stirpium, published at Frankfort in 1590. A second edition of the Herball, with considerable improvements and additions, was brought out by Thomas Johnson in 1633, and reprinted in 1636. Gerard was elected a member of the court of assistants of the barber-surgeons in 1595, by which company he was appointed an examiner in 1598, junior warden in 1605, and master in 1608. He died in February 1612, and was buried at St Andrews, Holborn.

Gérard de Nerval (1808–1855) is the adopted name of Gérard Labrunie, a French litterateur, and that by which he is generally known. The son of an officer in the army, and born at Paris, May 21, 1808, he received his early education chiefly from his father, who taught him German, and he afterwards studied at the college of Charlemagne. He made his literary debut by the publication of a volume of political odes, and in 1828 he published a translation of Goethe's Faust, of which Goethe himself expressed high approval, and the choruses of which were afterwards made use of by Berlioz for his legend-symphony, The Damnation of Faust. Several other translations from the German, contributed chiefly to the Mercure de France, a number of poetical pieces, and three comedies combined to acquire for him, at the age of twenty-one, a considerable literary reputation, and led to his being associated with Theophile Gautier in the preparation of the dramatic feuilleton for the Presse. On the death of Jennie Colon, an actress with whom he had contracted a liaison, he resigned his connexion with the Presse, and travelled in various parts of Europe, leading a somewhat dissipated life. He contributed an account of his travels to the Revue des Deux Mondes and other periodicals. After his return to Paris in 1844 he resumed for a short time the feuilleton. From 1841 he was subject to periodical attacks of insanity, and he committed suicide by hanging, 25th January 1855. The literary style of Gérard is simple and unaffected, and he has a peculiar faculty of giving to his imaginative creations an air of naturalness and reality. In a series of novelletes, afterwards published under the name of Les Illuminés ou les Precurseurs da Socialisme (1852), he gave a sort of analysis of the feelings which followed his third attack of insanity; and among his numerous other works the principal are Élégies nationales et Satires politiques, 1827; Scènes de la Vie Orientate, 2 vols., 1848–1850; Contes et Facéties, 1852; La Bohême galaute, 1856; and L'Alchimiste, a drama in five acts, the joint composition of Gerard and Alexander Dumas. His Œuvres complètes were published in 1868 in 5 volumes.

Gerasa, the modern Gerash or Jerash, a city of Palestine, in the Decapolis of Peræa, situated amid the mountains of Gilead, about 1757 feet above the level of the sea, at a distance of 20 miles from the Jordan and 21 miles to the north of Philadelphia. Of its origin nothing is known. Its name is never mentioned in the Old Testament, and in the New Testament the only reference to its existence is the alternative reading of Gerasenes for Gadarenes in Matthew viii. 28. From Josephus we learn that it was captured by Alexander Jannæus, burned by the Jews in revenge for the massacre at Cæsarea, and again plundered and depopulated by Annius the general of Vespasian; but in spite of these disasters it was still in the 2d and 3d centuries of the Christian era one of the wealthiest and most flourishing cities of Palestine. As late as 1121 it gave employment to the soldiers of Baldwin II., who found it defended by a castle built by a king of Damascus; but at the beginning of the following century the Arabian geographer Yakut speaks of it as deserted and overthrown. The ruins of Jerash, discovered by Seitzen about 1806 and since then frequently visited and described, still attest the splendour of the Roman city. They are distributed along both banks of the Kerwan, a brook which flows south through the Wady-ed-Dêr to join the Zerka or Jabbok; but all the principal buildings are situated on the level ground to the right of the stream. The town walls, which can still be traced and indeed are partly standing, had a circuit of not more than 2 miles, and the main street was less than half a mile in length; but remains of buildings skirt the road for fully a mile beyond the south gate, and show that the town had far outgrown the limit of its fortifications. The most striking feature of the ruins is the profusion of columns, no fewer than 230 being even now in position: the main street is a continuous colonnade, a large part of which is still entire, and it terminates to the south in a forum of similar formation. Among the public buildings still recognizable are a theatre capable of accommodating 6000 spectators, a naumachia or circus for naval combats, and several temples, of which the largest was probably the grandest structure in the city, possessing a portico of Corinthian pillars 38 feet high. The desolation of the city is probably due to earthquake; and the absence of Moslem erections or restorations would seem to show that the disaster took place before the Mahometan period.