GIRARDIN, FRANCOIS SAINT-MARC, a French professor and litterateur, born at Paris; in 1827 was professor in the College Louis-le-Grand, and in 1834 was nominated to the chair of Literature in the Sorbonne; as leader-writer in the Journal des Debats he vigorously opposed the Democrats, and sat in the Senate from 1834 to 1848; in 1869, as Saint-Beuve’s successor, he took up the editorship of the Journal des Savants, and in 1871 became a member of the National Assembly; he published his collected essays and also his popular literary lectures (1801-1873).

GIRONDE (794), a maritime department in SW.  France, facing the Bay of Biscay on the W. and lying N. and S. between Charente-Inferieure and Landes; the Garonne and the Dordogne flowing through it form the Gironde estuary, and with their tributaries sufficiently water the undulating land; agriculture and some manufactories flourish, but wine is the chief product.

GIRONDINS or GIRONDISTS, a party of moderate republican opinions in the French Revolution; “men,” says Carlyle, “of fervid constitutional principles, of quick talent, irrefragable logic, clear respectability, who would have the reign of liberty establish itself, but only by respectable methods.”  The leaders of it were from the Gironde district, whence their name, were in succession members of the Legislative Body and of the Convention, on the right in the former, on the left in the latter, and numbered among them such names as Condorcet, Brissot, Roland, Carnot, and others; they opposed the court and the clerical party, and voted for the death of the king, but sought to rescue him by a proposal of appeal to the people; overpowered by the Jacobins in June 1793, with whom they came to open rupture, they sought in vain to provoke a rising in their favour; on October 24 they were arraigned before the Revolutionary tribunal, and on the 31st twenty-one of them were brought to the guillotine, singing the “Marseillaise” as they went and on the scaffold, while the rest, all to a few, perished later on either the same way or by their own hands.

GIRTIN, THOMAS, a landscape-painter, born in London; painted in water-colour views of scenes near Paris and London; was a friend of Turner (1773-1802).

GIRTON COLLEGE, a celebrated college for women, founded in 1869 at Hitchin, but since 1873 located at Girton, near Cambridge; the ordinary course extends to three years, and degree certificates of the standard of the Cambridge B.A. are granted; the staff consists of a “head” and five resident lecturers, all women, but there is a large accession of lecturers from Cambridge; the students number upwards of 100, the fee for board and education L35 per term.

GIZEH or GHIZEH (11), a town in Egypt, on the Nile, opposite Old Cairo, to which it is joined by a suspension bridge spanning the river; in the neighbourhood are the Great Pyramids.