GOG AND MAGOG, names that occur in the Bible of foes of Israel, and designative in the Apocalypse of enemies of the kingdom of God, as also of a Scythian tribe N. of the Caucasus.  The names are applied likewise to two giants, survivors of a race found in Britain by Brute of Troy, effigies of whom stood at the Guildhall Gate, symbolic defenders of the city.

GOGOL, NICOLAI VASILIEVITCH, a popular Russian novelist, born in Poltava; in 1829 he started as a writer in St. Petersburg, but met with little success till the appearance of his “Evenings in a Farm near Dikanka”; the success of the included sketches of provincial life induced him to produce a second series in 1834, which are characterised by the same freshness and fidelity to nature; in 1837 appeared his masterpiece “Dead Souls,” in which all his powers of pathos, humour, and satire are seen at their best; for some time he tried public teaching, being professor of History at St. Petersburg, and from 1836 to 1846 lived chiefly at Rome; many of his works, which rank beside those of Puschkin and Turgenieff, are translated into English (1809-1852).

GOLCONDA, a fortified town in the Nizam’s dominions, 7 m.  W. of Hyderabad; famous for its diamonds, found in the neighbourhood; beside it are the ruins of the ancient city, the former capital of the old kingdom; the fort is garrisoned, and is the treasury of the Nizam; it is also a State prison.

GOLD COAST (1,475, of whom 150 are Europeans), a British crown colony on the Gulf of Guinea, West Africa, with a coast-line of 350 m.; from the low and marshy foreshore the country slopes upward and inward to Ashanti; the climate is very unhealthy; palm-oil, india-rubber, gold dust, &c., are exported; Cape Coast Castle is the capital.

GOLDEN AGE, the age of happy innocence under the reign of Cronos or Saturn, in which, as fabled, the earth yielded all fulness without toil, and every creature lived at peace with every other; the term is applied to the most flourishing period in the history of a nation.  See AGES.

GOLDEN ASS, a romance of APULEIUS (q. v.).

GOLDEN BULL, an Imperial edict, issued by the Emperor Charles IV., which determined the law in the matter of the Imperial elections, and that only one member of each electoral house should have a vote; so called from the gold case enclosing the Imperial seal attached.

GOLDEN FLEECE, the fleece of a ram which PHRYXOS (q. v.), after he had sacrificed him to Zeus, gave to AEetes, king of Colchis, who hung it on a sacred oak, and had it guarded by a monstrous dragon, and which it was the object of the Argonautic expedition under Jason to recover and bring back to Greece, an object which they achieved.  See ARGONAUTS.

GOLDEN FLEECE, ORDER OF THE, an order of knighthood founded by Philip III., Duke of Burgundy and the Netherlands in 1429, and instituted for the protection of the Church.

GOLDEN HORN, the inlet on which Constantinople is situated.