GERTRUDE OF WYOMING, a narrative poem by Thomas Campbell, written at Syden ham, in 1809. He chose the Spenserian stanza for his form of verse, and for his theme the devastation by the Indians, in 1778, of the quiet valley of the Wyoming, in Pennsylvania, on the Susquehanna. The poem opens with a de scription of "Delightful which Campbell, who had never seen it paints as a terrestrial paradise. The whole style and man ner is pseudo-classic and old-fashioned; the treatment vague, unreal and indefinite; but its elegance and finish of style, a certain sweet ness and pathos, combined with the subject, has kept the poem alive.
ger-fenoos, Georg Gott fried, German historian: b. Darmstadt, 20 May 1805 ; d. Heidelberg, 18 March 1871. In 1825. he went to the University of Heidelberg, where the lectures of Schlosser inspired him with a peculiar love of historical studies. In 18,31 he visited Italy, where he remained for a year collecting materials for the works he was meditating. His 'Historische Schriften,' pub lished after his return (1833), excited the at tention of scholars, and secured him in 1835 an extraordinary professorship in the University of Heidelberg, where he was in 1844 appointed to a professorship. In 1836 he was appointed professor at Gottingen, and in the following year was deprived of his chair and banished for protesting against the suspension of the Han over constitution. From 1845 he took an active
part in the liberal movement in Germany. It was at this period that he wrote his 'Mission der Deutschkatholiken> and 'Die Protestant ische Geistlichkeit and die Deutschkatholiken.' In 1847 he founded in Heidelberg the Deutsche Zeitung, which advocated a representative system for Germany and a clearly-defined fed eral constitution. His chief works are 'Ge schichte der poetischen National-litteratur der Deutschen' (1835-42), in which he endeavors to show how the development of German poetry is connected in all its phases with the history of the nation and other European countries; 'Shakespeare' (1849-50) ; 'Geschichte des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts (1855-66). All his works, even his more purely msthetical ones, such as that on Shakespeare, are more or less colored by his political views and aims. In the last years of his life he zealously endeavored to secure the popularity in Germany of the works of Handel, whom he regarded as the greatest genius in the musical sphere that the world had ever seen. He viewed with dislike the manner in which German unity was achieved under the aegis of Prussia. His 'Autobiography' ap peared in 1893.