GORLITZ, a town in the Prussian province of Silesia, capital of a circle in the government district of Liegnitz, is situated on the left bank of the Neisse, and at the junction point of several railways, 55 miles east of Dresden. The Neisse at this point is crossed by a railway bridge half a mile long and 120 feet high, with 32 arches. The town is the seat of a provincial office, a circle court, and a chamber of commerce. It is surrounded by beautiful walks and fine gardens, and although its old walls and towers have now been demolished, many of its ancient buildings remain to form a picturesque contrast with the signs of modern industry. From the hill called Landskrone, about 1500 feet high, an extensive prospect is obtained of the surrounding country. The principal. buildings are the fine church of St Peter and St Paul, dating from the 15th century, with a famous organ and a very heavy bell ; the church of Our Lady erected about the end of the 15th century, and possessing a fine portal and choir in pierced work; the Catholic church, founded in 1853, in-the Roman style of architecture, with beautiful glass windows and oil-paintings ; the town house, containing the arms of King Matthias of Hungary, and having at its entrance a fine flight of steps; the old bastion, named Kaisertrutz, now used as a guardhouse and armoury ; the gymnasium buildings in the Gothic style erected in 1851 ; the fine new middle school, the real school, the provincial trade school, the theatre, and the barracks. Near the town is the chapel of the Holy Cross, in connexion with which there is a model of the Holy Grave at Jerusalem. In the public park there is a bust of Schiller -awl a monument to Alexander von Humboldt ; and a monument has also been erected in the town in commemoration of the war of 1870-71. In connexion with the National History Society there is a valuable museum, and the Scientific Institute possesses a large library and a rich collection of antiquities, coins, and articles of vertu. Gorlitz, next to Breslau, is the largest and most flourishing commercial town of Silesia. Besides cloth, which forms its staple article, it has manufactories of various linen and woollen wares, machines, railway waggons, sago, tobacco, leather, chemicals, and tiles.

Gerlitz existed as a village from a very early period, and at the beginning of the 12th century it was made a borough by Duke Sobieslaus I. of Bohemia. It was then known as l)rebenau, but on being rebuilt after its destruction by fire in 1131 it received the name of Zgorzelice (burnt town). About the end of the 12th century it was strongly fortified, and in 1346 it joined the league of the six towns. It was several times besieged and taken during the Thirty Years' War, and it also suffered considerably in the Seven Years' War. In the battle which took place near it between the Austrians and Prussians, 7th September 1757, Winterfield, the general of Frederick the Great, was slain. In 1815 the town, with the greater part of Upper Lusatia, came into the possession of Prussia. The population in 1831 was only about 8000, but in 1849 it had increased to 19,032, and in 1875 it was 45,310.

&HIRES, JOSEPH JOHANN (1776-1848), a distinguished controversialist and writer on religious, political, and scientific subjects, was born January 25,1776, at Coblentz. This father was a man of moderate means, who sent his son, after he had passed through the usual elementary school, to a Latin college under the direction of the Roman Catholic clergy. The sympathies of the young Gorres were from the first strongly with the Revolution, and the dissoluteness and irreligion of the French exiles in the Rhineland confirmed him in his hatred of princes. He harangued the revolutionary clubs, and in his first political tract, called Universal Peace, an Ideal, he insisted on the unity of interests which should ally all civilized states to one another. He then commenced a republican journal called Das Rothe Blatt, and afterwards Rabezahl, in which he strongly condemned the administration of the Rhenish provinces by France.

After the peace of Campo Formic) (1797) there was some hope that the Rhenish provinces would be constituted into an independent republic. Iu 1799 the provinces sent an embassy, of which Gorses was a member, to Paris to put their case before the directory. The embassy reached Paris on the 20th of November 1799 ; two days before this Napoleon had assumed the supreme direction of affairs. After much delay the embassy was received by him ; but the only answer they obtained was "that they might rely on perfect justice, and that the French Government would never lose sight of their wants," Gorres on his return published a tract called Results of my Mission to Paris, in which he reviewed the history of the French Revolution. During the thirteen years of Napoleon's dominion Gorses lived a retired life, devoting himself chiefly to art or science. In 1801 he married Catherine de Lassaulx, and those of Giirres's admirers who claim him as a radical have laid great stress on the fact that this lady was a free-thinker. He published Aphorisms on art and physiology - fanciful but suggestive. He was for some years teacher at a secondary school in Coblentz, and in 1806 moved to Heidelberg, where he lectured at the university. He sought, with Brentano, Arnim, and others, to stir up the old national spirit by the republication of some of the old Teutonic ballads, but fruitlessly. He returned to Cobleutz in 1808, and again found occupation as a teacher in a secondary school, supported by civic funds. He now studied Persian, and in two years produced a really valuable translation of part of the Shahnamah, the epic of Firdonsi.

It was in the year 1810 that he seems to have conceived the notion of arousing the people to efforts by means of the press ; and after the battle of Leipsic, in the year 1814, he set his paper going. It bore the name of a paper which had been a mere echo of Prussia, the Rheinischer Merkur. The intense earnestness of the paper, the bold outspokenness of its hostility to Napoleon, and its fiery eloquence secured for it almost instantly a position and influence unique in the history of German newspapers. Bliicher read it every day ; Gentz, the brothers Grimm, Yarnhagen von Ense, were all loud in praise of it ; Stein used it as an instrument to move the public in the direction he desired, and continually sent it information of his plans; Napoleon himself called it Ice cinquienze puissance. The ideal it insisted on was a united Germany, with a representative government, but under an emperor after the fashion of other days, - for Gorses now abandoned. his early-advocacy of republicanism. When Napoleon was at Elba, Giirres wrote an imaginary proclamation issued by him to the people, the intense irony of which was so well veil-A that many Frenchmen mistook it for an original utterance of the emperor. He inveighed bitterly against the second peace of Paris (1815), declaring that Alsace and Lorraine should have been demanded back from France.

Stein was glad enough to use the _Merkur at the time of the meeting of the congress of Vienna as a vehicle for giving expression to his hopes. But Hardenberg„ in May 1815. warned Gorses to remember that he was not to arouse hostility against France, but only against Bonaparte. There was also in the Merkur an antipathy to Prussia, a continual expression of the desire that an Austrian prince should assume the imperial title, and also a tendency to pronounced liberalism, - all of which made it most distasteful to Hardenberg, and to his master King Frederick William III. Gorres disregarded warnings sent to him by the censorship and continued the paper in all its fierceness. Accordingly it was suppressed early in 1816, at the instance of the Prussian Government; and soon after Gorses was dismissed from his post as teacher at Coblentz. From this time his writings were his sole means of support, and he became a most diligent political pamphleteer. He was not himself a member of the Tagendisund, but be watched that society with deep interest, and believed, as did all the patriots of his time, that the clubs of students, or Burschenschaften, were calculated to restore the pristine greatness of Germany. The agitation continued, and finally Kotzebue's denunciation of young Germany led to his assassination. In the wild excitement which followed, the reactionary decrees of Carlsbad were framed, and these were the subject of Giirres's celebrated pamphlet Deutschland send die Revolution. In this work he reviewed the circumstances which had led to the murder of Kotzebue, and, while expressing all possible horror at the deed itself, he urged that it was impossible and undesirable to repress the free utterance of public opinion by reactionary measures. The success of the work was very marked, despite its ponderous style. It was suppressed by the Prussian Government, and orders were issued for the arrest of Gorres and the seizure of his papers. He escaped to Strasburg, and thence went to Switzerland, Two more political tracts, Europa send die Revolution (1821), and In &when der Rhein Province?' send in eigener Angclegenheit (1822), also deserve mention.

In Gorres's pamphlet Die Ileilige Allianz send die Iraker auf deny Congress von Verona he asserted that the princes bad met together to crush the liberties of the people, and that the people must look elsewhere for help. The " elsewhere " was to Rome ; and from this time Giirres became a vehement Ultramontane writer. He was summoned to Munich by King Louis of Bavaria, and there his writings enjoyed very great popularity. His Christliche Mystik gave a series of biographies of the saints, together with an ex- position of Roman Catholic mysticism. but his most celebrated Ultramontane work was a polemical one. Its occasion was the deposition and imprisonment by the Prussian Government of the archbishop Clement Wenceslaus, in consequence of the refusal of that prelate to sanction in certain instances the marriages of Protestants and Roman Catholics. GOrres in his A thanasias fiercely upheld the power of the church, although the liberals of later date who have claimed G6rres as one of their own school deny that he ever insisted on the absolute supremacy of Rome. Athanasius went through several editions, and originated a long and bitter controversy. In the Ilistorisch-politische 13Iatter, a Munich journal, Gorres and his son Guido continually upheld the claims of the church. GUrres received from the king the order of merit for his services. He was terribly disturbed when the king sunk under the dominion of Lola Montez, and he died July 29, 1848.

See A. Denk, Joseph von Corres, 1870 ; J. J. Sepp, G6rres mead seine Zeitgenossen, 1877. A complete edition of Gbrres's works was published at Munich in 1854. (L. A. M.)