universally as a border in mosaic pavements, not only in Italy but throughout Europe. In the Renaissance in Italy it was also a favourite enrichment for borders and occasionally in France and England. GUILLON, MARIE NICOLAS SYLVESTRE (1760-1847), French ecclesiastic, was born in Paris on the 1st of January 1760. He was librarian and almoner in the household of the princess de Lamballe, and when in 1792 she was executed, he fled to the provinces, where under the name of Pastel he practised medicine. A man of facile conscience, he afterwards served in turn under Napoleon, the Bourbons and the Orleanists, and became canon of St Denis, bishop of Morocco and dean of the Sorbonne. Among his many literary works are a _Collection des brefs du pape Pie VI_ (1798), _Bibliotheque choisie des peres grecs et latins_ (1822, 26 vols.) and a French translation of Cyprian with notes (1837, 2 vols.). GUILLOTINE, the instrument for inflicting capital punishment by decapitation, introduced into France at the period of the Revolution. It consists of two upright posts surmounted by a cross beam, and grooved so as to guide an oblique-edged knife, the back of which is heavily weighted to make it fall swiftly and with force when the cord by which it is held aloft is let go. Some ascribe the invention of the machine to the Persians; and previous to the period when it obtained notoriety under its present name it had been in use in Scotland, England and various parts of the continent. There is still preserved In the antiquarian museum of Edinburgh the rude guillotine called the "maiden" by which the regent Morton was decapitated in 1581. The last persons decapitated by the Scottish "maiden" were the marquis of Argyll in 1661 and his son the earl of Argyll in 1685. It would appear that no similar machine was ever in general use in England; but until 1650 there existed in the forest of Hardwick, which was coextensive with the parish of Halifax, West Riding, Yorkshire, a mode of trial and execution called the gibbet law, by which a felon convicted of theft within the liberty was sentenced to be decapitated by a machine called the Halifax gibbet. A print of it is contained in a small book called _Halifax and its Gibbet Law_ (1708), and in Gibson's edition of Camden's _Britannia_ (1722). In Germany the machine was in general use during the middle ages, under the name of the _Diele_, the _Hobel_ or the _Dolabra_. Two old German engravings, the one by George Penez, who died in 1550, and the other by Heinrich Aldegrever, with the date 1553, represent the death of a son of Titus Manlius by a similar instrument, and its employment for the execution of a Spartan is the subject of the engraving of the eighteenth symbol in the volume entitled _Symbolicae quaestiones de universo genere_, by Achilles Bocchi (1555). From the 13th century it was used in Italy under the name of _Mannaia_ for the execution of criminals of noble birth. The _Chronique de Jean d'Anton_,