Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 11.djvu/54

Rh ness, the Count de Gramont endeavoured to live the life of unrestrained enjoyment. In this he so far succeeded that, although the following century furnished more numerous examples of his kind, he may be taken as the most finished specimen. His ideal man was a being without conscience, without principle, without religion, without a soul. At the court of Charles II. he found companions like himself, women without virtue, men without honour, yet disguised and adorned with courtly manners and that external refine ment which did duty for principle ; and had it not been that his brother-in-law, Hamilton, conceived the design of writing the memoirs which have made him famous, Gramont would have been as entirely forgotten as most of his friends, save for a brief mention by St Evremond and another by Bussy Rabutin in that little-visited gallery of portraits, the Histoire Amoureuse. His grandfather had the distinction of being husband to Diane d Andouins, la belle Corisande, one of the mistresses of Henry IV. The grandson always regretted that the king had not acknowledged his father for his own son, lamenting even in the presence of Louis XIV. that his family had- missed the chance of becoming, in this illegitimate fashion, a branch of the royal line, The anecdote is entirely char acteristic. It was at first proposed to enter him in the church, but he speedily perceived that his vocation was not ecclesiastical, and joined the army, in which he saw a great deal of active service, and was rewarded with the governorship of the Pays d Aunis, and with other small posts. He crossed over to England during the protectorate of Cromwell. In the year 1662, two years after the restora tion of Charles II., he was exiled from the French court and again repaired to London, where he found such a welcome as was due to his manners, his gaiety, his extraordinary good spirits, and his love of gambling, intrigue, gallantry, and pleasure. It is the period of his residence at the English court which forms the greater part of Hamilton s memoirs. He is described by Bussy Rabutin as having &quot;laughing eyes, a well formed nose, a pretty mouth, a little dimple in the chin which gave an agreeable effect to the whole face, a certain finesse in his countenance, and a fairly good stature but for a stoop.&quot; In the whole English court there was no one more full of wit, more avid of pleasure, more devoid of all moral restraint, not even Rochester himself, than the Count de Gramont. Naturally, the court being what it was, there was no one more popular. In a court where the women vied with each other for the king s favour, where the men habitually cheated at play, seduced their friends wives, and corrupted their friends daughters, that man would be most popular in whom the absence of principle became, by reason of his grace, esprit, and elegance, in itself a recommendation. Gramont was as purely a sensualist as any Roman of the later empire. He married, in London, but on compulsion, the sister of his future biographer, Miss Hamilton, who, her brother tells us in the memoirs, was able to fix his affections. The state ment must be received with some qualifications. The count, it is true, was by no means young when he married. At the same time, he &quot; galantisait &quot; for many years afterwards, and, in fact, to the very end of a long life. He was the only old man, says Ninon de PEnclos, who could. affect the follies of youth without being ridiculous. In fact, Gramont, like La Fontaine, was a spoiled child, to whom everything was allowed, and who repaid indulgence by perpetual high spirits, and a continual flow of wit and bo ns mots. At the age of seventy-five he had a dangerous illness, during which he became reconciled, in his way, to the church, but on recovery relapsed into his old habits. At eighty he either dictated or revised his own memoirs, written by his brother- in-law Antony Hamilton. When they were finished he sold the manuscript for 1500 francs and kept most of the money himself. Fontenelle, then censor of the press, refused to license the work, from considerations of respect to the old man who had so strangely exposed in its pages the whole of his character. These scruples were overcome by the count himself, who had the pleasure of seeing his biography appear in his own lifetime, and of laughing with the rest of the world at his own rogueries at cards, his amorous adventures, and his secret intrigues. He died at the great age of eighty-six. His biographer Hamilton died thirteen years later at the age of seventy- four. The memoirs of the Count de Gramont are not to be recommended for general reading : yet they have the merit of being true ; in no other work is the reality of that profligate society of St James s so vividly ex pressed ; in no other contemporary memoirs is there so much wit, such grace of style, such skill in portraiture. Numerous editions and translations have been issued of this work, whose popularity seems destined to continue and grow.  GRAMPUS (Orca gladiator, Lacep.), a cetacean belong ing to the Delphinidce or dolphin family, and characterized by its rounded head without distinct beak, its high dorsal fin, and its large conical permanent teeth. Its upper part is of a nearly uniform glossy black colour, and the under part white, with a strip of the same colour over each eye. The name &quot; grampus &quot; is derived from the French grand poisson, through the Norman ffrapois. It is also known as the &quot; killer,&quot; in allusion to its ferocity in attacking its prey, which consists largely of seals, porpoises, and the smaller species of dolphins. Its fierceness is only equalled by its voracity, which is such that in a specimen measuring 21 feet in length, dissected by Professor Eschricht, the remains of fourteen seals and thirteen porpoises were found, while the animal appeared to have been choked in the endeavour to swallow another seal, the skin of which was found en- tangled in its teeth. They also pursue and commit great havoc among the bulky but gentle belugas or white whales, which sometimes throw themselves ashore in order to escape from their remorseless persecutors. The grampus is an inhabitant of northern seas, occurring on the shores of Greenland, and having been caught, although rarely, as far south as the Mediterranean. It is not common, although there are numerous instances of its capture, on the British coasts. The latest of these occurred in March 1876, about a mile to the west of Granton, on the Firth of Forth. The creature on being dragged ashore, while still alive, was said by the onlookers to have given forth shrill piercing cries somewhat resembling in their sharpness a woman s voice. The specimen was an adult male, and measured 21 feet 10 inches along the curve of the back, with a girth of 13 feet. It had 24 teeth in each jaw, the front tooth on each side of the lower jaw being exceedingly small and almost hidden by the overlapping of the gum, while the two immediately succeeding these on each side were worn down almost to the level of the gum. A striking feature in the grampus is the high dorsal fin, which in the specimen mentioned measured within 2 inches of 4 feet in height.

 GRAN (the ancient Istrogranum, whence Hungarian Esztergom, and Latin Strigonium), the capital of a county of the same name, seat of the prince primate, and formerly a royal free city, is situated on the right bank of the Danube, nearly opposite the confluence of the Garam (Gran), 25 miles north-west of Buda, 47 46 N. lat., 18 44 E. long. It may be generally divided into the town proper, the episcopal quarter, also called Vizivaros ( Watertown), and the communes of St Thomas and of St George. The finest terraces and public buildings are to be found in the two first-named portions of the town. On an elevated and commanding position, where once a fortress stood, are the 