Page:Imperial Dictionary of Universal Biography Volume 2.pdf/764

GRA  on suspicion and committed to the Tower, from which, after an imprisonment of some duration, he was discharged without a trial. Forewarned by this experience, he removed to France at the time of Bishop Atterbury’s affair, and amused himself in his self-exile revising his works and writing in prose a vindication of General Monk and his own kinsman, Sir Richard Greenville, from the reflections of Burnet, Clarendon, and Echard. His prose has been more highly praised than his poetry. He published a handsome edition of his collected writings on his return to England in 1732, and died in the January of 1735.—F. E.  GRANVILLE,, second earl, eldest son of the first earl by the second daughter of the fifth duke of Devonshire, was born in 1815, and was educated at Eton and at Christ church, Oxford, where he took his degree in 1834. He was for a few months attaché to the British embassy in Paris under his father. In 1836 he was returned to parliament as member for Morpeth, and was re-elected in 1837. But, on being shortly after appointed undersecretary for foreign affairs, he retired from parliament. In 1840 he was for a short time attached to the Russian embassy. At the general election in 1841 he was returned for Lichfield, and retained his seat until 1846, when he succeeded to the peerage on the death of his father. He seldom took part in the debates in the lower house; but he was known and respected as an able and consistent advocate of a liberal policy. He held the offices of master of the buckhounds and vice-president of the board of trade under Lord John Russell, and, by diligent application to the business of his department, soon became distinguished for practical knowledge, no less than for his courtesy and kindness. On the dismissal of Lord Palmerston in December, 1851, Lord Granville became his successor in the foreign office; but he held the seals only for a brief space, as the Russell ministry was soon after broken up. His lordship acted as vice-president of the royal commission for the Great Exhibition of 1851, and was also chairman of the executive committee. He accompanied the commissioners in their subsequent visit to Paris. Lord Granville was subsequently president of the board of trade under Lord Aberdeen in 1852, and president of the council and leader of the house of lords, when Lord Palmerston became prime minister in 1855. On the termination of the Russian war his lordship was sent upon an extraordinary mission to St. Petersburg, to attend the coronation of the young czar. Besides the offices mentioned, Lord Granville has held that of paymaster of the forces, chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster, and treasurer of the navy. He is also chancellor of the university of London, and a knight of the garter. He was again appointed, in 1859, to the office of president of the council, with which he combines that of leading the house of lords a task for which he is well fitted by his graceful manners, as well as by his excellent business habits.—J. T.  GRANVILLE,, Earl, an English statesman, second son of the first marquis of Stafford, was born in 1773. He was returned to parliament by the burgh of Lichfield as soon as he came of age; but in the following year (1794) he resigned his seat, and was elected member for the county of Stafford, which he continued to represent until his elevation to the house of lords in 1815. In the year 1800 he was appointed a lord of the treasury; and in 1802 was made chancellor of the exchequer in the ministry of Mr. Addington. When Mr. Pitt returned to his former position as first lord of the treasury in 1804, he despatched Lord Gower to Russia as minister-plenipotentiary, for the purpose of inducing the czar to enter into a coalition against France on an extensive scale. A treaty for this purpose having been signed, Lord Gower returned home in 1805, but refrained from joining any of the administrations during the succeeding ten years. In 1812 he had a narrow escape from assassination: for Bellingham, the murderer of Mr. Percival, had been for some time engaged in commercial pursuits where he imagined that he had suffered wrong from the British ambassador, and had gone down to the house of commons for the purpose of taking vengeance upon Lord Gower; but on seeing Mr. Percival approach, he suddenly changed his mind, and shot the prime minister on the spot. In 1815 Lord Gower was elevated to the peerage under the title of Viscount Granville. In 1824 he was sent as ambassador to Holland, and a few months later, on the death of Louis XVIII., he was transferred to the French court, where he remained until 1828, when he was recalled by the duke of Wellington. On the downfall of the Tory government, Lord Granville was reappointed ambassador to France by Earl Grey in 1831 with the exception of the brief period of Peel’s administration in 1834–35, he continued to hold that office until the overthrow of Lord Melbourne’s ministry in 1841. The liberality of Lord Granville’s opinions, combined with his singularly graceful manners, made him a most popular and efficient representative of the British government at the French court. He was elevated to the rank of earl in 1833, and died, 7th January, 1846.—J. T.  GRANVILLE. See.  GRAS,, a celebrated German sculptor, was born at Mergentheim in Franconia in the latter part of the sixteenth century. He settled at Innsprück under the patronage of the Archduke Maximilian, became court sculptor, was ennobled, and hence is sometimes referred to as Gras von Grasegg. Such of his works as are known are for the most part at Innsprück. He died at Schwatz in 1674.—J. T-e.  GRASSE-TILLY,, Comte de Grasse, Marquis de, was born at Valette, Provence, in 1723, and died at Paris, 11th January, 1788. Entering the French navy, he was taken prisoner by Anson, and detained two years at the battle of England. He served under D’Orvilliers in Ushant against Keppel. In 1779 he commanded a squadron under D’Estaing against Admiral Byron, and in 1780 served with De Guichen against Rodney. At the head of a French fleet, he assisted Washington and Rochambeau in the operations which led to the surrender of Cornwallis at York Town. Co-operating with Bouillé’s troops in their attack upon our West Indian islands, he was out-manœuvered off St. Christopher by Admiral Hood. On the 12th April, 1782, he was totally defeated by Rodney, and captured in his ship the Ville de Paris, of one hundred guns. On his liberation in 1784 he was honourably acquitted by a court-martial.—W. J. P.  GRASSI or GRASSO,, an Italian mathematician, was born at Savona in 1582, and died in Rome on the 23rd of July, 1654. He entered the Society of Jesuits in 1590, and taught mathematics successively at Genoa, in Rome, in the college of his order at Savona, of which he became rector, and in the Collegio Romano. He published in 1618 his “Dissertatio Optica de Iride,” and in 1618 his “Dissertatio Astronomica de tribus Cometis.” The best known of his works are two essays which form part of a controversy earned on by Grassi with Galileo on the subject of comets. The first is entitled “Libra Astronomica ac Philosophica, in quâ Galilæi opiniones de Cometis, a Mario Guiducio in Florentinâ Academiâ expositæ ac in lucem nuper editæ, examinantur à Lotario Sarsi Sigensano” (an anagram of Oratio Grassi Salonensi), and was published at Perugia in 1619. The work criticised in it is the “Discorso delle Comete,” published in 1619 in the name of Galileo’s pupil Guiducci, but really composed by the master himself, in which one of the very few unsound opinions of Galileo is maintained, viz., that comets are not planetary bodies, but meteors in the earth’s atmosphere. Grassi maintained the opinion now recognized to be correct, that comets are celestial bodies moving in definite orbits. Galileo’s reply to the strictures of Grassi was printed in Rome in 1623, and is called “Il Saggiatore, nel quale con bilancia esquisita e giusta si ponderano le cose contenute nella Libra Astronomica,” &c. (reciting the title of Grassi’s work). To this Grassi wrote a rejoinder, entitled “Ratio ponderum Libræ et Simbellæ, in quâ quid e Galilæi Simbellatore de Cometis statuendum sit proponitur,” which was published in Paris in 1626, and to which Galileo did not reply, although Guiducci continued the controversy.—W. J. M. R.  GRASWINCKEL,, was born at Delft in 1600, and became eminent for his knowledge of legal and other subjects. He studied at Leyden, practised as a pleader in Holland, and resided for some time in France. His time was chiefly spent in his own country, where he filled situations of great importance, and wrote works abounding in learning, and characterized by considerable ability. He died at Malines in 1666.—B. H. C. <section end="764H" /> <section begin="764I" />GRATIAN, eldest son of the Emperor Valentinian I., received the title of Augustus in his childhood, and at the age of seventeen succeeded his father in the western division of the empire in 375. To conciliate the party which proclaimed his infant half-brother Valentinian II., he frankly admitted the latter to a share of the imperial dignity, and resigned Italy in his favour. The transalpine provinces which Gratian reserved under his own government were then harassed by the barbarians, and in 378 an inroad of the Alemanni gave him an opportunity of proving<section end="764I" />