GARTH, SIR SAMUEL, a distinguished physician, born in co.  Durham; had an extensive practice; author of a mock-heroic poem entitled “The Dispensary” (1661-1718).

GASCOIGNE, SIR WILLIAM, English judge, born at Gawthorpe, Yorkshire; during Richard II.’s reign he practised in the law courts, and in 1397 became king’s serjeant; three years later he was raised to the Lord Chief-Justiceship; his single-eyed devotion to justice was strikingly exemplified in his refusal to pass sentence of death on Archbishop Scrope; the story of his committing Prince Henry to prison, immortalised by Shakespeare, is unauthenticated (1350-1419).

GASCONY, an ancient province of SW.  France, lying between the Atlantic, the Pyrenees, and the Garonne; it included several of the present departments; the province was of Basque origin, but ultimately became united with Aquitaine, and was added to the territory of the French crown in 1453; the Gascons still retain their traditional characteristics; they are of dark complexion and small in stature, vivacious and boastful, but have a high reputation for integrity.

GASKELL, MRS., nee STEVENSON, novelist and biographer, born at Cheyne Row, Chelsea; authoress of “Mary Barton,” “Ruth,” “Silvia’s Lovers,” &c., and the “Life of Charlotte Bronte,” her friend (1810-1865).

GASSENDI, PIERRE, a French mathematician and philosopher, born in Provence; declared against scholastic methods out of deference to the empirical; controverted the metaphysics of Descartes; became the head of a school opposed to him; adopted the philosophy of Epicurus and contributed to the science of astronomy, and was the friend of Kepler, Galileo, and Hobbes; was a great admirer of Bayle, the head of his school, a school of Pyrrhonists, tending to materialism (1592-1655).

GASSNER, JOHANN JOSEPH, a noted “exorcist,” born at Bludenz, in the Tyrol; while a Catholic priest at Kloesterle he gained a wide celebrity by professing to “cast out devils” and to work cures on the sick by means simply of prayer; he was deposed as an impostor, but the bishop of Ratisbon, who believed in his honesty, bestowed upon him the cure of Bendorf (1727-1779).

GATAKER, THOMAS, an English divine, member of the Westminster Assembly; disapproved of the introduction of the Covenant, declared for Episcopacy, and opposed the trial of Charles I. (1574-1654).

GATE OF TEARS, the strait of Bab-el-Mandeb, so called from the shipwrecks frequent in it.

GATES, HORATIO, an American general, born at Maldon, Essex, in England; served as an English officer in America till the peace of 1763, and then retired to Virginia; in the War of Independence he fought on the side of America, and, as commander of the northern army, defeated the English at Saratoga in 1777; so great was his popularity in consequence of this victory that ill-advised efforts were made to place him over Washington, but in 1780 he suffered a crushing defeat at the hands of the British at Camden, and was court-martialled; acquitted in 1782, he again retired to Virginia, and subsequently in 1800 removed to New York, having first emancipated and provided for his slaves (1728-1806).