GRISNEZ, CAPE, a headland with a lighthouse on the French coast opposite Dover, and the nearest point in France to England.

GRISONS (95), the largest of the Swiss cantons, lies in the SE. between Tyrol and Lombardy; consists of high mountains and valleys, amongst which are some of the most noted Alpine glaciers; the Engadine Valley, through which flows the Inn, is a celebrated health resort, as also the Davos Valley in the E.; some cereals are raised, but pasture and forest land occupy a large part of the canton, and supply the cattle and timber export trade; the population, which is small for the extent of territory, is a mixture of German, Romanic, and Italian elements.

GROCYN, WILLIAM, classical scholar, born at Bristol; was the first to teach Greek at Oxford, and the tutor in that department of Sir Thomas More and Erasmus (1442-1519).

GRODNO, a province and town of Russia; the latter (51) is on the Niemen, 148 m.  NE. of Warsaw; has a Polish palace and medical school.  The former (1,556) is a wide, pine-covered, swampy, yet fertile district, which produces good crops of cereals, and is a centre of the woollen industry.

GROLIER, JEAN, a famous bibliophile, whose library was dispersed in 1675; the bindings of the books being ornamented with geometric patterns, have given name to bindings in this style; they bore the inscription, “Io.  Grolieri et Amicorum” (the property of Jean Grolier and his friends).

GROeNINGEN (286), a low-lying province in the NE. of Holland, fronting the German Ocean on the N., and having Hanover on its eastern border; its fertile soil favours extensive farming and grazing; shipbuilding is an important industry.  The capital (58) is situated on the Hunse, 94 m.  NE. of Amsterdam; has several handsome buildings, a university (1614), botanic gardens, shipbuilding yards, and tobacco and linen factories.

GRONOVIUS, the name of two Dutch scholars, father and son, professors successively of belles-lettres at Leyden; John died 1671, and Jacob 1716.

GROS, ANTOINE JEAN, BARON, a French historical painter, born at Paris; his subjects were taken from events in the history of France, and especially in the career of Napoleon; his first work, received with unbounded enthusiasm, was “Pestifere’s de Jaffa,” and his latest, a picture in the cupola of the Church of Genevieve, in Paris (1771-1835).

GROSE, CAPTAIN FRANCIS, an English antiquary, born at Greenford, Middlesex; was educated for an artist, and exhibited; proved a good draughtsman; became captain of Sussex militia; published the “Antiquities of England and Wales” (1773-1787); came to Scotland in 1789 on an antiquarian tour, and made the acquaintance of Burns, who celebrated him in his “Hear, Land o’ Cakes and Brither Scots,” as “a chield’s amang you takin’ notes, and faith he’ll prent it”; was an easy-going man, with a corpulent figure, a smack of humour, and a hearty boon companion; lived to publish his “Antiquities of Scotland and Ireland”; died at Dublin in an apoplectic fit (1731-1791).