and his style is correct and elegant, but the unity of his narrative is somewhat destroyed by digressions, and by his method of treating war, politics, civil administration, and ecclesiastical affairs under separate heads. His most important work is his Histoire de la rivalité de la France et de l’Angleterre (in 11 vols., 1771–1777); and among his other works may be mentioned Essai de rhétorique française, à l’usage des jeunes demoiselles (1745), often reprinted, and in 1822 with a life of the author; Histoire de Marie de Bourgogne (1757); Histoire de François I er (7 vols., 1776–1779); Histoire des grandes querelles entre Charles V. et François I er (2 vols., 1777); Histoire de Charlemagne (2 vols., 1782); Histoire de la rivalité de la France et de l’Espagne (8 vols., 1801); Dictionnaire historique (6 vols., 1789–1804), making part of the Encyclopédie méthodique; and Mélanges littéraires, containing éloges on Charles V., Henry IV., Descartes, Corneille, La Fontaine, Malesherbes and others.
GAINESVILLE, a city and the county-seat of Alachua county, Florida, U.S.A., about 70 m. S.W. of Jacksonville. Pop. (1890) 2790; (1900) 3633, of whom 1803 were negroes; (1905) 5413; (1910) 6183. Gainesville is served by the Atlantic Coast Line, the Seaboard Air Line, and the Tampa & Jacksonville railways, and is an important railway junction. It is the seat of the University of the State of Florida, established at Lake City in 1905 and removed to Gainesville in 1906. The university includes a school of language and literature, a general scientific school, a school of agriculture, a technological school, a school of pedagogy, a normal school, and an agricultural experiment station. In 1908 the university had 15 instructors and 103 students. The Florida Winter Bible Conference and Chautauqua is held here. Gainesville is well known as a winter resort, and its climate is especially beneficial to persons affected by pulmonary troubles. In the neighbourhood are the Alachua Sink, Payne’s Prairie, Newman’s Lake, the Devil’s Mill Hopper and other objects of interest. The surrounding country produces Sea Island cotton, melons, citrus and other fruits, vegetables and naval stores. About 15 m. W. of the city there is a rich phosphate mining district. The city has bottling works, and manufactures fertilizers, lumber, coffins, ice, &c. The municipality owns and operates the water-works; the water-supply comes from a spring 2 m. from the city, and the water closely resembles that of the Poland Springs in Maine. Gainesville is in the midst of the famous Seminole country. The first settlement was made here about 1850; and Gainesville, named in honour of General E. P. Gaines, was incorporated as a town in 1869, and was chartered as a city in 1907.
GAINESVILLE, a city and the county-seat of Cooke county, Texas, U.S.A., about 6 m. S. of the Red river, and about 60 m. N. of Fort Worth. Pop. (1890) 6594; (1900) 7874 (1201 negroes and 269 foreign-born); (1910) 7624. The city is served by the Gulf, Colorado & Santa Fé, and the Missouri, Kansas & Texas railways, and by an interurban electric railway. Gainesville is a trading centre and market for the surrounding country, in which cotton, grains, garden truck, fruit and alfalfa are grown and live-stock is raised; and a wholesale distributing point for the neighbouring region in Texas and Oklahoma. The city has cotton-compresses and cotton-gins, and among its manufactures are cotton-seed oil, flour, cement blocks, pressed bricks, canned goods, foundry products, waggon-beds and creamery products. Gainesville was settled about 1851, was incorporated in 1873, and was chartered as a city in 1879; it was named in honour of General Edmund Pendleton Gaines (1777–1849), who served with distinction in the War of 1812, becoming a brigadier-general in March 1814 and receiving the brevet of major-general and the thanks of Congress for his defence of Fort Erie in August 1814. Gaines took a prominent part in the operations against the Seminoles in Florida in 1817 (when he was in command of the Southern Military District) and in 1836 and during the Mexican War commanded the department of the South-West, with headquarters at New Orleans.
GAINSBOROUGH, THOMAS (1727–1788), English painter, one of the greatest masters of the English school in portraiture, and only less so in landscape, was born at Sudbury, Suffolk, in the spring of 1727. His father, who carried on the business of a woollen crape-maker in that town, was of a respectable character and family, and was noted for his skill in fencing; his mother excelled in flower-painting, and encouraged her son in the use of the pencil. There were nine children of the marriage, two of the painter’s brothers being of a very ingenious turn.
At ten years old, Gainsborough “had sketched every fine tree and picturesque cottage near Sudbury,” and at fourteen, having filled his task-books with caricatures of his schoolmaster, and sketched the portrait of a man whom he had detected on the watch for robbing his father’s orchard, he was allowed to follow the bent of his genius in London, with some instruction in etching from Gravelot, and under such advantages as Hayman, the historical painter, and the academy in St Martin’s Lane could afford. Three years of study in the metropolis, where he did some modelling and a few landscapes, were succeeded by two years in the country. Here he fell in love with Margaret Burr, a young lady of many charms, including an annuity of £200, married her after painting her portrait, and a short courtship, and, at the age of twenty, became a householder in Ipswich, his rent being £6 a year. The annuity was reported to come from Margaret’s real (not her putative) father, who was one of the exiled Stuart princes or else the duke of Bedford. She was sister of a young man employed by Gainsborough’s father as a traveller. At Ipswich, Gainsborough tells us, he was “chiefly in the face-way”; his sitters were not so numerous as to prevent him from often rambling with his friend Joshua Kirby (president of the Society of Artists) on the banks of the Orwell, from painting many landscapes with an attention to details which his later works never exhibited, or from joining a musical club and entertaining himself and his fellow-townsmen by giving concerts. As he advanced in years he became ambitious of advancing in reputation. Bath was then the general resort of wealth and fashion, and to that city, towards the close of the year 1759, he removed with his wife and two daughters, the only issue of their marriage. His studio in the circus was soon thronged with visitors; he gradually raised his price for a half-length portrait from 5 to 40 guineas, and for a whole-length from 8 to 100 guineas; and he rapidly developed beyond the comparatively plain and humdrum quality of his Ipswich paintings. Among his sitters at this period were the authors Sterne and Richardson, and the actors Quin, Henderson and Garrick. Meanwhile he contributed both portraits and landscapes to the annual exhibitions in London. He indulged his taste for music by learning to play the viol-di-gamba, the harp, the hautboy, the violoncello. His house harboured Italian, German, French and English musicians. He haunted the green-room of Palmer’s theatre, and painted gratuitously the portraits of many of the actors: he constantly gave away his sketches and landscapes. In the summer of 1774, having already attained a position of great prosperity, he took his departure for London, and fixed his residence at Schomberg House, Pall Mall, a noble mansion still standing, for a part of which the artist paid £300 a year.
Gainsborough had not been many months in London ere he received a summons to the palace, and to the end of his career he divided with West the favour of the court, and with Reynolds the favour of the town. Sheridan, Burke, Johnson, Franklin, Canning, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Mrs Siddons, Clive, Blackstone, Hurd, were among the number of those who sat to him. But in London as in Bath his landscapes were exhibited, were commended, and were year after year returned to him, “till they stood,” says Sir William Beechey, “ranged in long lines from his hall to his painting-room.” Gainsborough was a member of the Royal Academy, one of the original 36 elected in 1768; but in 1784, being dissatisfied with the position assigned on the exhibition walls to his portrait of the three princesses, he withdrew that and his other pictures, and he never afterwards exhibited there. Even before this he had taken no part in the business of the Institution. After seceding he got up an exhibition in his own house, not successfully. In February 1788, while witnessing the trial of Warren Hastings, he felt an extraordinary chill at the back of his neck; this was the beginning of a cancer
