to the poor and the purchase of books for poor scholars. With the exception of a few lines of Latin verse on a lady who snowballed him, and a letter to Aldus Manutius at the head of Linacre’s translation of Proclus’s Sphaera (Venice, 1499), Grocyn has left no literary proof of his scholarship or abilities. His proposal to execute a translation of Aristotle in company with Linacre and Latimer was never carried out. Wood assigns some Latin works to Grocyn, but on insufficient authority. By Erasmus he has been described as “vir severissimae castissimae vitae, ecclesiasticarum constitutionum observantissimus pene usque ad superstitionem, scholasticae theologiae ad unguem doctus ac natura etiam acerrimi judicii, demum in omni disciplinarum genere exacte versatus” (Declarationes ad censuras facultatis theologiae Parisianae, 1522).
An account of Grocyn by Professor Burrows appeared in the Oxford Historical Society’s Collectanea (1890).
GRODNO, one of the Lithuanian governments of western
Russia, lying between 51° 40′ and 52° N. and between 22° 12′ and
26° E., and bounded N. by the government of Vilna, E. by Minsk,
S. by Volhynia, and W. by the Polish governments of Lomza
and Siedlce. Area, 14,926 sq. m. Except for some hills (not
exceeding 925 ft.) in the N., it is a uniform plain, and is drained
chiefly by the Bug, Niemen, Narev and Bobr, all navigable.
There are also several canals, the most important being the
Augustowo and Oginsky. Granites and gneisses crop out along
the Bug, Cretaceous, and especially Tertiary, deposits elsewhere.
The soil is mostly sandy, and in the district of Grodno and along
the rivers is often drift-sand. Forests, principally of Coniferae,
cover more than one-fourth of the area. Amongst them are some
of vast extent, e.g. those of Grodno (410 sq. m.) and Byelovitsa
(Bialowice) (376 sq. m.), embracing wide areas of marshy ground.
In the last mentioned forest the wild ox survives, having been
jealously preserved since 1803. Peat bogs, sometimes as much
as 4 to 7 ft. thick, cover extensive districts. The climate is wet and
cold; the annual mean temperature being 44.5° F., the January
mean 22.5° and the July mean 64.5°. The rainfall amounts to
2112 in.; hail is frequent. Agriculture is the predominant
industry. The peasants own 4212% of the land, that is, about
4,000,000 acres, and of these over 214 million acres are arable.
The crops principally grown are potatoes, rye, oats, wheat, flax,
hemp and some tobacco. Horses, cattle and sheep are bred in
fairly large numbers. There is, however, a certain amount of
manufacturing industry, especially in woollens, distilling and
tobacco. In woollens this government ranks second (after
Moscow) in the empire, the centre of the industry being Byelostok.
Other factories produce silk, shoddy and leather. The government
is crossed by the main lines of railway from Warsaw to
St Petersburg and from Warsaw to Moscow. The population
numbered 1,008,521 in 1870 and 1,616,630 in 1897; of these
last 789,801 were women and 255,946 were urban. In 1906
it was estimated at 1,826,600. White Russians predominate
(54%), then follow Jews (17.4%), Poles (10%), Lithuanians
and Germans. The government is divided into nine districts,
the chief towns, with their populations in 1897, being Grodno
(q.v.), Brest-Litovsk (pop. 42,812 in 1901), Byelsk (7461),
Byelostok or Bialystok (65,781 in 1901), Kobrin (10,365),
Pruzhany (7634), Slonim (15,893), Sokolsk (7595) and Volkovysk
(10,584). In 1795 Grodno, which had been Polish for ages, was
annexed by Russia.
GRODNO, a town of Russia, capital of the government of the
same name in 53° 40′ N. and 23° 50′ E., on the right bank of the
Niemen, 160 m. by rail N.E. of Warsaw and 98 m. S.W. of Vilna
on the main line to St Petersburg. Pop. (1901) 41,736, nearly
two-thirds Jews. It is an episcopal see of the Orthodox Greek
church and the headquarters of the II. Army Corps. It has two
old castles, now converted to other uses, and two churches
(16th and 17th centuries). Tobacco factories and distilleries
are important; machinery, soap, candles, vehicles and firearms
are also made. Built in the 12th century, Grodno was almost
entirely destroyed by the Mongols (1241) and Teutonic knights
(1284 and 1391). Stephen Bathory, king of Poland, made it his
capital, and died there in 1586. The Polish Estates frequently
met at Grodno after 1673, and there in 1793 they signed the
second partition of Poland. It was at Grodno that Stanislaus
Poniatowski resigned the Polish crown in 1795.
GROEN VAN PRINSTERER, GUILLAUME (1801–1876), Dutch politician and historian, was born at Voorburg, near
the Hague, on the 21st of August 1801. He studied at Leiden university, and graduated in 1823 both as doctor of literature and LL.D. From 1829 to 1833 he acted as secretary to King William I. of Holland, afterwards took a prominent part in Dutch home politics, and gradually became the leader of the so-called anti-revolutionary party, both in the Second Chamber, of which he was for many years a member, and outside. In Groen the doctrines of Guizot and Stahl found an eloquent exponent. They permeate his controversial and political writings and
historical studies, of which his Handbook of Dutch History (in Dutch) and Maurice et Barnevelt (in French, 1875, a criticism of Motley’s Life of Van Olden-Barnevelt) are the principal. Groen was violently opposed to Thorbecke, whose principles he denounced as ungodly and revolutionary. Although he lived to see these principles triumph, he never ceased to oppose them
until his death, which occurred at the Hague on the 19th of May 1876. He is best known as the editor of the Archives et correspondance de la maison d’Orange (12 vols., 1835–1845), a great work of patient erudition, which procured for him the title of the “Dutch Gachard.” J. L. Motley acknowledges his indebtedness to Groen’s Archives in the preface to his Rise of the Dutch Republic, at a time when the American historian had not yet
made the acquaintance of King William’s archivist, and also
bore emphatic testimony to Groen’s worth as a writer of history
in the correspondence published after his death. At the first
reception, in 1858, of Motley at the royal palace at the Hague, the king presented him with a copy of Groen’s Archives as a token of appreciation and admiration of the work done by the “worthy vindicator of William I., prince of Orange.” This copy, bearing the king’s autograph inscription, afterwards came into the possession of Sir William Vernon Harcourt, Motley’s son-in-law.
GROIN. (1) An obsolete word for the grunting of swine,
from Lat. grunnire, and so applied to the snout of a pig; it
is probably the origin of the word, more commonly spelled
“groyne,” for a small timber framework or wall of masonry used
on sea coasts as a breakwater to prevent the encroachment of
sand and shingle. (2) (Of uncertain origin; from an older form
grynde or grinde; the derivation from “grain,” an obsolete word
meaning “fork,” cannot, according to the New English Dictionary,
be accepted), in anatomy the folds or grooves formed between
the lower part of the abdomen and the thighs, covering the
inguinal glands, and so applied in architecture to the angle
or “arris” formed by the intersection of two vaults crossing one
another, occasionally called by workmen “groin point.” If the
vaults are both of the same radius and height, their intersections
lie in a vertical plane, in other cases they form winding curves
for which it is difficult to provide centering. In early medieval
vaulting this was sometimes arranged by a slight alteration in the
geometrical curve of the vault, but the problem was not satisfactorily
solved until the introduction of the rib which henceforth
ruled the vaulting surface of the web or cell (see Vault).
The name “Welsh groin” or “underpitch” is generally given
to the vaulting surface or web where the main longitudinal
vault is higher than the cross or transverse vaults; as the transverse
rib (of much greater radius than that of the wall rib),
projected diagonally in front of the latter, the filling-in or web
has to be carried back from the transverse to the wall rib.
The term “groin centering” is used where, in groining without
ribs, the whole surface is supported by centering during the erection
of the vaulting. In ribbed work the stone ribs only are
supported by timber ribs during the progress of the work, any
light stuff being used while filling in the spandrils. (See Vault.)
GROLMANN, KARL WILHELM GEORG VON (1777–1843),
Prussian soldier, was born in Berlin on the 30th of July 1777. He entered an infantry regiment when scarcely thirteen, became an ensign in 1795, second lieutenant 1797, first lieutenant 1804 and staff-captain in 1805. As a subaltern he had become one of
