GAIL, JEAN BAPTISTE (1755-1829), French hellenist, was born in Paris on the 4th of July 1755. In 1791 he was appointed deputy, and in 1792 titular professor at the Collège de France. During the Revolution he quietly performed his professional duties, taking no part in politics, although he possessed the faculty of ingratiating himself with those in authority. In 1815 he was appointed by the king keeper of Greek MSS. in the royal library over the heads of the candidates proposed by the other conservators, an appointment which made him many enemies. Gail imagined that there was an organized conspiracy to belittle his learning and professional success, and there was a standing quarrel between him and his literary opponents, the most distinguished of whom was P.L. Courier. He died on the 5th of February 1829. Without being a great Greek scholar, Gail was a man of unwearied industry, whose whole life was devoted to his favourite studies, and he deserves every credit for having rescued Greek from the neglect into which it had fallen during the troublous times in which he lived. The list of Gail’s published works filled 500 quarto pages of the introduction to his edition of Xenophon. The best of these is his edition of Theocritus (1828). He also wrote a number of elementary educational works, based on the principles of the school of Port Royal. His communications to the Académie des Inscriptions being coldly received and seldom accorded the honour of print, he inserted them in a vast compilation in 24 volumes, which he called Le Philologue, containing a mass of ill-digested notes on Greek grammar, geography, archaeology, and various authors.
See “Notice historique sur la vie et les ouvrages de J. B. G.,” in Mém. de l’Acad. des Inscriptions, ix.; the articles in Biographie universelle (by A. Pillon) and Ersch and Gruber’s Allgemeine Encyclopädie (by C.F. Bähr); a list of his works will be found in J.M. Quérard, La France littéraire (1829), including the contents of the volumes of Le Philologue.
GAILLAC, a town of south-western France, capital of an arrondissement in the department of Tarn, on the right bank of the Tarn, 15 m. W. of Albi on the railway from that city to Toulouse. Pop. (1906) town, 5388; commune, 7535. The churches of St Michel and St Pierre, both dating from the 13th and 14th centuries, have little architectural importance. There are some interesting houses, one of which, the Maison Yversen, of the Renaissance, is remarkable for the rich carving of its doors. The public institutions include the sub-prefecture, a tribunal of first instance, and a communal college. Its industries include the manufacture of lime and wooden shoes, while dyeing, wood-sawing and flour-milling are also carried on; it has a considerable trade in grain, flour, vegetables, dried plums, anise, coriander, &c., and in wine, the white and red wines of the arrondissement having a high reputation. Gaillac grew up round the Benedictine abbey of St Michel, founded in the 10th century.
GAILLARD, GABRIEL HENRI (1726-1806), French historian, was born at Ostel, Picardy, in 1726. He was educated for the bar, but after finishing his studies adopted a literary career, ultimately devoting his chief attention to history. He was already a member of the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles-lettres (1760), when, after the publication of the three first volumes of his Histoire de la rivalité de la France et d’Angleterre, he was elected to the French Academy (1771); and when Napoleon created the Institute he was admitted into its third class (Académie française) in 1803. For forty years he was the intimate friend of Malesherbes, whose life (1805) he wrote. He died at St Firmin, near Chantilly, on the 13th of February 1806. Gaillard is painstaking and impartial in his statement of facts, 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 Ier (7 vols., 1776-1779); Histoire des grandes querelles entre Charles V. et François Ier (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.