GENTILESCHI (Artemisia), daughter of the preceding, painted also with great success. Her picture of David with Goliah's head is deemed her best performance. She lived chiefly at Naples, in great splendour; and was famous for her amours.

GENTILE'SSE. s. (French.) Complaisance; civility; not used (Hudibras). GENTILISM. 8. (gentilisme, Fr.) Heathenism: paganism (Stilling fleet).

GENTILITIOUS. a. (gentilitius, Latin.) 1. Endemial; peculiar to a nation (Brown). 2. Hereditary; entailed on a family (Arbuth

GENTILITY. s. (gentilité, French.)__1. Good extraction; dignity of birth. 2. Elegance of behaviour; gracefulness of mien; nicety of taste. 3. Gentry; the class of persons well born. 4. Paganism; heathenism (Hooker).

GENTLE. a. (gentilis, Latin.) 1. Well born; well descended; ancient, though not noble (Sidney). 2.Soft; bland; mild; tame; meek; peaceable (Fairfax). 3. Soothing; pacific (Davies).

GENTLE. S. 1. A gentleman; a man of birth (Shakspeare). 2. A particular kind of worm (Walton).

To GENTLE. v. a. To make gentle (Shakspeare).

GENTLEFOLK. s. (gentle and folk.) Persons distinguished by their birth from the vulgar.

GENTLE FLOWER, in botany. See AMARYLLIS.

GENTLES, in angling, the grubs or maggots of the musca vomitoria, or common fleshy or blow-fly, and of several other insects that feed on putrid animal food. They are a very common and useful bait in general fishing. In London they may be generally had of the tallow-chandlers fit for use, and should be kept in oatmeal and bran, as bran by itself is too dry. Where they cannot be thus obtained, the following, among other methods, may be an easy way of breeding and preserving them. Take a piece of beast's liver, and with a crossstick, hang it in some corner over a pot or barrel, half full of dry clay, and as the gentles grow big they will fall into the barrel and scour themselves, and be always ready for use whensoever you incline to fish; and may be thus created till after Michaelmas. But if you desire to keep gentles to fish with all the year, get a dead cat or kite, and let it be fly-blown, and when the gentles begin to be alive and to stir, bury it and them in soft moist earth, but as free from frost as you can, and these you may dig up at any time when you intend to use them; they will last till March, and about that time turn to flies.

GENTLEMAN, a person of good family, or descended of a family which has long borne arms, the grant of which adds gentility to a man's family.

The word is formed of the French gentilhomme, or rather of gentil, fine, fashionable, or becoming; and the Saxon man, q. d. honestus,

or honesto loco natus: it probably comes originally from the Latin gentilis homo. The word is now applied indiscriminately to every man of an appearance and behaviour above the lower orders of the people.

Mr. Camden observes, that the distinction of a gentleman of coat-armour, or an upstart, and a gentleman of blood, is the bearing of arms from the grandfather; and that he who bears arms from his grandfather, is to all intents and purposes a gen.leman of blood; for which cause it is requisite by the statutes of the Bath, that every knight, before his admission, proves himself to be so qualified; which done it carries with it, if his merit be equal, a passport also to the order of the garter. Notitia Anglicana, p. 24. See also Doddridge's Honour's Pedigree, p. 147. Smith, De Republ. Angl. & Fortescue, fol. 82.

GENTLEMAN-USHER OF THE BLACK ROD, the chief gentleman-usher to the king: his duty is to bear the rod before the king at the feast of St. George at Windsor ; and to his custody all peers questioned for any crime are first committed. His badge is a black rod," with a lion in gold at top.

GENTLEMEN OF THE BED-CHAMBER, persons of the first rank, ten in number; whose office is, each in his turn, to attend a week in the king's bed-chamber.

GENTLEMEN OF THE CHAPEL, officers whose duty and attendance is in the royal chapel, being in number thirty; ten whereof are priests, and the other twenty called clerks of the chapel, who assist in the performance of divine service.

GENTLEMEN PENSIONERS.

SIONER.

See PEN

GENTLEMANLIKE. GENTLEMANLY. a. (gentleman and like.) Becoming a man of birth (Swift).

GENTLENESS. s. (from gentle.) 1. Dignity of birth; goodness of extraction. 2. Softness of manners; sweetness of disposition; meekness (Milton). 3. Kindness; benevolence: obsolete (Shakspeare).

GENTLESHIP. s. Carriage of a gentle

man.

GENTLEWOMAN. S. 1. A woman of birth above the vulgar; a woman well de scended (Bacon). 2. A woman who waits about the person of one of high rank (Shakspeare). 3. A word of civility or irony (Dryden).

GENTLY. ad. (from gentle.) 1. Softly; meekly; tenderly; inoffensively; kindly (Locke). 2. Softly; without violence (Grew).

GENTRY. s. (gentlery, gentry, from gentle.) 1. Birth; condition (Shakspeare). 2. Class of people above the vulgar (Sidney). 3. A term of civility real or ironical (Prior). 4. Civility; complaisance: obsolete (Shakspeare).

GENTOOS, or GENTUS, in modern history, according to the common acceptation of the term, denote the professors of the religion of the bramins or brachmans, who inhabit the country called Hindustan, in the East Indies, from the word stan, a region, and hind

or hindu; which Ferishteh, as we learn from colonel Dow's translation of his history, supposes to have been a son of Ham the son of Noah.

The term Gentoo, or Gent, in the Sanscrit dialect, denotes animals in general, and in its more confined sense mankind, and is never appropriated particularly to such as follow the doctrines of Brhima. These are divided into four great tribes, each of which has its own separate appellation; but they have no common or collective term that comprehends the whole nation under the idea affixed by the Europeans to the word Geutoo.

The doctrine of transmigration is one of the distinguishing tenets of the Gentoos. With regard to this subject, it is their opinion, according to Mr. Holwell, that those souls which have attained to a certain degree of purity, either by the innocence of their manners or the severity of their mortifications, are removed to regions of happiness proportioned to their respective merits; but that those who cannot so far surmount the prevalence of bad example, and the powerful degeneracy of the times, as to deserve such a promotion, are condemned to undergo continual punishment in the animation of successive animal forms, until, at the stated period, another renovation of the four jogues shall commence, upon the dissolution of the present. They imagine six different spheres above this earth; the highest of which, called suttee, is the residence of Brhima and his particular favourites. This sphere is also the habitation of those men who never uttered a falsehood, and of those women who have voluntarily burned themselves with their husbands; the propriety of which practice is expressly enjoined in the code of the Gentoo laws. This code, printed by the East India Company in 1776, is a very curious collection of Hindoo jurisprudence, which was selected by the most experienced pundits or lawyers from curious originals in the Shanscrit language, who were employed for this purpose from May 1773 to February 1775; afterwards translated into the Persian idiom, and then into the English language by Mr. Halhed.

The several institutes contained in this collection are interwoven with the religion of the Gentoos, and revered as of the highest authority. The curious reader will discover an astonishing similarity between the institutes of this code and many of the ordinances of the Jewish law; between the character of the bramins or priests, and the Levites; and be tween the ceremony of the scape-goat under the Mosaic dispensation, and a Gentoo cere mony called the ashummed jug, in which a horse answers the purpose of the goat. Many obsolete customs and usages alluded to in many parts of the Old Testament may also receive illustration from the institutes of this code. It appears from the code, that the bramins, who are the priests and legislators of the country, have resigned all the secular and executive er into the hands of another cast or tribe; no bramin has been properly capable of

the magistracy since the time of the suitee jogue. The only privilege of importance which they have appropriated to themselves is an exemption from all capital punishment: they may be degraded, branded, imprisoned for life, or sent into perpetual exile; but it is every where expressly ordained, that a bramin shall not be put to death on any account whatsoever. See HINDUS.

GE'NU. (genu, yom, wafa to us ywu viunr, because by it the body is bent towards the earth.) The knee.

GENUFLEXION. s. (genuflexion, Fr.) The act of bending the knee; adoration ex pressed by bending the knee (Stillingfleet).

GENUINE. ă. (genuinus, Lat.) Not spurious; real; natural; true (Tillotson). GENUINELY. ad. Without adulteration; without foreign admixtures; naturally (Boyle). GENUINENESS. S. (from genuine.) Freedom from any thing counterfeit; freedom from adulteration; purity; natural (Boyle).

state

For the distinction between genuineness and authenticity, see AUTHENTICITY.

GENUS, among metaphysicians and logicians, denotes a number of beings which agree in certain general properties common to them all: so that a genus is nothing else but an ab stract idea, expressed by some general name or term. See LOGIC and METAPHYSICS.

GENUS, the third division in a systematic arrangement of animals and vegetables; containing animals or plants of the same class and order, which agree in certain invariable parts of their structure, but disagree in others.

Genuses making an awkward plural, and genera not being English; it is perhaps to be often wished that we might be allowed to substitute hind for genus, and sort for species.

GENUS, in music, by the ancients called genus melodia, is a certain manner of dividing and subdividing the principles of melody; that is, the consonant and dissonant intervals into their concinuous parts. The moderns consi dering the octave as the most perfect of intervals, and that whereon all the concords depend in the present theory of music, the division of that interval is considered as containing the true division of the whole scale. But the ancients went to work somewhat differently: the diatessaron, or fourth, was the fast interval which they admitted as concord; and there fore they sought first how that might be met conveniently divided; from whence they constituted the diapente and diapason. The dia tessaron being thus, as it were, the root and foundation of the scale, what they called the genera, or Hinds, arose from its various divi. sions; and hence they defined the genus mode land to be the manner of dividing the tetrachoid and disposing its four sounds as to succession. The genera of music were three, the enharmonic, chromatic, and diatonic. The two first were variously subdivided; and eveu the last, though that is commonly reckoned to be bout any species, yet different authors have proposed different divisions under that

name, without giving any particular names to the species, as was done to the other two. For the characters, &c. of these several genera, see ENHARMONIC, CHROMATIC, and DIA

TONIC.

GEOCENTRIC, is said of a planet or its orbit, to denote its having the earth for its centre. The moon alone is properly geocentric. And yet the motions of all the planets may be considered in respect of the earth, or as they appear from the earth's centre, and thence called their geocentric motions. Hence also the terms geocentric place, latitude, longitude, &c. being the place, latitude, longitude, &c. of a planet as seen from the earth's centre. GEODÆ'SIA. s. (ytwenicia.) That part of geometry which contains the doctrine or art of measuring surfaces, and finding the contents of all plane figures (Harris).

GEODÆʼTICAL. a. (from geodesia.) Relating to the art of measuring surfaces, especially on the earth.

GEOFFRE'A. (Geoffræa, named in honour of Dr. Geoffrey.) The bark so called is the produce of the Geoffroya inermis, of Swatz, Geoffroya inermis, foliolis lanceolatis. Class diadelphia. Order decandria. A native of Jamaica, where it is distinguished by the name of cabbage-bark tree, or worm-bark trec. It has a mucilaginous and sweetish taste, and a disagreeable smell. According to Dr. Wright of Jamaica, it is powerfully medicinal as an anthelmintic. See GEOFFROYA.

GEOFFRO'YA, in botany, a genus of the class diadelphia, order decandria. Calyx five cleft; drupe ovate; not compressed. Three species; natives of South America and the West Indies: one well known as a tall, spinous tree, with axillary racemes: the other two unarmed, but trees also. Of these the bark of g. inermis, commonly distinguished by the name of bulgo-water tree, or bastardcabbage tree, is used successfully in Jamaica as a vermifuge. It is given in different forms of powder, decoctiou, syrup, and extract.

GEOGRAPHER. s. (yn and youpw.) One who describes the earth according to the position of its different parts (Brown). GEOGRAPHICAL. a. (geographique, Fr.) Relating to geography. GEOGRAPHICALLY. ad. In a geogra. phical manner (Broome).

GEOGRAPHY, the science that teaches and explains the nature and properties of the earth, as to its figure, place, magnitude, motions, celestial appearances, &c. with the various lines, real or imaginary, on its surface.

Geography is distinguished from cosmography, as a part from the whole; this latter considering the whole visible world, both heaven and earth. And from topography and chorography, it is distinguished, as the whole from a part.

Golnitz considers geography as either exterior or interior: but Varenius more justly divides it iato general and special; or universal and parti

cular.

General or Universal Geography, is that which considers the earth in general, without any regard

to particular countries, or the affections cominou to the whole globe: as its figure, magnitude, motion, land, sea, &c.

Special or Particular Geography, is that which contemplates the constitution of the several particu lar regions, or countries; their bounds, figure, climale, seasons, weather, inhabitants, arts, customs, language, &c.

History of Geography. The study and practice of Geography must have commenced at very early ages of the world. By the accounts we have remaining, it seems this science was in use among the Babylonians and Egyptians; from whom it passed to the Greeks first of any Europeans, and from these successively to the Romans, the Ara bians, and the western nations of Europe. Herodotus says the Greeks first learned the pole, the gnomon, and the twelve divisions of the day, from the Babylonians. But Pliny and Diogenes Laertius assert, that Thales of Miletus, in the sixth cen tury before Christ, first found out the passage of the sun from tropic to tropic, and it is said was the author of two books, the one on the tropic, and the other on the equinox; both probably determined by means of the gnomon; whence he was led to the discovery of the four seasons of the year, which are determined by the equinoxes and solstices; all which, however, it is likely he learned of the Egyptians, as well as his division of the year into 365 days. This it is said was invented by the second Mercury, surnamed Trismegistus, who, according to Eusebius, lived about 50 years after the Exodus. Pliny expressly says, that this discovery was made by observing when the shadow returned to its marks; a clear proof that it was done by the gnomon. It is farther said, that Thales constructed a globe, and represented the land and sea upon a table of brass. Farther that Anaximander, a disciple of Thales, first drew the figure of the earth upon a globe; and that Hecate, Democritus, Eu doxus, and others, formed geographical maps, and brought them into common use in Greece.

Timocharis and Aristillus, who began their obed to fix the latitudes and longitudes of the fixed servations about 295 B. C. it seems first attempt stars, by considering their distances from the equator, &c. One of their observations gave rise to the discovery of the precession of the equinoxes, which was first remarked by Hipparchus about 150 years after; who also made use of their method, for delineating the parallels of latitude and the meridians on the surface of the earth; thus laying the foundation of this science as it now appears.

The latitudes and longitudes, thus introduced by Hipparchus, were not, however, much attended to till Ptolemy's time. Strabo, Vitruvius, and Pliny, have all of them entered into a minute geographical description of the situation of places, according to the length of the shadows of the gnomon, without noticing the longitudes and latitudes.

Maps at first were little more than rude outlines, and topographical sketches of different countries. The earliest on record were those of Sesostris, mentioned by Eustathius; who says, that "this Egyptian king, having traversed great part of the earth, recorded his march in maps, and gave copies of them not only to the Egyptians, but to the Scythians, to their great astonishment." Some have imagined, with much probability, that the Jews made a map of the Holy Land, when they gave the different portions to the nine tribes at Shiloh: for Joshua tells us that they were sent to walk through the land; and that they described