4T 



GKIJKR, ERIK Ol'STAF. 



number* twice a week In 1713, and flrwr>U collected and reprinted 

 in S Tola. Svo, 1721, and again in 1743. It was set up in opposition 

 to the commercial treaty with France which was proposed by 

 ministers after the peace of Utrecht, and to Defoe's thrioe a week 

 paper, entitled ' lleroator, or Commerce Retrieved,' in which tho 

 tr*Uy was defended. ' The Britioh Merchant ' contains perhaps the 



complete exposition that has been given of what i* called 

 the Mercantile or Balance of Trade theory; buj, independently of 

 their tyitematic notions, many of the facts collected by the writers 

 are carious and valuable, and their publication forms a record of the 

 state of many branches of our commerce at the period when it 

 appeared. (See a fall account of it in the ' Pictorial History of 

 England,' vol. iv. pp. 207-13.) In the preface to the republication it 

 is stated by the editor, Mr. Charles King, that "Mr. Joshua Gee, 

 merchant, was a very great assistant, and laboured with much indus- 

 try in these paper"." Oee however is best known by his separate 

 work, entitled ' The Trade and Navigation of Great Britain con- 

 sidered,' which originally appeared at London in 8vo, in 1729 or 1730 

 (for copies of the first edition seem to have sometimes one, sometimes 

 the other of these dates). It was reprinted at London in 8vo in 1731, 

 and in 12mo in 1738 ; and there is a Glasgow edition of 1760, called 

 on the title-page the sixth, and another in 12mo of 1767, professing 

 to contain "many interesting Notes and Additions, by a Merchant" 

 The book is divided into thirty-four chapters, and, besides the general 

 principles of trade, discu'ses the particular commerce carried on by 

 England with every part of the world. The two main propositions 

 which the author attempts to make out are, ' That the surest way 

 for a nation to increase in riches is to prevent the importation of such 

 foreign commodities as may be raised at home," and " That this king- 

 dom is capable of raising within itself and its colonies materials for 

 employing all our poor in those manufactures which we now import 

 from such of our neighbours who refuse the admission of ours." In 

 his advertisement Gee informs us that the poverty and necessity in 

 which he bad seen the poor in several parts of tho kingdom had 

 touched him very sensibly, and he had spent a (treat deal of time 

 from the service-of his family " to find out methods for promoting so 

 public a blessing as turning the employment we give the poor of 

 foreign nations to our own." His scheme however is merely to put 

 down begging in the streets, and to employ the poor in workhouses. 

 On the whole, the book, though it was formerly popular, is not one 

 of any remarkable ability or value, except as giving a clear account 

 in small f pace of what the trnde of the country then was. 



GEEFS, GUILLAUME, the most eminent living Belgian sculptor, 

 was the son of a baker at Antwerp, where he was born about 1805. 

 Having studied in his native place, he went for improvement to Paris, 

 where he was for a time in the atelier of M. Ramaye, and under whom 

 he acquired a decidedly French manner, which however he has since 

 to a great extent thrown off. It was at Paris that he exhibited in 

 1830 hU first work' A Young Herdsman of the Early Christian 

 Times strewing Flowers on a Tomb ; ' but, though clever, it scarcely 

 gave promise of the excellence which the sculptor has since attained. 

 Almost at the outset of his career he was fortunate in having an 

 opportunity afforded for putting forth his powers, such as does not 

 often fall to the lot of so young a sculptor : this was to obtain, in an 

 open competition, commissions from the Belgian government to exe- 

 cute a monument, which stands in the Place ties Martyrs, Brussels, to 

 the memory of the victims who fell in the struggle for Belgian inde- 

 pendence, in September 1830; a monument to Count Frederick de 

 Merode. in the church of St. Gudule, and a statue of General Belliard, 

 both of whom fell in the same struggle. These works showed a 

 decided genius for monumental sculpture, and at once.placed Geefs 

 at the head of his profession in Belgium. They still rank among his 

 most famous works; but he has won a hich place as a poetic sculptor 

 by his ' Gcnevieve de Brabant, with her Child and a Deer;' 'Francesco 

 de Rimini,' a leading attraction at the Exhibition of the National 

 Academy, Brussels, in 1886; 'Melancholy;' La Fille du Pdcheur;' 

 'Prayer;' 'The Infant St. John ;' 'Sleeping Children,' avery pleasing 

 group, now in the possession of her Majesty at Osborne ; and his 

 ' Lion in Love,' one of the most admired pieces of sculpture in the 

 Great Exhibition of 1851, though not in the purest taste or highest 

 style of art. In the same exhibition were also a 'Paul and Virginia' 

 and a ' Cupid ' by him. Besides the monuments and monumental 

 statues mentioned above, M. Geefs bos executed a noble etatue of 

 Kubens, which now stands in the Place Vert at Antwerp, where the 

 great painter long resided ; a statue of Grc'try ; one of Malibran, for 

 her monument at Laeken, near Brussels ; a colossal marble statue of 

 King Leopold, for the vestibule of the Palais National ; and the grand 

 monumental statue of Charlemagne, for the church of St. Servaia at 

 Haestricbt He has also executed a aeries of eight very striking bas- 

 reliefs, representing leading events in the life of St. Hubert, for the 

 shrine of the saint, presented to the old church of St. Hubert at 

 Ardennes by the King of the Belgians. Guillaume Geefs was the first 

 Belgian sculptor to break away from the shackles imposed by a rigid 

 adherence to Greek models. Working in the spirit rather than 

 imitating the forms of the great Greek sculptors, Geefs preserved 

 originality of conception; and, while exhibiting national character, he 

 unites largeness of style with much grace and poetic feeling. Several 

 east* from the works of Geefi are in the Crystal Palace at Sydenham. 



His wife, FAXST GEEK*, formerly Corr, is a clever painter of genre 

 and portrait*. 



* JOSEPH GKEFS, younger brother of Guillaume, is likewise a sculptor 

 of considerable ability. His earliest work, 'Adonis partant pour la 

 Chasse,' was exhibited at Brussels Academy in 1833. He excels iu 

 female figures, and ho has executed several very clever baasi-rilievi 

 and medallions. 



CEIJEIt, KlilK GUSTAF, said by a Swedish critic to be equally 

 eminent as a poet, a thinker, and an historian, was born at the iron- 

 foundry of Rontater, in lUnsitter chspelry, province of Wcrmeland, 

 Sweden, on the 12th of January 1783. His father, the proprietor of 

 the foundry, was the descendant of a family which bad emigrated to 

 Sweden from Austria in the time of Quxtavus Adolphus, and by esta- 

 blishing foundries had peopled the district Geijer, in his ' Minnen,' 

 or ' Reminiscences,' has given a vivid description of the wilil country 

 of his birth and the hearty patriarchal manners which prevailed in it, 

 to both of which he was strongly attached. At twelve years old be 

 was sent to the school of Carlstad, five Swedish miles south of his 

 birthplace, and at sixteen to the University of Upsal ; during Ids 

 residence at which however, he enjoyed nothing so much as his fre- 

 quent visits home, when) he used to declare his conviction that the 

 solemn academical disputations of Upsal would be the laughing-stock 

 of future ages. At tho age of twenty be was still without a degree, 

 and when his friends, who were anxious to see some fruits of his 

 studies, applied to a family of consideration to secure him the place 

 of tutor, they received for answer that inquiries had been made at the 

 university as to his character, and that he was found to be a " youth 

 without steadiness." The rejection, and the motive assigned for it, 

 stung Geijer to the soul. He resolved to do something to raise his 

 reputation from so low a point, and without informing any one of his 

 design, went to the parsonage, begged to look over a file of old news- 

 papers, and ascertained that the subject of the great prize offered that 

 year by the Swedish Academy was the ' Areminnet,' or eulogy of 

 Sten Sture, the administrator of the kingdom before the time of 

 Gustavus Vosa. There was an imperfect copy of Dalin's ' History of 

 Sweden ' at the foundry-house ; this he studied in secret, found means 

 to possess himself of some paper, which was scarce in those quarters, 

 and as fast as he wrote his essay, concealed the sheets in the unsus- 

 pected hiding-place of an old clock-case. It needed some contrivance 

 to get tlie essay sent off by post without taking any one into his con- 

 fidence, but this too was done. Some months after his sister asked 

 him what made him turn so red on a sudden as he was reading 

 the newspaper. Ue had come on an advertisement requesting tho 

 author of the essay on Sture, with a certain motto the same which 

 he had selected to make himself known to the academy. He had 

 won the prize, and from that day was looked on in a different light by 

 his family and all his friends. In the next year, when he visited Stock- 

 holm, ho was introduced to many of the leading literary men, and 

 universally regarded as a youth of high promise. In the same year 

 (1804), on a visit to his native Wermeland, he became acquainted, on 

 a hunting excursion, with another young Wermelander, a student of 

 the University of Lund, and they took a long ramble together, sleeping 

 occasionally in barns, and keeping up a continual disputation. This 

 student, who became a friend for life, was Esaias Tegner, afterwards 

 bishop of Wexio, now universally regarded as the greatest poet whom 

 Sweden has produced. " We never talked together, then or after- 

 wards," Geijer said in later life in his eulogy on Tegnc"r, " without dis- 

 puting ; and as we never came to agree, perhaps the solution may be, 

 that we never understood one another. How this might be with 

 Tegne'r I know not, but I at least believed that I understood him." 



In 1806 Geijer took his degree, and soon after obtained a post iu 

 the National Archives ; but he was anxious to travel in foreign 

 countries, and in 1809 obtained his wish by visitiug England as 

 travelling tutor to a youth of the name of Von SchinkeL He staid 

 about a twelvemonth in this country, two months of which wire 

 spent in studying English at Stoke Newingtou. Several of Geijer's 

 letters from England were printed by himself in his 'Minnen' in 1*34 ; 

 others have appeared since his death in the collected edition of his 

 writings now publishing. In one of them, dated from Bath in 1810, 

 and first printed in 1855, he says, " I came to England with strong 

 prejudices against the people. It is a nation, I thought to myself, in 

 which a love for gain and a narrow selfishness has quenched all that 

 is beautiful and noble. Mine was a Swedish notion of selfishness, 

 drawn from an imperfect state of society, where the connection 

 between the public and private advantage is often far from obvious. 

 Here every man knows that connection; and there is no honester 

 man in the world than the selfish industrious Englishman, from the 

 merchant to the day-labourer. This result may be owing to prudence 

 as well as to principle, but such is the cae. No foreigner can come 

 here without admiring the honour and the mutual confidence that 

 prevail in commeice and in life." On his return to Sweden, < 

 was soon engaged in the editorship of a magazine having the name of 

 'Iduno,' set up by a society of twelve, of whom he was one, and hn 

 brother another, who christened themselves ' the Goths.' The main 

 idea of their union was that of reviving the manners and spirit of their 

 Gothic ancestors, and some of their rules aud ceremonies were suffi- 

 ciently childish; but for these the founder, one of their friends named 

 Adlerbeth, was chiefly responsible. Tho 'Iduna' contained in its 



