subjects; he raised the Lithuanian army to the highest state of efficiency then attainable; defended his borders with a chain of strong fortresses; and built numerous towns including Vilna, the capital (c. 1321). Gedymin died in the winter of 1342 of a wound received at the siege of Wielowa. He was married three times, and left seven sons and six daughters.
See Teodor Narbutt, History of the Lithuanian nation (Pol.) (Vilna, 1835); Antoni Prochaska, On the Genuineness of the Letters of Gedymin (Pol.) (Cracow, 1895); Vladimir Bonifatovich Antonovich, Monograph concerning the History of Western and South-western Russia (Rus.) (Kiev, 1885). (R. N. B.)
GEE, THOMAS (1815–1898), Welsh Nonconformist preacher
and journalist, was born at Denbigh on the 24th of January 1815.
At the age of fourteen he went into his father’s printing office, but
continued to attend the grammar school in the afternoons. In
1837 he went to London to improve his knowledge of printing,
and on his return to Wales in the following year ardently threw
himself into literary, educational and religious work. Among his
publications were the well-known quarterly magazine Y Traethodydd
(“The Essayist”), Gwyddoniadur Cymreig (“Encyclopaedia
Cambrensis”), and Dr Silvan Evans’s English-Welsh
Dictionary (1868), but his greatest achievement in this field was
the newspaper Baner Cymru (“The Banner of Wales”), founded
in 1857 and amalgamated with Yr Amserau (“The Times”)
two years later. This paper soon became an oracle in Wales,
and played a great part in stirring up the nationalist movement in
the principality. In educational matters he waged a long and
successful struggle on behalf of undenominational schools and for
the establishment of the intermediate school system. He was an
enthusiastic advocate of church disestablishment, and had a
historic newspaper duel with Dr John Owen (afterwards bishop
of St David’s) on this question. The Eisteddfod found in him
a thorough friend and a wise counsellor. His commanding
presence, mastery of diction, and resonant voice made him an
effective platform speaker. He was ordained to the Calvinistic
Methodist ministry at Bala in 1847, and gave his time and talents
ungrudgingly to Sunday school and temperance work. Throughout
his life he believed in the itinerant unpaid ministry rather
than in the settled pastorate. He died on the 28th of September
1898, and his funeral was the most imposing ever seen in North Wales.
GEEL, JACOB (1789–1862), Dutch scholar and critic, was
born at Amsterdam on the 12th of November 1789. In 1823 he was
appointed sub-librarian, and in 1833 chief librarian and honorary
professor at Leiden, where he died on the 11th of November 1862.
Geel materially contributed to the development of classical
studies in Holland. He was the author of editions of Theocritus
(1820), of the Vatican fragments of Polybius (1829), of the
Ὀλυμπιακός of Dio Chrysostom (1840) and of numerous essays in
the Rheinisches Museum and Bibliotheca critica nova, of which he
was one of the founders. He also compiled a valuable catalogue
of the MSS. in the Leiden library, wrote a history of the Greek
sophists, and translated various German works into Dutch.
GEELONG, a seaport of Grant county, Victoria, Australia,
situated on an extensive land-locked arm of Port Phillip known
as Corio Bay, 45 m. by rail S.W. of Melbourne. Pop. of the city
proper (1901) 12,399; with the adjacent boroughs of Geelong
West, and Newton-and-Chilwell, 23,311. Geelong slopes to the
bay on the north and to the Barwon river on the south, and its
position in this respect, as well as the shelter it obtains from the
Bellarine hills, renders it one of the healthiest towns in Victoria.
As a manufacturing centre it is of considerable importance.
The first woollen mill in the colony was established here, and the
tweeds, cloths and other woollen fabrics of the town are noted
throughout Australia. There are extensive tanneries, flour-mills
and salt works, while at Fyansford, 3 m. distant, there are
important cement works and paper-mills. The extensive vineyards in the neighbourhood of the town were destroyed under
the Phylloxera Act, but replanting subsequently revived this
industry. Corio Bay, a safe and commodious harbour, is entered
by two channels across its bar, one of which has a depth of 2312 ft.
There is extensive quayage, and the largest wool ships are able
to load alongside the wharves, which are connected by rail with
all parts of the colony. The facilities given for shipping wool
direct to England from this port have caused a very extensive
wool-broking trade to grow up in the town. The country
surrounding Geelong is agricultural, but there are large limestone
quarries east of the town, and in the Otway Forest, 23 m. distant,
coal is worked. Geelong was incorporated in 1849.
GEESTEMÜNDE, a seaport town of Germany, in the Prussian
province of Hanover, on the right bank of the Weser, at the
mouth of the Geeste, which separates it from Bremerhaven, 32 m.
N. from Bremen by rail. Pop. (1905) 23,625. The interest of the
place is purely naval and commercial, its origin dating no farther
back than 1857, when the construction of the harbour was begun.
The great basin, which can accommodate large sea-going vessels,
was completed in 1863, the petroleum basin was opened in 1874,
and additional wharves have been constructed for the reception
of vessels engaged in the fishing industry. The fish market of
Geestemünde is the most important in Germany, and the auction
hall practically determines the price of fish throughout the empire.
The whole port is protected by powerful fortifications. Among
the industrial establishments of the town are shipbuilding yards,
foundries, engineering works and saw-mills.
GEFFCKEN, FRIEDRICH HEINRICH (1830–1896), German
diplomatist and jurist, was born on the 9th of December 1830 at
Hamburg, of which city his father was senator. After studying
law at Bonn, Göttingen and Berlin, he was attached in 1854 to
the Prussian legation at Paris. For ten years (1856–1866) he
was the diplomatic representative of Hamburg in Berlin, first
as chargé d’affaires, and afterwards as minister-resident, being
afterwards transferred in a like capacity to London. Appointed
in 1872 professor of constitutional history and public law in the
reorganized university of Strassburg, Geffcken became in 1880 a
member of the council of state of Alsace-Lorraine. Of too nervous
a temperament to withstand the strain of the responsibilities of
his position, he retired from public service in 1882, and lived
henceforth mostly at Munich, where he died, suffocated by an
accidental escape of gas into his bedchamber, on the 1st of May
1896. Geffcken was a man of great erudition and wide knowledge
and of remarkable legal acumen, and from these qualities proceeded
the personal influence he possessed. He was moreover a
clear writer and made his mark as an essayist. He was one of the
most trusted advisers of the Prussian crown prince, Frederick
William (afterwards the emperor Frederick), and it was he (it is
said, at Bismarck’s suggestion) who drew up the draft of the New
German federal constitution, which was submitted to the crown
prince’s headquarters at Versailles during the war of 1870–71.
It was also Geffcken who assisted in framing the famous document
which the emperor Frederick, on his accession to the
throne in 1888, addressed to the chancellor. This memorandum
gave umbrage, and on the publication by Geffcken in the
Deutsche Rundschau (Oct. 1888) of extracts from the emperor
Frederick’s private diary during the war of 1870–71, he was, at
Bismarck’s instance, prosecuted for high treason. The Reichsgericht
(supreme court), however, quashed the indictment, and
Geffcken was liberated after being under arrest for three months.
Publications of various kinds proceeded from his pen. Among
these are Zur Geschichte des orientalischen Krieges 1853–1856
(Berlin, 1881); Frankreich, Russland und der Dreibund (Berlin,
1894); and Staat und Kirche (1875), English translation by
E. F. Fairfax (1877). His writings on English history have been
translated by S. J. Macmullan and published as The British
Empire, with essays on Prince Albert, Palmerston, Beaconsfield,
Gladstone, and reform of the House of Lords (1889).
GEFFROY, MATHIEU AUGUSTE (1820–1895), French
historian, was born in Paris. After studying at the École
Normale Supérieure he held history professorships at various
lycées. His French thesis for the doctorate of letters, Étude sur
les pamphlets politiques et religieux de Milton (1848), showed
that he was attracted towards foreign history, a study for which
he soon qualified himself by mastering the Germanic and
Scandinavian languages. In 1851 he published a Histoire des
états scandinaves, which is especially valuable for clear arrangement
and for the trustworthiness of its facts. Later, a long
