They painted also his wife, Anne Shepherd, who was exactly his own size, three feet ten inches high. They were married in the presence of the king and queen, and Waller wrote some verses on the occasion. Gibson was a page of the back stairs to Charles I. They had nine children, of whom five lived to maturity, and attained the average size. They both lived to a great age, Gibson dying in 1690, aged seventy-five, and his wife in 1709, aged eighty-nine.—(Walpole's Anecdotes.)—R. N. W.
GIBSON, Thomas, was born at Morpeth in Northumberland, and was famous in the sixteenth century for his attainments in physic, divinity, history, and botany. A partisan of the Reformation, he had to fly the country during the reign of Mary, but returned on Elizabeth's accession, and died in London in 1562. His writings, some of which are in MS., consist of attacks upon the papists, and of medical and chemical tracts.—W. J. P.
* GIBSON, Thomas Milner, Right Honourable, an English politician and statesman, was born at Trinidad in 1807. He was educated first at the Charterhouse school, and then at Trinity college, Cambridge, where he took a wrangler's degree in 1830. Two years later he married Arethusa Susanna, the only child of the Rev. Sir Thomas Gery Cullum, Bart. This lady has distinguished herself by her love for the cause of liberty, and by her kindness to those who seek refuge in England from the violence of despotic governments. After traveling for some time on the continent, Mr. Gibson, in July, 1837, entered parliament as the member for Ipswich. His political opinions were then of the same colour as those of the late Sir Robert Peel, with whom he ranged himself in the divisions. But as he grew more earnest in the pursuit of politics he became more and more of a liberal, and on Mr. Villiers' motion for a committee of the whole house to consider the corn-laws in March, 1839, Mr. Gibson voted for the motion against Peel, Gladstone, and the bulk of the party. After this Mr. Gibson went to his constituents at Ipswich for re-election, and was rejected. A similar fate befell him at Cambridge, where he offered himself the same year (1839), and he did not re-enter the house of commons till 1841, when he was elected for Manchester as an advanced liberal. This seat he retained for sixteen years, during which he distinguished himself as an orator and a radical. In advocating the repeal of the corn-laws he became associated with Messrs. Bright and Cobden, and more or less identified with their political opinions in favour of economical government and non-intervention in foreign affairs. He held office from July, 1846, to April, 1848, as vice-president of the board of trade. For the nine years following he remained a private member of parliament, occasionally opposing the measures of whig as well as of tory ministers; but his greatest triumph of that nature was achieved on the 3rd of March, 1857, when he and his friends joined the conservatives in support of Mr. Cobden's motion condemnatory of Sir J. Bowring's conduct respecting the lorcha Arrow, and of the war with China. The ministry were defeated, a dissolution of parliament ensued, and Mr. Gibson lost his seat. In December, 1857, he was elected member for Ashton-under-Lyne, which borough he continues to represent. In June, 1859, he became one of Lord Palmerston's new ministry as president of the poor-law commission, a post which he exchanged in the following month for the presidency of the board of trade. He was sworn of the privy council in 1846.—R. H.
GIBSON, William, a self-educated English mathematician, was born of poor parents in 1729 at the village of Bolton in Westmoreland. In his boyhood he was employed as a farm-servant, but he soon rose to the position of a farm-overseer, and at length saved enough of money to enable him to take a farm on his own account. He now determined to commence his literary and scientific education, which had previously been totally neglected, and with that view he regularly devoted several hours of the night to study. His first acquisition was the art of reading; his second, arithmetic, in which he became so skilful as to be able to calculate mentally the product of two numbers, each of nine figures; his third, the art of writing. He then applied himself to mathematics, which ever afterwards continued to be his favourite study; and in all branches of which, both pure and applied, he acquired great skill. His writings on that subject consist principally of short articles in periodicals called the Gentleman's Diary, the Ladies' Diary, and the Palladium. He was frequently employed in his neighbourhood as a land-surveyor. During the latter part of his life he kept youths as boarders, whom he instructed in mathematics. He died on the 4th of October, 1791, of the effects of a fall.—W. J. M. R.
GIÉ, Pierre de Rohan de, a native of Brittany, who rose to the rank of a marshal of France, commenced his military career under Louis XI., for whom he commanded in Flanders against the Austrians, in the latter half of the fifteenth century. The attempt of Charles VIII. against Naples subsequently gave the marshal employment in Italy; and Louis XII., besides conferring on him the governorship of Angers, intrusted him with the education of the heir to the throne, the young Count d'Angouléme, afterwards Francis I. An unwarrantable stretch of his authority in the seizure of certain ships, afterwards brought him into disgrace; and he retired to his estate in the neighbourhood of Angers, where he occupied his time and displayed his taste for the fine arts in ornamenting the apartments and grounds of his château. He died on the 22d April, 1513.—W. B.
GIEDROYC, Romuald Thadeus, Prince, was born in Lithuania in 1750. He served with distinction in the Polish struggles for national existence, under Pulaski in 1768-72, and under Kosciusko in 1794. He obtained the rank of lieutenant-general for his victory over the Russians at Salaty. After Suwarrow's capture of Warsaw, Giedroyc led a retired life until he joined in Napoleon's invasion of Russia. He was taken prisoner at Sierakow, but returned to Poland in 1814, and died at Warsaw in 1824.—W. J. P.
GIESECKE, Sir Charles Lewes Metzler von, a distinguished mineralogist and collector, was the son of a wine merchant of the name of Metzler, at Augsburg, where he was born on the 6th of April, 1761. Originally intended for the ministry in the Reformed church, he was educated at the university of Göttingen; but he soon turned to the study of the law, which, however, was as little congenial to his tastes. Mineralogy, classical literature, and the stage had greater charms for him, and so he studied under Blumenbach; was intimate with Schiller, Klopstock, and Göethe; associated with Heyne in translating Homer, and played the part of Hamlet in his own translation of that drama. His love of music amounted to a passion, and he wrote the music of two operas. Attaching himself to a theatrical company, he dissipated his means, and abandoning his father's name for that of Giesecke, his mother's, he renounced the stage and turned to mineralogy with a devotion which thenceforth never swerved. Studying under Werner at Freyburg in 1794, he associated with some of the greatest mineralogists and chemists of his day; and after some time he set out to collect specimens, and examined every mine of consequence in northern Germany, Sweden, Norway, and the Faroe Islands. By this means he earned a high reputation, and was elected a member of literary and scientific societies in Berlin, Upsala, Jena, and his native town. Giesecke next entered the Austrian service, and was appointed assistant-secretary to the legation, when Prince Metternich went as ambassador to Selim II. to Constantinople. This enabled him to visit the mineral districts of Hungary, Transylvania, Bohemia, Styria, and Carinthia, and subsequently Naples. Being wounded in the service, he retired from the army, and opened a school of mineralogy at Copenhagen, where he continued till the bombardment of that city by Nelson, when his house and cabinet of minerals were burned, and his pupils dispersed. To compensate for his losses, Christian VII. gave him employment, and sent him on a geological and mineralogical survey to Greenland, whither he went in 1805, remaining there till the summer of 1813 in unceasing toil, and under great physical privations. The knowledge derived during this period is contained in a valuable unpublished journal (still extant), and partially given to the world in his "Lectures on the Natural History of Greenland," and in papers contributed to the Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy, and other scientific publications. In 1811 Giesecke shipped a great quantity of new and valuable minerals for Copenhagen. The vessel was captured by a French privateer, retaken by an English frigate, and carried into Leith. The precious boxes were thrown aside as useless stones, till the late Thomas Allan, the well-known mineralogist of Edinburgh (see Allan, Thomas), discovered and purchased them for £40. A full description of these minerals was given by Allan in a paper read before the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1812, from which it appears that amongst them was over £5000 worth of cryolite, a quantity of sodalite, and a substance, till then unknown, and called in honour of the fortunate purchaser
