Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 54.djvu/148

 Lord De Saumarez for Greenwich Hospital, Lord Jeffrey, Lord Melville, Lord-president Boyle, Allan Ramsay, George Kinloch of Dundee, Dr. Chalmers, the Earl of Shrewsbury, and that in bronze of Professor Wilson (‘Christopher North’) in Prince's Street Gardens, Edinburgh. He also executed statues of Lord Dalhousie and of James Wilson for Calcutta, of the Countess of Elgin for Jamaica, and a colossal statue of Burns for New York, for which city he made also a replica of that of Sir Walter Scott. Many of his busts are distinguished by great dignity and refinement, and among them may be especially named those of the queen, the Prince of Wales, the Duke of Edinburgh, Sir Robert Peel, Thomas De Quincey, Florence Nightingale, Professor Edward Forbes, Lord Cockburn, Lord Fullerton, Lord Colonsay, David Scott, R.S.A., and a bust in bronze of Dr. Guthrie. He executed likewise several regimental and other monuments, as well as the figures illustrating the parable of the ten virgins which decorate the Standard Assurance office; these he repeated and enlarged for the office in Dublin. He prepared for the bank at Montreal figures descriptive of the history of commerce.

In 1829 Steell became a Royal Scottish academician, and in 1838 he was appointed sculptor to the queen for Scotland. He first introduced artistic bronze casting into Scotland, and built at his own expense a foundry in which not only his own works but also those of other artists could be reproduced in metal.

Steell, who on account of ill-health had lived for several years in complete retirement, died at 24 Greenhill Gardens, Edinburgh, on 15 Sept. 1891, and was interred in the Old Calton burying-ground. On 30 Nov. 1826 he married Elizabeth, daughter of John Graham, a merchant of Edinburgh. She died in 1885. Latterly he was in receipt of a civil list pension of 100l. Busts by him of David Scott, R.S.A., James Wilson, the Duke of Wellington, and others, are in the National Gallery of Scotland. A plaster bust of Thomas De Quincey is in the National Portrait Gallery, London.



STEERE, EDWARD (1828–1882), missionary bishop in Africa, son of William Steere of the chancery bar, and Esther (Ball) his wife, was born in London on 4 May 1828, and educated, first under Alexander Allen, at Hackney, then at University College school, London. Proceeding to University College, he graduated B.A. of the university of London in 1847, LL.B. in 1848, and LL.D., with gold medal for law, in 1850. The same year he was called to the bar at the Inner Temple, but showed a preference for philosophy and theology, and came under the influence of the tractarian revival. Living chiefly in London, Steere was deeply impressed by the need of earnest work among the poor, and in May 1854 joined a small society, known as the Guild of St. Alban. He had already learned the art of printing, and set up a private press, from which he issued the monthly magazine of the guild. Before the end of the year, on receiving a small legacy from an uncle, he gave up his chambers, and in May 1855 he founded in connection with the guild a sort of brotherhood at ‘The Spital,’ near Tamworth. The scheme did not answer his expectations, and in response to the appeals of friends to carry out an earlier intention, he was ordained at Exeter Cathedral on 21 Sept. 1856.

Steere's first curacy was at King's Kerswell, Newton Abbot, Devonshire. In the summer of 1858 he was invited to undertake the sole charge of Skegness and curacy of Winthorpe, Lincolnshire, by the vicar of Burgh-cum-Winthorpe, William George Tozer. He was admitted priest at Lincoln Cathedral. Skegness was then a straggling village which had long been without parochial care, but Steere made his reputation among the fishermen as a ‘downright shirt-sleeve man and a real Bible parson;’ while the Wesleyans ‘came to church in the morning to please him.’ In the autumn of 1859 he became rector of Little Steeping, at the foot of the Wolds. Towards the close of 1862 he obtained leave of absence in order to accompany his friend Tozer, the new missionary bishop of the universities mission to Central Africa, to the Shiré. On 19 May 1863, after narrowly escaping being drowned in a storm, he landed at the mouth of the Zambesi. For many months the newcomers failed to make much progress, until in August 1864 they fixed their headquarters at Zanzibar, then the centre of the slave traffic. Here the missionary work was begun with a few slave boys, and by the middle of 1866 had so well advanced that Steere was about to return home, when the bishop fell ill, and was ordered to England, leaving him in charge of the mission. Steere had already compiled a handbook to the Swahili language, reduced to writing the dialect of the Usambara country, and produced a Shambala grammar,