307 



SCHAUFFELEIN, HANS L. 



SCHEFFER, HENRI. 



80S 



them. By this means he acquired valuable and extensive stores of 

 reading, which enabled him to supply a number of excellent essays 



Schoueu 



__ that kind 



possess a permanent interest, his ' reviews ' on the productions of the 

 day were calculated to serve the cause of good taste, and generally 

 displayed t dent, shrewdness, and humour. 



His original productions are not many, neither do they belong to 

 the highest species of poetry. Nevertheless in his prose fables he is 

 second only to Lessing, while in his sonnets and madrigals he shows 

 himself rather the rival than the imitator of Petrarch. Many of his 

 minor pieces are indeed mere trifles, but are distinguished by that 

 captivating charm of manner which frequently constitutes almost the 

 sole* difference between prosy rhyming and highly wrought poetry. 

 That he should have executed comparatively so little, while gifted 

 with powers to excel, ceases to be matter of astonishment, when it is 

 considered that he died in his thirty-second year, March 3, 1795. 



SCHAUFFELEIN, HANS L. [SCHEUFFEUN, HANS.] 



SCHEELE, CHARLES WILLIAM, an illustrious chemist, who 

 was born at Stralsund in Pomerania, in December, 1742, where his 

 father was a tradesman. He was educated first at a private academy 

 in his native town, and afterwards in a public school. Having a desire 

 to study pharmacy, he was apprenticed to an apothecary at Gotten- 

 burg, with whom he remained eight years, during which period he 

 acquired much valuable chemical information. In 1773 he removed 

 to Upsal, where he became acquainted with Bergman, who became 

 his friend and patron, and Scheele's publication entitled ' Chemical 

 Observations and Experiments on Air and Fire ' is prefaced by an 

 introduction from the pen of Bergman. Observing that fire could not 

 be maintained without the presence of air, Scheele turned his atten- 

 tion to its analysis ; and he found that what was then called liver of 

 sulphur and some other substances occasioned a diminution of the 

 atmospheric air to which they were exposed, to about four-fifths of its 

 original volume. He afterwards obtained oxygen gas, or, as he called 

 it, ' empyreal air/ by decomposing nitric acid, and by other processes ; 

 and he showed ttiat this air was totally absorbable by liver of 

 sulphur, and that upon adding as much of this gas to the residuum 

 of the air which had been acted upon by liver of sulphur as had been 

 absorbed by it, atmospheric air was reproduced. He found that the 

 flame of burning hydrogen gas produced a similar diminution in the 

 bulk of the air to that occasioned by the action of liver of sulphur. 



It will be observed that, like Priestley, he discovered oxygen gas ; 

 and though not so early, yet, as Priestley himself admits, without auy 

 knowledge of what he had previously achieved. 



Another and most important discovery which we owe to the labours 

 of Scheele, is the elementary gaseous body now called chlorine, but 

 by him named depblogisticated marine acid. If we substitute, as has 

 been very commonly done, hydrogen for phlogiston, the views of the 

 discoverer will be perfectly intelligible and quite correct. 



One of Scheele's first discoveries was that of tartaric acid, and he 

 pointed out the mode of pi-eparation, and this, with slight alterations, 

 is still adopted : this was in 1770, and in the following year his paper 

 on fluoric acid appeared in the Memoirs of the Stockholm Academy. 

 He at first erroneously supposed that the silica which he obtained in 

 the operation of preparing this acid was a compound of fluoric acid 

 and water ; but when the inaccuracy of this opinion was proved by 

 other experiments, he gave it up. 



In 1774 his experiments in manganese appeared in the Memoirs 

 above mentioned, and it was during his researches on this metal that 

 he discovered two bodies not previously known, namely, chlorine, 

 already mentioned, and the earthy substance barytes. In the follow- 

 ing year he proposed a new method of preparing benzoic acid, and also 

 published an essay on arsenic and its acid ; and a few years afterwards 

 he made known the preparation of arsenite of copper, since largely 

 employed as a pigment under the name of Scheele's or mineral green. 

 In subsequent years he published important papers on molybdena and 

 plumbago ; on milk, and the lactic acid which it contains when sour ; 

 and also on the metal tungsten. 



In 1782 his experiments on Prussian blue appeared : these were 

 instituted for the purpose of discovering the nature of the colouring- 

 matter, and they display great ingenuity, and sagacity in an uncommon 

 degree. It resulted from these researches that the Prussia acid, or 

 the colouring principle, was a compound of azote and carbon. 



He pointed out, in 1784, a process for preparing citric acid in a pure 

 crystalline form ; and not long afterwards he described processes by 

 which malic and gallic acids might be obtained in a state of purity. 



These are the most important of Scheele's discoveries ; and, with 

 scarcely any other exception than perhaps Priestley, no person has 

 pointed out so many new substances. It is to be observed that his 

 labours were conducted under very disadvantageous circumstances, 

 and during a life of short continuance, for he died at the early age of 

 forty-four years, at Koping near Stockholm, in 1786. 



SCHEEMAKERS, PETER, a Flemish sculptor, who obtained great 

 celebrity in England. He was born at Antwerp in 1691, and he was 

 the pupil of his father and a sculptor of the name of Delvaux. While 

 still young he visited Denmark, where he worked as a journeyman. 

 About the year 1728 he walked to Rome, and he was then so poor 



that he was forced to sell a considerable portion of his clothes to 

 obtain subsistence. From Rome, after only a short stay, Scheemakers 

 journeyed again, the greater part of the way on foot, to England, and 

 here he obtained considerable employment; but he paid a second vi.-it 

 to Rome, and after a two years' residence there he settled about 1735 

 for many years in England. He lived in Old Palace-yard, Westminster, 

 until 1741, when he removed to Vine Street, Piccadilly, when he became 

 the rival of Rysbrack and lloubiliac, and executed many important 

 works, including some of the principal monuments in Westminster 

 Abbey. The time of his death is not known, but according to his pupil 

 Nollekens, as related by Smith, he returned to Antwerp in 1770, and 

 there soon after died. Two sales however of his effects took place 

 in Covent Garden in 1756 and 1757. Among the articles sold was a 

 beautiful small copy in marble of the Laocoon, which was bought by 

 the Earl of Lincoln : a good mould was taken from it by a figure- 

 maker of the name of Yevini, from which excellent casts were made. 

 Scheemakers' works are very numerous ; they are elaborate in design 

 and costume, but possess few of the higher qualities of the art; 

 the marble is always remarkably well worked. There are monuments 

 by him in Westminster Abbey to Shakspere ; Dryden ; George, Duke 

 of Albemarle; John Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham; Admirals 

 Watson, Sir C. Wager, and Sir J. Balchen ; Commander Lord Aubrey 

 Beauclerk; and Doctors Chamberlin, Mead, and Woodward. He 

 made also the statue of of Sir John Barnard, in the old Royal 

 Exchange ; the statues in the India House of Admiral Pocock, Major 

 Lawrence, and Lord Clive ; the bronze statue of Guy in Guy's Hos- 

 pital; and the bronze statue of Edward VI. in St. Thomas's Hospital. 

 He executed also some busts, and many other sculptures for the 

 gardens of Stowe. (Smith, Nolleken* and his Timet, <kc. ; Immerzeel, 

 De Levens en Werken der Hollandsche en Vlaamsche Kunslchilders, &c.) 



* SCHEFFER, ARY, one of the most distinguished French his- 

 torical painters, was born in Holland, but of French parents, in 1795. 

 He studied art in Paris under the celebrated Baron Guerin, [GUERIN, 

 PIERRE NARCISSE] and practised in that city with constantly increas- 

 ing success, both historical and genre painting. Among his best 

 known pictures in these lines are his ' Christ the Comforter,' a work 

 of great power and beauty ; ' The Dead Christ ;' ' The Three Maries ;' 

 ' Francesca da Rimini and her Lover meeting Dante and Virgil in 

 Hell,' one of his finest productions ; Byron's ' Giaour ; ' Go the's 

 ' Faust,' ' Mignon,' &c. How skilful a portrait painter M. Scheffer is 

 when he practises that branch of art most of our readers will have 

 seen by his very striking portrait of Charles Dickens, which appeared 

 in the Exhibition of the Royal Academy in 1856. The style of Ary 

 Scheffer has little in common with that of his master Guerin. He seems 

 to have drawn his inspiration rather from the great revivers of art iu 

 Germany, with whom, both in turn of thought and manner, he has much 

 hi common. There are, to a great extent, in both the same loftiness 

 and simplicity, and the same somewhat pietistic devotionalism in 

 their religious works ; but Scheffer has engrafted thereupon a good 

 deal of Gallicism of style and colour, and the result is not always 

 satisfactory, at least beyond the atmosphere of Paris. But Ary 

 Scheffer is unquestionably a great painter, and some of his best works 

 leave little to be desired. To him moreover the French school owes 

 much, as one of the ablest and foremost of those who assisted in 

 breaking the fetters of the rigid classical conventionalism in which that 

 school had eo long been bound, while he set himself as resolutely 

 to oppose the extreme licence in which subsequently so many clever 

 artists sought to indulge. M. Ary Scheffer's strictly technical merits 

 are very high, though he is in his less important works at times some- 

 what careless. His drawing is true and graceful, his touch firm and 

 well adapted to his style, and his colour, though wanting in mellow- 

 ness and truth to nature, is often very beautiful. M. Scheffer is 

 looked up to as a leader in devotional art by his countrymen, and his 

 works are justly held in high estimation. From the different govern- 

 ments he has received the honours which on the Continent usually 

 reward marked success in art, science, or literature. His pictures 

 adorn the walls of the national palaces, and he bears the dignity of 

 an officer of the Legion of Honour. 



ARNOLD SCBEFKER, brother of Ary, born in Holland in 1796, 

 obtained in early life some celebrity in the literary world by his 

 ' Tableaux Politique de I'Allemagne,' 1815; his 'Essai sur quatre 

 Questions Politiques,' 1816; ' Le Nation Anglaise et le Gouvernement 

 Britannique ;' a ' History of Germany,' and other political and his- 

 torical works, and he became connected with the periodical press. 

 After the revolution of 1830, M. Arnold Scheffer associated himself 

 with M. Armaud Carrell, of the 'National,' and thenceforward dis- 

 tinguished himself by the acrimony of his attacks on the person and 

 government of Louis Philippe, the warm patron of his brother Ary. 

 M. Arnold Scheffer lived not only to see the monarchy of the barri- 

 cades overthrown, but also that republican supremacy for which he 

 had so diligently laboured. He died in December, 1853. 



* HENRI SCHEFFER, the youngest brother of Ary, was born 

 in Holland in 1799. Like his elder brother he early dedicated him- 

 self to art; studied like him in the atelier of Guerin; and like him, 

 though with inferior success, has practised religion?, historical, 

 genre, and portrait painting ; his pictures ranging through such sub- 

 jects as the ' Mater Dolorosa,' 'Joan of Arc on the way to Execu- 

 tion,' ' Reading the Bible,' and ' Charlotte Corday removed from the 



