405 



SENNERTUS, DANIEL. 



SEPULVEDA, JUAN GINES DE. 



400 



of fifteen hundred florins per annum, and with permission to carry on 

 his private business also. The subsequent improvements effected by 

 Senufelder were attributed by himself to the ease and independence 

 which this honourable engagement afforded. 



As early as 1809 Sencfelder had commenced a collection of specimens 

 to illustrate an account of his invention ; but circumstances impeded 

 the completion of the work, which might probably never have been 

 finished but for the exertions of Mr. Von Schlichtegroll, director of 

 the Royal Academy of Munich, who, in 1816 and 1817, published 

 several letters on the subject, urging the publication of a work that 

 should perpetuate the memory of the invention, and set at rest the 

 erroneous rumours then prevalent on the subject. Senefrlder there- 

 fore wrote and published an account of his inventions and discoveries, 

 with a preface by Von Schlichtegroll, and a dedication to the king of 

 Bavaria. This work was shortly translated Loth into French and 

 English, the latter in 1819, in a quarto volume, entitled 'A Complete 

 Course of Lithography,' &c. It has no pretension to literary merit, but 

 cannot fail to prove interesting as a simple and circumstantial record 

 pf the experiments and difficulties attending the invention of a highly 

 important art. The illustrations of various styles, some of which are 

 curious, add to the value of the work, to which is prefixed a portrait 

 of Senefelder. 



The rapid extension of lithography, even before the publishing of 

 this book, must have been highly gratifying to the inventor, who 

 observed on this subject, " I esteem myself happy in seeing, in my 

 own lifetime, the value of my invention so \iniversally appreciated ; and 

 in having myself been able to attain in it a degree of perfection which, 

 in a thousand other inventions, has not been reached till long after the 

 death of the first inventor." In 1819 the Society for the Encourage- 

 ment of Arts, &c., in London, voted their gold medal to Senefelder, 

 as the inventor of lithography. Senefelder married about the time of 

 his appointment to the office in which, we believe, he spent the 

 remainder of his life. He died at Munich, February 26, 1834, in his 

 sixty-third year. 



SENNERTUS, DANIEL, was born at Breslau in 1572. In 1601 

 he took the degree of Doctor of Medicine at Wiirtemberg, and in the 

 following year was elected professor there. He died of the plague in 

 1637. During his life, and for many years after, Sennertus enjoyed 

 the highest possible reputation as a learned and skilful physician. His 

 works, which are very numerous and long, prove him to have been a 

 skilful compiler from those of others. He was the first to endeavour 

 to reconcile the then modern doctrines of Paracelsus with the ancient 

 ones of Galen, which they had well nigh overturned ; and he appears 

 to have been much less credulous than most of his contemporaries on 

 the subjects of alchemy, the universal remedy, and others of the like 

 kind. The whole works of Sennertus were published in folio at 

 Venice in 1645, and in subsequent years at Paris and Lyon. 



SEPPINGS, SIR ROBERT, F.R.S. the distinguised naval architect, 

 received his education as a shipwright under Sir John Henslow, 

 surveyor of the uavy, and continued in connection with the important 

 service of our dock-yards during a period of fifty years. He was the 

 author of many improvements of the first order in our naval architec- 

 ture, including the system of diagonal bracing and trussing, which he 

 devised while he was master shipwright of Chatham Dockyard. This 

 system formed the subject of two memorable papers in the ' Philoso- 

 phical Transactions ' of the Royal Society, for the years 1814 and 1818, 

 one by Sir R. Seppings in each of those years, and one by the cele- 

 brated Dr. T. Young, For. Sec. R.;S. [YOUNG, TIIOMAS.] in the former, 

 and which attracted an unusual amount of public attention. The great 

 principle of this method was such an arrangement of the principal 

 timbers as would oppose a powerful mechanical action to every change 

 of position of the ribs and other timbers in every part of the ship, 

 thus firmly compacting together the entire fabric, and preventing that 

 perpetual racking of beams and working of joints which in the ancient 

 system of ship-building, produced hogging, creaking, leakage, and 

 rapid decay ; arid filling up likewise every vacuity between the 

 timbers, which are occasionally the unavoidable receptacles for 

 foul air, filth, vermin, and various other sources of rottenness and 

 disease. These important improvements, though opposed to the 

 inveterate prejudices' of the older shipwrights, a body of men who 

 have not sufficiently valued and understood, in this country at Iea3t, 

 the just principles of mechanical action, in the practical operation of 

 Bhip-building, were universally adopted in the navy under the 

 enlightened administration of Mr. Charles York, and the powerful 

 advocacy of Sir John Barrow in the ' Quarterly Review ; ' and the merit 

 of their author was acknowledged by his appointment as surveyor of 

 the navy, and by the award of the Copley Medal of the Royal Society, 

 of which he became a Fellow on the 10th of November 1814. 



"While the claims of Sir R. Seppings to the invention of the system 

 of diagonal bracing in naval architecture is indubitable, it may not be 

 out of place to record here the following point of information. It can 

 be no derogation to the merits of discoverers or inventors to show 

 that their progress is a portion of the general advance of the human 

 mind. Sir John F . W. Herschel has stated in a letter to Mr. C. R. 

 Weld, Assist. Sec., R.S., inserted in the ' History of the Royal Society ' 

 by the latter, that he is "disposed to think that the system of triangular 

 arrangement adopted by Sir W. Herschel in the wood-work of his great 

 telescope being a perfect system of diagonal bracing," or rather 



that principle to which the " diagonal bracing " system owes its 

 strength, was original with his father at the time of its construction 

 that is about the year 1786. 



Sir Robert Seppings introduced other improvements into our system 

 of naval architecture. The admiralty presented him with 1GOO/. as a 

 reward for his simple yet most useful invention of an improved block 

 for supporting vessels, by which their keels and lower timbers were 

 much more easily and promptly examined and repaired. It was pro- 

 duced while he filled the office of master-shipwright assistant in 

 Plymouth dockyard, and is described in the ' Transactions of the 

 Society of Arts ' vol. xxii. p. 275-292, the Society having awarded him 

 their gold medal for it in the year 1804. His plan for lifting masts out 

 of the steps, which superseded the employment of sheer hulks for that 

 purpose, has been the means of saving much expense and labour. His 

 new mode of framing ships has led to a much more extensive use of 

 short and small timbers, which were formerly of little value ; but the 

 most valuable of all the reforms of construction for which the navy 

 of England is indebted to him was the substitution of round for flat 

 sterns, which afford increased strength to the framework of the ship, 

 greater protection against pooping in heavy seas, an almost equal 

 power of anchoring by the stern and by the bow, a more secure and 

 effective position for the rudder, and a stout platform for a powerful 

 battery, embracing a sweep of more than 180. This capital improve- 

 ment was strenously opposed by many distinguished naval officers, 

 who regretted the loss of those magnificent cabins, which were better 

 suited for their purposes of state than of service, but the good sense 

 of less prejudiced judges happily prevailed, and secured for our ships 

 of war an additional claim upon the respect of our enemies. The 

 select committee on finance of the House of Commons on several 

 occasions bore testimony to his official merits, and he received the 

 marked approbation of both houses of parliament. 



Foreign nations were not tardy in acknowledging the value of the 

 improvements in ship-building originated by Sir R. Seppings, and their 

 author received many substantial proofs of their sense of his merits ; 

 the Emperor Alexander of Russia, and the kings of Denmark and 

 Holland, presented him with memorials of their appreciation of 

 what he b,ad effected. We may safely affirm, that in the national 

 record of the great benefactors of their country, there are few names 

 which will deserve more grateful commemoration than that of the 

 object of this notice. In addition to the papers on the diagonal 

 bracing already alluded to, Sir R. Seppings communicated to the Royal 

 Society a paper ' On a new principle of constructing ships in the mer- 

 cantile navy,' which was inserted in the 'Philosophical Transactions,' 

 for 1820. Dr. Young's paper, also referred to above, though not com- 

 municated to the Royal Society till 1814, had been presented in tho 

 form of a report to the Board of Admiralty in 1811. It will be found 

 reprinted in Dr. Peacock's edition of the 'Miscellaneous Works "of 

 Young, (vol. i. p. 535-562) together with the official correspondence 

 relative to it between the latter and Sir J. Barrow. Sir R. Seppings was 

 an honorary member of the Cambridge University Philosophical Society, 

 and a corresponding member of the Philosophical Society of Rotterdam. 

 It had been proposed by the University of Oxford to confer upon him 

 the honorary degree of D.C.L., at the commemoration of 1836, but 

 severe indisposition compelled him to decline it. He died at his house 

 at Tauntonin Somersetshire, on the 25th of April 1840, aged seventy- 

 two, leaving several children ; his wife's decease had taken place a few 

 years before. 



SEPU'LVEDA, JUAN GINE'S DE, an eminent Spanish scholar and 

 historian, was born at Pozoblanco near Cordova, in 1490. After pur- 

 suing his studies, first in Cordova and then at the university of 

 Alcald, he embarked for Italy in June, in 1515, and reached Bologna, 

 where he obtained admission into the college founded by Cardinal 

 Albornoz. There he made rapid progress in theology and the learned 

 languages under the guidance of the celebrated Pomponazzi (Peter), 

 translated part of Aristotle, and wrote the life of Cardinal Albornoz : 

 ' De Vita et Rebus Gestis ^Egidii Cardinalia Albornotii,' lib. iii., fol., 

 Rome, 1521. Sepulveda afterwards went to Rome, where he found a 

 protector in Cardinal Carpi, who gave him a lodging in his palace. 

 Thence he passed to Naples, where he assisted Cardinal Caetano in 

 revising the Greek text of the New Testament. In 1529 Sepulveda 

 returned to Rome and entered the service of Cardinal Quinones ; but 

 in 1536, having been appointed chaplain and historiographer to 

 Charles V., he quitted- Italy and arrived in Spain, where he was 

 entrusted with' the education of the eldest son of that emperor, after- 

 wards Philip II. About this time, Bartholome' de las Casas, bishop of 

 Chiapa, so celebrated for his endeavours to alleviate the sufferings of 

 the Indians, was pleading their cause at court with all the zeal and 

 fervour of a true philanthropist. Sepulveda, having been prevailed 

 upon by the enemies of Las Casas to refute his arguments, wrote a 

 book, entitled ' Democrates Secundus, seu de Justis Belli Causis,' &c., 

 in which he undertook to prove that the wars of the Spaniards in 

 America were just, and founded on their right to subdue the inhabi- 

 tants of a world discovered by them ; that it was the duty of the 

 Americans to submit to be governed by the Spaniards on account of 

 their superior knowledge and wisdom; and that if they would nob 

 voluntarily acquiesce in the Spanish yoke, they might and ought to 

 be compelled to do so by force of arms. He further declared that_ his 

 only object in writing that work wa* to establish the rights of the kings 



