533 



SLEEMAN, SIR WILLIAM HENRY, K.C.B. 



SLEIDAN, JOHN. 



students from every part of Germany to Halle. {Skovorodcl went to 

 Halle, where he devoted three years to metaphysical and theological 

 studies ; and that his country might profit by the advantages which 

 he derived from foreign learning, he made at this time translations 

 from the Homilies of St. Chrysostom, and composed moral fables 

 which have been handed down orally by the inhabitants of the Ukraine, 

 the surest possible test of their popularity. After four years be 

 returned to Kiew, but was not re-admitted into the academy, nor 

 appointed to any post in which his energies might find exercise. 

 Upon thia he applied himself to mitigate the persecutions of the 

 United Greeks, concerning whom a few details are necessary. 



This sect had arisen in Russia from a kind of politico-religious 

 compact between the Holy See and the sovereign of Russia about 

 the year 1610, for the purpose of reducing Russia under the papal 

 dominion. In order to effect this, the two powers established a 

 medium sect, partly Romanist, partly Greek : the pope sent Jesuits 

 to teach the necessary doctrine; and the emperor Wladislaw imposed 

 this body of doctrine as the creed of the provinces on the border of 

 Russia and Poland, whose situation had already exposed them to the 

 influences of both parties. The Unites (as the members of the Greek 

 Church who acknowledge the supremacy of the pope, are called in 

 Russia) had already appeared in the north of Italy, in Illyria, and 

 Croatia ; but nowhere under similar circumstances. In Russia this 

 sect became a sort of rallying-point for the members of both Churches, 

 teaching the Russians gradually to confound distinctions of doctrine, 

 and so to think little of the purer faith and system handed down to 

 them by their ancestors. It has existed to the present day, and ao 

 late as 1840 the Emperor of Russia, by a dispensing power as strange 

 as that which he exercised originally, decreed that the United Greeks 

 should exist no more. But in the reign of Catherine II., under 

 which Skovoroda lived, the oppression of the inhabitants of the 

 Ukraine (who had lost the privileges guaranteed to them by Peter the 

 Great after the battle of Poltava) had so far spoiled their disposition, 

 aa to render them willing in their turn to oppress any one who was 

 weak enough to fear them. The United Greeks, who had from the 

 commencement of the sect lived under the protection of the throne, 

 were selected as the objects of their persecution. The most rational 

 way of checking these persecutions was to destroy the spirit which 

 gave them birth. To this task Skovoroda applied himself; in the 

 mixed character . of priest and minstrel, he proceeded from village to 

 village through his native Ukraine, preaching the words of peace, 

 singing the religious songs which he had composed for them, and iucul- 

 catiug the same truths under the attractive form of fables. Still he 

 constantly refused to head the sect of the Unites, as his object was 

 not to create or foster schism, but merely to give both parties the 

 benefit of his lessons. By this time the influence which he had justly 

 acquired, had pleaded strongly in his favour, and the academy con- 

 ferred on him the vicarage of his native village. In this station he 

 prohibited all rigour against the persecuted Unites, and endeavoured 

 to gain them over by his doctrines, which were enforced by an elo- 

 quence unequalled in the pulpit of South Russia. This at the same 

 time gave an impulse to the clergy of the province, which however 

 unhappily ceased with his death. Even when ordered by the synod, 

 he refused to use the means of persecution, and his refusal led to his 

 ejection from the cure which his exertions had so greatly benefited. 

 His occupation being gone, he resolved to indulge a long-felt desire to 

 visit Rome, the nurse of doctors and confessors, and to view her who, 

 in his eyes, had been glorious as the queen of nations. But almost 

 immediately on his arrival in that city he was recalled by the news of 

 fresh persecutions at home ; his works however show what an im- 

 pression Christian rather than Pagan Rome had left on his mind. 

 His return again checked the fury of the opposite parties ; but his 

 exertions, though successful, were only working out his own ruin. 

 The jealousy of the court at St. Petersburg could not allow a single 

 individual, in a cause however humane, to stand in the way of its 

 views. He was considered as a rebel, and orders for hia apprehension 

 were issued, which he evaded by taking refuge at the country residence 

 of a noble who had often pressed him to become tutor to his son. 

 This sanctuary of feudal power could not be invaded, even by the 

 imperial authority, and he might still have lived in a diminished 

 sphere of usefulness, but he died at the early age of forty-eight, and 

 traditions say that he foretold his own death the day before it 

 occurred, and dug his grave in the garden, unwilling to give this 

 last trouble to the friends to whom he thought he had long enough 

 been a burden. 



He was the only author in Little Russia who had written in proae : 

 his work called ' Symphonon ' was a solitary instance of that kind of 

 composition, and it has the advantage over the works written in 

 Great Russia in being formed rather on the ancient Greek model 

 than on that of the Latin or German languages, a style of which 

 Lomonossof was the founder. His translations have been already 

 noticed. Some original essays in the Latin and Russian languages, 

 which remain, show much good taste and elegance, with a great 

 extent of reading, qualifications which were little known in his age or 

 country. With the exception of the common songs of war and love, 

 all traditional songs were almost to the present day attributed by the 

 bandurists (the troubadours of the Ukraine) to Skovoroda. 



SLEEMAN, SIR WILLIAM HENRY, K.C.B., the son of Philip 



Sleeman, Esq., was born at Stratton, Cornwall, in 1788. In 1808, he 

 became a cadet in the East India Company's service at Bengal. He 

 served in the Nepaulese war of 1812 with distinction; and at its con- 

 clusion being laid up with an illness which disqualified him for active 

 employment, he spent fifteen months at the College of Fort William, 

 during which time he made himself master of the history and language 

 of the natives, and prepared himself for a career of future usefulness. 

 In 1816, he commended himself to Lord Moira (afterwards Marquis of 

 Hastings), then Governor General of India, by conducting an inquiry 

 into the claims arising out of the war in Nepaul, and in 1820 was 

 appointed agent in the Saugur and Nerbudda districts. Here he 

 employed his energies in the extinction of the atrocious systems of 

 Thuggee and Dacoity, on which he wrote several able pamphlets ; he 

 at the same time produced a larger work, entitled ' Military Discipline 

 in our Indian Army.' In 1842, he was commissioned by Lord Ellen- 

 borough to report on the condition of Buudelcund ; and in 1849 he 

 was promoted to the Residency at Lucknow, by Lord Dalhoueie, who 

 employed him in preparing for the reduction of Oude under British 

 laws. As a proof of the necessity for adopting stringent measures, it 

 should be mentioned that while resident at Lucknow, he intercepted a 

 letter sent from the King of Persia to the King of Oude, in which the 

 former spoke hopefully of a Persian invasion of India, and promised 

 in that event to secure to him his throne, on condition of betraying 

 the English into his hands. He also wrote a ' Treatise on Political 

 Economy,' and a 'Review and Analysis of the Peculiar Doctrines 

 of the System of Political Economy founded by Ricardo.' His 

 most popular works, however, are his 'Diary in Oude' (1852), and 

 hia ' Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Officer ' (1843), a work 

 which has been pronounced by competent authorities to be the best 

 adapted of all existing treatises on British India, to give an Englishman 

 a faithful picture of the actual state of the religious, moral, and social 

 condition of the natives of that country. He lived to see his measures 

 with regard to Oude carried into effect by his successor, Sir James 

 Outram, and to hear of the proclamation of Lord Dalhousie, an- 

 nouncing the actual annexation of that rich and important district. 

 Hia health gave way towards the close of 1855, and he died at sea on 

 his return to England, February 10, 1856, a few days after having 

 been created a Knight Commander of the Bath, at the special request 

 of Lord Dalhousie, to mark his distinguished services in the cause of 

 religion and humanity by the suppression of Thuggee. 



SLEIDAN, JOHN, whose original name was PHILIPSON, was born 

 in 1506 at Sleida, near Cologne, and assumed the name of Sleidan from 

 the place of his birth. After receiving hia first instruction in tEe 

 Gymnasium of his native town, he proceeded successively to the 

 universities of Liege, Cologne, Louvain, Paris, and Orleans, in which 

 he studied law, and attained the degree of licentiate ; but feeling a dis- 

 inclination to practise at the bar, he, while not neglecting his pro- 

 fessional studies, paid great attention to classical literature. In 1535 he 

 waa recommended to Cardinal du Bellay, the French minister in Paris, 

 whom he accompanied to the diet of Haguenau, where he displayed 

 much aptitude for public business, and he was also for a short time 

 the delegate of Francis I. of France to the diet of Ratisbon. Sleidan 

 had secretly adopted the opinions of Luther, and the edicts of Francis 

 against the partisans of Luther, compelled him to quit his service in 

 1542. He retired to Strasburg, where the Protestant princes of the 

 Schmalkaldic League appointed him their historian, and the council 

 of the town created him professor of law. In 1545 the Protestant 

 princes next employed him in uegociations with France and England, 

 in which latter country he married. The battle of Muhlberg, gained 

 by Charlea V. in 1547, having dissolved the League of Schmalkald, 

 Sleidau was deprived of hia employment, but the town of Strasburg 

 settled a pension on him ; and in 1551 sent him as a deputy from 

 their town to the Council of Trent, in which he displayed considerable 

 ability. When Maurice of Saxony captured Augsburg the council 

 dispersed, without having effected anything, and Sleidan returned to 

 Strasburg in 1552. On the approach of the French army under 

 Henry II. in the same year, he was sent as deputy to negociate with 

 him as to the demand of provisions for his army and admission into 

 the town aa he had come to their assistance. The latter was refused, 

 the town was garrisoned, and the French retreated. He continued to 

 occupy himself with state affairs till 1555, when the death of his wife 

 brought on a melancholy which incapacitated him for business, and 

 he died on December 31, 1556. 



During all his political avocations Sleidan's literary activity was con- 

 siderable. The chief source of his reputation however arises from his 

 ' De Statu Religiouis et Reipublicae, Carolo quinto Ciesare, Commentarii,' 

 in twenty-five books, which was published in 1555, to which waa 

 added a twenty-sixth book, found among his papers after his death, 

 the whole containing the history of the Reformation from 1517, 

 when Luther began to preach, till September 1556. The work is 

 highly valuable for the particularity and faithfulneas of the details ; 

 for the trustworthy sources from which he drew his facts, as well as 

 from hia own personal knowledge of many of them ; for its impar- 

 tiality and fairness, which extorted a favourable judgment even from 

 Pope Paul IV. (though an opposite opinion waa given by the Emperor 

 Charlea V., who called Sleidan and P. Jovius hia liars, as the one had 

 said too much ill and the other too much good of him), and the judg- 

 ment of the pope has been confirmed. The Latin also is simple and 



