312 



SEMPER 



SENECA 



bin body into the breach tluiH made, slaughtered 

 the armour-encumbered Aii-trimi knight* like 

 sheep, and threw the remainder into the utmost 

 confusion and dismay. The result was a decisive 

 victory for the Swiss, who thus asserted thrir 

 independence, and finally broke the effort* nf tlie 

 Austrian dukes to tutUlm* them. The anniversary 

 of this great victory is still celebrated by religious 

 solemnities on the field of battle. 



N>lll|MT. KARL, naturalist, was born at Altona 



on (illi .Inly |s:i'_>. studied at Kiel, Hanover, and 

 Wiir/.huig, ami, after travelling in the Philippines 

 and South Sc;i Islam).., Infinite professor of /oology 

 at \Vur/.burg. He has written on the Philippines, 

 on several prohlems of comparative anatomy, and 

 The Natural Conditions of Existence as they affect 

 Animal Life (trans. 1880). 



SrilllMTVi Vlllll. See HOUSE-LEEK. 



Srmpriiiifliam. See GILBERTINES. 



Sen, KEsiifii I'liiMiKii, an Indian religions 

 reformer, was born at the village of Garifa (Gouri- 

 pore) in Bengal, on 19th November 1838, and 

 received an education partly English, partly 

 Hindu. About 1858 he was' attracted by the 

 I trah mo Somaj (n. v. ), and SIM m afterwards began 

 the work of his lifetime, a steady endeavour to 

 promote the religious regeneration of his country- 

 men. In 1866 he founded the more liberal ' Urahmo 

 Somaj of India.' After a visit to England in 1870 

 he organised in Calcutta several schemes of chari- 

 table philanthropy on the lines of what he hail 

 seen in England. In 1878 a schism broke out in 

 his church, caused by his own autocratic temper, 

 and by his leanings to mysticism. His la- 1 years 

 were years of controversy, waning influence, and 

 disappointment ; and he died on 8th January 1884. 

 See Max-Muller, Biographical Essays (1884). 



8enaar. See SENNAAR. 



Srii.-ini-oiir. ETIENXE PIVERT DE, author of 

 Obermann, was liorn at Paris in Novemlier 1770. 

 In a sickly and secluded boyhood he read eagerly, 

 especially travels ; at fifteen entered for four years 

 the College de la Marche ; and here devoured 

 Malebranche, Helvetins, and the 18th-century 

 philosophers, losing his faith completely in the 

 process. At nineteen, with the connivance of his 

 mother, he left home to escape the course at Saint 

 Sulpice required by his imperious father, turned 

 his steps to the lake of Geneva, the next year at 

 Fribpttrg married a young girl who did not long 

 survive, lost his patrimony through the Revolution, 

 but returned to Paris about 1798, and thereafter 

 made a modest living by his pen, eked out with a 

 pension granted by Loois-PhUlppe on the recom- 

 mendation of Thiers and Villemain. He died at 

 Saint-Cloud in February 1846, asking that on his 

 grave might be placed these words only : fiternite, 

 dement man atile. His fame rests securely on 

 three books : Rfi'trie* tnr la Nature primitive de 

 I'll'immt (1799), Obermann (1804), and Libres 

 ll"i:t,iti,,ni tTun Solitaire Inctniiiii. In the first 

 IxMik we see the student of Rousseau weighed 

 down by the alworbing dogma of necessity, full of 

 aversion for all human society, returning to his 

 ideal in the patriarchal nomad, the vegetative 

 inMinet. and the primordial sensations of man. 

 In Obtnnann his hero travel- in tlie Yalais, next to 

 Kontainelileau, and again to Switzerland, writing 

 his thoughts the while in letters to n friend. Here 

 the atheism nil dogmatic fatalism of tlie Rtveriet 

 have given place to universal doubt no less over- 

 whelming. Nowhere is the desolating maladie 

 du si, .,.|,.' more ell. ,-tively expressed than in this 

 book, which, with affinities enough to Chateau- 

 briand and Madame de Stacl, is yet completely 

 original in ito inwardness, its sincerity, the deli- 



cate feeling for nature it exhibits, and the melan- 

 choly eloquence of many of iu passages. ' Though 

 nay be called a sentimental writer,' says 

 Matthew Arnold, 'and though Olicrmnnn, a collec- 

 tion of letters from Switzerland treating almost 

 entirely of nature and of the human soul, may 

 be called a work of sentiment. Srnaucour has a 

 gravity and severity which distinguish him from 

 all other writers of the sentimental school. The 

 world is with him in his solitude far le-~ than it is 

 with them; of all writers he is the most perfectly 

 isolated and the least attitudinising. His chief 

 work, too, has a value and power of its own, apart 

 from these merits of its author. The stir of all the 

 main forces, by which modern life is and has been 

 impelled, lives in the letters of ObcrimiHii : the 

 dissolving agencies of the 18th century, the fiery 

 storm of the French Revolution, the first faint 

 promise and dawn of that new world which our 

 own time is but now more fully bringing to light 

 all these are to be felt, almost to ! touched, there. 

 To me, indeed, it will always seem that tlie im- 

 press! venem of this production can hardly be rated 

 too high.' 



S6nancour was neglected in his day, but he has 

 found fit audience in George Sand, kainte-Beuve, 

 and, amongst ourselves, Matthew Arnold, whose 

 two elegies, In Memory of the Author of Ober- 

 iiiinin and Obermnnn Once Afore, are known to all 

 lovers of English poetry. 



See Sainte-Benve's two essays in Portrait! Contempo- 

 raini, voL i. ; and the Cornitill Magazine, vol. xlv. 



Senate* the deliberative assembly of the 

 Roman people (see ROME, Vol. VIII. p. 789). In 

 modern republics, as in France (q.v.) and the United 

 States (q.v.), the senate is the upper chamber of the 

 legislature. The governing body of universities 

 usually is the senate (see UNIVERSITIES). 



Sendal, a town on the east coast of the main- 

 land of Japan, 220 miles NNE. of Tokyo by rail. 

 Pop. (1890)90,231. 



Seneca. Anno-us Seneca (pr.vnomen un- 

 known), a Spaniard from Corduba (Cordova), 

 was born about 54 B.C., and, having come to 

 Rome as a youth, studied eloquence under 

 Marillus. We next find him again in Spain, 

 married to Helvia, by whom he had three sons 

 Novatus, Lucius Anna -us, and Mela (father of 

 I. ui-an the poet). About 3 A.D. he returned to 

 the capital a second time to busy himself with 

 rhetoric, till, under Til>eritis, he sought his native 

 country once more, and died there, 39 A.D. He 

 was a great admirer of Cicero. \Vitli much of 

 the antique Roman fibre, he hail moral ballast 

 enough to steer clear of the excesses on which i 

 contemporary rhetoricians made shipwreck. Be- " 

 sides a historical work, now lost, he wrote in 

 later life Oratorum et Rhetontm Sen/entice ; 

 Divitionet ; Colores ; ten books of 'Contiuvr^i.i ,' 

 of which the first, second, seventh, ninth, and 

 tenth are complete, the remainder surviving only 

 in extracts; and one book of ' Suasoriu- the 

 whole, fragmentary as they are, of high im|>ort- 

 ance for the history of Roman rhetoric. The Ijest 

 edition is that of H. J. Miiller( Prague, 1887). while 

 Sander's X/irdrliijtbraitrh ties l!hctor.i Anniitu 

 Seneca (1880) is of special value to the student of 

 I .at in style. 



Seneca* L. ANN^ECS, son of the preceding, also 

 a inith" i if C'irduha, was born about 4 H.O., and 

 carefully educated for the bar, under his father's 

 eye, in Rome, where, in Caligula's reign, he 

 narrowly escaped the death to which that emperor, 

 jealous of his enlightened litaralism, had destined 

 him. After years of exclusive devotion to philo- 

 sophy and rhetoric, he entered the Curia, but, 41 

 A.D., lost the favour he had won with Claudius \>y 



