64 



RYSWICK S. 



lands, and Cattinat was victorious in Italy. But 

 the landing of the French in Ireland, at the insti- 

 gation of the deposed James II., proved unfortu- 

 nate, and the French fleet under marshal Tourville 

 was totally defeated by the English and Dutch, 

 under the command of admiral Russell, near La 

 Hogue, May 29, 1692. Since that time, the 

 British naval power has always maintained an 

 ascendency over the French. In the mean time, 

 the duke of Vendome conquered Catalonia, and, 

 August 7, 1695, also Barcelona. This, and the 

 wish of Louis to dissolve the great European 

 league, before the Spanish throne should become 

 vacant, hastened the conclusion of a peace. Savoy 

 had already concluded a separate peace with France, 

 at Turin, August 29, 1696, and connected herself 

 with that power. Upon this, Sweden mediated 

 the general peace at the congress held at Ryswick, 

 from May 9, 1697, until September 20 of the same 

 year, when England, Spain, and Holland signed a 

 treaty of peace with France. Louis XIV. restored 



all his conquests in Catalonia mid tlie Spanish 

 Netherlands, with the exception of eit^ht \-t\vo 

 places, which had been taken by the process of re- 

 union (see Louis XIV.), and acknowledged William 

 111. as king of Great Britain and Ireland. The 

 emperor and empire first signed the treaty of peace 

 with France, October 30. Louis restored all the 

 places which he had taken possession of in Germany 

 by the process of reunion (see Louis XIV.), with 

 the exception of those which were situated in 

 Alsace, the sovereignty of which was conceded to 

 him. He likewise retained the free city of Stras- 

 burg, which was taken in 1681. The clause of 

 the fourth article of the treaty of Ryswick, accord- 

 ing to which the Catholic religion, which had been 

 introduced into the 1922 places now restored by 

 the French, was to remain as it then stood, gave 

 much dissatisfaction to the Protestants. France 

 restored all her conquests. The navigation of the 

 Rhine was declared free. See Actes et Mt'-moires 

 des Negotiations de la Paix de Ryswik (in 5 vols.) 



S. 



S ; the nineteenth letter of the English alphabet, 

 representing the hissing sound produced by emitting 

 the breath between the roof of the mouth and the 

 tip of the tongue placed just above the upper 

 teeth, so that the air is driven through the teeth. 

 From this circumstance, s has sometimes been 

 reckoned among the linguals (as the tongue is 

 essential in its pronunciation), sometimes among 

 the dentals (as the teeth co-operate in producing 

 the hissing sound). It is also one of the semi- 

 vowels, as it can be pronounced without the assis- 

 tance of a vowel, and the sound be prolonged 

 indefinitely, like /, m, n,r; and Missula, in Martian, 

 does not allow it to be a letter, but only a sibilus 

 (hissing.) In pronouncing s, the breath may be 

 driven with more or less violence over the end of 

 the tongue; hence, in most languages, it has a 

 twofold pronunciation sharp, as in sack, sin, this, 

 thus; and soft, as in muse, wise. The German 

 Sinn (pronounced ziri), and Maus (pronounced 

 mouse), and the French soit and base, are also 

 examples of these two sounds. In German, the s 

 is soft at the beginning of a syllable, and sharp at 

 the end or in the middle, while the contrary is 

 usually the case in English. But in some parts of 

 Germany (e. g. Holstein) s at the beginning is 

 sharp. But the Germans have, besides, a peculiar 

 character for the sharp s, being a contraction of sz, 

 which, when words containing it, are printed with 

 Roman characters, is changed into ss, as Ross, 

 Mass an inconvenient contrivance, as the ss, ac- 

 cording to the common German rule, always gives 

 the preceding vowel a short pronunciation, which 

 is not the case with sz. It is a fundamental rule 

 of etymology, that if a /word begins with two or 

 more consonants, the last of them only belongs to 

 the root, though the others are not always useless 

 additions. This rule is particularly true of words 

 beginning with s followed by one or more conso- 



nants; e. g. slime, from lime, Latin limus, in German 

 Lehm and Leim, which, instead of slime, has Schlrim 

 (pronounced shlime~). The German stumm, for the 

 English dumb, which, in German (formerly also 

 written dumb, now dumni), signifies stupid (one 

 " who has not much to say for himself"), slippery 

 (in German schliipfrig), from the Latin lubricm. 

 In both these cases, the s has an intensitive power, 

 which, in fact, it has very often, and of which 

 numberless instances are found in all languages. 

 But it is often put before words, apparently without 

 this meaning; as in Servus, from the ancient Roman 

 Erus, Eruus. The Greeks made Scythians of the 

 Kythi. Tinn (in German Zinn) is of the same root 

 with the Latin stannum. The Greek v(, x<, vX* 

 and vlu% became with the Latins SMS, sol, sylvia, and 

 sudor. This easy addition of s to words is also the 

 cause of its playing so prominent a part in the 

 declension of substantives and verbs in many, per- 

 haps most languages. Notwithstanding the predo- 

 minance of this letter in most languages, particu- 

 larly in English,* the people of the South sea 

 islands cannot pronounce it at all, and say, for 

 instance, instead of Ellis, Ellilti. The sounds of 

 the letters s, r, t, sh and th (which, in fact, repre- 

 sents but a simple sound, though written with two 

 characters in English, whilst the Spaniards have one, 

 the z), are all produced by a very similar motion of 

 the organs; and hence the frequent change of the s 

 into the other letters. (See the articles JR and T.) 

 The sound th is the transition between s and t; 

 hence the third person singular of the present tense, 

 ending, in German, in t, ended formerly, in English, 

 in th, and now in s; e. g. has, hath (Germ, hat); 



' If you hear two persons conversing in English at such a 

 distance that nothing but the general sound ot the; discourse 

 reaches your ear, they appear to be engaged in a continual 

 i\i^in'.f, Irom the frequent occurrence of the s. The constant 

 repetition <>f this sound produces a very bad ell'ect in English 

 vocal muti*. 



