210 



SEVIGNE SEWARD. 



against his enemies, Severus now found the peace 

 if' his family disturbed. Caracalla attempted to 

 murder his father, as he was concluding a treaty of 

 I'.-iicf with the Britons; and Severus, worn out 

 with infirmities, which the gout and the uneasiness 

 of his mind increased, soon after died at York, 

 A. D. 211, in the sixty-sixth year of his age. Se- 

 verus has been so much admired for his military 

 talents, that some have called him the most warlike 

 of the Roman emperors. As a monarch, he was 

 iTiiel; and it has been observed that he never did 

 an act of humanity or forgave a fault. In his diet, 

 he was temperate, and he always showed himself 

 an enemy to pomp and splendour. He loved the 

 appellation of a man of letters, and he even com- 

 posed a history of his own reign. 



SEVIGNE, MARIE DE RABUTIN, MARQUISE DE, 

 a French woman of quality, greatly distinguished 

 for her epistolary talents, was born in 1627. Her 

 father, the baron of Chantal, who was the head of 

 the house of Bussy Rabutin, left her, during 

 infancy, his sole heiress. The graces of her person 

 and conversation procured her many admirers; and 

 in 1644, she married the marquis de Sevigne, who 

 was killed in a duel in 1651, leaving her the mother 

 of a son and daughter. She formed no second 

 union, but devoted herself to the education of her 

 children, and to the cultivation of her mind, by 

 reading and literary society. She was extremely 

 attached to her daughter, who, in 1669, married 

 the count de Grignan, and accompanied him to his 

 government of Provence. The absence of her 

 daughter from the metropolis gave rise to the 

 greater part of the Letters which have gained 

 madame de Sevigne so much reputation. The 

 subjects of many of these epistles are so entirely 

 domestic as to produce little interest; but others 

 abound with court anecdotes, remarks on men and 

 books, and the topics of the day, which are con- 

 veyed with great ease and felicity. They are 

 models of the epistolary style, perfectly natural 

 from their expression, lively sentiment and descrip- 

 tion, and a playfulness which gives grace and 

 interest to trifles. In her letters to her daughter, 

 the reader is sometimes wearied with an excess of 

 flattery of her beauty and talents, the preservation 

 of the former of which seems to have formed the 

 principal object of her maternal anxiety. In fact, 

 although endowed with abilities and penetration, 

 she did not rise much above the level of her age in 

 taste and principles. She was highly attached to 

 rank and splendour, loved admiration, and felt the 

 usual predilection of high life for manners and ac- 

 complishments in preference to solid worth. She 

 had a strong feeling of religion, but was often 

 inconsistent in her sense of it, and in reference to 

 the proceedings against the French Protestants, 

 expresses herself with bigotry and want of feeling. 

 The most complete edition of her Letters is that 

 which appeared at Paris in 1818 (11 vols., 8vo.) 

 An English translation was published in London 

 about 1758. She died in 1696, at the age of 

 seventy. 



SEVILLE, SEVILLA (anciently Hispalis) ; a 

 city of Spain, in Andalusia, on the Guadalquivir, 

 capital of a province of the same name, forty-five 

 miles north of Cadiz, 250 south-west of Madrid; 

 Ion. 5 39' W. ; lat. 37 24' N. ; population, 94,000. 

 It is an archiepiscopal see, and stands in a fine 

 plain, surrounded by an old wall, built of cement, 

 with twelve gates, and 166 turrets. The interior 

 of the city is built in the Moorish style, the streets 



being often so narrow that a person can touch the 

 houses on both sides at once; and it is badly paved. 

 The squares are neither numerous nor spacious. 

 There are several beautiful public M'alks, one, in 

 particular, on the banks of the Guadalquivir. The 

 city contains a cathedral, twenty-nine churches, 

 eighty-four convents, and twenty-four hospitals. 

 The cathedral is the largest Gothic edifice in 

 Spain, and one of the largest churches in Europe. 

 It was built in the fifteenth century, contains 

 eighty-two altars, and has a tower 250 feet high, 

 considered the finest in Spain. Other conspicuous 

 edifices are the alcazar, or palace, a Moorish build- 

 ing, containing a library of 20,000 volumes, a 

 garden, &c. ; the longa or exchange, the artillery 

 school, and the mint. The houses generally cover 

 a large space, but towards the street they have 

 often a mean appearance, the Moors being accus- 

 tomed to confine their embellishments to the 

 interior. Seville contains an academy for the phy- 

 sical sciences, one for the fine arts, a medical 

 society, and a university, founded in 1502, almost 

 as backward as at the time of its foundation. The 

 silk manufactures of Seville were formerly exten- 

 sive. In the time of Ferdinand and Isabella, 

 it is said there were 6000 looms. These manu- 

 factures declined in the middle and end of the 

 seventeenth century, but revived again in the 

 eighteenth, and between 2000 and 3000 looms are 

 now employed. Other manufactures are coarse 

 woollens, leather, tobacco, and snuff. Vessels 

 drawing more than ten feet of water must unload 

 eight miles below the city, and the largest vessels 

 stop at St Lucar, at the mouth of the river. 

 Seville is one of the most ancient cities of Spain ; 

 by the Romans called Hispalis; by the Goths 

 Hispalia; by the Arabians Ixbilla; hence, by the 

 Castilians Sevilla. It was the residence of the 

 Gothic kings before they moved to Toledo. Fer- 

 dinand III., king of Castile, after a year's siege, 

 forced Seville to open its gates to him. At this 

 time it is said to have contained 600,000 inhabi- 

 tants; and upon the capitulation 300,000 Moors 

 abandoned the city . After the discovery of America, 

 it became the centre of the commerce of the new 

 world, and was very flourishing; but the -difficulty 

 in navigating the river, and the superior advantages 

 of the port of Cadiz, induced the government to 

 order the galleons to be stationed at the latter 

 place. 



SEVRES; a village, with 2700 inhabitants, 

 about half way between Paris and Versailles (two 

 leagues from each), lying near St Cloud, on the 

 Seine. It is celebrated for its glass and porcelain 

 manufactories. The porcelain of Sevres is unri- 

 valled for brilliancy of colour and delicacy of 

 execution. The finest specimens are made for the 

 court, and are annually exhibited at Christmas in 

 the halls of the Louvre, with the products of the 

 Gobelin looms See Porcelain, and Pottery. 



SEWARD, ANNA, daughter of Thomas Seward, 

 rector of Eyam, Derbyshire, and canon residentiary 

 of Lichfield, was born at Eyam, in 1747, and in 

 childhood exhibited a taste for poetical composition, 

 which was rather checked than encouraged by her 

 father. Miss Seward's first separate publication 

 was an Elegy on the Death of Captain Cook, with 

 an Ode to the Sun (1780, 4to.); and this was fol- 

 lowed by a Monody on Major Andre, with Letters 

 to her from Major Andre, written in 1769 (1781, 

 4to.), and Louisa, a Poetical Novel, in four Epis- 

 tles (1784, 4to.) In 1799, she published a collec- 



