77 
SEVILLE. 
SEVIERVILLE, a post town and capital of the United 
States, in Sevier county, Tennessee, on a branch of the 
French Broad; about 30miles south-east of Knoxville. 
SEVIGNAC, a small town in the north-west of France, 
department of the Gotes-du-Nord. Population 2100. 
SEVIGNE (Marie Rabutin), Marquise de, a distinguish¬ 
ed lady, was born in 1626. Her father, baron of Chantal 
ajid Bourbilly, died while she was very young, leaving her 
heiress of the house of Bussy Rabutin. Her rank, and the 
graces of her person and conversation, procured her many 
admirers, and in 1644 she married the Marquis de Sevigne 
who in 1651 was killed in a duel. She from this time de¬ 
voted herself to her children, and to the cultivation of her 
own mind. She had an extraordinary affection for her 
daughter, who, in 1669, married the Count de Grignan, and 
accompanied him to his government of Provence, and this 
separation gave rise to the greater part of the letters which 
have gained her so high a reputation, though she had many 
other correspondents. Many of M. de Sevigne’s letters are 
of a domestic nature, but others are enlivened with court 
anecdotes, remarks on men and books, and topics of the 
period in which they were written, which render them very 
amusing; and in point of style, they are models of epistolary 
writing, which, perhaps, have never been surpassed. In her 
letters to her daughter, the reader sometimes is hurt with the 
excess of flattery on her talents and beauty, which latter 
quality appears to have been a principal source of her 
maternal tenderness, and the preservation of it the great 
object of her anxiety. This lady died in 1696, at the age 
of 70. Though endowed with much penetration, and, to 
a certain degree, with a cultivated understanding, she did 
not rise much above the level of her age and sex in taste and 
principles. She was attached to rank and splendour, loved 
admiration, and was apt to be taken with frivolous accom¬ 
plishments in preference to solid worth. She had a deep 
sense of religion, but wished to conciliate it with the polite 
world, the manners and maxims of which, according to the 
rigid system of the Catholics, were entirely at variance with 
it. She has been censured for want of taste in her insensibility 
to the poetical merit of Racine, but this has been imputed to 
her prepossessions in favour of Corneille. 
SEVIGNE, a small river in the south-west of France, 
which falls into the Charente. 
' SEVIGNE, a small town in the north-east of France, 
department of the Ardennes. Population 800. 
SEVILLA, a river of Cuba, which rises near the south 
coast, runs south, and enters the sea, forming a good port at 
its mouth. 
SEVILLE, a province in the south-west of Spain, forming 
the western half of Andalusia, and still retaining the title of. 
kingdom, from its having been a distinct and independent 
state in the time of the Moors. Its form, though irregular, 
is on the whole compact, containing an area of 9500 square 
miles, with a population, in 1800, of 750,000; a number 
which, considering the repeated attacks of a pestilential dis¬ 
ease in the sea-ports, and the general indolence of the people, 
must have since experienced a very slow increase. The eccle¬ 
siastical division of this province is into two dioceses, the civil 
into ten districts. The chief towns are— 
Population. 
Seville, the capital. 100,000 
Cadiz ..... _I... 70,000 
Ecija .. 28,000 
Xeres. 20,000 
Ossuna... 15,000 
St. Mary’s, near Cadiz. 12,000 
Face of the Country, and Climate. —This province, par¬ 
ticularly in the south, abounds with fine scenery, the surface 
being diversified, not only with lofty mountains, but with vines 
and the finest fruit trees. The principal mountain chains 
are the Sierra Morena, the Sierra de Ronda, the Sierra de 
Constantina; but none are of great elevation, and they con¬ 
sist in various places of hills, either bare or covered with cork- 
Vol. XXIII. No. 1555. 
trees. They are intersected in some parts by ravines, in 
others by fertile valleys. The chief rivers of this province 
are the Guadalquivir, the Guadiana, the Xenil, the Tinto 
and the Odiel. The climate is warm, and even hot; but the 
extremes are tempered by cool breezes from the sea or from 
the mountains, so that the heat is less intense than in the 
adjacent province of Granada. The solano, or hot African 
wind, though not so prevalent as in other provinces, is at 
times so scorching as to blight the crop on the ground in a 
few hours, and to produce injurious effects on the human 
constitution. Thunder storms are not frequent, and the chief 
hazards to the labours of the husbandmen arise from drought. 
The winter may be compared to a iqild spring in the south 
of England, or the north of France. 
Products. —Mines of gold and silver are said to have been 
formerly wrought in this province, but at present there is 
nothing of the kind; the basis of most of the mountains is 
limestone or marble. The soil differs greatly according to 
situation, being in some places hard and stony, in others a 
fine black mould. Agriculture is extremely backward ; the 
spade and hoe being often used in situations where their 
place ought to be supplied by the plough and harrow. The 
pasturages are good in those situations where the frequency 
of rain, the height of the ground, or the use of irrigation, 
protect the soil from the intense heats. The climate is very 
favourable to vines ; the environs of Xeres produce the well- 
known sherry wine; those of Rota, tent wine (vino tinto); 
those of St. Lucar, the wine called in Spain mancinillo. 
Large tracks in the southern districts are covered with the 
fruit frees of a warm climate, oranges, lemons, citrons, limes; 
but other tracks of equal extent are almost desolate; thus, on 
going from Algesiras to Chiclana, a distance of 40 miles, the 
traveller sees only a few villages and scattered cottages. This 
is in a great measure the consequence of the old provincial 
laws and usages, than which nothing could be more adverse 
to improvement. Thus, though the climate is well adapted 
to olives, the culture of them has as yet been comparatively 
insignificant, the privilege of extracting oil from that fruit 
having long been confined to certain individuals. The price 
of oxen in country parts is moderate, but the town dues on 
butcher’s meat at Seville make it cost as much in that market 
as in London. The chief export of the province is the bay 
salt, prepared and shipped from Cadiz, and the neighbour¬ 
hood. 
Manufactures. —The silk manufacture is said to have 
been formerly flourishing in this part of Spain, but its extent 
was probably never greater than at present. The silk looms 
are chiefly in the capital. There are also in this province 
manufactures on a small scale of coarse woollen, linen, lea¬ 
ther, soap, pottery and hats, all for home consumption. The 
export trade of the province is carried on at Cadiz, and con¬ 
sists chiefly in the export of wine to England, and of mis¬ 
cellaneous articles to Spanish America. The chief sea-port 
in the south of the province is Algesiras. 
Inhabitants .—The national characteristics of the Anda¬ 
lusians (see that article), belong also to the inhabitants of the 
province of Seville. Less serious in their demeanour than 
the Castilians, and enjoying in a very scanty degree the 
advantage of education, the extent of their country has been 
such as to furnish one or two eminent men in almost every 
age. Among these were, in the time of the Romans, Balbus, 
the historian of Augustus, and Columella, the well-known 
writer on agriculture; in the Gothic ages, St. Isidore, bishop 
of Seville, in the 7th century; and, at a less remote date, 
Cervantes, Murillo, and the benevolent Las Casas. The ge¬ 
neral characteristic of the inhabitants is a kind of apathy, 
which was not roused to exertion even by the invasion of 
Buonaparte. Institutions for education are not wanting; but 
what benefit can be expected from them, in a country where 
the philosophy of Bacon and Newton is hardly yet introduced, 
or in nautical schools where the teachers are unacquainted with 
the method of finding the latitude by two observationsoi the 
sun’s altitude. To the bad government and other drawbacks 
common to Spain in general, this province has to add causes 
of peculiar suffering; the disturbances since 1S10, in thecolo- 
X . nies 
