The Nuttall Encyclopaedia Part 397

SEALED ORDERS, the orders given the commanding officer of a s.h.i.+p or squadron that are sealed up, which he is not allowed to open till he has proceeded a certain length into the high seas; an arrangement in order to ensure secrecy in a time of war.

SEA-SERPENT, a marine monster of serpent-like shape whose existence is still a matter of question, although several seemingly authentic accounts have been circulated in attestation. The subject has given rise to much disputation and conjecture on the part of naturalists, but opinion mostly favours the supposition that these gigantic serpent-like appearances are caused by enormous cuttlefish swimming on the surface of the water, with their 20 ft. long tentacles elongated fore and aft. Other fishes which might also be mistaken for the sea-serpent are the barking-shark, tape-fish, marine snake, &c.

SEBASTIAN. ST., a Roman soldier at Narbonne, and martyred under Diocletian when it was discovered he was a Christian; is depicted in art bound naked to a tree and pierced with arrows, and sometimes with arrows in his hand offering them to Heaven on his knees, he having been shot first with arrows and then beaten to death.

SEBASTIANO DEL PIOMBO, Italian painter, born at Venice; was an excellent colourist, and collaborated with Michael Angelo (1485-1547).

SEBASTOPOL (34), a fortified seaport of Russia, situated on a splendid natural harbour (4 m. by ), on the SW. of the Crimea; during the Crimean War was destroyed and captured by the French and English after a siege lasting from October 9, 1854, to September 18, 1855; has, since 1885, been restored, and is now an important naval station; exports large quant.i.ties of grain.

SEBILLOT, PAUL, celebrated French folk-lorist; _b_. 1843.

SECKER, THOMAS, archbishop of Canterbury, born at Sibthorpe, Nottinghams.h.i.+re; first studied medicine and graduated at Leyden in 1721, but was induced to take orders, and after a year at Oxford was ordained a priest in 1723; held various livings till his appointment to the Primacy in 1758; noted as a wise and kindly ecclesiastic (1693-1768).

SECOND-SIGHT, name given to the power of seeing things future or distant; a power superst.i.tiously ascribed to certain people in the Highlands of Scotland.

SECULARIST, name given to one who, discarding as irrelevant all theories and observances bearing upon the other world and its interests, holds that we ought to confine our attention solely to the immediate problems and duties of this, independently of all presumed dependence on revelation and communications from a higher sphere.

SEDAN (20), a town of France, in department of Ardennes, on the Maas, 164 m. NE. of Paris; once a strong fortress, but dismantled in 1875, where in 1870 Napoleon III. and 86,000 men under Marshal Macmahon surrendered to the Germans; noted for its cloth manufactories. Previous to the Edict of Nantes was a celebrated centre of Huguenot industry and theological learning.

SEDGEMOOR, district in central Somersets.h.i.+re, 5 m. SE. of Bridgwater, scene of a famous battle between the troops of James II. and those of the Duke of Monmouth on July 6, 1685, in which the latter were completely routed.

SEDGWICK, ADAM, geologist, born at Dent, Yorks.h.i.+re; graduated at Cambridge in 1808, became a Fellow in the same year, and in 1818 was elected to the Woodward chair of Geology; co-operated with Murchison in the study of the geological formation of the Alps and the Devonian system of England; strongly conservative in his scientific theories, he stoutly opposed the Darwinian theory of the origin of species; his best work was contributed in papers to the Geological Society of London, of which he was President 1829-1831; published "British Palaeozoic Rocks and Fossils"

(1785-1873).

SEELEY, SIR JOHN ROBERT, author of "Ecce h.o.m.o," born in London; studied at Cambridge, became professor of History there in 1869 on Kingsley's retirement; his "Ecce h.o.m.o" was published in 1865, a piece of perfect literary workmans.h.i.+p, but which in its denial of the self-originated spirit of Christ offended orthodox belief and excited much adverse criticism; wrote in 1882 a work ent.i.tled "Natural Religion,"

in which he showed the same want of sympathy with supernatural ideas, as also several historical works (1834-1895).

SEGOVIA (14), a quaint old Spanish city, capital of a province (154) of the same name; crowns a rocky height looking down on the river Eresma, 32 m. NW. of Madrid; its importance dates from Roman times; has a great aqueduct, built in Trajan's reign, and a fine Moorish castle and Gothic cathedral; cloth-weaving the only important industry.

SEGU (36), a town of West Africa, on the Joliba, 400 m. SW. of Timbuctoo; chiefly occupied by trading Arabs; once the capital of a now decayed native State.

SEINE, an important river of France, rises in the tableland of Langres, takes a winding course to the NW., pa.s.sing many important towns, Troyes, Fontainebleau, Paris, St. Denis, Rouen, &c., and discharges into the English Channel by a broad estuary after a course of 482 m., of which 350 are navigable.

SEINE (3,142), the smallest but most populous department of France, entirely surrounded by the department of Seine-et-Oise; Paris and its adjacent villages cover a considerable portion of the area; presents a richly wooded, undulating surface, traversed by the Seine in a NW.

direction.

SEINE-ET-MARNE (356), a north-midland department of France lying E.

of Seine; the Marne crosses the N. and the Seine the S.; has a fertile soil, which grows in abundance cereals, vegetables, and fruits; many fine woods, including Fontainebleau Forest, diversify its undulating surface.

Melun (capital) and Fontainebleau are among its important towns.

SEINE-ET-OISE (628), a department of NW. France, encloses the department of Seine; grain is grown in well-cultivated plains and the vine on pleasant hill slopes; is intersected by several tributaries of the Seine, and the N. is prettily wooded. Versailles is the capital; Sevres and St. Cloud are other interesting places.

SEINE-INFeRIEURE (839), a maritime department of North-West France, in Normandy, facing the English Channel; is for the most part a fertile plain, watered by the Seine and smaller streams, and diversified by fine woods and the hills of Caux; is a fruit and cider producing district; has flouris.h.i.+ng manufactures. Rouen is the capital, and Havre and Dieppe are important trading centres.

SELBORNE, ROUNDELL PALMER, EARL OF, Lord Chancellor, born in Oxfords.h.i.+re; called to the bar in 1837, and after a brilliant career at Oxford entered Parliament in 1847, and in 1861 became Solicitor-General in Palmerston's ministry, receiving at the same time a knighthood; two years later was advanced to the Attorney-Generals.h.i.+p; in 1872 was elected Lord Chancellor, a position he retained till 1874, and again held from 1880 to 1885; refused to adopt Mr. Gladstone's Home Rule policy for Ireland and joined the Liberal-Unionists, but declined to take office under Lord Salisbury; was raised to an earldom in 1882, received various honorary degrees; greatly interested himself in hymnology, and edited "The Book of Praise"; wrote also several works on Church questions (1812-1895).

SELBY (6), a market-town of Yorks.h.i.+re, on the Ouse, 15 m. S. of York; has a noted cruciform abbey church, founded in the 12th century, and exhibiting various styles of architecture; has some boat-building; manufactures flax, ropes, leather, bricks, &c.

SELDEN, JOHN, born at Salvington, Suss.e.x; adopted law as a profession, and was trained at Clifford's Inn and the Inner Temple, London; successful as a lawyer, he yet found time for scholarly pursuits, and acquired a great reputation by the publication of various erudite works bearing on old English jurisprudence and antiquities generally; a "History of t.i.thes" (1618), in which he combats the idea that "t.i.thes"

are divinely inst.i.tuted, got him into trouble with the Church; was imprisoned in 1621 for encouraging Parliament to repudiate James's absolutist claims; from his entrance into Parliament in 1623 continued to play an important part throughout the troublous reign of Charles; sincerely attached to the Parliamentary side, he was one of the framers of the Pet.i.tion of Right, and suffered imprisonment with Holies and the others; sat in the Long Parliament, but, all through out of sympathy with the extremists, disapproved of the execution of Charles; held various offices, e. g. Keeper of the Rolls and Records in the Tower; continued to write learned and voluminous works on biblical and historical subjects, but is best remembered for his charming 'Table-talk, a book of which Coleridge remarked, "There is more weighty bullion sense in this book than I can find in the same number of pages of any uninspired writer" (1584-1654).

SELENE, in the Greek mythology the moon-G.o.ddess, the sister of Helios, and designated Phoebe as he was Phoebus; she became by Endymion the mother of 50 daughters.

SELF-DENYING ORDINANCE, a resolution of the Long Parliament pa.s.sed in 1644, whereby the members bound themselves not to accept certain executive offices, particularly commands in the army.

SELIM I., a warlike sultan of Turkey, who, having dethroned and put to death his father, Bajazet II., entered upon a victorious career of military aggrandis.e.m.e.nt, overcoming the Persians in 1515, conquering and annexing Egypt, Syria, and the Hejaz in 1517, finally winning for himself the position of Imam or head of the Mohammedan world; greatly strengthened his country, and strove according to his lights to deal justly with and ameliorate the condition of the peoples whom he conquered (1467-1520).

SELJUKS, a Turkish people who in the 10th century, headed by a chief named Seljuk (whence their name), broke away from their allegiance to the khan of Kirghiz, adopted the Mohammedan faith, and subsequently conquered Bokhara, but were driven across the Oxus and settled HI Khora.s.san; under Toghril Beg, grandson of Seljuk, they in the 11th century won for themselves a wide empire in Asia, including the provinces of Syria and Asia Minor, whose rulers, by their cruel persecution of Christian pilgrims, led to the Crusade movement in Europe. The Seljuks were in part gradually absorbed by the advancing Mongol tribes, while numbers fled westward, where they were at length incorporated in the Ottoman Empire in the 14th century.

SELKIRK (6), county town of Selkirks.h.i.+re, on the Ettrick, 40 m. SE.

of Edinburgh; famed at one time for its "Souters"; is a centre of the manufacture of tweeds.

SELKIRKs.h.i.+RE (27), a south inland county of Scotland; extends S.

from the corner of Midlothian to Dumfriess.h.i.+re, between Peebles (W.) and Roxburgh (E.); the gra.s.sy slopes of its hills afford splendid pasturage, and sheep-farming is a flouris.h.i.+ng industry; manufactures are mainly confined to Galas.h.i.+els and Selkirk; is traversed by the Ettrick and the Yarrow, whose romantic valleys are a.s.sociated with much of the finest ballad literature of Scotland.

SELWYN, GEORGE, a noted wit in the social and literary life of London in Horace Walpole's time, born, of good parentage, in Gloucesters.h.i.+re; was expelled from Oxford in 1743 for blasphemy; four years later entered Parliament, and supported the Court party, and received various government favours; his vivacious wit won him ready entrance into the best London and Parisian society; is the chief figure in Jesse's entertaining "George Selwyn and his Contemporaries"

(1719-1791).