many replies, being held to be an attack on Christianity. Dealing only with Christ’s humanity, it dwells on his work as the founder and king of a theocratic state, and points out the effect which this society, his church, has had upon the standard and active practice of morality among men. Some who condemned the book seem to have forgotten that it was avowedly “a fragment,” and that the author does not deny the truth of doctrines which he does not discuss. Its literary merit is unquestionable; it is written with vigour and dignity; its short and pointed sentences are never jerky, and there is a certain stateliness in the admirable order of their sequence. His later essay on Natural Religion, which, premising that super naturalism is not essential to religion, maintains that the negations of science tend to purify rather than destroy Christianity, satisfied neither the Christian nor the scientist, and though well written excited far less interest than his earlier work. In 1869 he was appointed professor of modern history at Cambridge. His influence as a teacher was stimulating; he prepared his lectures carefully and they were largely attended. In historical work he is distinguished as a thinker rather than a scholar. Avoiding research and disliking all attempts at a picturesque representation of the past, he valued history solely in its relation to politics, as the science of the state. He maintained that it should be studied scientifically and for a practical purpose, that its function was the solution of existing political questions. Hence he naturally devoted himself mainly to recent history, and specially to the relations between England and other states. His Life and Times of Stein, a valuable narrative of the anti-Napoleonic revolt, led by Prussia mainly at Stein’s instigation, was written under German influence, and shows little of the style of his short essays. Its length, its colourlessness, and the space it devotes to subsidiary matters render it unattractive. Far otherwise is it with his Expansion of England (1883). Written in his best manner, this essay answers to his theory that history should be used for a practical purpose; it points out how and why Great Britain gained her colonies and India, the character of her empire, and the light in which it should be regarded. As an historical essay the book is a fine composition, and as a defence of the empire is unanswerable and inspiring. It appeared at an opportune time, and did much to make Englishmen regard the colonies, not as mere appendages, but as an expansion of the British state as well as of British nationality, and to remind them of the value of Great Britain’s empire in the East. Seeley was rewarded for this public service by being made K.C.M.G., on the recommendation of Lord Rosebery. His last book, The Growth of British Policy, written as an essay and intended to be an introduction to a full account of the expansion of Great Britain, was published posthumously. Seeley died on the 13th of January 1895. He married in 1869 Miss Mary Agnes Phillott, who survived him.
See G. W. Prothero, Memoir prefixed to Growth of British Policy (London, 1895). (W. Hu.)
SÉES, a town of north-western France, in the department of Orne, on the river Orne 3 m. from its source and 13 m. N.N.E. of Alençon by rail. Pop. (1906) town, 2612; commune, 3982. The town is a bishop’s see and has a Gothic cathedral remarkable for the boldness of its architecture. The church dates from the 13th and 14th centuries and occupies the site of three earlier churches. The west front, which is disfigured by the buttresses projecting beyond it, has two stately spires of open work 230 ft. high. The nave was built towards the end of the 13th century. The choir, built soon afterwards, is remarkable for the lightness of its construction. In the choir are four bas-reliefs of great beauty representing scenes in the life of the Virgin; and the altar is adorned with another depicting the removal of the relics of St Gervais and St Protais. The church has constantly been the object of restoration and reconstruction. Other noteworthy buildings are the episcopal palace (1778), with a pretty chapel; the higher seminary, located in the old abbey of St Martin (supposed to be one of the fourteen or fifteen monasteries founded in the 6th century by St Evroult); and the sumptuous modern chapel of the Immaculate Conception, a resort of pilgrims.
The first bishop of Sées (Saium, Sagium) was St Lain, who lived about the 4th century. In the 9th century Sées was a fortified town and fell a prey to the Normans. At that period Sées consisted of two distinct parts, separated by the Orne—the bishop’s burgh, and to the south, the new or count’s burgh (Bourg le Comte). From 1356 the counts of Alençon were its possessors. It was captured and recaptured in the wars between Henry II. of England and his sons. In the Hundred Years’ War it was one of the first towns of Normandy to fall into the hands of the English (1418). Pillaged by the Protestants during the Wars of Religion, Sées attached itself to the League in 1589, but voluntarily surrendered to Henry IV. in 1590.
SEETZEN, ULRICH JASPER (1767–1811), German explorer
of Arabia and Palestine, was born, the son of a yeoman, in the
little lordship of lever in German Frisia on the 30th of January
1767. His father, who was a man of substance, sent him to the
university of Göttingen, where he graduated in medicine. His
chief interests, however, were in natural history and technology;
he wrote papers on both these subjects which gained him some
reputation, and had both in view in making a series of journeys
through Holland and Germany. He also engaged in various
small manufactures, and in 1802 obtained a government post in
Jever. In 1801, however, the interest which he had long felt
in geographical exploration culminated in a resolution to travel.
In the summer of 1802 he started down the Danube with a
companion Jacobsen, who broke down at Smyrna a year later.
His journey was by Constantinople, where he stayed six months,
thence through Asia Minor to Smyrna, then again through the
heart of Asia Minor to Aleppo, where he remained from November
1803 to April 1805, and made himself sufficiently at home with
Arabic speech and ways to travel as a native. Now began the
part of his travels of which a full journal has been published (April
1805 to March 1809), a series of most instructive journeys in
eastern and western Palestine and the wilderness of Sinai, and
so on to Cairo and the Fayum. His chief exploit was a tour round
the Dead Sea, which he made without a' companion and in
the disguise of a beggar. From Egypt he went by sea to Iidda
and reached Mecca as a pilgrim in October 1809. In Arabia he
made extensive journeys, ranging from Medina to Lahak and
returning to Mocha, from which place his last letters to Europe
were written in November 1810. In September of the following
year he left Mocha with the hope of reaching Muscat, and was found dead two days later, having, it is believed, been poisoned by the command of the imām of Sana.
For the parts of Seetzen’s journeys not covered by the published journal (Reisen, ed. Kruse, 4 vols., Berlin, 1854), the only printed records are a series of letters and papers in Zach’s Monatliche Correspondenz and Hammer’s Fundgruben. Many papers and collections were lost through his death or never reached Europe. The collections that were saved form the Oriental museum and the chief part of the Oriental MSS. of the ducal library in Gotha.
SEGANTINI, GIOVANNI (1858–1899), Italian painter, was born at Arco in the Trentino on the 15th of June 1858. His mother, who died in 1863, belonged to an old family of the mountain country. His father, who' was a man of the people, went to Milan, whence he set forth with another son to seek his fortune, leaving Giovanni behind. At the age of seven the child ran away; he was found perishing of cold and hunger, and was obliged to earn his bread by keeping the flocks on thehills. He spent his long hours of solitude in drawing. Owing to his fame having reached the ears of a syndic, he was sent back to Milan; but, unable to endure domestic life, he soon escaped again, and led a wandering life till he met at Arco with his half-Brother, who offered him the place of cashier in his provision shop. After more flights and more returns, Segantini remained at Milan to attend classes at the Brera, earning a living meanwhile by giving lessons and painting portraits. His first picture, “The Choir of Sant Antonio,” was noticed for its powerful quality. After painting this, however, he shook himself free by degrees of academical teaching, as in his picture “The Ship.” He subsequently painted “The Falconer” and “The Dead Hero,” and then settled in Brianza, near Como. There he gave himself up to the study of mountain life, and became in truth the painter of
