The Nuttall Encyclopaedia Part 393

SATURNALIA, a festival in ancient Rome in honour of Saturn, in which all cla.s.ses, free and bond, and young and old, enjoyed and indulged in all kinds of merriment without restraint.

SATYRS, in the Greek mythology semi-animal woodland deities who roamed the hills generally in the train of DIONYSUS (q. v.), dancing to rustic music; represented with long pointed ears, flat noses, short horns, and a hair-clad man's body, with the legs and hoofs of a goat; they are of l.u.s.tful nature, and fond of sensual pleasure generally.

SAUERKRAUT, a favourite article of food in Germany and elsewhere in North Europe; formed of thinly sliced young cabbage laid in layers, with salt and spice-seeds, pressed in casks and allowed to ferment.

SAUERTEIG (i. e. leaven), an imaginary authority alive to the "celestial infernal" fermentation that goes on in the world, who has an eye specially to the evil elements at work, and to whose opinion Carlyle frequently appeals in his condemnatory verdict on sublunary things.

SAUL, a Benjamite, the son of Kish, who fell in with Samuel as he was on the way in search of his father's a.s.ses that had gone astray, and from his stature and stately bearing was anointed by him to be first king of Israel; he distinguished himself in the field against the enemies of his people, but fell at the hands of the Philistines after a reign of 40 years, and after several insane attempts on the life of David, who had been elected to succeed him.

SAUMAREZ, JAMES, BARON DE, English admiral, born at Guernsey; entered the navy at 13, distinguished himself in the American War, captured a French frigate in 1793, which brought him knighthood; was second in command at the battle of the Nile, and gained a great victory off Cadiz in 1801; was raised to the peerage in 1831 (1757-1836).

SAUMUR (14), a town of France, in the department of Maine-et-Loire, situated on the Loire and partly on an island in the river, 32 m. SE. of Angers; once famous for its Protestant theological seminary, and till the Edict of Nantes a stronghold of the Huguenots; has interesting churches, a castle (still used as an a.r.s.enal), and a noted cavalry school; has trade in grain, dried fruits, rosaries, &c.

SAUSSURE, HORACE BENEDICT DE, geologist and physicist, born in Geneva; was the first to ascend Mont Blanc in the interest of science, and was distinguished for his researches in the same interest all over the Alps and on other mountain ranges; he invented or improved several scientific instruments (1740-1799).

SAVAGE, RICHARD, English poet, with a worthless character, who gained the regard of Johnson; his chief poem, "The Wanderer," of no poetic merit (1697-1743).

SAVANNAH, a name used chiefly in Florida and neighbouring States to designate the wide treeless plains of these parts; is practically an equivalent for "pampa," "prairie," &c.; comes from a Spanish word meaning "a sheet."

SAVANNAH (54), a city and port of the United States, capital of Chatham County, Georgia, on the Savannah River, 18 m. from its mouth; well equipped with parks, electric light, handsome churches, government buildings, &c., an important naval stores station and second cotton port of the U.S., and has foundries, rice, flour, cotton, and paper-mills, &c.

SAVE, a tributary of the Danube, rises in the Julian Alps and flows SE. across Southern Austria till it joins the Danube at Belgrade after a course of 556 m., of which 366 are navigable.

SAVIGNY, KARL VON, a German jurist, born in Frankfort-on-the-Main, of French parentage; wrote a treatise on the Right of Property, became professor of Roman Law at Berlin; his chief works were the "History of Roman Law in the Middle Ages" and the "History of Roman Law in Modern Times" (1779-1861).

SAVILLE, SIR HENRY, a learned scholar, born in Yorkshire; was tutor to Queen Elizabeth and provost of Eton, and founder of the Savilian professorships of Geometry and Astronomy at Oxford (1549-1642).

SAVONA (24), a seaport of Italy, on the Gulf of Genoa, in the Riviera, 26 m. SW. of Genoa, in the midst of orange groves, &c.; handsomely laid out; has a 16th-century cathedral, castle, palace, picture gallery, &c.; exports pottery and has prosperous iron-works, gla.s.s-works, tanneries, &c.

SAVONAROLA, GIROLAMO, Italian reformer, born at Ferrara of a n.o.ble family; was in his youth of a studious ascetic turn, became at 24 a Dominican monk, was fired with a holy zeal for the purity of the Church, and issued forth from his privacy to denounce the vices that everywhere prevailed under her sanction, with threats of divine judgment on her head, so that the impressions his denunciations made were deep and wide-spread; the effect was especially marked in Florence, where for three years the reformer's influence became supreme, till a combination of enemies headed by the Pope succeeded in subverting it to his ejection from the Church, his imprisonment, and final execution, preceded by that of his confederates Fra Domenico and Fra Silvestro; it was as a reformer of the morals of the Church and nowise of its dogmas that Savonarolo presented himself, while the effect of his efforts was limited pretty much to his own day and generation (1452-1498).

SAVOY, DUCHY OF (532), in the SE. of France, on the Italian frontier, comprises the two departments of Haute-Savoie and Savoie; previous to 1860 const.i.tuted a province of the kingdom of Sardinia; Lake of Geneva bounds it on the N. and the lofty Graian Alps flank it on the E., forming part of the Alpine highlands; it is charmingly picturesque, with mountain, forest, and river (numerous tributaries of the Rhone); has excellent grazing lands; grows the vine abundantly, besides the usual cereals; the people are industrious and thrifty, but for the most part poor. Aix-les-Bains, Evian, and Challes are popular watering-places.

Chambery was the old capital.

SAVOY, HOUSE OF, an ancient royal house of Europe (represented now by the king of Italy), whose territorial possessions were const.i.tuted a county of the empire in the 12th century under the name Savoy; was created a duchy in the 15th century. By the treaty of Utrecht (1713) the island of Sicily was ceded to Savoy and the t.i.tle of king bestowed upon the duke; in 1720 Victor Amadeus II. was forced to cede Sicily to Austria in exchange for Sardinia, which with Savoy and Piedmont, &c., const.i.tuted the kingdom of Sardinia till its dissolution in 1860, when Savoy was ceded to France and the remaining portion merged in the new Italian kingdom under Victor Emmanuel.

SAVOY, THE, a district of the Strand, London, in which a palace was built in 1245 called of the Savoy, in which John of France was confined after his capture at Poitiers; was burnt at the time of the Wat Tyler insurrection, but rebuilt in 1505 as a hospital; it included a chapel, which was damaged by fire in 1864, but restored by the Queen.

SAXE, MAURICE, marshal of France, natural son of Augustus II., king of POLAND (q. v.) distinguished himself under various war captains, Marlborough and Prince Eugene in particular, and eventually entered the service of France; commanding in the War of the Austrian Succession he took Prague and Egra, and was made a marshal, and appointed to the command of the army of Flanders, in which he gained victories and captured fortresses, and was thereafter loaded with honours by Louis XV.; was one of the strongest and most dissolute men of his age; died of dropsy, the result of his debaucheries (1698-1750).

SAXE-COBURG, DUKE OF, second son of the Queen, Duke of Edinburgh; married a daughter of Alexander II., czar of Russia; succeeded to the dukedom in 1893; retains his annuity as an English prince of 10,000; _b_. 1844.

SAXE-WEIMAR, AMALIA, d.u.c.h.eSS OF, was of the Guelph family, and married to the duke, and in two years was left a widow and in government of the duchy, attracting to her court all the literary notabilities of the day, Goethe the chief, till in 1775 she resigned her authority to her son, who followed in her footsteps (1739-1807).

SAXO GRAMMATICUS, a Danish chronicler who flourished in the 12th century; wrote "Gesta Danorum," which brings the history of Denmark down to the year 1158, and is in the later sections of great value.

SAXON SWITZERLAND, name given to a mountainous region in Saxony, SE.

of Dresden.

SAXONS, a people of the Teutonic stock who settled early on the estuary of the Elbe and the adjoining islands, who in their piratical excursions infested and finally settled in Britain and part of Gaul, and who, under the name of Anglo-Saxons, now hold sovereign sway over large sections of the globe.

SAXONY (3,502), a kingdom of Germany, lies within the basin of the Elbe, facing on the E., between Bavaria (S.) and Prussia (N.), the mountainous frontier of Bohemia; a little less in size than Yorkshire, but very densely inhabited; spurs of the Erzgebirge, Fichtelgebirge, and Riesengebirge diversify the surface; is a flourishing mining and manufacturing country; Dresden is the capital, and other important towns are Leipzig, Chemnitz, and Freiburg; the government is vested in the king and two legislative chambers; is represented in the Reichstag and Reichsrath of the empire; by the time of the Thirty Years' War the electorate of Saxony, which in its heyday had stretched to the North Sea, and from the Rhine to the Elbe, had sadly dwindled away; it suffered much at the hands of Frederick the Great during the Seven Years' War, and in 1815, having sided with Napoleon, a portion of its territory was, by the Congress of Vienna, ceded to Prussia; was defeated along with Austria in 1866, and thus joined the North German Confederation, to be incorporated afterwards in the new German Empire.

SAXONY, PRUSSIAN (2,580), a province of Prussia, chiefly comprises that part of SAXONY (q. v.) added to Prussia in 1815; situated in the centre of Prussia, N. of the kingdom of Saxony; is watered by the Elbe and its numerous affluents, and diversified by the Harz Mountains and Thuringian Forest; contains some of the finest growing land in Prussia; salt and lignite are valuable products, and copper is also mined; the capital is Magdeburg, and other notable towns are Halle (with its university), Erfurt, &c.

SAYCE, ALEXANDER HENRY, philologist, born near Bristol; has written works on the monuments of the East, bearing chiefly on Old Testament history; _b_. 1846.

SCaeVOLA, CAIUS MUCIUS, a patriotic Roman who, when sentenced to be burnt alive by Lars Porsena the Etrurian, then invading Rome, for attempting to murder him, unflinchingly held his right hand in a burning brazier till it was consumed, as a mark of his contempt for the sentence.

Porsena, moved by his courage, both pardoned him, and on hearing that 300 as defiant had sworn his death, made peace with Rome and departed. The name Scaevola (i. e. left-handed) was given him from the loss of his right hand on the occasion.

SCAFELL, a c.u.mberland mountain on the borders of Westmorland, with two peaks, one 3210 ft., and the other 3161 ft. high, the highest in England.

SCALE, DELFA, a prince of Verona, and a general of the Ghibellines in Lombardy, who offered Dante an asylum when expelled from Florence (1291-1329).

SCALIGER, JOSEPH JUSTUS, eminent scholar, son of the following, born at Agen; educated by his father; followed in his father's footsteps, and far surpa.s.sed him in scholarship; travelled over Europe, and became a zealous Protestant; accepted the chair of _belles lettres_ in the University of Leyden on condition that he should not be called upon to lecture, and gave himself up to a life of study, especially on matters philological and literary; was a man of universal knowledge, and the creator of modern chronology (1540-1609).