The Nuttall Encyclopaedia Part 411

SOUZA, MADAME DE (maiden name Adelaide Filleul), French novelist, born in Paris, and educated in a convent, on her leaving which she was married to the Comte de Flahaut, a man much older than herself, and with whom she lived unhappily; fled to Germany and then to England on the outbreak of the Revolution; afterwards returned to Paris, and as the wife of the Marquis de Souza-Botelho presided over one of the most charming of _salons_, in which the chief attraction was her own bright and gifted personality; her novels, "Eugene de Rothelin," "Eugenie et Mathilde,"

etc., breathe the spirit of the old regime, and are full of natural and vivacious pictures of French life (1761-1836).

SOWERBY BRIDGE (10), manufacturing town in West Riding of Yorkshire, 3 m. SW. of Halifax; cotton-spinning, woollen manufactures, and dyeing are the chief; it was the birthplace of Tillotson.

SOY, a sauce or condiment used in j.a.pan and China; prepared from a bean which is extensively cultivated in those countries.

SOYER, ALEXIS, a famous cook, born at Meaux; turned aside from a tempting career as a vocalist and took up gastronomy as a profession; during the 1830 Revolution he narrowly escaped with his life to London, which he henceforth made his head-quarters, rising to the position of cook to the Reform Club; rendered important services as a culinary expert in Ireland during the 1847 famine, and at the Crimea (1855); was the author of various highly popular works on the art of cooking, "The Modern Housewife," "Shilling Cookery Book," etc. (1809-1858).

SPA (7), a watering-place in Belgium, 20 m. SE. of Liege; a favourite health and fashionable resort on account of its springs and its picturesque surroundings, the number of visitors during the season amounting to 12,000.

SPAHI, an Algerine cavalry soldier serving in the French army.

SPAIN (17,800), a kingdom of South-West Europe, which with Portugal (less than one-fifth the size of Spain) occupies the entire Iberian Peninsula, and is divided from France on the N. by the Pyrenees Mountains, and on the E. and S. is washed by the Mediterranean; the NW.

corner fronts the Bay of Biscay (N.) and the Atlantic (W.), while Portugal completes the western boundary; its area, three and one-third times the size of England and Wales, is, along with the Canaries and the Balearic Isles, divided into 49 provinces, although the more familiar names of the 14 old kingdoms, states, and provinces (New and Old Castile, Galicia, Aragon, etc.) are still in use; forms a compact square, with a regular, in parts precipitous, coast-line, which is short compared with its area; is in the main a highland country, a vast plateau (2000 to 3000 ft. high) occupying the centre, b.u.t.tressed and crossed by ranges (Sierra Nevada in the S., Sierra de Guadarrama, Sierra Morena, etc.), and diversified by the long valleys of the Ebro, Douro, Tagus, Guadalquivir, and other lesser rivers, all of which are rapid, and only a few navigable; climate varies considerably according as one proceeds to the central plains, where extremes of heat and cold are experienced, but over all is the driest in Europe; agriculture, although less than a half of the land is under cultivation, is by far the most important industry, and Valencia and Catalonia the provinces where it is most successfully carried out, wheat and other cereals, the olive and the vine, being the chief products; other important industries are mining, the Peninsula being extremely rich in the useful minerals; Merino sheep farming, anchovy and sardine fisheries, wine-making, and the manufacture of cotton, silk, leather, and paper; chief exports are wine, fruits, mineral ores, oil and cork; Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Seville, and Malaga are the chief towns; the widest variety of character exists among the natives of the various provinces, from the hard-working, thrifty Catalan to the lazy, improvident Murcian, but all possess the southern love "of song, dance, and colour," and have an inherent grace and dignity of manner; Roman Catholicism is the national religion; and although systems of elementary and secondary schools are in vogue, education over all is in a deplorably backward condition; the Government is a hereditary and const.i.tutional monarchy; the Cortes consists of the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies; universal suffrage and trial by jury are recent innovations. The outstanding fact in the history of Spain, after the downfall of the Roman Empire, of which she had long formed a part, is the national struggle with the Moors, who overran the peninsula in the 8th century, firmly established themselves, and were not finally overthrown till Granada, their last possession, was taken in 1492; sixteen years later the country became a united kingdom, and for a brief period, with its vast American colonies and wide European possessions, became in the 16th century the dominant power of Europe; since then she has lagged more and more in the race of nations, and her once vast colonial empire has gradually crumbled away till now, since the unsuccessful war with America in 1898, only an island or two remains to her.

SPALATO (15), a historic and flourishing town of Dalmatia, finely situated on a promontory on the E. side of the Adriatic, 160 m. SE. of Fiume; a place of considerable antiquity, and one of the great cities of the Roman world; is chiefly famed for the vast palace built by Diocletian, and which became his residence after his abdication; subsidiary buildings and grounds were enclosed by walls, within which now a considerable part of the town stands; the n.o.blest portions of the palace are still extant; the modern town carries on an active trade in grain, wine, cattle, etc.; is noted for its liqueurs.

SPALDING, a market-town in Lincolnshire, 34 m. SE. of Lincoln, in the heart of the Fens; is a very ancient place; has a trade in agricultural produce, and is a railway centre.

SPALLANZANI, LAZARO, a noted Italian scientist, born at Scandiano, in Modena; held chairs of Philosophy and Greek in the Universities of Reggio and Modena, but more attracted to natural science he in 1768 became professor of Natural History at Pavia; wrote elaborate accounts of expeditions to Sicily and elsewhere; overturned b.u.t.ton's theory of spontaneous generation, and in important works made some valuable contributions to physiological science (1729-1799).

SPANDAU (45), an important town and fortress of Prussia, in Brandenburg, at the confluence of the Spree and Havel, 8 m. W. by N. of Berlin; fortifications are of the strongest and most modern kind, and in the "Julius Tower" of the powerful citadel the German war-chest of 6,000,000 is preserved; there is an a.r.s.enal and large Government cannon-foundries, powder-factories, etc.

SPANHEIM, FRIEDRICH, a theological professor at Geneva (1631), and afterwards at Leyden (1641); author of the work on "Universal Grace"

(1600-1648). His son, EZECHIEL SPANHEIM (1629-1710) became professor of Eloquence in his native town, Geneva, and after acting as tutor to the sons of the Elector Palatine was employed on several important diplomatic missions to Italy, England, and France; meanwhile devoted his leisure to ancient law and numismatics, publishing learned works on these subjects. FRIEDRICH SPANHEIM, brother of preceding, was a learned Calvinistic professor of Theology at Heidelberg (1685), and afterwards at Leyden (1632-1701).

SPANISH MAIN (i. e. mainland), a name given at one time to the Central American provinces of Spain bordering on the Caribbean Sea, and also to the Caribbean Sea itself.

SPARKS, JAMES, president of Harvard University, born in Connecticut; bred a carpenter, took to study, attended Harvard, where he graduated, studied theology, and became Unitarian, becoming a minister in that body, but retired from the ministry and settled in Boston; edited the _North American Review_; wrote and edited biographies of eminent Americans, and edited the writings of Benjamin Franklin and George Washington (1789-1866).

SPARTA or LACEDEMON, the capital of ancient Laconia, in the Peloponnesus, on the right bank of the Eurotas, 20 m. from the sea; was 6 m. in circ.u.mference, consisted of several distinct quarters, originally separate villages, never united into a regular town; was never surrounded by walls, its walls being the bravery of its citizens; its mythical founder was Lacedemon, who called the city Sparta from the name of his wife; one of its early kings was Menelaus, the husband of Helen; LYCURGUS (q. v.) was its law-giver; its policy was aggressive, and its sway gradually extended over the whole Peloponnesus, to the extinction at the end of the Peloponnesian War of the rival power of Athens, which for a time rose to the ascendency, and its unquestioned supremacy thereafter for 30 years, when all Greece was overborne by the Macedonian power.

SPARTACUS, leader of the revolt of the slaves at Rome, which broke out about 73 B.C.; was a Thracian by birth, a man of powerful physique, in succession a shepherd, a soldier, and a captain of banditti; was in one of his predatory expeditions taken prisoner and sold to a trainer of gladiators, and became one of his slaves; persuaded his fellow-slaves to attempt their freedom, and became their chief and that of other runaways who joined them; for two years they defied and defeated one Roman army after another sent to crush them, and laid Italy waste, till at the end of that time Licinius Cra.s.sus, taking up arms in earnest, overpowered them in a decisive battle at the river Silarus, in which Spartacus was slain.

SPASMODIC SCHOOL, name given to a small group of minor poets about the middle of the 19th century, represented by Philips, James Bailey, Sydney Dobell, and Alexander Smith, from their strenuous, overstrained, and unnatural style.

SPECIFIC GRAVITY, the weight of a body compared with another of equal bulk taken as a standard, such as the weight of a cubic inch of water.

SPECTRUM, the name given to coloured and other rays of pure light separated by refraction in its transmission through a prism, as exhibited on a screen in a darkened chamber.

SPECTRUM a.n.a.lYSIS, name given to the method of determining the composition of a body by means of the spectrum of light which it gives forth or pa.s.ses through it, founded on the principle that a substance powerfully absorbs exactly the rays it radiates, and every substance has its own absorbing powers; or it may be defined the method of distinguishing different kinds of matter by their properties in relation to light.

SPECULATIVE, THE, that which we think and which as such goes no deeper than the intellect, which is but the eye of the soul, not the heart of it. See SPIRITUAL, THE.

SPEDDING, JAMES, editor of Bacon, born at Mirehouse, near Keswick, son of a c.u.mberland squire; scholar and honorary Fellow of Cambridge; became in 1847 Under-Secretary of State with 2000 a year; devoted his life to the study of Bacon, the fruit of which the "Letters and the Life of Francis Bacon, including all his Occasional Works, newly selected and set forth with a Commentary, Biographical and Historical," in 7 vols.; a truly n.o.ble man, and much esteemed by his contemporaries in literature (1808-1881).

SPEKE, JOHN BANNING, African explorer, born in Somersetshire; became a soldier, and served in the Punjab; joined Burton in 1854 in an expedition into Somaliland, and three years after in an attempt to discover the sources of the Nile, and setting out alone discovered Victoria Nyanza, which he maintained was the source of the river, but which Burton questioned; on his return he published in 1863 an account of his discovery, which he was about to defend in the British a.s.sociation when he was shot by the accidental discharge of his gun while he was out hunting (1827-1864).

SPENCE, JOSEPH, a miscellaneous writer, born in Hants; educated at and a Fellow of Oxford; his princ.i.p.al work, "Polymetis; or, an Inquiry into the Agreement between the Works of the Roman Poets and the Remains of Ancient Artists"; his "Anecdotes" are valuable from his acquaintance with the literary cla.s.s of the time, and have preserved his name (1699-1768).

SPENCER, HERBERT, systematiser and unifier of scientific knowledge up to date, born at Derby, son of a teacher, who early inoculated him with an interest in natural objects, though he adopted at first the profession of a railway engineer, which in about eight years he abandoned for the work of his life by way of literature, his first effort being a series of "Letters on the Proper Sphere of Government" in the _Nonconformist_ in 1842, and his first work "Social Statics," published in 1851, followed by "Principles of Psychology" four years after; in 1861 he published a work on "Education," and his "First Principles" the following year, after which he began to construct his system of "Synthetic Philosophy," which fills a dozen large volumes, and has established his fame as the foremost scientific philosopher of the time.

Following in the lines of Auguste Comte and John Stuart Mill, he takes a wider sweep than either of them, fills the field he occupies with fuller and riper detail, resolves the whole of science into still more ultimate principles, and works the whole up into a more compact and comprehensive system. He is valiant before all for science, and relegates everything and every interest to Agnosticism that cannot give proof of its scientific rights. "What a thing is in itself," he says, "cannot be known, because to know it we must strip it of all that it becomes, of all that has come to adhere to it." The ultimate thus arrived at he finds to be, and calls, Energy, and that therefore, he says, we don't and can't know. That a thing _is_ what it becomes seems never to occur to him, and yet only the knowledge of that is the knowledge of the ultimate of being, which is the thing he says we cannot know. To trace life to its roots he goes back to the cell, whereas common-sense would seem to require us, in order to know what the cell is, to inquire at the fruit. This is the doctrine of St. John, "The Word was G.o.d." In addition to agnosticism another doctrine of Spencer's is Evolution, but in maintaining this he fails to see he is arguing for an empty conception barren of all thought, which thought is the alpha and omega of the whole process, and is as much an ultimate as and still more so than the energy in which he absorbs G.o.d.

Indeed, his philosophy is what is called the AUFKLaRUNG (q. v.) in full bloom, and in which he strips us of all our spiritual content or _Inhalt_, and under which he would lead us out of "HOUNDSDITCH"

(q. v.), not _with_, but _without_, all that properly belongs to us; _b_. 1820.

SPENCER GULF, a deep inlet on the coast of South Australia, 180 m.

by 90 m.

SPENER, PHILIP JACOB, German Protestant theologian, founder of the PIETISTS (q. v.), born in Alsace, studied in Strasburg; in 1670 held a series of meetings which he called "Collegia Pietatis," whence the name of his sect; established himself in Dresden and in Berlin, but Halle was the centre of the movement; he was an earnest and universally esteemed man (1636-1705).

SPENSER, EDMUND, author of the "Faerie Queene," and one of England's greatest poets; details of his life are scanty and often hypothetical; born at London of poor but well-connected parents; entered Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, as a "sizar" in 1569, and during his seven years' residence there became an excellent scholar; took a master's degree, and formed an important friendship with Gabriel Harvey; three years of unsettled life followed, but were fruitful in the production of the "Shepheards'

Calendar" (1579), which at once placed him at the head of the English poets of his day; had already taken his place in the best London literary and political circles as the friend of Sir Philip Sidney and Leicester, and in 1580 was appointed private secretary to Lord Grey, then proceeding to Ireland as the Lord Deputy, and although his master soon returned to England Spencer continued to make his home in Ireland, where he obtained some civil appointments, and in 1591 entered into possession of a considerable portion of the forfeited estates of the Earl of Desmond, adjacent to his house, Kilcolman Castle, co. Cork; seems to have been a pretty stern landlord, and, as expounded in his admirable tract, "A View of the Present State of Ireland," the advocate of a policy of "suppression and repression"; consequently was little loved by the Irish, and on the outbreak of Tyrone's rebellion in 1598 his house was sacked and burned, and he himself forced to flee to London, where he died a few weeks later "a ruined and heart-broken man"; the rich promise of the "Shepheards' Calendar" had been amply fulfilled in the "Complaints,"

"Amoretti," "Colin Clout's Come Home Again," the "Epithalamium" the finest bridal song in any language, and above all in the six published books of "The Faerie Queene" (1589 and 1596), in which all his gifts and graces as a poet are at their best; "He may be read," says Professor Saintsbury, "in childhood, chiefly for his adventure; in later youth, for his display of voluptuous beauty; in manhood, for his historical and ethical weight; in age, for all combined" (1552-1599).

SPERMACETI, a white waxy matter obtained in an oily state from the head of the sperm-whale inhabiting the Pacific and Indian Oceans; candles made of it yield a particularly steady and bright light.

SPEY, a river in the N. of Scotland which, rising in Badenoch, flows NE. through Inverness, Elgin, and Banffshire, falls into the Moray Firth after a course of 107 miles; the salmon-fisheries are valuable; it is the swiftest of the rivers of Great Britain.