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SAINT-EVREMOND, Charles Margustel de Saint-Denis,
Seigneur de, a celebrated wit at the courts of France and England in the seventeenth century, was born at St. Denis le Guast, near Coutances, on the 1st April, 1613. Educated for the law, he quitted that profession for a military career, in which he distinguished himself as much by his bravery as by his fine taste and manners. The charms of his conversation made him a welcome guest with the great Condé and Turenne, and procured him the favour of Cardinal Mazarin; while the sharpness of his satire cost him the appointments he had received, and condemned him to the Bastile and an exile which became perpetual. He was at the battles of Rocroi, Fribourg, and Nordlingen, being severely wounded at the last. During the Fronde he wielded the pen as well as the sword in behalf of the king, and his satirical account of M. de Longueville's retreat into Normandy was rewarded by Mazarin with a pension of three thousand livres a year. He accompanied the cardinal when engaged upon the treaty of the Pyrenees in 1659. The account he wrote of that transaction in a letter to Marshal Crequi was afterwards turned against him; and being condemned by Louis XIV. to the Bastile in 1661, he fled to Holland. Thence he removed in the following year to England, where he was well received by Charles II., and became an established court wit for the remainder of his long life. His writings derive their chief interest from their appropriateness to men and events of his day. His graver studies on Sallust, Tacitus, and other Roman writers, exhibit no remarkable learning or critical acumen. He took part in the controversy known as "the battle of the books," giving the palm of superiority to modern writers over the ancients. The favoured lover of Marion de l'Orme, of Ninon de l'Enclos, and the devoted admirer of the beautiful Hortense Mancini, is rendered hideous in his engraved portraits by a large wen that formed in his later years between his two eyes. When after thirty years' exile he was invited to return to Paris, he declined, saying—"I would rather stay with people accustomed to my wen." He died at an advanced age, 20th September, 1703, and was buried in Westminster abbey.—R. H. SAINT GERMAIN, Claude Louis, Count de, a distinguished French officer and statesman, was born in Franche Comtè in 1707, of an ancient but poor noble family. Having made choice of the military profession, he obtained a commission in a regiment of which his father was colonel. But anxious to perfect himself in the knowledge of his profession, he resolved to visit Germany, and obtained a commission from Prince Eugéne in the service of the elector palatine. His marriage in 1737 to a lady of the ancient and illustrious house of Osten recommended him to the favour of the imperial princes; in 1738 he served with great distinction in Hungary against the Turks, and at the close of the campaign was raised to the rank of a major of dragoons. He next entered the service of the elector of Bavaria (afterwards the Emperor Charles VII.), and shortly after the death of that prince he returned to France, and received through Marshal Saxe the commission of major-general. The military reputation which he gained in the war in Flanders obtained for him the rank of lieutenant-general in 1748, and at the peace he was appointed to the command of Lower Alsace. He served in the Seven Years' war, saved the wreck of the French army at the battle of Rosbach; fought with conspicuous courage at Crevel, covered the retreat at Minden, and contributed greatly to the victory at Corbach. But finding his services overlooked and himself treated with neglect, he quitted France and entered the service of Denmark, where he was made a field-marshal, and received the order of the elephant. On the execution of Count Struensee and the exile of the queen he quitted Copenhagen, and placed the sum of one hundred thousand ducats, which had been bestowed upon him in lieu of his pension, in the hands of a banker at Hamburg, who became a bankrupt. The count, who bore this reverse of fortune with remarkable equanimity, retired in 1773 to a small estate in Alsace, whence he was summoned by the king in 1775 to take the office of minister of war. He effected important reforms in this department, and displayed great intelligence, activity, and rare disinterestedness in the discharge of his duties. But after the retirement of Turgot and Malesherbes, his plans were thwarted at every turn by the greedy and dishonest courtiers. He, in consequence, resigned his office in 1777, and died in 1778. His Memoirs were published at Amsterdam in 1799, in 1 vol., 8vo.—J. T. SAINT GERMAN, Christopher, an English lawyer, who flourished during the sixteenth century. He was a native of Warwickshire, and was educated at Oxford, and studied law in the Inner temple. He attained great eminence in the legal profession, and published in Latin, in 1523, a well-known work entitled "The Doctor and Student, or Dialogues between a doctor of divinity and a student in the lawes of England, concerning the grounds of these lawes." Several other works are also ascribed to him, which do not seem to have been of importance. St. German died in 1540 —J. T. SAINT-HILAIRE, Auguste de, a French botanist of eminence, was born at Orleans in 1779, and died at Montpellier on 3rd May, 1853. At an early age he showed a predilection for natural history. He first studied entomology, and finally devoted himself to botany. He contributed many valuable papers to the Journal de Botanique, Bulletin de la Société des Sciences Physiques d'Orleans, and Bulletin de la Société Philomatique, and especially to the Annales and Memoires du Museum. In the two last-mentioned works he published important papers on vegetable physiology and structure. One of them, on "Free Central Placentation," placed him in a high rank among philosophical botanists. In order to examine the natural history of warm climates, he accompanied the duke of Luxembourg to Brazil. From 1816 to 1822 he examined the Cisplatine provinces and Paraguay, and collected about seven thousand species of plants, two thousand birds, sixteen thousand insects, and one hundred and twenty-nine quadrupeds, besides reptiles and other animals. The results of his observations were given to the world in the Memoires du Museum; in his "Histoire des plantes du Brésil et du Paraguay;" his "Plantes usuelles des Brésiliens;" and his "Flora Brasiliæ Meridionalis." He gave also an account of his travels in the province of Rio Janeiro, of Minas Geraes, in the Diamond and littoral district of Brazil. He suffered much in health from his continued labours. He was affected with paralysis, loss of speech, and partially of sight, and he at length retired to Montpellier. Here he published his "Leçons de Botanique," comprising remarks on vegetable morphology and terminology, and on the value of characters in natural orders. He was a member of the Academy of Sciences, and a fellow of the Linnæan Society.—J. H. B. SAINT-HILAIRE, Isidore Geoffroy, an eminent French zoologist, was born in 1805, and died on 10th November, 1861. He was the son of Etienne Geoffrey St. Hilaire. He early imbibed a taste for natural science, and he devoted himself to the prosecution of it with great zeal and success. In 1826 he presented to the Academy of Sciences a memoir on mammifers. He was elected a member of the Academy at the age of seventeen. He was afterwards appointed professor of zoology in the Faculty of Science at Bourdeaux, and he subsequently became professor of zoology at the museum, director of the menagerie which had been established by his father, and at length professor of zoology in the Faculty of Science at Paris. He became very eminent as a zoologist and as a teacher. He developed the great ideas which had been put forth by his father. He founded the Societé Zoologique d'Acclimatation, the object of which was to multiply the species of animals useful to man for food, clothing, and labour. He occupies an honourable place in the annals of science. He was a man of wide sympathies, and he interested himself especially for those men of science who had not been favoured by fortune. In 1856 he delivered a course of lectures on monstrosities, which were afterwards published under the title of "Leçons de Teratologie." He also published "Leçons de Mammologie," and "Leçons de Zoologie Générale." Among his other works are the following—"Traité de Teratologie;" "Essai de Zoologie Générale;" "Histoire Naturelle des Insects et des Mollusques;" "Vie, travaux, &c., d'Etienne Geoffrey St. Hilaire;" "Catalogue Methodique du Museum d'Histoire Naturelle;" "Domestication et Naturalization des Animaux utiles;" "Histoire Générale des Règnes Organiques," &c. He also contributed papers to the Comptes Rendus, Annales des Sciences Naturelles, and Bulletin de la Societé Zoologique d'Acclimatation, &c. In 1854 he was president of the Academy of Sciences, and was a member of the principal learned societies of the world.—J. H. B. * SAINT JOHN, James Augustus, a prolific miscellaneous writer, was born in Caermarthenshire about the beginning of the present century. In his seventeenth year he came to London, and commenced his literary career. He was for some time editor of a liberal newspaper at Plymouth. On his return to London he became the coadjutor of Mr. James Silk Buckingham in