Niger, who had assumed the imperial title in Syria. After a

sanguinary campaign, Niger was defeated and taken by Severus at Issus, near the scene of Alexander the Great's victory over Darius. He was at once put to death, along with his family, in 194. On his return from the East, Severus had to encounter a new adversary, Clodius Albinus, who had assumed the title of emperor in Gaul about the time of his own proclamation at Carnutum. During his contest with Niger, Severus temporized with Albinus, flattering him with the title of Cæsar, and proposing a partition of power. Albinus unwisely remained idle in Gaul, and Severus on his return from Syria, at once resolved to crush the only rival who remained to dispute with him the empire. The decisive battle was fought near Lyons in February, 197; upwards of one hundred and fifty thousand men being engaged on each side. Albinus was totally routed after a desperate struggle, and killed himself to avoid falling into the hands of his enemy. Severus, ever active and restless, soon hurried back to the East, where the incursions of the barbarians were menacing danger to the Romans, and crossed the Euphrates in 198, accompanied by his sons, Caracalla and Geta. His expedition was eminently successful; he took the cities of Babylon, Seleucia, and Ctesiphon, and reduced the Parthians to terms of submission. He also attempted the conquest of Arabia, but in this he failed like all previous conquerors. After visiting Egypt and Palestine, he returned to Rome, where he celebrated magnificent triumphal shows and games, and gave large donatives to the soldiers and people. In 208 he undertook a campaign in Britain, in which the Roman government was then sorely harassed by incursions of the Picts, to repel whose inroads he built the famous rampart still known as the wall of Severus. His presence checked the barbarians for a time, yet he is said to have lost more than fifty thousand men. Worn out by incessant fatigue, Severus died at York in 211. Though stern and harsh, Severus was certainly well adapted as a ruler for the age and society in which he lived. He was an able and laborious administrator, as well as a skilful general, and his reign tended to prolong the existence of the decaying empire.—G. SEVERUS, Sanctus or Endeleichius, a christian poet and rhetorician, born in Aquitaine, and flourished in the fourth century. The author of an eclogue where, in a dialogue between a pagan and a christian, the mortality of cattle is discussed. It was first printed in the Poemata Vetera of Pithæus. Gronovius gave an edition of it under the following title—"Severi Sancti, sive Endeleichii rhetoris de mortibus Boum Carmen, ab Elia Vinetto et Petro Pithæo servatum, cum notis Joh. Weitzii et Wolffgang Seberi;" Lugd. Bat., 1715, 8vo. Another edition was published by Richtern in 1747.—W. J. P. SEVERUS. See Alexander. SEVIGNĖ, Marie de Rabutin Chantal, Marquise de, the most celebrated of letter writers, was the only child of Baron Chantal, at whose castle of Bourbilly in Burgundy she was born, on the 5th of February, 1627. Losing her mother when only six days old, and her father, who was killed at La Rochelle, before she was six months old, the direction of her education devolved upon her mother's brother, the Abbé de Coulange, whom she ever regarded with respect and affection, applying to him the epithet Bien-bon. Chapelain and Menage became her instructors, and her progress did honour to their teaching. Beautiful in person, accomplished in mind, witty, lively, and clever to an unusual degree, her success in society was complete. Yet she never lost her love for simple nature. The verdure of fields, the foliage of the forest, the fragrance of the honeysuckle, and the song of the nightingale are delights which she loved to celebrate. On her first entrance into Parisian life many lovers were at her feet. She accepted for her husband the nephew of Cardinal de Retz, the marquis of Sevigné, to whom she was married in 1644, she being eighteen years old. He was a mate unworthy of her, coarse and sensual, "a universal lover, that never loved any one so lovable as his wife." After her marriage she became one of the ornaments of the Hotel Rambouillet, and a centre of attraction to the wits and gallants of the day. Though exposed to many temptations and naturally disposed to coquetry, her reputation was never tarnished. Besieged at various times by such men as Turenne, the prince of Conti, the finance minister Fouquet, her irresistible cousin Bussy-Rabutin, and many others, she bravely and gaily withstood them all before and after her widowhood. She retained a friendship for many of these men, and to Fouquet she continued faithful in his disgrace. After seven years of married life Madame de Sevigné was left a widow with a son and a daughter. Her husband the marquis having been brought to the brink of ruin by his dissipation and extravagance, was killed in a duel by the Marshal d'Albret, on account of a lady named Godran. Devoting herself thenceforward to the education of her children, and the restoration of their dilapidated fortune, Madame de Sevigné retired to her seat of Les Rochers in Brittany. She afterwards returned to Parisian society to shine with more lustre than ever, and died at a ripe age on 18th April, 1696. The strength and depth of her maternal affection appears in every page of her celebrated letters, which are written for the most part to her daughter, who became by marriage countess of Grignan, and dwelt away from the capital with her husband in Provence. These letters illustrate the period of Anne of Austria's regency in colours of the brightest hue. They describe intrigues, adventures, and scenes with delightful vividness of fancy and minuteness of detail. A tone of light banter runs through them, which is instantly alarmed into seriousness if a headache or the slightest evil befall Madame Grignan, whose complexion, even her hair and her teeth are objects of maternal anxiety to Madame de Sevigné. The best edition is that edited by Monmerqué, 12 vols., 8vo, 1836.—R. H. SEWARD, Anna, styled by her friends "the muse of Lichfield," was born in 1747 at Eyam, of which parish her father, Thomas Seward, was rector. She was educated under the eye of her father, who, though himself a writer of verses, discouraged the pursuit of poetry in his daughter. Anna was indebted to the influence and guidance of Dr. Darwin, then resident in Lichfield, for her first successes in versification. The quiet cathedral town at that time enjoyed a special renown in the world of letters. Johnson and Garrick were born there, and Darwin and the Sewards attracted many learned visitors and much literary correspondence. At the age of seventeen Anna wrote "The Visions," an elegy of some hundred lines, commemorating the virtues of her only surviving sister, who had just died on the eve of her marriage. The lost sister's place in the family was in a measure supplied by Miss Honora Sneyd, who became the object of Major Andre's attachment. The tragic fate of the gallant young officer in America afforded Miss Seward the subject of another elegy. Elegies, odes, sonnets, and songs enough to occupy more than two octavo volumes flowed from her pen, and evince a talent that in an age more propitious to poetry would have placed her in the same rank with later and more celebrated English female writers. Her poetical novel "Louisa" appeared in 1782, and met with great success. The dulness which makes her poetry unreadable is less apparent in her extensive correspondence, which she enlivens with occasional anecdotes. Her father being canon residentiary of Lichfield, she passed the greater part of her life in the bishop's palace there, and died 25th March, 1809. The publication of her remains was secured by a bequest which she made of the copyright of her letters to Constable, the Edinburgh publisher, who brought them out in 6 vols., 8vo, 1811. Her miscellaneous compositions in prose and verse she bequeathed to Walter Scott, by whom they were edited and published in 3 vols. in 1810, with a biographical sketch.—R. H. SEWARD, William, an English biographical writer, was born at London in 1746. He was the author of a series of articles called "Drossiana," published in the European Magazine between 1789 and 1799. These were collected and published in 5 vols., under the title of "Anecdotes of various Distinguished Personages"—chiefly belonging to the period in which he lived. This work was favourably received, and was reprinted; a subsequent collection of his articles "Biographiana," was also highly successful. Seward was noted for his encouragement of struggling artists of merit. He died April 19, 1799.—F. * SEWARD, William Henry, an American politician, secretary of state in President Lincoln's administration, was born in the state of New York in 1801. He studied for and entered the profession of the law, and attained considerable distinction. He began public life early as a member of the whig party, and was elected governor of New York for two terms, 1838-42. His strong antislavery principles stood in the way of his political advancement, members of his own party of more moderate views on that question being preferred to him, and it was not until 1849 that he appeared in the congress at Washington as senator from New York. Even then he was kept in the back-ground, his admirers allege, by the influence of the slave-owning interest. He was a zealous opponent of the "Missouri compromise." By