and thence to Vienna, where he found a friend in the prince de Ligne. He died on the 16th of August 1803. Sénac also wrote a moderate exposition of the causes that led to the revolution, entitled Du gouvernement, des mrenrs et des conditions en Frame avant la Revolution, avec les caractéres des principonx personages du regne de Louis XVI; the last part was reprinted (1813) by the duc de Levis with a notice of the author as Portraits et caracteres. Sénac collected his own Œuvres philosophiques et littéraires (2 vols.) at Hamburg in 1795.
See his Œuvres choisies, edited by M. de Lescure in 1862; Lettres inédites de Madame de Créqui à Sénac de Meilhan (1856), edited by Edouard Fournier; Louis Legrand, Sénac de Meilhan et l’intendance du Hainaut et du Cambrésis (1868); and the notice by Fernand Caussy prefixed to his edition (1905) of the Considerations sur l’esprit et les mœurs.
SENANCOUR, ETIENNE PIVERT DE (1770–1846), French
author, was born in Paris in November 1770. His father desired
him to enter the seminary of Saint-Sulpice preparatory to becoming
a priest, but Senancour, to avoid a profession for which
he had no vocation, went on a visit to Switzerland in 1789.
At Fribourg he married in 1790 a young Frenchwoman, Mademoiselle
Daguet, but the marriage was not a happy one. His
wife refused to accompany him to the Alpine solitude he desired,
and they settled in Fribourg. His absence from France at the
outbreak of the Revolution was interpreted as hostility to the
new government, and his name was included in the list of emigrants.
He visited France from time to time by stealth, but
he only succeeded in saving the remnants of a considerable
fortune. In 1799 he published in Paris his Rêveries sur la nature
primitive de l’homme, a book containing impassioned descriptive
passages which mark him out as a precursor of the romantic
movement. His parents and his wife died before the close of the
century, and Senancour was in Paris in 1801 when he began
Obermann, which was finished in Switzerland two years later,
and printed (Paris, 2 vols.) in 1804. This singular book, which
has never lost its popularity with a limited class of readers, was
followed in the next year by a treatise De l’amour, in which he
attacked the accepted social conventions. Obermann, which is
to a great extent inspired by Rousseau, was edited and praised
successively by Sainte-Beuve and by George Sand, and had a
considerable influence both in France and England. It is a series
of letters supposed to be written by a solitary and melancholy
person, whose headquarters are placed in a lonely valley of the
]ura. The idiosyncrasy of the book in the large class of Wertherian-Byronic
literature consists in the fact that the hero, instead
of feeling the vanity of things, recognizes his own inability
to be and do what he wishes. Professor Brandes has pointed out
that while René was appreciated by some of the ruling spirits of
the century, Obermann was understood only by the highly gifted,
sensitive temperaments, usually strangers to success. Senancour
was tinged to some extent with the older philosophe form of
free-thinking, and had no sympathy with the Catholic reaction.
Having no resources but his pen, Senancour was driven to hackwork
during the period which elapsed between his return to
France (1803) and his death at St Cloud (10th of January 1846);
but some of the charm of Obermann is to be found in the Libres
Méditations d’un solitaire inconnu. Thiers and Villemain successively
obtained for Senancour from Louis Philippe pensions
which enabled him to pass his last days in comfort. He wrote
late in life a second novel in letters entitled Isabelle (1833). He
composed his own epitaph; Eternité, sois mon asile.
Senancour is immortalized for English readers in the Obermann of Matthew Arnold. Obermann itself was translated into English, with biographical and critical introduction, by A. G. Waite (1903). See the preface by Sainte-Beuve to his edition (1833, 2 vols.) of Obermann, and two articles Portraits contemporains (vol. i.); Un Précurseur and Sénancour (1867) by J. Levallois, who received much information from Sénancour's daughter, Eulalie de Sénancour, herself a journalist and novelist; and a biographical and critical study Sénancour, by J. Merlant (1907).
SENARMONT, ALEXANDRE ANTOINE HUREAU DE (1769–1810),
French artillery general, was born at Strassburg, and
educated at the Metz school for engineer and artillery cadets.
In 1785 he was commissioned in the artillery, in which he served
as a regimental officer for fifteen years. In 1800 he won great
credit both by his exertions in bringing the artillery of the Army
of Reserve over the Alps and by his handling of guns in the
battle of Marengo. In 1806, as a general of brigade, and commander
of the artillery of an army corps, he took part in the Jena
and Eylau campaigns. But he is remembered chiefly in connexion
with the “caseshot attack” which was the central
feature of Napoleon’s matured tactical. system, and which
Senarmont put into execution for the first time at Friedland
(q.v.). For this feat he was made a baron, and in 1808 he was
promoted general of division by Napoleon on the field of battle
in front of Madrid. He was killed at the siege of Cadiz on the
26th of October 1810.
SENARMONT, HENRI HUREAU DE (1808–1862), French
mineralogist and physician, was born at Broué, Eure et Loire, on
the 6th of September 1808. He became engineer-in-chief of
mines, and professor of mineralogy and director of studies at the
École des Mines at Paris. He was distinguished for his researches
on polarization and on the artificial formation of minerals. He
also wrote essays and prepared maps on the geology of Seine et
Marne and Seine et Oise for the Geological Survey of France
(1844). He died'in Paris on the 30th of June 1862.
SENATE (Lat. senatus, from root sen-, as in senex, old; the
root is the Sanskrit sana, cf. Gr. ἕνος; the same element
appears in señor, seigneur, seneschal) literally the assembly of
old men,[1] originally the heads of the chief families, and hence,
in general, the upper council in a governmental system. The
Latin word corresponds with the Greek gerousia (q.v.), the name
of the similar body at Sparta; it must not be used of the Cleisthenic
council (see Boulē) at Athens, which was in all respects
a different body. The Athenian Areopagus (q.v.) represents the
Roman senate. The word is applied primarily to the aristocratic
Roman assembly (see below). It is also used to designate the
second chamber in the legislatures of France, Italy and the
United States, as also in those of the separate states composing
the Union; in the British legislature it is represented by the
House of Lords. By analogy the title is used for the governing
bodies of various educational institutions, e.g. in the universities
of Cambridge and London, and also in certain American colleges
and universities, where it denotes an advisory body composed of
representatives of the students as well as members of the faculty.
So in the Scottish colleges the governing body is the Senatus
Academicus. In Scottish law, the lords of session (i.e. judges)
are called senators of the College of Justice, which is itself
spoken of as a senate.
The Ancient Roman Senate. (A) History.—The senate or council of elders formed the oldest and most permanent element in the Roman constitution. The authorities are unanimous in ascribing the origin of the senate to Romulus, who chose out 100 of the best of his subjectsUnder the monarchy. to form his advising body. They are, however, far from unanimous in their account of the subsequent history of the senate down to the foundation of the republic. The only facts on which they are all agreed are that in 509 B.C. it already contained 300 members, and that a distinction already existed within it between patres maiorum gentium and minorum gentium (Livy i. 35; Cic. De rep. ii. 20. 35; Dionys. ii. 47). Moreover, with one exception they agree in asserting that throughout the monarchical period the senate consisted entirely of patricians. There is undoubtedly some connexion between the increase in the numbers of the senate by the admission of new members and the distinction between two classes of patres. The most probable view seems to be that the rise in the number of the senators was due to the gradual incorporation of fresh elements into the patrician community, with a consequent increase of gentes; and that the new clans, out of which new members came into the senate, were the gentes minores. The exclusively patrician character of the senate at this period seems an inevitable inference from all that we know of the political position of the plebs at the
- ↑ With the idea of age is conjoined that of superior wisdom and experience, worthy of respect and qualified to decide; cf. the Anglo-Saxon Witanagemot, the assembly of the wise men. Originally the members were the advisers of the king, and their spirit was generally aristocratic and conservative.
