often beautifully painted, even the greatest French pastoralists not disdaining to 'embellish their panels. It is still in use at the public baths at Ischl, in Austria, and also in the city of Bath, England, as a mode of transit in connexion with the medical baths. The sedan-chair can be taken into the bedroom, and the invalid conveyed without exposure to the outer air to and from the mineral-water bath. The poles are so arranged that the chair may be carried up and down stairs and still preserve its horizontal position.
SEDBERGH, a market town in the Skipton parliamentary
division of the West Riding of Yorkshire, England, 2812 m. S.S.E.
of Penrith by a branch of the London & North-Western railway.
Pop. (1901) 2430. It is pleasantly situated at the junction of
several small streams forming the river Lune, in a deep valley
surrounded by high-lying moors. The church of St Andrew is
principally late Norman. The grammar school was founded by
Dr Roger Lupton, provost of Eton College, in 1528, but as it was
connected with a chantry it was suppressed by Henry VIII., to
be re founded in 1551 by Edward VI.; it now takes rank among
the important public schools.
SEDDON, RICHARD JOHN (1845–1906), New Zealand
statesman, was born at Eccleston, Lancashire, England, in 1845,
his father being a schoolmaster at Eccleston Hill school. He was
brought up to the engineering trade, and when eighteen Went
to Australia and entered the railway Workshops at Melbourne.
He was caught by the “gold fever” and went to Bendigo, where
he spent some time in the diggings; but in 1866 he joined an
uncle on the west coast of New Zealand, starting work as a miner.
In 1869 he married Miss Louisa lane Spotswood, of Melbourne.
In the same year he was elected to a seat on his local Road
Board, and he was soon returned to the Westland Provincial
Council for the Arahura district, becoming its first chairman
of committees. In 1879 he was returned to the New Zealand
parliament for Kumara, and sat for that constituency for twenty-six
years, though its name was changed to Westland. He was
a member of the Ballance ministry (1891), holding the portfolios
for public works, defence and mines; and on Ballance's death
(1893) became premier, a position he retained till his sudden
death on the 10th of June 1906. During these years Seddon
held a unique place in the public life of New Zealand, and in
its relations with the empire. He combined his premiership
with various offices—as colonial treasurer, minister for education,
postmaster-general, telegraph commissioner, minister of marine,
minister for land purchase, and minister for labour,—but his
strenuous personality, and the confidence inspired by his determination
to make New Zealand a living force among the
British dominions, were the dominating features in all his course
of action. His large physique, his profound earnestness, his
gift of popular oratory, his expansive kindliness and his power
of dealing with men, made him supreme among his own people.
He became known in a wider sphere after his attending the
colonial conference in London in 1897, and -thenceforth he was
regarded as one of the pillars of British imperialism. During the
Boer War, and afterwards in the movement for preferential
trade with the colonies, he was an enthusiastic supporter of Mr
Chamberlain, though he was characteristically outspoken in
opposition to the introduction of Chinese labour into South
Africa. His rough and ready views were frequently open to
criticism, but his vigorous patriotism and intensity of character
give hima permanent place among those who have worked for
the consolidation of the British dominions.
A Life, by J. Drummond, was published in 1907.
SEDDON, THOMAS (1821–1856), English landscape painter, was born in London on the 28th of August 1821. His father was a cabinetmaker, and the son for some time followed the same occupation; but in 1842 he was sent to Paris to study ornamental art. On his return he executed designs for furniture for his father. In 1849 he made sketching expeditions in Wales and France, and in 1852 began to exhibit in the Royal Academy, sending a figure-piece, Penelope, and afterwards landscapes, deriving their subjects from Brittany. In the end of 1853 he joined Holman Hunt at Cairo. He worked for a. year in Egypt and Palestine, executing views which Ruskin pronounced to be “the first landscapes uniting perfect artistical skill with topographical accuracy; being directed, with stern self-restraint, to no other purpose than that of giving to persons who cannot travel trustworthy knowledge of the scenes which ought to be most interesting to them.” Seddon's Eastern subjects were exhibited in Berners Street, London, in 1855, and in Conduit Street in 1856. In October 1856 Seddon again visited Cairo, where he died on the 23rd of November. In 1857 his works were exhibited in the rooms of the Society of Arts, and his important and elaborately finished picture, “Jerusalem and the Valley of Jehoshaphat,” was purchased by subscription and presented to the National Gallery.
A memoir of Seddon, by his brother, was published in 1859.
SEDERUNT, ACT OF, in Scots law, an ordinance for regulating the forms of judicial procedure before the Court of Session, passed by the judges under authority of a power originally conferred by an act of the Scottish parliament, 1540, c. 93. A quorum of nine judges is required to pass an act of Sederunt.
SEDGLEY, an urban district of Staffordshire, England,
between Dudley and Wolverhampton, in the parliamentary
borough of Wolverhampton. Pop. (1901) 15,951. The district
abounds in coal, lime and ironstone. Nails, rivets, chains,
fire-irons, locks and safes are produced. The parish includes
the large manufacturing districts of Upper and Lower Gornal,
Coseley and Deepfields, the last having a station on the London
& North-Western railway, 10 m. W.N.W. from Birmingham.
SEDGWICK, ADAM (1785–1873), English geologist, was born on the 22nd of March 1785 at Dent in Yorkshire, the second son of Richard Sedgwick, vicar of the parish. He was educated at the Grammar Schools of Dent and Sedbergh, and at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated B.A. as fifth wrangler in 1808, and two years later was elected a Fellow of his college. For several years he was occupied as private tutor and afterwards as assistant mathematical tutor at Trinity College. In 1818 he was admitted to priests' orders. He had at this time paid no serious attention to geology. As a lad he had collected fossils from the Mountain Limestone near Dent, and in 1813 he had visited the mines near Furness and Coniston. Nevertheless, when the Rev. John Hailstone retired in 1818 from the post of Woodwardian professor of geology, Sedgwick applied for the vacancy, and was so strongly supported by his college as a man of talent that he was elected by a large majority. He now took up the study of geology with intense zeal, traversed large areas in the south of England, and, becoming acquainted with W. D. Conybeare, regarded him as his master in geology. It is astonishing with what rapidity he grasped the principles of stratigraphical geology and the relationships of rocks in the field. In papers read before the Cambridge Philosophical Society, 1820–1821, on the structure of parts of Devonshire and Cornwall, he made observations of exceptional interest and value. Of this society in 1819 he had been one of the founders with J. S. Henslow. Every year for a long period now brought its season of field-work. Sedgwick dealt with the geology of the Isle of Wight, and with the strata of the Yorkshire coast (in papers published in the Annals of Philosophy, 1822, 1826); and he examined the rocks of the north of Scotland with Murchison in 1827. He contributed an important essay On the Geological Relations and Internal Structure of the Magnesian Limestone to the Geological Society of London (1828). As early as 1822 he had begun to make a detailed geological map of the older rocks of the Lake District; he continued these researches whereby the main structure of this mountain region was first unravelled, in succeeding years; and the principal results were brought before the Geological Society (1831–1836). Meanwhile he was elected president of the Geological Society in 1829–1830, and in 1831 he commenced field-work in North Wales. His chief attention was now concentrated on the older rocks of England and Wales. Murchison began the task of unravelling the structure of the older rocks on the Welsh borders in the same year. They had intended to start together, but the arranger rents fell through, and thus they began their labours independently
