chapel containing a much venerated 13th-century image of the Virgin, which was annually carried in procession through the town, are all noticeable. The choir-screen was sold to the South Kensington Museum in London for £900, this sum being devoted to the work of modern restoration. The town hall contains an interesting series of decorative panels by a modern artist, A. Derkinderen, describing the founding of the city. It also includes a museum of local antiquities. In the Provincial museum are interesting Roman, German and Frankish antiquities. The principal other buildings are the court house, government buildings (formerly a Jesuit monastery), episcopal palace, grammar school (once attended by Erasmus), a prison, hospitals, arsenal and barracks. 's Hertogenbosch is the market of the fertile Meiery district, and carries on a considerable trade, chiefly by water, with Dordrecht and Rotterdam, Nijmwegen, Amhem, Maastricht and Liège. The chief industries include distilleries, breweries, glass works, cigar factories and the ancient linen and cutlery manufactures.
SHERWIN, JOHN KEYSE (1751–1790), English engraver and history-painter, was born in 1751 at East Dean in Sussex. His father was a wood-cutter employed in shaping bolts for shipbuilders, and the son followed the same occupation till his seventeenth year, when, having shown an aptitude for art by copying some miniatures with exceptional accuracy, he was befriended by William Mitford, upon whose estate the elder Sherwin worked, and was sent to study in London, first under John Astley, and then for three years under Bartolozzi—for whom he is believed to have executed a large portion of the plate of Clytie, after Annibal Caracci, published as the work of his master. He was entered as a student of the Royal Academy, and gained a silver medal, and in 1772 a gold medal for his painting of “Coriolanus taking Leave of his Family.” From 1774 till 1780 he was an exhibitor of chalk drawings and of engravings in the Royal Academy. Establishing himself in St James's Street as a painter, designer and engraver, he speedily attained popularity and began to mix in fashionable society. His drawing of the “Finding of Moses,” a work of but slight artistic merit, which introduced portraits of the princess royal of England and other leading ladies of the aristocracy, hit the public taste, and, as reproduced by his burin, sold largely. In 1785 he succeeded Woollett as engraver to the king, and he also held the appointment of engraver to the prince of Wales. His professional income rose to about £12,000 a year; but he was constantly in pecuniary difficulties, for he was shiftless, indolent, and without method, open-handed and even prodigal in his benefactions—and prodigal, too, in less reputable directions, for he became a reckless gambler, and habits of intemperance grew upon him. He died in extreme penury on the 24th of September 1790—according to Steevens, the editor of Shakespeare, at “The Hog in the Pound, ” an obscure alehouse in Swallow Street, or, as stated by his pupil J. T. Smith, in the house of Robert Wilkinson, a print seller in Cornhill.
It is as an engraver that Sherwin is most esteemed; and it may be noted that he was ambidextrous, working indifferently with either hand upon his plates. His drawing is correct, his line excellent and his textures are varied and intelligent in expression. Such of his plates as the “Holy Family” after Nicholas Poussin, “Christ Bearing the Cross” after Murillo, the portrait of the marquis of Buckingham after Gainsborough and that of Pitt occupy a high place among the productions of the English school of line-engravers. He also worked after Pine, Dance and Kauffman.
SHERWOOD, MARY MARTHA (1775–1851), English author, was born at Stanford, Worcestershire, on the 6th of May 1775, the daughter of the Rev. George Butt, D.D., then rector of Stanford. In 1803 she married her cousin, Captain Henry Sherwood, an officer in the British army, and subsequently accompanied him to India, where she devoted herself to charitable work and to writing. Her Indian story, Little Henry and his Bearer, was translated into many languages. Her best-known work, however, is The History of the Fairchild Family, written after her return to England, of which the first part appeared in 1818, and the second and third parts in 1842 and 1847 respectively. The sub-title of this tale is The Child's Manual, being a series of stories calculated to show the importance and ejects of a religious education. The book had a very large sale among the English middle-classes. Mrs Sherwood wrote nearly a hundred stories of a religious type and tracts, mainly for the young. She died on the 22nd of September 1851.
See The Life and Times of Mrs Sherwood. From the Diaries of Captain and Mrs Sherwood, edited by F. J. H. Darton (1910).
SHERWOOD FOREST, one of the ancient English forests, in Nottinghamshire. It extended from Nottingham northward to Worksop, being over 20 m. long and from 5 to 9 m. broad. The soil is sandy and poor, and although a considerable portion has been brought under cultivation, the district preserves many traces of its ancient character, especially as a great part of it is covered by the domains included under the modern name of the Dukeries (q.v.). Sherwood was a crown forest from the time of Henry II. and a favourite hunting-ground of several kings; the land was divided between various lords of the manor, and its disafforestation was carried out at various times. The forest is traditionally noted as the retreat of Robin Hood, whose cave is seen at Papplewick near Newstead.
SHETLAND, or Zetland, a group of islands constituting a county of Scotland, and the most northerly British possession in Europe. It consists of an archipelago of islands and islets, over 100 in number, situated to the north-east of Orkney, between 59° 50′ and 60° 52′ N. and 0° 55′ and 2° 14′ W., and bounded on the W. by the Atlantic and on the E. by the North Sea. The distance from Dennis Head in North Ronaldshay of the Orkneys to Sumburgh Head in Shetland is 50 m., but Fair Isle, which belongs to Shetland, lies midway between the groups. The islands occupy an area of 352,889 acres or 551·4 sq. m. Besides Mainland, the principal member of the group, the more important are Yell, Unst and Fetlar in the north, Whalsay and Bressay in the east, Trondra, East and West Burra, Papa Stour, Muckle Roe and Foula in the west, and Fair Isle in the south. The islands present an irregular surface, frequently rising into hills of considerable elevation (an extreme of 1475 ft. is found in the north-west of Mainland). Most of the inland scenery is bleak and dreary, consisting of treeless and barren tracts of peat and boulders. The coast scenery, especially on the west, is always picturesque and often grand, the cliffs, sheer precipices of brilliant colouring, reaching a height of over 1000 ft. at some places. The shores are so extensively indented with voes, or firths—the result partly of denudation and partly caused by glaciers—that no spot in Shetland is more than 3 m. from the sea. There are sheets of fresh water in the larger islands, the most important being Strom Loch (2 m. long), Girlsta (112 m. long) and Spiggie (112 m.) in Mainland, and Loch of Cliff (2 m.) in Unst, and numerous short streams. The principal capes are Sumburgh Head, the most southerly point of Mainland, a bold promontory 300 ft. high; Fitful Head, on the south-west of the same island, a magnificent headland, 2 m. in length and nearly 1000 ft. high, where Norna, the prophetess of Sir Walter Scott's Pirate, was supposed to have her abode and which the Norsemen called the White Mountain, in allusion to the colour of the clay slate composing it; and the Noup and Herma Ness, two of the most northerly points in Unst.
Geology.—The geological characters of this group of islands resemble those of the northern part of Scotland. Old Red Sandstone, red grits, sandstones and marls and conglomerate occur in a narrow belt on the east side of Mainland from Sumburgh Head to Rova Head, north of Lerwick; they also form the island of Bressay. In the western portion of Mainland, in Northmavine, there is a considerable tract of rocks of this age which are formed largely of intrusive diabase-porphyrite; similar volcanic rocks occur in Papa Stour. These are penetrated by intrusions of granitic and felsitic character; one of these masses in Papa Stour is a handsome pink felsite. Practically all the remaining area in these islands is occupied by metamorphic schists and gneisses which occur in great variety and with which are associated numerous dikes and masses of intrusive igneous rock. The southern part of Mainland, from Laxfirth Voe to Fitful Head a series of dark schists and slates, is found with subordinate limestones. The metamorphic rocks of the rest of Mainland are principally coarse gneisses, micaceous and chloritic schists, quartzites, &c.; in these rocks at Tingwall and Wiesdale considerable beds of limestone occur, which may be followed across the island in a northerly direction to Yell Sound, and to Dales Voe in Delting.
