is in most cases a bar to criminal proceedings. Massachusetts goes still further. By the law of that State if a man commits fornication with a single woman, each of them shall be punished by imprisonment not exceeding three months, or by fine not exceeding $30. The seduction of a female passenger on a vessel of the United States is an offence punishable by fine or imprisonment. The fine may be ordered by the court to be paid to the person seduced or her child (Act of Congress of 24th March 1860). The State legislation of the United States is in remarkable opposition to the rule of the canon law, by which the seduction of a woman by her betrothed was not punishable on account of the inchoate right over her person given by the betrothal.
SEDULIUS, Cœlius, a Christian poet of the 5th century, was the author of an abecedarian Hymnus de Christo in iambic dimeters, portions of which maintain their ground in the offices of the Church of Rome, viz., in the Christmas hymn “A solis ortus cardine," and in that for Epiphany (altered from “Herodes hostis impie”). His other works are Paschale Carmen s. Mirabilium Divinorum Libri V., originally in four or five books in hexameter verse and afterwards enlarged and turned into prose, and Veteris et Novi Testamenti Collatio, in elegiac verse. De Verbi Incarnatione, a Virgilian cento, has also been ascribed to him, but on insufficient grounds. Of his personal history nothing is known, except that he is called a presbyter by Isidore of Seville; by some other writers of less authority he is designated “antistes” or “episcopus.” A Scoto-Irish origin has sometimes been claimed for him; but at all events he must not be confounded with Sedulius the grammarian, an Irish Scot who lived in the 9th century. The best edition of his works is that of Arevalus (4to, Rome, 1794).
SEDUM. About 120 species are enumerated in this genus of Crassulaceæ, mostly perennial herbs with succulent leaves of varied form, but never compound. The individual flowers are usually small and grouped in cymes. In colour they range from white and yellow to pink. They have a calyx of five sepals, as many petals, usually ten stamens, and five distinct carpels, which have as many glands at their base and ripen into as many dry seed-pods. Several species are British, including some with tuberous roots and large leaves (Telephium), and others of smaller size, chiefly found on rocks, walls, and dry banks. Many are cultivated for the beauty of their flowers, and many are remarkable for their prolonged vitality under adverse circumstances. Sedums are very closely allied to Sempervivums (see Houseleek).
SEELAND. See Zealand.
SÉES, a town of France and a bishop’s see, in the department of Orne, is situated on the Orne, 4 miles from its source and 13 miles north of Alengon by the railway from Le Mans to Caen. The very fine cathedral, dating to a large extent from the 13th and 14th centuries, occupies the site of churches founded in 440, 996, and 1053. The west front has two stately spires of open work 230 feet high, which have been restored more than once in the 19th century. The nave, built in the beginning of the 13th century, was remodelled in its upper portion fifty or sixty years after its erection; the choir, built about 1230 and restored in 1260 after a great fire, is remarkable for the lightness of its construction, the inner galleries of the presbytery being the boldest venture ever made in this kind. In the choir are four bas-reliefs of great beauty and delicacy representing scenes in the life of the Virgin; and the altar is adorned with another depicting the removal of the relics of St Gervais and St Protais. Most of the stained windows are good. Around the cathedral are the cloisters of the canons; the episcopal palace (1778), with a pretty chapel; the great seminary, located in the old abbey of St Martin (supposed to be one of the fourteen or fifteen monasteries founded in the 6th century by St Evroult); the hôtel de ville; and the statue of Conté, a member of the Egyptian expedition of 1798. The population of Sées was 3483 in 1881, and that of the commune 4687.
The first bishop of Sées (Sagium) was St Lain, who lived at the close of the 3d or beginning of the 4th century. In the 9th century it was a fortified town and fell a prey to the Normans; and the stones from its ruined ramparts were used for the erection of a church in the close of the 10th century. In the 12th century Sées belonged to the count of Alengon and consisted of two distinct parts, separated by the Orne,—the bishop’s burgh, and to the south the new or count’s burgh (Bourg le Comte). Captured in 1154 by Henry II. of England, it was recovered in the following year by Guillaume de Bellême; and in 1136 it was partly burned by the count of Anjou. After being taken by Philip Augustus it enjoyed some years of peace, during which a hospital and a Franciscan monastery were built; but it was one of the first towns of Normandy to fall into the hands of the English (1417), who retained possession until their final expulsion from France. Pillaged by the Protestants during the Wars of Religion, Sées attached itself to the League in 1589, but voluntarily surrendered to Henry IV. in 1590.
SEETZEN, Ulrich Jasper (1767–1811), one of the most distinguished of modern travellers in the East, was born the son of a yeoman, in the little lordship of Jever in German Frisia, on 30th January 1767. His father, who was a man of substance, sent him to the university of Göttingen, where he graduated in medicine. His chief interests, however, were in natural history and technology; he wrote a number of papers on both these subjects which gained him some reputation, and had both in view in a series of journeys which he made from time to time through various parts of Holland and Germany. He also engaged practically in various small manufactures, and in 1802 obtained a Government post in Jever. In 1801, however, the interest which he had long felt in geographical exploration had culminated in a resolution to travel by Constantinople to Syria and Arabia, and then, when familiarized with Mohammedan ways, to try to penetrate into Central Africa. He relied mainly on his own resources, but received a small subvention from Gotha, where also he learned from Zach to make astronomical observations. In the summer of 1802 he started down the Danube with a companion Jacobsen, who broke down at Smyrna a year later. His journey was by Constantinople, where he stayed six months, thence through Asia Minor to Smyrna, then again through the heart of Asia Minor to Aleppo, where he remained from November 1803 to April 1805, and made himself sufficiently at home with Arabic speech and ways to travel as a native and without an interpreter. Now began the part of his travels of which a full journal has been published (April 1805 to March 1809), a series of most instructive journeys in eastern and western Palestine and the wilderness of Sinai, and so on to Cairo and the Fayyum. His chief exploit was a tour round the Dead Sea, which he made without a companion and in the disguise of a beggar. From Egypt he went by sea to Jeddah and reached Mecca as a pilgrim in October 1809. In Arabia he made extensive journeys, ranging from Medina to Lahak and returning to Mocha, from which place his last letters to Europe were written in November 1810. In September of the following year he left Mocha with the hope of reaching Muscat, and was found dead two days later, having, it is believed, been poisoned by the command of the imam of Sana’a. For the parts of Seetzen’s journeys not covered by the published journal (Reisen, ed. Kruse, 4 vols., Berlin, 1854) the only printed records are a series of letters and papers in Zach’s Monatliche Correspondenz and Hammer’s Fundgruben. Many papers and collections were lost through his death or never reached Europe. The collections that were saved form the Oriental museum and the chief part of the Oriental MSS. of the ducal library in Gotha.
