Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 21.djvu/411

Rh S C H S C H 389 mental phase of the Romantic movement in France. After the early death of his father, a poor painter, Ary was taken to Paris and placed in the studio of Guerin by his mother, a woman of great energy and character. The moment at which Scheffer left Guerin coincided with the commencement of the Romantic movement. He had little sympathy with the directions given to it by either of its most conspicuous representatives, Sigalon, Dela- croix, or Gericault, and made various tentative efforts Gaston de Foix (1824), Suliot Women (1827) before he found his own path. Immediately after the exhibition of the last-named work he turned to Byron and Goethe, selecting from Faust a long series of subjects which had an extraordinary vogue. Of these, we may mention Margaret at her Wheel ; Faust Doubting ; Margaret at the Sabbat ; Margaret Leaving Church ; the Garden Walk ; and lastly, perhaps the most popular of all, Margaret at the Well. The two Mignons appeared in 1836; and Francesca da Rimini, which is on the whole Scheffer's best work, belongs to the same period. He now turned to religious subjects : Christus Consolator (1836) was followed by Christus Remunerator, the Shepherds Led by the Star (1837), The Magi Laying Down their Crowns, Christ in the Garden of Olives, Christ Bearing his Cross, Christ Interred (1845), St Augustine and Monica (1846), after which he ceased to exhibit, but, shut up in his studio, con- tinued to produce much which was first seen by the outer world after his death, which took place at Argenteuil on the 15th June 1858. At the posthumous exhibition of his works there figured the Sorrows of the Earth, and the Angel Announcing the Resurrection, which he had left unfinished. Amongst his numerous portraits those of La Fayette, Beranger, Lamartine, and Marie Amelie were the most noteworthy. His reputation, much shaken by this posthumous exhibition, was further undermined by the sale of the Paturle Gallery, which contained many of his most celebrated achievements ; the charm and facility of their composition could not save them from the con- demnation provoked by their poor and earthy colour and vapid sentiment. Scheffer, who married the widow of General Baudrand, was only made commander of the Legion of Honour in 1848, that is, after he had wholly withdrawn from the Salon. His brother Henri, born at The Hague 27th September 1798, was also a fertile painter. See Vitet's notice prefixed to Bingham's publication of works of A. Scheffer ; Etex, Ary Scheffer ; Mrs Grote, Life of A. Scheffer ; Julius Meyer's Gcschichte der franzosischen Kunst. SCHELDT, or SCHELDE (Fr. Escaut, Lat. Scaldis, 0. Dutch Schoude or Schouwe), a river of north-west Europe, belonging for 75 miles of its pourse to France, 137 to Belgium, and 37 to the Netherlands. Rising at a height of 295 feet above the sea, in a small lake (7 square miles) at the old abbey of St Martin, near Catelet, in the French department of Aisne (Picardy), it becomes navigable by the junction of the St Quentin Canal, below Catelet, and passes by Cambray, Denain (where it receives the Selle), Valenciennes, at the mouth of the Rouelle, Conde, at the mouth of the Haisne or Henne, and Chateau 1'Abbaye, at the mouth of the Scarpe. Entering Belgium between Mortagne and Hollain, it continues by Fontenoy, Tournay, and Oudenarde to Ghent, where it is joined by the Lys from the left, and by the canals which unite this town with Sas and Bruges. At Ghent the tide rises 3| feet and lasts for four hours ; and it would ascend much farther were it not for sluices. But the river, instead of proceeding straight towards the sea, as it appears to have done perhaps as late as the time of Charlemagne, makes a great bend towards the east to Dendermonde (the mouth of the Dender) and Antwerp, whence it again turns north- west and loses itself in the estuaries among the islands of Zealand. The whole of the lowlands to the north of Ghent are so intersected with canals, and the natural channels are so intermingled with those partially or entirely artificial, that it is impossible to discover with certainty what has been the real history of the lower course of the Scheldt. 1 The Hont or Western Scheldt, the principal estuary by which nearly all Belgium commerce is conveyed, was probably opened up by a storm in 1173, and about 1058 must have been a mere narrow creek. The Eastern Scheldt, which then received most of the river, has gradually diminished in importance, and since the construction of the railway bridge across it between the mainland and South Beveland in 1867 has become completely obstructed with sands. At Antwerp the depth at high water is 49 feet. Between 1648 and 1792 the Dutch closed the mouths of the Scheldt against foreign commerce. The emperor Joseph of Austria, at that time ruler of Antwerp, protested against this action in 1783, but in 1784, by the treaty of Fontainebleau, he recognized, in return for concessions of territory and 9^ million florins, the right of the Dutch to adhere to the terms of the peace of Westphalia. In 1792 by conquest of Dumouriez, and in 1795 by treaty between France and Holland, the Scheldt was declared open. During the union of Holland and Belgium the question naturally lay in abeyance. When Belgium became independent (1839) Holland so far resumed her exclusive policy, but in 1863 the dues which she was allowed to levy by the treaty of separation were capitalized by Belgium paying 17,141,640 florins, a sum which was largely repaid to Belgium by twenty other countries who felt they had an interest in the free navigation of the Scheldt. Great Britain's share was 8,782,320 francs. See Vifquain, Des Votes Navigable! en Belgique, 1842 ; Wauvermans, "Sur Ics Variations de 1'Escaut au XVI. siecle," in Bull, de la Soc. de Ge'ogr. d'Anvers, voL i.; Raemdonck, "L'Hist. du Cours de 1'Escaut," and Verstraete, "Cours Primitif de 1'Escaut," both in Bull, de la Soc. Beige de Ge'ogr., 1878. SCHELLING, FRIEDRICH WILHELM JOSEPH VON (1775-1854), a distinguished German philosopher, was born on 27th January 1775 at Leonberg, a small town of Wiirtemberg, otherwise notable as scene of the early years of Kepler's life. Through both parents he was connected with families of distinction in the Protestant church com- munity. His father, a solidly trained scholar of Oriental languages, was called in 1777 as chaplain and professor to the cloister school of Bebenhausen, near Tubingen, a pre- paratory seminary for intending students of theology at Tubingen. Here Schelling received his earliest education and gave the first evidences of what afterwards so eminently distinguished him, remarkable precocity and quickness of intellect. From the Latin school at Niirtin- gen, whither he had been sent in his tenth year, he was returned in two years as having already acquired all the school could give him, and his father with regret was compelled to allow him at so abnormally young an age to study with the seminarists at Bebenhausen. In 1790, with special permission, for he was yet three years under the prescribed age, Schelling entered the theological seminary at Tiibingen, where he had as fellow students, contemporary as scholars though elder in years, Hegel and Holderlin. The character and direction of his studies may be gathered sufficiently from- the titles of the essays which for various purposes were accomplished during the five years of his student career. In 1792 he graduated in the philosophical faculty with a thesis Antiquissimi de prima malorum humanorum origine pliilosophematis explicandi tentamen criticum et philosophicum ; in 1793 he contri- buted to Paulus's Memorabilien a paper Ueber Mythus, historische Sagen, und Philosopheme der dltesten Welt ; and in 1795 his thesis for his theological degree was De Mar done Paullinarum epistolarum emendatore. The in- fluence of these early studies over his later literary career 1 Bylandt, Belpaire, Renard, and Wauvermans impugn, and Des Roches, Vifquain, Van Raeradonck and Verstraete maintain, the existence within historic times of a direct main-river channel from Ghent northward to the sea.