Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 21.djvu/719

Rh S E S S E T 693 SESAME, the most important plant of the genus Sesamum (nat. ord. Pedalinese), is that which is used throughout India and other tropical countries for the sake of the oil expressed from its seeds. S. indicum is an herb 2 to 4 feet high, with the lower leaves on long stalks, broad, coarsely toothed or lobed. The upper leaves are opposite, lanceolate, and bear in their axils curved, tubular, two- lipped flowers, each about f inch long, and pinkish or yellowish in colour. The four stamens are of unequal length, with a trace of a fifth stamen, and the two-celled ovary ripens into a two-valved pod with numerous seeds. The plant has been cultivated in the tropics from time immemorial, and is supposed on philological grounds to have been disseminated from the islands of the Indian Archipelago, but at present it is not known with certainty in a wild state. The plant varies in the colour of the flower, and especially in that of the seeds, which range from light yellow or whitish to black. Sesame oil, otherwise known as gingelly or til (not to be confounded with that derived from Guizotia oleifera, known under the same vernacular name), is very largely used for the same pur- poses as olive oil, and, although less widely known by name, is commercially a much more important oil ; thus, apart from the almost universal use of the oil in India, from 50 to 80 millions of kilogrammes of the seed are stated to have been introduced annually into France in 1870- 1872. The seed is also largely exported from Zanzibar and Formosa. The seeds and leaves also are used by the natives as demulcents and for other medicinal purposes. The soot obtained in burning the oil is said to constitute one of the ingredients in India or Chinese ink, The plant might be cultivated with advantage in almost all the tropical and semi-tropical colonies of Britain, but will not succeed in any part of Europe. SESOSTRIS (^e'crcocrr/H?, so Herodotus ; Diodorus writes Sesoosis ; other forms are Sesonchosis, Sesosis, Sesothis, &c.) is according to Greek historians the name of a king of Egypt who conquered the whole world, even Scythia, the lands of the Ganges, and ^Ethiopia, which were not subject to any of the later great empires. The conqueror in whose exploits these extravagant legends took their rise was Ramses II. (see EGYPT, vol. vii. p. 739) ; but the Greek accounts unite in his person all the greatest deeds of the ancient Pharaohs, and add much that is purely imagin- ary. In Manetho's lists Sesostris is identified with a much older king, Usertesen IL, perhaps because authentic tradi- tion made him the conqueror of ^Ethiopia (see vol. vii. p. 734). When Herodotus says that he himself saw monu- ments of Sesostris in Palestine, he has been thought to refer to the figures of Ramses II. hewn in the rocks of Nahr-al- Kalb, near Beirut, but they do not agree well with his description (Hdt., ii. 102-106), which seems to point rather to Astarte pillars (Asherim). The monuments in Ionia of which he speaks still exist in the Karabel Pass. They are not Egyptian but so-called " Hittite," i.e., probably Cappa- docian. See Wright, Empire of the Hittites, last plate. SESSA, a town of the kingdom of Italy, province of Terra di Lavoro, situated among hills on the site of the ancient Suessa Aurunca, on a small affluent of the Gari- gliano, is 17 miles east of Gaeta and half a mile from Sant' Agata. The hill on which Sessa is situated is a mass of volcanic tufa, in which have been discovered painted chambers erroneously supposed to have belonged to a city covered by a volcanic eruption. The town contains many ancient remains, particularly the ruins of Ponte Aurunca and of an amphitheatre. It is the see of a bishop, has an interesting basilica with three naves, a gymnasium, a technical school, and a seminary. The cathedral contains inscriptions, a mosaic pavement, and a good ambo decorated with mosaics resting on columns. In the principal street are memorial stones with inscriptions in honour of Charles V., surmounted by an old crucifix with a mosaic cross. Exclusive of the environs, the town has a population of 6130. The hills of Sessa are celebrated for their vines, the "Ager Falernus " of the Romans. SESSION, COURT OP. See SCOTLAND, p. 535 supra. SETTLE, ELKANAH (1648-1723), a minor poet and playwright of the Restoration period, immortalized by the ridicule of Dryden and Pope, was born at Dunstable in 1648. He is the "Doeg" of the second part of Absalom and Ackitopkel, and is treated by the satirist with some- what more good-humoured contempt than his companion in the pillory Shadwell. Doeg, though without knowing how or why, Made still a blundering kind of melody; Spurr'd boldly on, and dash'd through thick and thin, Through sense and nonsense, never out nor in. Dryden treats him as a sort of harmless fool, who " rhymed and rattled " along in perfect satisfaction with himself. For some time also he was taken by the public at his own valuation. At college he seems to have been regarded as a prodigy, and his juvenile verse was preferred to Dryden's. Coming to London, he began to produce tragedies. His Empress of Morocco (acted in 1673, when the author was twenty-five) was a signal success on the stage, and is said by Dennis to have been " the first play that was ever sold in England for two shillings, and the first that was ever printed with cuts." Puffed up by this success, Settle made haughty allusions in his preface, which excited the ire of his contemporaries ; and Dryden co-operated with Crowne and Shadwell in writing sarcastic notes on The Empress. Settle's next collision with Dryden was also provoked by himself. He attempted a counterblast to Dryden's great satire in Absalom Senior, and was contemptuously demolished in return. Settle was then comparatively a young man, his age being thirty-five, but he had touched the height of his fame, and the remain- ing forty years of his life were not so successful. Dryden mockingly said of him that his ambition was to be " the master of a puppet-show," alluding to his duties in the office of city poet, in which he was one of the successors of Lodge, Middleton, Jonson, and Quarles; and to this he was literally reduced in his old age, keeping a booth at Bartholomew Fair, where he is said to have played the part of the dragon in green leather. He died in the Charterhouse in 1723. SETTLEMENT, in law, is a mutual arrangement between living persons for regulating the present or future enjoyment of property. It also denotes the instrument by which such enjoyment is regulated. The prevailing notion of a settlement is the dealing with property in a manner different from that in which the law would have dealt with it apart from the settlement. Definitions of settlement for the purposes of the Acts are contained in the Acts of 1856, 1877, and 1882 (see below). They are, however, scarcely sufficient for a general definition. On the one hand they are too extensive, and include wills ; on the other they are not comprehensive enough, as they apply only to real estate. They also include only cases of successive limitations, but the idea of succession does not in itself seem a necessary part of the conception of settlement, although no doubt most settlements contemplate successive enjoyment. Settle- ments may be either for valuable consideration or not : the latter are usually called voluntary, and are in law to some extent in the same position as revocable gifts ; the former are really contracts, and in general their validity depends upon the law of contract. They may accordingly contain any provisions not contrary to law or public policy. 1 1 In this English law allows greater freedom than French. By 791 of the Code Napoleon, in a contract of marriage the succession to a living person cannot be renounced.