Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 22.djvu/62

 46 S I G S I G pies of reform. An excellent opportunity was provided for the inculcation of his views by the invitation which Necker addressed to all French writers to publish their opinions upon the mode of convening the states-general. Sieyes startled his countrymen by the issue of various pamphlets upon the political situation, and particularly by his dar- ing and original treatise upon the Third Estate, with its three famous divisions in question and answer : " 1st, What is the Third Estate 1 Everything. What has it hitherto been in the political order? -Nothing. What does it demand 1 To become something." He attacked unsparingly the privileged classes, and indeed in this his most famous work he constructed, single-handed and at once, a programme for the Revolution. The influence of the book and of its author soon became enormous, and in 1789 the Abbe Sieyes was elected by the city of Paris as a representative to the states-general, where he was the first to propose that the three estates should meet together in one assembly. On the rejection of his motion he boldly suggested the formation of an "assembly of repre- sentatives of France already verified." He was not, how- ever, successful as a speaker, his style being obscure and his matter too compressed for oral expression, faults which disappeared when he committed his thoughts to writing. Yet he was one of the leaders of the assembly, and was appointed a member of the committee on the constitution. His published speech in opposition to the power of absolute veto by the king brought him still further into notice. But he recognized his inaptitude for public speaking, and, although even Mirabeau declared that the silence of Sieyes was a public calamity, he stood aside while his own ideas were being developed amidst violence and riot both within and without the constituent and afterwards the legislative assembly. As excess fol- lowed upon excess in the wild course of the Revolution Sieyes had neither the courage nor the power to quell the riot. In danger of becoming a suspect, and fearful of his life, he emerged from obscurity in November 1793, on the occasion of the installation of Reason in Notre Dame. Before the national convention he denied his faith, abjur- ing the title of priest, professing that his only worship was that of liberty and equality and his only religion the love of humanity and country, and concluding by formally renouncing to the state the commuted pension which he enjoyed in lieu of his former benefice. The overthrow of the Jacobins at last overcame his fears and in March 1795 he is found publicly lauding the memory of those guillotined Girondists in whose defence he, two years before, had never once lifted his voice. In the same year (1795) the ex-abbe was commissioned by the Convention to The Hague, where he successfully con- cluded an offensive and defensive alliance between the United Provinces and France. Without Sieyes no framing of a constitution could be attempted, and he was accord- ingly appointed member of a commission to draw up organic laws, the constitution of 1793 having been found unworkable. When the commission brought forward its report Sieyes did not dissent ; but he proposed to the Con- vention a separate scheme of his own, the specialty of which was the provision for the appointment of a constitutional jury which should be charged with the duty of revising all legislative decrees against which the challenge was brought that they were themselves at variance with the constitu- tion. His scheme was, however, rejected in favour of the new constitution, and from that moment he became its secret enemy. He was elected one of the first directory of five, but he declined the honour. In 1798 he was appointed the plenipotentiary of France to Prussia, where he was received with great honour and where he speedily began to plot against the Government he represented. He communicated his views to Napoleon, then in Egypt. Meanwhile (1799) he was again elected to the directory, and, his plans being ripe, he accepted office. Then came the coup d'etat of 18th Brumaire (9th November 1799), in which Sieyes took so important a part, but in which he was unquestionably overborne by the genius and audacity of Bonaparte. The provisional consulate com- posed of Napoleon, Sieyes, and Ducos lasted but a few weeks. After a little Sieyes is a count of the empire and the proprietor of Crosne (Seine-et-Oise), while Napoleon is able to boast of how he has bribed the ex-abbe out of his constitutional views. Amid the political changes of France, Sieyes on the second return of the Bourbons fled to Brussels; but after the revolution of 1830 he felt it safe to return to Paris, where he died on 20th June 1836. SIGALON, XAVIEB (1788-1837), French painter, born at Uzes (Gard) towards the close of 1788, was one of the few leaders of the romantic movement who cared for treat- ment of form rather than of colour. The son of a poor rural schoolmaster, he had a terrible struggle before he was able even to reach Paris and obtain admission to Guerin's studio. But the learning offered there did not respond to his special needs, and he tried to train himself by solitary study of the Italian masters in the gallery of the Louvre. The Young Courtesan (Louvre), which he exhibited in 1822, at once attracted attention and was bought for the Luxembourg. The painter, however, re- garded it as but an essay in practice and sought to measure himself with a mightier motive ; this he did in his Locusta (Nimes), 1824, and again in Athaliah's Massacre (Nantes), 1827. Both these works showed incontestable power; but the Vision of St Jerome (Louvre), which appeared at the salon of 1831, together with the Crucifixion (Issengeaux), was by far the most individual of all his achievements, and that year he received the cross of the Legion of Honour. The terrors and force of his pencil were not, however, rendered attractive by any charm of colour ; his paintings remained unpurchased, and Sigalon found him- self forced to get a humble living at times by painting portraits, when Thiers, then minister of the interior, re- called him to Paris and entrusted him with the task of copying the Sistine fresco of the Last Judgment for a hall in the Palace of the Fine Arts. On the exhibition, in the Baths of Diocletian at Rome, of Sigalon's gigantic task, in which he had been aided by his pupil Numa Boucoiran, the artist was visited in state by Gregory XVI. But Sigalon was not destined long to enjoy his tardy honours and the comparative ease procured by a small Government pension ; returning to Rome to copy some pendants in the Sistine, he died there of cholera on 9th August 1837. See Julius Meyer, Gcsch. d. franzosischen Kunst ; Villot, Cat. Tableaux, Louvre ; C. Blanc, Histoire des Peintres, iZcole Franqaise. SIGHTS. A sight for shooting may be defined as an apparatus for determining the point of impact of a pro- jectile, in popular language, for "aiming" or "laying." In its simplest form it is scarcely recognizable as a sight. When an expert cricketer throws the ball straight to the wicket the eye and the hand assume that relative position which experience has taught to be correct, and the eye may be said to lay the hand on the wicket by means of the in- tervening muscles, which therefore constitute the sight. The next step towards accuracy is seen in the ordinary shot-gun, where the eye is placed over and behind the centre of the breech, and sees that a bead placed above the centre of the muzzle is in a direct line with the desired point of impact. If we add a notch at the centre of the breech to fix the eye more accurately, we shall have the hind-sight, the fore-sight, and the object brought into line, when the gun is correctly laid. This would constitute a perfect direct mechanical sight