Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 22.djvu/644

 20 S U E S U E ter 1617 at Paris, where he passed his whole life, and where he died on 30th April 1655. His early death and retired habits have combined to give an air of romance to his simple history, which has been decorated with as many fables as that of Claude. We are told that, per- secuted by Lebrun, who was jealous of his ability, he became the intimate friend and correspondent of Poussin, and it is added that, broken-hearted at the death of his wife, Le Sueur retired to the monastery of the Chartreux and died in the arms of the prior. All this, however, is pure fiction. The facts of Le Sueur's life are these. He was the son of Cathelin Le Sueur, a turner and sculptor in -svood, who placed his son with Vouet, in whose studio he rapidly distinguished himself. Admitted at an early age into the guild of master-painters, he left them to take part in establishing the academy of painting and sculpture, and was one of the first twelve professors of that body. Some paintings, illustrative of the Hypnerotomachia Polyphili, which were reproduced in tapestry, brought him into notice, and his reputation was further enhanced by a series of decorations (Louvre) in the mansion of Lambert cle Thor- igny, which he left uncompleted, for their execution was frequently interrupted by other commissions. Amongst these were several pictures for the apartments of the king and queen in the Louvre, which are now missing, although they were entered in Bailly's inventory (1710); but several works produced for minor patrons have come down to us. In the gallery of the Louvre are the Angel and Hagar, from the mansion of De Tonnay Charente ; Tobias and Tobit, from the Fieubet collection ; several pictures executed for the church of Saint Gervais; the Martyrdom of St Lawrence, from Saint Germain de PAuxerrois; two very fine works from the destroyed abbey of Marmoutiers ; St Paul preaching at Ephesus, one of Le Sueur's most complete and thorough performances, painted for the goldsmiths' corporation in 1649 ; and his famous series of the Life of St Bruno, exe- cuted in the cloister of the Chartreux. These last have more personal character than anything else which Le Sueur produced, and much of their original beauty survives in spite of injuries and restorations and removal from the wall to canvas. The Louvre also possesses many fine drawings (reproduced by Braun), of which Le Sueur left an incredible quantity, chiefly executed in black and white chalk. His pupils, who aided him much in his work, were his wife's brother, Th. Gousse, and three brothers of his own, as well as Claude Lefebvre and Patel the landscape painter. Most of his works have been engraved, chiefly by Picart, B. Audran, Seb. Leclerc, Drevet, Chauveau, Poilly, and Desplaces. Le Sueur's work lent itself readily to the engraver's art, for he was a charming draughtsman ; he had a truly delicate perception of varied shades of grave and elevated sentiment, and possessed the power to render them. His graceful facility in composition was always restrained by a very fine taste, but his works often fail to please completely, because, producing so much, he had too frequent recourse to conventional types, and partly because he rarely saw colour except with the cold and clayey quality proper to the school of Vouet ; yet his St Paul at Ephesus and one or two other works show that he was not naturally deficient in this sense, and whenever we get direct reference to nature as in the monks of the St Bruno series we recognize his admirable power to read and render physiognomy of varied and serious type. See Guillet de St Georges, M6m. in6d. ; C. Blanc, Histoire dcs Pcintres ; Vitet, Catalogue dcs Tableaux du Louvre ; D'Argenville, Vies dcs Pcintres. SUEZ (SuwEis), the port of Egypt on the Red Sea and southern terminus of the Suez Canal (see below), situated at the head of the Gulf of Suez in 29* 58' 37" N. lat. and 32 31' 18" E. long, (see vol. iv. pi. XXXVI.). The new harbours and quays are about 2 miles south of the town, with which they are connected by an em- bankment and railway, crossing a shallow which is dry at low water ; the terminal lock of the freshwater canal is on the north of the town near the English hospital and the storehouses of the Peninsular and Oriental Com- pany. The site is naturally an absolute desert, and till the water of the Nile was introduced by the freshwater canal in 1863 the water-supply of Suez was brought across the head of the gulf from the "wells of Moses" on the Arabian coast, or else carried on camels, an hour's journey, from the fortified brackish well of Bir Suweis. Thus, in spite of its favourable position for commerce, Suez before the canal was but a small place. While the canal was in progress the population rose from 5000 to 15,000, but has since declined. The canal, in fact, carries traffic past Suez rather than to it ; and with its mean bazaar and mosques and mongrel population the town makes an unfavourable impression on the visitor, save for the imposing view over the gulf, with the Sinai Mountains on its eastern and Mount 'Ataka on its western shore. A canal from the Nile to the Red Sea, the indispensable con- dition for the existence of a prosperous trading station at Suez, appears to have existed in very early times. Classical writers say that it was first planned by Sesostris (Rameses II.), and again undertaken by Darius I., but first completed by the Ptolemies ( Arist., Meteor. , i. 14 ; Strabo, xiv. 25). The town at its terminus was Arsinoe or Cleopatris. The work was renewed by Trajan under the name Augustus amnis, but the trade from the East with Egypt still went mainly overland from Myus Hormus or from Berenice on the Red Sea, below the Gulf of Suez, to Coptus in Upper Egypt. Instead of Arsinoe later writers name the port of Clysma, which the Arabs corrupted into Kolzum, calling the Red Sea the Sea of Kolzum. On the Moslem conquest of Egypt the canal was restored, and is said to have remained open more than a century, till the time of Mansur. According to Mas'udi (Mor&j, iv. 98), Harun al- Rashid projected a canal across the isthmus of Suez, but was per- suaded that it would be dangerous to lay open the coasts of Arabia to the Greek navy. Kolzum retained some trade long after the closing of the canal, but in the 13th century it lay in ruins, and the neighbouring Suez, which had taken its place, was, as Yakut tells us, little better than a ruin. From Mokaddasi, p. 196, it may be inferred that the name of Suez originally denoted Bir Suweis. Throughout the Middle Ages, as in Roman times, the main route from Cairo to the Red Sea was up the Nile to Kus, and then through the desert to Aidhab. With the Ottoman conquest Suez became more important as a naval and trading station. Ships were built there from the 16th century onwards, and in the 18th century an annual fleet of nearly twenty vessels (Niebuhr) sailed from it to Jiddah, the port of correspondence with India. When the French occupied the town in 1798, and Bonaparte was full of his canal project, Suez was much decayed, and the conflicts which followed on its occupation in 1800 by an English fleet laid a great part of the town in ruins. The overland mail route from England to India by way of Suez was opened in 1837. The regular Peninsular and Oriental steamer service began a few years later, and in 1857 a railway was opened from Cairo through the desert. This line is now abandoned in favour of the railway which follows the canal from Suez to Ismailia, and then ascends the Wady Tumeilat to Zakazik, whence branches diverge to Cairo and Alexandria. SUEZ CANAL. The great engineering features have been already treated of under CANAL (vol. iv. pp. 789-792). The opening of the canal to a great extent revolutionized the main lines of inter- national traffic. More especially it has restored to the Mediter- ranean countries a share in the commerce of the world such as they have not possessed since the beginning of the modern period. In doing so it has naturally caused the decay of certain stations (such as St Helena) on the ocean highways previously in vogue. In the case of sailing vessels, however, the winds at the Red Sea entrance of the canal are so frequently contrary that much of the advantage of the shortness of route is lost, and these vessels con- sequently still take the old-fashioned detours. Traffic, too, in the canal has so greatly increased that in 1886 a vessel was considered fortunate that got through in forty-eight hours. In 1882 ship- owners having expressed dissatisfaction with the condition of the service, schemes for rival canals were started, one for a fresh-water canal from Alexandria to Cairo and thence to Suez by way of Tel- el-Kebir, another for a canal from Alexandria to Mansurah and Ismailia, and then parallel to the original canal to Suez, and a third for the construction of a second Suez canal, to be finished in 1888. These proposals all fell to the ground ; but at length, in