Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XIV.djvu/835

 SHAG the lower house, but was thrown out by the lords. The king again dissolved parliament, and the next one met at Oxford ; but Shaftes- bury being still all-powerful in the commons, it was soon dissolved (1681). The earl was arrested by order of council on the charge of high treason, and the benefit of his own habeas corpus act was denied him ; but the grand jury threw out the bill, and the earl was liberated. He left England, and reached Amsterdam in 1682, where he was admitted to the magistracy. This secured his personal safety, and for the remainder of his life he lived in splendor. He wrote memoirs of his own times, and intrusted them to his friend John Locke, who destroyed them, frightened, it is said, by the execution of Algernon Sidney. His life was written and privately printed under the direction of his great-grandson (new ed., 1836). See also " Life of the first Lord Shaftesbury," by W. D. Christie (London, 1871). II. Anthony Ashley Cooper, third earl of, grandson of the preceding, born in London, Feb. 26, 1671, died in Naples, Feb. 15, 1713. He entered parliament in 1693, and made a famous speech in behalf of the proposal to allow counsel to persons charged with high treason. Illness compelled him to retire from public life in 1698. He entered the house of lords in 1700, supported the measures of Wil- liam III., and on the king's death retired. He was a philanthropist and a leading free thinker, and wrote " A Letter on Enthusiasm " (1708) ; "Moralists" and Sensus Communis (1709); and "A Soliloquy, or Advice to Authors" (1710). A complete collection of his works was published under the title " Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, and Times" (3 vols. 8vo, 1713). At the time of his death he was engaged in Naples upon a work on the arts of design. III. Anthony Ashley Cooper, sev- enth earl of, born April 28, 1801. He gradu- ated at Christ Church college, Oxford, in 1822, was returned to parliament in 1826, and sup- ported the administration of George Canning. He was repeatedly a member of the house of commons, and entered the house of lords in 1851. He has continually striven to improve the condition of the laboring classes, and has taken part in many religious and benevolent enterprises. SHAG. See CORMORANT. SHAGREEN (Pers. sagri, shagrain), a prepa- ration of the skins of horses, wild asses, and camels, resembling parchment more than leath- er. It is a product of Astrakhan in Russia and the countries of the East. Thick strips are cut from the skins along the chine, and having been deprived of the hair and dressed in the usual process of currying, each one is stretched by strings fastened to its edges in a square wooden frame. It is kept moist, and is occa- sionally stretched still more, till it becomes smooth and tense as a drum head. While still moist, the hair side is sprinkled over with the hard shining black seeds of a species of cheno- 809 podium, and these being covered with a piece of felt or thick cloth, the seeds are pressed into the skin by trampling or by a simple press. 'The skin retaining the seeds is then dried in the shade, and being afterward beat- en the seeds fall out, leaving the surface in- dented with their pits. The opposite smooth side is then shaved down nearly to the bottom of the pits, and on macerating the skin in wa- ter the depressions appear in little swellings on this side, which remain permanent, and become hard with the rest of the skin when dried. When the strips have been steeped in a warm solution of soda, and cleansed with salt brine, they are ready for dyeing. Shagreen was for- merly much used for scabbards of swords and for the cases of instruments, spectacles, &c. SHAKERS, the popular name of a religious sect who call themselves the " United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing." They originated in England about the year 1770, but are now confined to the United States, where they have 17 societies and about 4,000 full members, besides some hundreds of novitiates. They were at first an offshoot from the Friends or Quakers, and generally held similar views relative to spiritual illumination, giving testi- monies, objecting to the legal oath, to war, slavery, &c. ; but in their theological ideas, as well as in their practice of celibate life, and in community of goods, they now differ en- tirely from the Friends. In 1747 some mem- bers of the society of Friends near Manches- ter, England, formed a distinct association, of which Jane and James Wardley were the lead- ers. Of this society the parents of Ann Lee were members, and in 1758 she became one of its adherents. For several years this lit- tle company were only remarkable for greater physical manifestations of their spiritual illu- mination than most of the assemblages of Quakers, such as dancing, shouting, trembling, speaking with tongues, &c. These manifesta- tions excited the hostility of the populace, and even of some magistrates and clergymen, who charged them with thereby violating the sab- bath. Several of the members, including the Wardleys and Ann Lee and her family, were imprisoned, fined, and roughly used. In 1770 Ann Lee professed to have received, by a spe- cial manifestation of divine light, those reve- lations in virtue of which her followers have ever since given her the name of Mother Ann, and have regarded her as a person inspired by the Christ of the female order, as Jesus was in- spired by the Christ of the male order. *Christ is applied by them, as a generic term, to the highest or innermost sphere, exterior to the deific sphere, called in the Scriptures eternity : " the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eter- nity." In 1774, under authority of a revela- tion to Mother Ann, ten of the more promi- nent members of the society, including Ann Lee, emigrated to America, arriving in New York Aug. 6 ; and eight of them subsequently settled at Niskayuna (now Watervliet), 7 m.