Chapter Secret Tribunal to Serbonian Bog of S by Brewer's Readers Handbook

Secret Tribunal to Serbonian Bog

Secret Tribunal (The), the count of the Holy Vehme.—Sir W. Scott: Anne of Geierstein (time, Edward IV.).

Secrets. The Depository of the Secrets of all the World was the inscription over one of the brazen portals of Fakreddin’s valley.—Beckford: Vathek (1784).

Secrets (The Revealer of). (See under RING, The Steel Ring, p. 916.)

Sede, in Voltaire’s tragedy of Mahomet, was the character in which Talma, the great French tragedian, made his début in 1787.

Sedgwick (Doomsday), William Sedgwick, a fanatical “prophet” in the Commonwealth, who pretended that it had been revealed to him in a vision that the day of doom was at hand.

Sedillo, the licentiate with whom Gil Blas took service as a footman. Sedillo was a gouty old gourmand of 69. Being ill, he sent for Dr. Sangrado, who took from him six porringers of blood every day, and dosed him incessantly with warm water, giving him two or three pints at a time, saying, “A patient cannot be blooded too much; for it is a great error to suppose that blood is needful for the preservation of life. Warm water,” he maintained, “drunk in abundance, is the true specific in all distempers.” When the licentiate died under this treatment, the doctor insisted it was because his patient had neither lost blood enough nor drunk enough warm water.—Lesage: Gil Blas, ii. I, 2 (1715).

Sedley (Mr.), a wealthy London stock-broker, brought to ruin by the fall of the Funds just prior to the battle of Waterloo. The old merchant then tried to earn a meagre pittance by selling wine, coals, or lottery-tickets by commission, but his bad wine and cheap coals found but few customers.

Mrs. Sedley, wife of Mr. Sedley. A homely, kind-hearted, bonny, motherly woman in her prosperous days, but soured by adversity, and quick to take offence.

Amelia Sedley, daughter of the stock-broker, educated at Miss Pinkerton’s academy, Chiswick Mall, and engaged to captain George Osborne, son of a rich London merchant. After the ruin of old Sedley, George married Amelia, and was disinherited by his father. He was adored by his young wife, but fell on the field of Waterloo. Amelia then returned to her father, and lived in great indigence, but captain Dobbin greatly loved her, and did much to relieve her worst wants. Captain Dobbin rose in his profession to the rank of colonel, and then married the young widow.

Joseph Sedley, a collector, of Boggley Wollah; a fat, sensual, conceited dandy, vain, shy, and vulgar. “His excellency” fled from Brussels on the day of the battle between Napoleon and Wellington, and returned to Calcutta, where he bragged of his brave deeds, and made it appear that he was Wellington’s right hand; so that he obtained the sobriquet of “Waterloo Sedley.” He again returned to England, and became the “patron” of Becky Sharp (then Mrs. Rawdon Crawley, but separated from her husband). This lady proved a terrible dragon, fleeced him of all his money, and in six months he died under very suspicious circumstances.—Thackeray: Vanity Fair (1848).

Sedley (Sir Charles), in the court of Charles II.—Sir W. Scott: Woodstock (time, Commonwealth).

See, the Conquering Hero Comes! This song stands at the opening of act ii. of Alexander the Great, a tragedy by N. Lee (1678).

(Set to music by Handel, and introduced in the oratorio of Fudas Maccabæus, 1743.)

Seelencooper (Captain), superintendent of the military hospital at Ryde.—Sir W. Scott: The Surgeon’s Daughter (time, George II.).

Seer (The Ploughkeepsie), Andrew Jackson Davis.