SULLY
SUMNEE
Bonaparte. Sue was the son of a dis
tinguished Parisian surgeon, and he had
the Empress Josephine for godmother.
He studied medicine, and was assistant-
surgeon in the Spanish expedition of 1823.
He then became a naval surgeon, and
travelled much with the fleet. In 1829
his father left him a fortune, and he settled
.in Paris. A novel he wrote in 1830
(Kernock le pirate) was so successful that
he applied himself seriously to fiction.
His My stores de Paris began to appear in
the Journal des Debats in 1842, and people
fought for copies of the paper. It was
published in ten volumes in 1813. Another
Paris journal gave him a hundred thousand j
francs for his next novel, Le juif errant \
(10 vols., 1845). In his earlier years he
had been aristocratic, but in 1850, when ,
he was returned to the Chambre, he sat j
on the extreme left with the anti-clericals.
He was proscribed at the coup d etat of
1851. D. Aug. 3, 1857.
SULLY, Professor James, M.A., LL.D., psychologist. B. Mar. 3, 1842. Ed. Taun- ton Independent College, Eegent s Park College, and Gottingen and Berlin Univer sities. He was a gold medallist of London University. For some years he lectured on education for the College of Preceptors and at Cambridge University, and he then became professor of psychology at London University College. He is now Professor Emeritus. His chief works are Pessimism (1877), Outlines of Psychology (1884), Teacher s Handbook of Psychology (1886), The Human Mind (1892), and Studies of Childhood (1895). Professor Sully belongs to the empirical school, and is Agnostic as to the " soul " and its future.
SULLY PRUDHOMME, Rene Fran- QOis Armand, French poet. B. Mar. 16, 1839. Ed. Lycee Bonaparte. He was the son of a rich merchant, but he served some time in the professions of engineering and of law before he settled down to letters. In the preface to his first volume of poems (Stances et poemes, 1865) he declared him- 771
self a sceptic, but observed that he did
not wish to hurt his father s feelings. Les
epreuves (1866) and Les solitudes (1869)
completed his reputation ; and he also
wrote a few works on aesthetics and trans
lated the first book of Lucretius. He was
admitted to the Academy in 1881, and was
awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in
1901. Prudhomme, whose poetry takes
a very high rank in recent French literature,
was a nationalist of the rare morbid type.
He never believed, yet always professed
that he wanted to believe. At the most
he believed in a sort of Pantheistic
"divine," which reveals itself in duty.
" His malady," says Gaston Paris in a
fine appreciation of him, " is the malady
of our age he desired an illusion and
found it impossible to believe in it " (Pen- seurs et Poetes, p. 233). D. Sep. 7, 1907.
SUMNER, Charles, American states
man. B. Jan. 6, 1811. Ed. Harvard
University and Law School. He was
admitted to the Bar in 1834 ; but he did so
much writing and lecturing in addition
to his legal work that he broke down, and
spent three years (1837-40) in Europe.
On his return to America Sumner took an.
active part in the Abolition movement.
He was one of its foremost orators, and
an oration which he made in 1845, " The
True Grandeur of Nations," was long
remembered in America. In 1851 he was
returned to the Senate, where he continued
the campaign with such courage that in
1856 a southern Senator dangerously
assaulted him. He was disabled for three
years, and it is said that the assault was
responsible for his fatal illness years
afterwards ; yet Sumner pleaded that his
assailant should be regarded only as " the
instrument of a malign power." In 1861
he was appointed Chairman of the Senate
Committee on Foreign Eolations. Sumner
was the most accomplished American
statesman of his time, and probably second
to none in political and personal integrity.
He worked hard for the reform of politics,
and advocated the enfranchisement of the
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