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SARTAIN—SARZANA


Irish. His generosity, his courage and his commanding height, had already commended him to the affection of the Irish. When the cause of King James was ruined in Ireland, Sarsfield arranged the capitulation of Limerick and sailed to France on the 22nd of December 1691 with many of his countrymen who entered the French service. He received a commission as lieutenant-general (maréchal de camp) from King Louis XIV. and fought with distinction in Flanders till he was mortally wounded at the battle of Landen or Neerwinden, on the 19th of August 1693. He died at Huy two or three days after the battle. In 1691 he had been created earl of Lucan by King James. He married Lady Honora de Burgh, by whom he had one son James, who died childless in 1718. His widow married the duke of Berwick.

J. Todhunter, Life of Patrick Sarsfield (London, 1895).


SARTAIN, JOHN (1808–1897). American artist, was born in London, England, on the 24th of October 1808. At the age of twenty-two he emigrated to America, and settled in Philadelphia. He was the pioneer of mezzotint engraving in America. Early in his career he painted portraits in oil and made miniatures; he engraved plates in 1841–1848 for Graham's Magazine, published by George Rex Graham (1813–1894); became editor and proprietor of Campbell's Foreign Semi-Monthly Magazine in 1843; and from 1849–1852 published with Graham Sartain's Union Magazine. He had charge of the art department of the Centennial Exhibition, Philadelphia, in 1876; took a prominent part in the work of the committee on the Washington Memorial, by Rudolf Siemering, in Fairmount Park, Philadelphia; designed medallions for the monument to Washington and Lafayette erected in 1869 in Monument Cemetery, Philadelphia; and was a member of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and a cavaliere of the Royal Equestrian Order of the Crown of Italy. He died in Philadelphia on the 25th of October 1897. His Reminiscences of a Very Old Man (New York, 1899) are of unusual interest. Of his children William Sartain (b. 1843), landscape and figure painter, was born at Philadelphia on the 21st of November 1843, studied under his father and under Léon Bonnat, Paris, was one of the founders of the Society of American Artists, and became an associate of the National Academy of Design. Another son, Samuel Sartain (1830–1906), and a daughter, Emily Sartain (b. 1841), who in 1886 became principal of the Philadelphia School of Design for Women, were also American artists.


SARTHE, a department of north-western France, formed in 1790 out of the eastern part of Maine, and portions of Anjou and of Perche. Pop. (1906) 421,470. Area 2410 sq. m. It is bounded N. by the department of Orne, N.E. by Eure-et-Loir, E. by Loir-et-Cher, S. by Indre-et-Loire and Maine-et-Loire and W. by Mayenne. The Sarthe, a sub-tributary of the Loire, flows in a south-westerly direction through the department; and the Loire, which along with the Sarthe joins the Mayenne to form the Maine above Angers, traverses its southern borders. Broken and elevated country is found in the north and east of the department, which elsewhere is low and undulating. The highest point (on the boundary towards Orne) is 1115 ft. The Sarthe flows past Le Mans and Sablé, receiving the Merdereau and the Vègre from the right, and the Orne Saosnoise and the Huisne from the left. The Loir passes La Flèche, and along its chalky banks caves have been hollowed out which, like those along the Cher and the Loire, serve as dwelling-houses and stores. The mean annual temperature is 51° to 52° Fahr. The rainfall is between 25 and 26 in.

The majority of the inhabitants live by agriculture. There are three distinct districts:—the corn lands to the north of the Sarthe and the Huisne; the region of barren land and moor, partly planted with pine, between those two streams and the Loir; and the wine-growing country to the south of the Loir. Sarthe ranks high among French departments in the production of barley, and more hemp is grown here than in any other department. The raising of cattle and of horses, notably those of the Perche breed, prospers, and fowls and geese are fattened in large numbers for the Paris market. Apples are largely grown for cider. The chief forests are those of Bercé in the south and Perseigne in the north, but the department owes its well-wooded appearance in a great measure to the hedges planted with trees which divide the fields. Coal, marble and freestone are among the mineral products. The staple industry is the weaving of hemp and flax, and cotton and wool-weaving are also carried on. Paper and cardboard are made in several localities. Iron-foundries, copper and bell foundries, factories for provision-preserving, marble-works at Sablé, potteries, tile-works, glass-works and stained-glass manufactories, currieries, machine factories, wire-gauze factories, flour-mills and distilleries are also prominent industrial establishments, a great variety of which are found at Le Mans. Flour, agricultural products, live stock and poultry form the bulk of the exports. The department is served by the Western, the Orléans and the State railways, and the Sarthe and Loir provide about 100 m. of waterway, though the latter river carries little traffic.

The department forms the diocese of Le Mans and part of the ecclesiastical province of Tours, has its court of appeal at Angers, and its educational centre at Caen, and constitutes part of the territory of the IV. army corps, with its headquarters at Le Mans. The four arrondissements are named from Le Mans, the chief town, La Flèche, Mamers and St Calais. The principal places are Le Mans, La Flèche, La Ferté Bernard, Sablé and Solesmes, which receive separate treatment. Besides these places, those of chief architectural interest are Le Lude, which has a fine château of the Renaissance period, Sillé-le-Guillaume, where there is a Gothic church and a stronghold of the 15th century, and St Calais, the church of which dates from the 14th to the 17th centuries.


SARTI, GIUSEPPE (1729–1802), Italian composer, was born at Faenza on the 28th of December 1729. He was educated by Padre Martini, and appointed organist of the cathedral of Faenza before the completion of his nineteenth year. Resigning his appointment in 1750, Sarti devoted himself to the study of dramatic music, becoming director of the Faenza theatre in 1752. In 1751 he produced his first opera, Pompeo, with great success. His next works, Il Rè Pastore, Medonte, Demofoonte and L'Olimpiade, assured him so brilliant a reputation that in 1753 King Frederick V. of Denmark invited him to Copenhagen, with the appointments of Hofkapellmeister and director of the opera. Here he produced his Ciro riconsosciuto. In 1765 he travelled to Italy to engage some new singers; meanwhile the death of King Frederick put an end for the time to his engagement. In 1769 he went to London, where he could only contrive to exist by giving music lessons. In 1770 he obtained a post in Venice as music master at the Conservatorio dell' Ospedaletto. In 1779 he was elected maestro di cappella at the cathedral of Milan, where he remained until 1784. Here he exercised his true vocation—composing, in addition to at least twenty of his most successful operas, a vast quantity of sacred music for the cathedral, and educating a number of clever pupils, the most distinguished of whom was Cherubini. In 1784 Sarti was invited by the empress Catherine II. to St Petersburg. On his way thither he stopped at Vienna, where the emperor Joseph II. received him with marked favour, and where he made the acquaintance of Mozart. He reached St Petersburg in 1785, and at once took the direction of the opera, for which he composed many new pieces, besides some very striking sacred music, including a Te Deum for the victory of Ochakov, in which he introduced the firing of real cannon. He remained in Russia until 1801, when his health was so broken that he solicited permission to return. The emperor Alexander dismissed him in 1802 with a liberal pension; letters of nobility had been granted to him by the empress Catherine. His most successful operas in Russia were Armida and Olega, for the latter of which the empress herself wrote the libretto. Sarti died at Berlin on the 28th of July 1802.

Sarti's opera I Due Litiganti has been immortalized by Mozart, who introduced an air from it into the supper scene in Don Giovanni. It should be noted that Mozart's Nozze di Figaro owed a great deal to the influence of this opera, which was performed in Vienna in 1784. The admirable libretto by Da Ponte, author of the libretti of Figaro and Don Giovanni, shows similar situations, and the complicated finale of the first act served as a model to Mozart for the finale of the last act of Figaro.


SARZANA, a town and episcopal see of Liguria, Italy, in the province of Genoa, 9 m. E. of Spezia, on the railway to Pisa, at the point where the railway to Parma diverges to the north, 59 ft. above sea-level. Pop. (1901) 6531 (town); 11,850 (commune). The handsome cathedral of white marble in the Gothic style, dating from 1355, was completed in 1474. It contains two elaborately-sculptured altars of the latter period. The former