dedication to Lord Brougham. The reputation of Mrs. Somerville for a high degree of scientific attainment was at once established by this book, and further extended among the learned by some interesting experiments which she made on the magnetical influence of the solar rays. In 1834 she sent forth an admirably original and well-arranged summary of the physical phenomena of the universe under the title "On the Connection of the Physical Sciences." The success of this book was complete, as evinced by the many editions that have succeeded one another, each embodying all of augmentation that science had intermediately received. In 1835 Mrs. Somerville was elected an honorary member of the Royal Astronomical Society. Her latest work—"Physical Geography," appeared in 1848, being dedicated to Sir John Herschel. In this account of the terrestrial globe the reader will find all the discoveries made by Humboldt and others up to the time of the publication, set forth with a method and skill that is at once pleasing and instructive. In acknowledgment of her eminent services to literature and science, a pension of £300 a year has been granted to her by the crown. For some years she has been residing with her family at Florence, enjoying the fruits of her well-earned fame.—R. H.
SOMERVILLE, Thomas, D.D., a Scottish clergyman and historian, was the son of the parish minister of Hawick, where he was born in 1741. He entered the university of Edinburgh in 1756; was licensed as a preacher in 1764; and in 1767 received from Sir Gilbert Elliot, afterwards governor-general of India, a presentation to the church and parish of Minto. In 1772 he was promoted through the same influence to the more advantageous living of Jedburgh, where he spent the remainder of his life. In 1792 Dr. Somerville published his "History of Political Transactions in the reign of William III," in one vol. 4to; and in 1798 he gave to the world his "History of Great Britain in the reign of Queen Anne," both highly respectable works. Dr. Somerville was also the author of some sermons, and of two political pamphlets of no great value. He died in 1830, in the ninetieth year of his age, having preserved his faculties quite entire to the close of his life, together with his cheerful temper, and his delight in his books, and in the society of his friends. In 1861 Dr. Somerville's autobiography was published, under the title of "My own Life and Times in 1741-1814." It is an interesting work, and throws valuable light on the manners and customs of the people of Scotland during the last century.—J. T.
SOMERVILLE, William, a Warwickshire squire who has celebrated in verse the joys of country life, was born at Edston, his paternal seat in that county, in 1692. He was educated at Winchester and at New college, Oxford, of which he became a fellow. His writings exhibit no inconsiderable amount of reading and a practical acquaintance with the world, both in town and country. The best known of his productions is a poem in blank verse entitled "The Chase," which is deficient in interest to the majority of readers—a remark that will apply to "Field Sports" and to the ponderous burlesque entitled "Hobbinol, or the Rural Games," which the poet dedicated to Hogarth as the greatest master in the burlesque way. The most entertaining and instructive of Somerville's poems are "The Fables and Tales." Often coarse in the extreme, they display a fine hearty temperament, and describe the manners and habits of young men in the reign of George I. with a minute detail that must have been derived from experience. Such is "The Fortune-hunter," written in rhyme, in five cantos. He was not very prudent in the management of his estate, and according to his friend Shenstone he sought forgetfulness of pecuniary embarrassments in the free use of wine. He died 19th July, 1742, and was buried at Wotten, near Henley in Arden. In Nichols' Anecd., viii., 301, occurs Somerville's name among those of whom Lintot bought "copy." For a collection of poems, &c., he was paid £35 15s.—R. H.
SOMNER, William, an antiquary and Anglo-Saxon scholar, was born at Canterbury, probably in 1598. His father was registrar of the ecclesiastical court of Canterbury, and Somner was educated at the free school there. From an early age he displayed antiquarian tastes, which found ample scope in the ancient city of his birth and in its neighbourhood, as well as in the records to which his father's and his own position gave him access. On leaving school he was employed as a clerk under his father, and afterwards received from Archbishop Laud an office in the same courts, which is said to have been a "creditable" one. He long cherished a design of writing an exhaustive work on the antiquities of his native county, and his first publication, the "Antiquities of Canterbury," 1640, was an instalment of the magnum opus, which he never completed. Incited by Meric Casaubon, whom Laud had made a prebendary of Canterbury, Somner began the study of the Celtic, Teutonic, and Scandinavian languages, but especially of Anglo-Saxon, in which he attained a proficiency wonderful in those days of few and scanty aids to its knowledge. Casaubon printed as an appendix to his De Quatuor Linguis (1650) Somner's learned remarks on a catalogue of old German words, showing the affinity between old German and Anglo-Saxon. Of more practical value was Somner's Glossary to Twysden's Decem Scriptores, 1652. Again Meric Casaubon incited him to the compilation of the first dictionary of Anglo-Saxon. He had made some way with it when he was enabled to complete it under favourable auspices, being appointed in 1657, at the instance of Usher, to receive the salary attached to the Spelman lectureship of Anglo-Saxon at Cambridge. Somner's "Dictionarium Saxonico-Latinum-Anglicum" was published at Oxford in 1659. Owing promotion to Laud, and a tried as well as a fervent royalist, Somner was appointed after the Restoration master of St. John's hospital, and auditor of Christ church, Canterbury. In 1660 he published an elaborate work on a custom peculiar to his native county, the "Treatise of Gavelkind," which he had completed twelve years before, probably as part of his contemplated work on Kent. To the same scheme was due no doubt the composition of his tractate "Of the Roman ports and forts in Kent," and on the Portus Iccius from which Cæsar started on his second expedition to England, and which Somner sought to prove was Boulogne. The former essay was published in 1693, with a memoir of the author by Bishop Kennet; the latter translated into Latin by Bishop Gibson in 1724. Somner himself closed his laborious and useful life in 1669.—F. E.
SONNINI, Charles Nicholas Sigisbert de Manancourt, traveller and naturalist, was born at Luneville in 1775. He was destined for the bar, and commenced the study of the law, but relinquished it for the army. He obtained a commission in the marine, and was sent out to Cayenne in the capacity of engineer. There he gave himself up to the study of natural history, and travelled considerably in its pursuit. He contributed largely to Buffon's account of foreign birds, having obtained an extended knowledge of the species in his travels in Europe and Africa. During the Reign of Terror he narrowly escaped the guillotine. He died in 1811. Sonnini's principal works are—"Travels in Egypt;" "Travels in Greece and Turkey;" an edition of Buffon's Natural History, 127 vols., 8vo. He was a contributor to the Dictionnaire d'Histoire Naturelle, 24 vols., 8vo; and editor of the Bibliotheque Physico-Economique.—W. J. P.
SOPHIA, Electress of Hanover, through whom the house of Brunswick was seated on the throne of Great Britain, was born at the Hague on the 13th October, 1630. She was the twelfth child of the elector palatine, titular king of Bohemia, and of Elizabeth, daughter of James I. of England, and was born when the fortunes of her parents were at their lowest ebb. After her brother had been restored to the Lower Palatinate and had married Charlotte of Hesse, she was appointed state governess to his daughter. Clever, sprightly, intellectual, she was early an admirer, and even a correspondent, of Descartes. At the end of September, 1658, she married Duke Ernest Augustus of Brunswick-Luneburg, afterwards elector of Hanover, and in 1660 gave birth to the future king of England, George I. She had five other sons and one daughter, Sophia Charlotte, who married Frederick I., the first king of Prussia. During her later years (her husband died in 1698) she lived in retirement at Herrenhausen, cultivating philosophy and her gardens; Leibnitz was her daily visitor. In 1701 the British parliament passed the act of succession, vesting the right to the throne in the Electress Sophia and her heirs, being protestants, after the Princess Anne and her children. She did not live to enjoy the heritage which she had done her best to secure—dying a few weeks before Queen Anne, the 8th of June, 1714. There is an interesting picture of her as she was at the beginning of the eighteenth century, still lively and active, in Toland's Account of the Courts of Prussia and Hanover; London, 1705.—F. E.
SOPHIA DOROTHEA, the ill-fated consort of George I. of England, was born on the 15th of September, 1666. She was the only daughter of George William, duke of Zell (second
