confined, or put into the holes of the pillory. For this neglect of duty, Beardmore was fined £50, and suffered two months' imprisonment. Some time before he was tried for the above publication, the duchess of Queensbury, as heir of lord Clarendon, obtained an injunction in the court of chancery to stop the publication of the continuation of that nobleman's history; a copy of which had got into the hands of Francis Gwyn, esq, between whom and the doctor there had been an agreement to publish it. The care and expenses attending the ushering this work into the world were to be wholly Dr. Shebbeare's, who performed his part of the agreement, and caused it to be handsomely printed in quarto, with frequent reflections on, and allusions to recent events. On the injunction being obtained, Dr. Shebbeare was under the necessity of applying to the aid of law to recover the money expended by him in printing, amounting to more than £500. And it may be easily imagined that his circumstances were not improved by three years' imprisonment. During his confinement, he declares, he never received as presents more than twenty guineas from all the world, although receipts were issued for a first volume of the History of England, and of the Constitution thereof from its origin.' That volume he wrote, and had transcribed; but it was never published, for which he assigned various reasons, too tedious to be quoted. He said, however, that he did not intend to die until what he had proposed was finished; a promise which he was unable to perform. He was detained in prison during the whole time of the sentence, and with some degree of rigor; for when his life was in danger from an ill state of health, and he applied to the court of king's bench for permission to be carried into the rules a few hours in a day, though lord Mansfield acceded to the petition, yet the prayer of it was denied and defeated by judge Forster. But at the expiration of the time of his sentence, a new reign had commenced; and shortly afterwards, during the administration of Mr. Grenville, a pension was granted him by the crown. This he obtained by the personal application of Sir John Philips to the king, who, on that occasion, spoke of him in very favorable terms, which he promised to endeavour to deserve. From that event we find Dr. Shebbeare a uniform defender of the measures of government, and the mark against whom every opposer of administration threw out the grossest abuse. Even the friends of power were often adverse to him. Dr. Smollet introduced him, in no very respectful light, under the name of Ferret, in the novel of Sir Launcelot Greaves, and Mr. Hogarth made him one of the group in the third election print. Scarcely a periodical publication was without some abuse of him, which he seems to have in general had the good sense to neglect. In 1774, however, he defended himself from some attacks made upon him, and represented the character of king William in such a light as to excite the indignation of every whig in the kingdom. Early in life he appears to have written a comedy, which in 1766 he made an effort to get represented at Covent Garden. In 1768 he wrote the review of books in the Political Re gister for three months, and was often engaged to write for particular persons, with whom he frequently quarrelled when he came to be paid. This was the case with Sir Robert Fletcher. His pen seems to have been constantly employed, and he wrote with great rapidity, what certainly can now be read with little satisfaction. Though pensioned. by government, he can scarcely be said to have renounced his opinions; for, in the pamphlet already mentioned, his abuse of the Revolution is as gross as in that for which he suffered the pillory. His violence defeated his own purpose. He was a strenuous supporter of the ministry during the American war, and published in 1775. An Answer to the Speech of Edmund Burke, esq., April 19th, 1774. And An Essay on the Origin, Progress, and Establishment of National Society; in which the principles of government, the definitions of physical, moral, civil, and religious liberty, contained in Dr. Price's Observations, &c., are fairly examined and refuted; together with a justification of the legislature, in reducing America to obedience by force. His publications, satirical, political, and medical, amount to thirtyfour; besides a novel, entitled Lydia or Filial Piety; in which religious hypocrisy and blustering courage are very properly chastised. He died on the 1st of August, 1788, leaving, among those who knew him best, the character of a benevolent man; notwithstanding the violence of his party spirit. SHECHEM, the son of Hamor, the Hivite, prince of the country so named, a contemporary of the patriarch Jacob, who purchased from him a field for a burial ground. Upon this occasion, or soon after it, the prince, falling in love with Dinah, the patriarch's only daughter, seduced her; but, contrary to the villanous practice of most seducers of female innocence, generously and honorably proposed marriage to her father and brethren. But through the vindictive villany of her two brethren, Simeon and Levi, a scene of hypocrisy, cruelty, and massacre, followed, which has scarcely a parallel, in the history of the most savage nations. Under pretence of religion, the prince, his father, and the whole men of the city were massacred; the women and children carried captives, and the city plundered. See Gen. xxxiv. triarch Jacob not only complained at the time, that their barbarity had made him to stink among the inhabitants, but pronounced a well merited curse upon the monsters, on his death bed, when he blessed the rest of his sons. Gen. xlix, 5-7. The pa SHECHEM, SCHECHEM, or SICHEM, a city of Canaan, the capital of the Shechemites, built by Hamor, and named after his son. It stood upon mount Ephraim, about ten miles north of Shiloh, and thirty or thirty-five north of Jerusalem, and belonged to the tribe of Ephraim. It was one of the cities of refuge, and is memorable for being the place where Joshua assembled the tribes, and gave them his last solemn advice, a short time before his death. Josh. xxiv. 1—28. On the death of Gideon, the Shechemites made his bastard son, Abimelech, king, and murdered seventy of his legitimate sons; but afterwards, rebelling against the usurper, he massacred the people, razed their city, and burned their tower, with 1000 persons in it. See ABIMELECH. Shechem, however, was afterwards rebuilt, and about the end of Solomon's reign was a place of so much consequence that it became the scene of the revolution under his son Rehoboam, who was dethroned in it, and Jeroboam I. elected king, who repaired it, and made it his capital. It continued to be the capital of several of his successors, whose luxury and drunkenness procured it the name of Sychar, till the captivity of Shalmaneser. See SAMARIA. About A. M. 3870 it was taken, pillaged, and razed, by John Hyrcanus, king of the Jews. About A. D. 72 it was rebuilt by Vespasian, and named Flavia, and Neapolis. It is now called Naplouse or Nablous. See NABLOUS, and SAMARITANS. Near Jacob's Well, at this town, a church was erected about the ninth century, of which there are still relics. SHECK'LATON, n. s. Fr. sheklatone. A kind of embroidery. He went to fight against the giant in his robe of shecklaton, which is that kind of gilded leather with which they use to embroider the Irish jackets. & Spenser. To SHED, v. a., v. N., Sax. rcedan. SHED'DER, n. s. [n. s. effuse; to pour out; spill; scatter; let fall its parts: a slight covering. Neither men putten newe wyn in to olde botels, ellis the botels ben to broken and destroyed, and the wyn sched out; but men putten newe wyn into newe botels and bothe ben kept. Wicklif, Matt. 9. A shedder of blood shall surely die. Ezek. xviii. 10. Prior. Springing wreaths from William's brow; As his summer's youth shall shed Eternal sweets around Maria's head. These moss-grown domes with spiry turrets crown'd, In these lone walls, their days eternal bound, Where awful arches make a noon-day night, And the dim windows shed a solemn light, Thy eyes diffused a reconciling ray, And gleams of glory brightened all the day. Pope. Here various kinds, by various fortunes led, Commence acquaintance underneath a shed. Swift. Weak as the Roman chief, who strove to hide His father's cot, and once his father's pride, By casing a low shed of rural mould With marble walls, and roof adornea with gold. Harte. SHEEN, EAST, a beautiful village of Surrey, in the parish of Mortlake, seated on an eminence, near the Thames, between Richmond and Roehampton. SHEEN, WEST, an ancient hamlet of Surrey, in the parish of Richmond, which stood a quarter of a mile north-west of the old palace of Richmond, where Henry V. founded a Carthusian convent, in which Perkins Warbeck sought an asylum. Its last remnant, the ancient gateway, was taken down in 1770; when the whole hamlet, consisting of eighteen houses, was demolished, and the ground made into a lawn, and added to the king's enclosures. Mortimer's Husbandry., seem to require explanation. We are his people, and the sheep of his pasture. Psalms. His gate like a sheepbiter fleering aside. Tusser. She put herself into the garb of a shepherdess, and in that disguise lived many years; but, discovering herself a little before her death, did profess herself the happiest person alive, not for her condition, but in enjoying him she first loved; and that she would rather, ten thousand times, live a shepherdess in conSidney. tentment and satisfaction, He would have drawn her elder sister, esteemed her match for beauty, in her shepherdish attire. Id. She saw walking from her ward, a man in shepherdish apparel. Id. Of substances there are two sorts of ideas; one of single substances, as they exist separately, as a man, or sheep. Wanting change of company, he will, when he comes abroad, be a sheepish or conceited creature. Sheepishness and ignorance of the world, are not consequences of being bred at home. Id. Id. Grew. Without success, let a man be never so hardy, he will have some degree of sheepishness. There happening a solemn festivity, such as the sheepshearings used to be, David begs some small repast. South. The bear, the lion, terrors of the plain; Lead up all those who heard thee, and believ'd; 'Midst thy own flock, great shepherd, be received, And glad all heaven with millions thou hast saved. Id. SHEEP, in zoology. See Ovis and WooL. Among the various animals with which Divine Providence has stored the world, for the use of man, none is to be found more useful, or more valuable, than the sheep. It supplies us with food and clothing, and finds ample employment for our poor at all seasons of the year, whereby a variety of manufactures of woollen cloth is carried on without interruption to domestic comfort and loss to friendly society, or injury to health, as is the case with many other occupations. Every lock of wool that grows on its back contributes to the support of staplers, dyers, pickers, scourers, scribblers, carders, combers, spinners, spoolers, warpers, quillers, weavers, fullers, tuckers, burlers, shearmen, pressers, clothiers, and packers, who, one after another, tumble, and toss, and twist, and bake, and boil, this raw material, till they have each extracted a livelihood out of it; and then comes the merchant, who, in his turn, ships it, in its highest state of improvement, to all quarters of the globe, whence ne brings back every kind of riches to his country in return for this valuable commodity which the sheep affords. Besides this, the useful animal, after being deprived of his coat, produces another against the next year; and, when we are hungry, and kill him for food, he gives us his skin to employ the feltmongers and parchment-makers, who supply us with a durable material for securing our estates, rights, and possessions; and, if our enemies take the field against us, supplies us with a powerful instrument for rousing our courage to repel their attacks. When the parchment-maker has taken as much of the skin as he can use, the glue-maker comes after and picks up every morsel that is left, and therewith supplies a material for the carpenter and cabinet-maker, which they cannot before we can have elegant furniture in our do without, and which is essentially necessary houses; tables, chairs looking-glasses, and a hundred other articles of convenience. And, in absence of the sun, the sheep supplies us with an artificial mode of light, whereby we preserve every pleasure of domestic society, and with whose assistance we can continue our work, or write or read, and improve our ininds, or enjoy the social mirth of our friends. Another part of the slaughtered animal supplies us with an ingredient necessary for making good common soap, a useful store for producing cleanliness in Even the horns are every family, rich or poor. converted by the button-makers and turners into a cheap kind of buttons, tips for bows, and many usefu' ornaments. From the very trotters an oil is extracted useful for many purposes; and they afford good food when baked in an Even the bones are useful also; for, by a late invention, they are found, when reduced to ashes, to be a useful and essential ingredient in the composition of the finest artificial stone in oven. ornamental work for chimney-pieces, cornices of "ooms, houses, &c., which renders the composition more durable by effectually preventing its cracking. This meek inoffensive creature can feed where every other animal has been before him and grazed all they could find; and, if he takes a little grass on our downs or in our fields, he amply repays us in the richness of the manure which he leaves behind him. He protects the hands from the cold wintry blast, by providing them with the softest leather gloves. Every gentleman's library is also indebted to him for the neat binding of his books, for the sheath of his sword, and for cases for his instruments; in short, there is hardly any furniture or utensil of life but the sheep contributes to render either more useful, convenient, or ornamental. Wales breeds a small hardy kind of sheep, which has the best tasted flesh, but the worst wool of all. Nevertheless it is of more extensive use than the finest Segovian fleeces; for the benefit of the flannel manufacture is universally known. The sheep of Ireland vary, like those of Great Britain; those of the south and east being large and their flesh rank; those of the north and the mountainous parts small, and their flesh sweet. The fleeces in the same manner differ in degrees of value. Scotland breeds a small kind in Shetland, and their fleeces are remarkably fine. But the new Leicestershire breed is perhaps one of the most profitable breeds in the island. See RURAL ECONOMY. Joseph Altom of Clifton, who raised himself from a plough-boy, was the first who distinguished himself in the midland counties of England for a superior breed of sheep. How he improved his breed is not known; but it was customary for eminent farmers in his time to go to Clifton in summer to choose and purchase ram-lambs, for which they paid two or three guineas. This man was succeeded by Mr. Bakewell; and it may reasonably be supposed that the breed, by means of Altom's stock, had passed the first stage of improvement before Mr. Bakewell's time. Still, however, it must be acknowledged that the Leicestershire breed of sheep owes its present high state of improvement to the ability and care of Mr. Bakewell. This subject is pretty fully treated of under RURAL ECONOMY. The feeding sheep with turnips is a great advantage to the farmers. When they are made to eat turnips they soon fatten; but there is some difficulty in bringing this about. The old ones always refuse them at first, and will sometimes fast till almost famished; but the young lambs fall to at once. The common way of turning a flock of sheep at large into a field of turnips is very disadvantageous; for they would thus destroy as many in a fortnight as will keep them a whole winter. There are three other ways of feeding them on this food. The first is to divide the land into hurdles, and allow the sheep to come upon such a portion only at a time as they can eat in one day, and so advance the hurdles farther into the ground daily till all be eaten. This is infinitely better than the former random method; but they never eat them clean even this way, but leave the bottoms and outsides scooped in the ground: the people pull up these indeed with iron crooks, and lay them before the sheep again; but they are commonly so fouled that they do not care for them. The second way is by enclosing the sheep in hurdles, as in the former; but in this they pull up all the turnips which they suppo e the sheep can eat in one day, and daily remove the hurdles over the ground whence they have pulled up the turnips: thus there is no waste, and less expense; for a person may in two hours pull up all those turnips, the remaining shells of which would have employed three or four laborers a day to get up with their crooks out of the ground trodden hard by the feet of the sheep; and the worst is that, as in the method of pulling up first, the turnips are eaten up clean; in this way, by the hook, they are wasted; the sheep do not eat any great part of them; and, when the ground comes to be tilled afterwards for a crop of corn, the fragments of the turnips are seen in such quantities on the surface that half the crop at least seems to have been wasted. The third method is to pull up the turnips, and remove them in a cart to some other place, spreading them on a fresh place every day; thus the sheep will eat them up clean, both root and leaves. The great advantage of this method is, when there is a piece of land not far off which wants dung more than that where the turnips grew, which perhaps is also too wet for the sheep in winter; and then the turnips will, by the too great moisture and dirt of the soil, sometimes spoil the sheep, and give them the rot. Yet such ground will often bring forth more and larger turnips than dry land; and, when they are carried off, and eaten by the sheep on ploughed land in dry weather, and on green sward in wet weather, the sheep will succeed much better; and the moist soil where the turnips grew, not being trodden by the sheep, will be much fitter for a crop of corn than if they had been fed with turnips on it. The expense of hurdles, and the trouble of moving them, are saved in this case, which will counterbalance at least the expense of pulling the turnips and carrying them to the places where they are to be eaten. They must always be carried off for oxen. The manner in which Mr. Bakewell raised his sheep to the degree of celebrity in which they long stood, is, notwithstanding the recentness of the improvement, a thing in dispute; even among men high in the profession, and living in the very district in which the improvement has been carried on! This proprietor alone perhaps was in possession of the minutiae of his own improvement: it is most probable that no cross with any alien breed whatever was used; but that the improvement was effected by selecting individuals from kindred breeds, or varieties of long-woolled, sheep, with which Mr. Bakewell was surrounded on almost every side, and by breeding in and in (i. e. from the same family) with this selection: solicitously seizing the superior accidental varieties produced; associating these varieties; and still continuing to select, with judgment, the superior individuals. It now remains to give a description of the superior class of individuals of this breed, especially ewes and wedders, in full condition, but not immoder ately fat. The rams will require to be distinguished afterwards. The head is long, small, and hornless, with ears somewhat long, and standing backward, and with the nose shooting forward. The neck thin, and clean toward the head; but taking a conical form; standing low, and enlarging every way at the base; the fore end altogether short. The bosom broad, with the shoulders, ribs, and chine extraordinarily full. The loin broad, and the back level. The haunches comparatively full towards the hips, but light downward; being altogether small in proportion to the fore parts. The legs of a moderate length; with the bones extremely fine. The bone throughout remarkably light. The carcase, when fully fat, takes a remarkable form; much wider than it is deep, and almost as broad as it is long. Full on the shoulder, widest on the ribs, narrowing with a regular curve towards the tail; approaching the form of the turtle nearer perhaps than any other animal. The pelt is thin, and the tail small. The wool is shorter than long wools in general, but much longer than the middle wools; the ordinary length of staple five to seven inches, varying much in fineness and weight. This breed surpasses every other in beauty of form; they are full and weighty in the fore quarters; and are remarkable for small⚫ness of bone. Mr. Marshall, who has been of so much benefit to agriculture and his country by his publications, informs us, in his Rural Economy of the Midland Counties, that he has seen a rib of a sheep of this breed contrasted with one of a Norfolk sheep the disparity was striking; the latter nearly twice the size; while the meat which covered the former was three times the thickness: consequently the proportion of meat to bone was in the one incomparably greater than in the other. Therefore, in this point of view, the improved breed has a decided preference: for surely while mankind continue to eat flesh and throw away bone, the former must be, to the consumer at least, the more valuable. The manner of managing sheep in Spain, a country famous for producing the best wool in the world, is as follows:-Here there are two kinds of sheep: the coarse-woolled sheep, which always remain in their native country, and are housed every night in winter; and the fine woolled sheep, which are always in the open air, and travel every summer from the cool mountains of the northern parts of Spain, to feed in winter on the southern warm plains of Andalusia, Mancha, and Estremadura. Of these latter it appears, from accurate computation, that there are about 5,000,000, and that the wool and flesh of a flock of 10,000 sheep produced yearly about twentyfour reals a-head, or about the value of twelve English sixpences, one of which belongs to the owner, three to the king, and the other eight are allowed for the expenses of pasture, tythes, shepherds, dogs, salt, shearing, &c. In the sixteenth century the travelling sheep were estimated at 7,000,000; 10,000 sheep form a flock, which is divided into ten tribes, under the management of one person, who has absolute dominion over fifty shepherds and fifty dogs. M. Bourgoanne, a French gentlemen, who resided many years in VOL. XX. Spain, and directed his enquiries chiefly to the civil government, trade, and manufactures of that country, gives the following account of the wandering sheep of Segovia. It is,' says he, 'in the neighbouring mountains that a part of the wandering sheep feed during the fine season. They leave them in October, pass over those which separate the two Castiles, cross New Castile, and disperse themselves in the plains of Estremadura and Andalusia. For some years past those of the two Castiles, which are within reach of the Sierra Morena, go thither to pass the winter; which, in that part of Spain, is more mild; the length of their day's journey is in proportion to the pasture they meet with. They travel in flocks from 1000 to 1200 in number, under the conduct of two shepherds; one of whom is called the mayoral, the other the zagal. When arrived at the place of their destination, they are distributed in the pastures previously assigned them. They return in April; and whether it be habit or natural instinct that draws them towards the climate, which at this season becomes most proper for them, the inquietude which they manifest might, in case of need, serve as an almanac to their conductors. Mr. Arthur Young, in that patriotic work which he conducted with great industry and judgment, the Annals of Agriculture, gives us a very accurate and interesting account of the Pyrenean or Catalonian sheep. On the northern ridge, bearing to the west, are the pastures of the Spanish flocks. This ridge is not, however, the whole; there are two other mountains, quite in a different situation, and the sheep travel from one to another as the pasturage is short or plentiful. I examined the soil of these mountain pastures, and found it in general stony; what in the west of England would be called a stone brash, with some mixture of loam, and in a few places a little peaty. The plants are many of them untouched by the sheep; many ferns, narcissus, violets, &c., but burnet (poterium sanguisorba) and the narrow leaved plantain (plantago lanceolata) were eaten close. I looked for trefoils, but found scarcely any it was very apparent that soil and peculiarity of herbage had little to do in rendering these heights proper for sheep. In the northern parts of Europe, the tops of mountains half the height of these (for we were above snow in July) are bogs; all are so which I have seen in our islands, or at least the proportion of dry land is very trifling to that which is extremely wet :Here they are in general very dry. Now a great range of dry land, let the plants be what they may, will in every country suit sheep. The flock is brought every night to one spot, which is situated at the end of the valley on the river I have mentioned, and near the port or passage of Picada: it is a level spot sheltered from all winds. The soil is eight or nine inches deep of old dung, not at all enclosed: from the freedom from wood all round, it seems to be chosen partly for safety against wolves and bears. Near it is a very large stone, or rather rock, fallen from the mountain. This the shepherds have taken for a shelter, and have built a hut against it; their beds are sheep skins, and their door so small that they crawl in. I saw no place for fire; but they M |