buttoned, your shoe untied, demonstrating a careless practice: as, sleight of hand, the tricks of desolation. Shakspeare. a juggler. Often written, but less properly, slight. The innocent sleep; Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleeve of care. Id. He was cloathed in cloth, with wide sleeves and a John laughed heartily in his sleeve at the pride of the esquire. Arbuthnot's History of John Bull. Behold yon isle by palmers, pilgrims trod, Grave mummers! sleeveless some, and shirtless others. Pope. SLEIDAN (John), an eminent German historian, born in 1506, at Sleidan, where he was educated along with the learned John Sturmius, his fellow citizen. He afterwards went to Paris; then to Orleans, where he studied the law three years, and took a licentiate's degree in it, though he never practised as a lawyer. Returning to Paris, in 1535, Sturmius recommended him to cardinal Du Bellay, who gave him a pension, and entrusted him with matters of importance. He accompanied the ambassador of France to the diet at Haguenau, and returned to Paris, where he remained till 1542; when, being suspected of indulging the opinions of Luther, he fled to Strasburg, where he was much patronised, particularly by the learned James Sturmius, by whose advice he wrote his celebrated History of his Own Times. He was afterwards employed in various negociations to France and England; and in one of these journeys, in 1546, married a lady whom he loved to distraction. In 1551 he went, as a delegate from the republic, to the Council of Trent. He was still usefully employed in public affairs till 1555, when the death of his beloved wife threw him into so deep a melancholy that he totally lost his memory, so as not even to know his own children. He died at Strasburg in 1556. He was much admired as a learned writer. His chief work is entitled De Statu Religionis et Reipublicæ, Carolo V. Cæsare, Commentarii: 1555, folio; containing the History of Europe from 1517 to 1555. He wrote many other works, particularly a small tract, De Quatuor Monarchiis, vel summis imperiis, libri tres; wherein he applies the prophecies of Daniel and St. John as most other Protestant commentators do. SLEIGHT, n. S. Island. slag'd is cunning. Johnson. Swedish slogd (as if of sly-hood). Thomson. Artful trick; cunning artifice or Fair Una to the red cross knight Betrothed is with joy; Though False Duessa, it to bar, Her false sleights do employ. Faerie Queene. He that exhorted to beware of an enemy's policy, doth not give council to be impolite; but rather to be all prudent foresight, lest our simplicity be overreached by cunning sleights. Hooker. Upon the corner of the moon Out stept the ample size Shakspeare. Macbeth. Of mighty Ajax, huge in strength; to him, Laerte's of being cheated, as to cheat; Doubtless the pleasure is as great As lookers on feel most delight, That least perceive the juggler's sleight. Hudibras. When we hear death related, we are all willing to favour the sleight, when the poet does not too grossly impose upon us. like truths. Dryden. Good humour is but a sleight of hand, or a faculty making truths look like appearances, or appearances L'Estrange. His honest friends preserve him by a sleight. Swift. While innocent he scorns ignoble flight, SLEN'DER, adj. SLEN'DERLY, adv. SLEN'DERNESS, n. s. Belg. slinder. Thin; small in circumference or bulk compared with the length; weak; inconsiderable; sparing; not well supplied: the adverb and noun substantive corresponding. If I have done well, it is that which I desired; but if slenderly and meanly, it is that which I could attain to. 2 Maccabees. Yet they, who claim the general assent of the fear to give very hard and heavy sentence upon as whole world unto that which they teach, and do not many as refuse to embrace the same, must have special regard that their first foundations and grounds be more than slender probabilities. Hooker. The slenderness of your reasons against the book, together with the inconveniences that must of necessity follow, have procured a great credit upon it. At my lodging. Whitgifte. The worst is this, that at so slender warning, You're like to have a thin and slender pittance. Shakspeare. Small whistles give a sound because of their extreme slenderness, the air is more pent than in a wider Bacon. pipe. If the debt be not just we know not what may be deemed just, neither is it a sum to be slenderly regarded. Hayward. SLESWICK, or SCHLESSWIG, a duchy of the Danish dominions, which has Jutland to the north, and Holstein to the south, while on the east and west it is bounded by the sea. Its form is oblong; its length is about seventy-two miles; its breadth, without including the islands to the east or west, varies from thirty to fifty-six miles. It has no mountains, and not many elevations entitled to the name of hills. In most parts it is fit for tillage, and the products are barley, oats, and rye, with comparatively little wheat, hemp, or flax. Sleswick corresponds in latitude to the northern counties of England; as also in humidity of climate, rain being produced there frequently by easterly, and still more frequently by westerly winds. The weather is very variable. Unfortunately great part of the interior is dry and sandy, so that the population (300,000 on the mainland, and 40,000 on the islands) is not large for a surface of 3600 square miles. On the superior soils, the freshness of the pasture is such as, with little skill on the part of an ignorant peasantry, to give a size and strength to the horses and horned cattle, which render them of value to foreigners, and lead to a regular, if not a large export. Butter and cheese are likewise abundant, and form articles of export. Sheep have not been improved with equal success, their wool being short and coarse. The inhabitants are of mixed descent, particularly of Danish, Saxon, and Friesland origin, each speaking their own dialect; but the prevalent languages are German and Danish. The principal river is the Eyder, which, joined to the canal of Kiel, affords a direct navigation from the North Sea to the Baltic. The chief towns are Kiel and Tonningen have a trade carried on by the canal and the Eyder; Flensborg is an improving place; but the rest of the country exhibits little activity. The manufactures of woollen and linen are carried on, not in collective establishments, but in the cottages of the manufacturer: and the lace manufactures at Tondern and other places, as well as those of stockings, have suffered by the introduction of machinery in England. Fishing forms a considerable occupation on all the coasts. Sleswick, like Holstein, preserves its ancient institutions and the state of the peasantry is somewhat less backward than in Jutland; but it was only in 1805 that feudal vassalage was definitively abolished. Sleswick has for many centuries been in close connexion with Denmark, and governed sometimes directly by the king, at other times by a brother of the reigning sovereign-a separation attended at last with such pretensions to independency as to determine the Danish government to unite it, in 1720, completely and definitively to the crown. See DEN MARK. SLESWICK, the capital of the foregoing duchy, is pleasantly situated on the Sley. It is a long irregular but neat town, containing about 7000 inhabitants. The objects of interest are the cathedral, its altar and the monuments of the princes; the town-house, orphan-house, work-house, and the nunnery of St. John; the houses are generally of brick. Here are manufactures of sugar, earthenware, leather and sail-cloth. Its commerce has been considerably improved since the Sley has been made navigable by a canal. In the ninth century Sleswick was a town of some note; in the tenth it was destroyed and rebuilt; in the fifteenth it shared the like fate. In its vicinity stands the castle of Gottorp. Eight miles north of Kiel, and 126 south-west of Copenhagen. SLICE, v. a. & n. s. Saxon, rlitan; Teut. schlitz, of schlitzen, to slit. To cut into flat pieces, or into parts; cut off a broad piece: the piece cut off. Their cooks make no more ado, but, slicing it into little gobbets, prick it on a prong of iron, and hang it in a furnace. Sandy's Journey, The pelican hath a beak broad and flat, much like the slice of apothecaries, with which they spread Hakewill. plaisters. in Hacking of trees in their bark, both downright and across, so as you may make them rather in slices than continued hacks, doth great good to trees. Bacon. The residue were on foot, well furnished with jack and skull, pikes and slicing swords, broad, thin, and of an excellent temper. Hayward. Nature lost one by thee, and therefore must Slice one in two to keep her number just. Cleaveland. When burning with the iron in it, with the slice clap the coals upon the outside close together, to keep the heat in. Moxon. When hungry thou stood'st staring like an oaf, Id. He from out the chimney took A flitch of bacon off the hook, And freely, from the fattest side, Cut out large slices to be fried. SLICH, in metallurgy, the ore of any metal, particularly of gold, when it has been pounded, and prepared for farther working. The manner of preparing the slich at Chremnitz in Hungary is: they lay a foundation of wood three yards deep; upon this they place the ore, and over this there are twenty-four beams, armed at their bottoms with iron; these, by a continual motion, beat and grind the ore, till it is reduced to powder: during this operation the ore is covered with water. Four wheels move these beams, each wheel moving six; and the water, as it runs off, carrying some of the metalline particles with it, is received into several basins, one placed behind another; and after having passed through them all, and deposited some sediment in each, it is let off into a large pit, half an acre in extent, in which it is suffered to stand so long as to deposit all its sediment, and after this it is let out. This work is carried on day and night, and the ore taken away and replaced by more as often as occasion requires. That ore which lies next the beams by which it was pounded is always the cleanest and richest. When the slich is washed as well as possible, 100 weight of it usually contains about an ounce or half an ounce of metal, which is a mixture of gold and silver; but the gold is in the largest quantity, and usually constitutes two-thirds of the mixture: they then put the slich into a furnace with some limestone, and slacken, and run them together. The first melting produces a substance called lech; this lech they burn with charcoal, to make it lighter, to open its body, and render it porous, after which it is called rost; to this rost they add sand in such quantity as they find necessary, and then melt it over again. At Chremnitz they have many other ways of reducing gold out of its ore, but particularly one, in which they employ no lead during the whole operation; whereas, in general, lead is always necessary after the beforementioned processes. See METALLURGY. SLICK, adj. Belg. slickt. See SLEEK. Whom silver-bowed Apollo bred, in the Pierian mead, Both slicke and daintie, yet were both in warre of wondrous dread. Chapman. Glass attracts but weakly; some slick stones thick glasses indifferently. Browne's Vulgar Errours. SLICKENSIDES, in mineralogy, a specular variety of galena, found in Derbyshire. It expresses the smoothness of its surface. It occurs lining the walls of very narrow rents. It has a most remarkable property, that when the rock in which it is contained is struck with a hammer, a crackling noise is heard, which is generally followed by an explosion of the rock, in the direction and neighbourhood of the vein. The cause of this singular effect has not been satisfactorily explained. SLIDE, v. n., v. a. & Į Preterite slid; parSLI'DER, n. s. [n. s. ticiple pass. slidden. Sax. rlidan, rlidende, sliding; Belg. slijden; Welsh, ys-lithe; Teut. schliffen. See SLICE and SLIT. To pass along smoothly; slip; glide: pass inadvertantly or unnoticed: to pass imper-. He slides on smoothly, and looks back no more. Id. At first the silent venom slid with ease, And seized her cooler senses by degrees. Id. Æneid. Then no day void of bliss, of pleasure, leaving, Ages shall slide away without perceiving. Dryden. Nor could they have slid into those brutish immoralities of life, had they duly manured those first practical notions and dictates of right reason. South. Such of them should be retained as slide easily of themselves into English compounds, without violence to the ear. Pope. Begin with sense, of every art the soul, Parts answering parts shall slide into a whole; Nature shall join you, time shall make it grow A work to wonder at. Id. merely by the sliding of the parts of the instrument one by another, the lines and divisions of which give the answer or amount by inspection. This instrument is variously contrived and applied by different authors, particularly Gunter, Partridge, Hunt, Leadbeater, Symons, Everard, and Coggeshall; but the most usual and useful ones are those of the two latter. Everard's sliding rule is chiefly used in cask gauging. It is commonly made of box, twelve inches long, one inch broad, and six-tenths of an inch thick. It consists of three parts; viz. the stock just mentioned, and two thin slips of the same length, sliding in small grooves in two opposite sides of the stock: consequently, when both these pieces are drawn out to their full extent the instrument is three feet long. On the first broad face of the instrument are four logarithmic lines of numbers. The first, marked A, consisting of two radii numbered 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 1; and then 2, 3, 4, 5, &c., to 10. On this line are four brass centre-pins, two in each radius; one in each of them being marked MB, for malt-bushel, is set at 2150-42, the number of cubic inches in a malt-bushel; the other two are marked with A, for ale gallon, at 282, the number of cubic inches in an ale gallon. The second and third lines of numbers are on the sliding pieces, and are exactly the same with the first; but they are distinguished by the letter B. In the first radius is a dot, marked Si, at 707, the side of a square inscribed in a circle whose diameter is 1. Another dot, marked Se, stands at 886, the side of a square equal to the area of the same circle. A third dot, marked W, is at 231, the cubic inches in a wine gallon. And a fourth, marked C, at 3.14, the circumference of the same circle, whose diameter is 1. The fourth line of numbers, marked MD, to sig. nify malt-depth, is a broken line of two radii, numbered 2, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 9, 8, 7, &c.; the number 1 being set directly against MB on the first radius. On the second broad face, marked cd, are several lines: as 1st, a line marked D, and numbered 1, 2, 3, &c., to 10. On this line are four centre-pins: the first, marked WG, for wine-gauge, is at 17.15, the gauge-point for wine gallons, being the diameter of a cylinder whose height is one inch, and content 231 cubic inches, or a wine gallon: the second centre-pin, marked AG, for ale-gauge, is at 18.95, the like diameter for an ale gallon: the third, marked MS, for malt square, is at 46.3, the square root of 2150-42, or the side of a square whose content is equal to the number of inches in a solid bushel and the fourth, marked MR, for maltround, is at 52-32, the diameter of a cylinder, or bushel, the area of whose base is the same 2150-42, the inches in a bushel. 2dly, Two lines of numbers on the sliding piece, on the other side, marked C. On these are two dots; the one marked c, at 0795, the area of a circle whose circumference is 1; and the other, marked d, at 785, the area of the circle whose diameter is 1. 3dly, Two lines of segments, each numbered 1, 2, 3, to 100; the first for finding the ullage of a cask, taken as the middle frustrum of a spheroid, lying with its axis parallel to the horizon; and the other for finding the ullage of a cask standing. Again, on one of the narrow sides, noted c, are, 1st, a line of inches, numbered 1, 2, 3, &c., to 12, each subdivided into ten equal parts. 2dly, A line by which, with that of inches, we find a mean diameter for a cask, in the figure of the middle frustrum of a spheroid: it is marked spheroid, and numbered 1, 2, 3, &c., to 7. 3dly, A line for finding the mean diameter of a cask, in the form of the middle frustrum of a parabolic spindle, which gaugers call the second variety of casks; it is therefore marked second variety, and is numbered 1, 2, 3, &c. 4thly, A line by which is found the mean diameter of a cask of the third variety, consisting of the frustrums of two parabolic conoids, abutting on a common base; it is therefore marked third variety, and is numbered 1, 2, 3, &c. On the narrow face, marked f, are, 1st, a line of a foot divided into 100 equal parts, marked FM. 2dly, A line of inches, like that beforementioned, marked IM. 3dly, A line for finding the mean diameter of the fourth variety of casks, which is formed of the frustrums of two cones, abutting on a common base. It is numbered 1, 2, 3, &c.; and marked FC, for frustrum of a cone. On the backside of the two sliding pieces is a line of inches, from twelve to thirtysix, for the whole extent of the three feet, when the pieces are put endwise; and against that the correspondent gallons and 100th parts, that any small tub, or the like open vessel, will contain at one inch deep. For the various uses of this instrument, see the authors mentioned above, and most other writers on gauging. Coggeshall's sliding rule is chiefly used in measuring the superficies and solidity of timber, masonry, brick-work, &c. This consists of two rulers, each a foot long, which are united together in various ways. Sometimes they are made to slide by one another, like glaziers' rules: sometimes a groove is made in the side of a common two-foot joint rule, and a thin sliding piece in one side, and Coggeshall's lines added on that side; thus forming the common or carpenters' rule: and sometimes one of the two rulers is made to slide in a groove made in the side of the other. There are several other varieties in the construction of the sliding rule, which need not here be described. SLIGHT, adj., n. s., & v. a. SLIGHT NESS, n. s. Belg. slicht; Teutonic slucht, of licht, light; trivial. Small; worthless; inconsiderable; weak; foolish: slight, noun substantive, is neglect; contempt; scorn; also artifice, cunning practice, confounded with SLEIGHT, which see. The verb active means to disregard; treat with neglect: the adverbs and noun substantive corresponding. Words, both because they are common, and do not so strongly move the fancy of man, are for the most Hooker. part slightly heard. Is Cæsar with Antonius prized so slight? Shakspeare. The rogues slighted me into the river with as little remorse as they would have drowned puppies. Id. English miles, and its maximum breadth is about thirty-seven. The baronies are Carbury Lower, Carbury Upper, Coolavin, Corran, Leney, Tiraghrill, Tyreragh, which are subdivided into thirty-nine parishes. The only towns of conse quence are Sligo, Ballymote, Colooney, 2nd Árdnaree, but there are upwards of twenty villages. The principal rivers are the Garrow, the Bonnet, the Arrow, the Esky, the Uncion, the Moy, and the Owenmore. The chief lakes are the Arrow, the Garrow, and the Talt, the sum of whose superficial areas amounts to 20,000 acres, besides Temple House and Lough Gill. The last of these is famous for its picturesque scenery, and on its banks are the demesne and beautiful residence of Mr. Wynne, called Hazelwood, objects of much attraction to the lovers of the picturesque. Sligo abounds in monastic remains (forty of which are still traceable), some extremely beautiful, possessing the advantages of romantic situation and great elegance of architecture. Sligo abbey, the ruins of Ballysadare, and the stone-roofed chapel on Inismurry, are probably the most interesting. The surface of this county is of a mountainous character; the chief range, crossing from Foxford to Ballysadare, passes south of Lough Gill to Manor Hamilton. This great assemblage is of primary formation, the upper strata generally consisting of mica slate, on which massive and slaty hornblende repose, while limestone (of secondary formation) crosses out at the base, in the channels and banks of all the rivers. The basin of Lough Gill is limestone, and, in general, this valuable stone prevails through the lowlands of the county. The districts at a medium height, which are also tolerably fertile, appear to be formed of disintegrated mica slate, combined with calcareous matter. Few mines are yet worked here. The lead mine at Ballysadare contains a large portion of silver, and, if freed from water, would be found highly productive. Iron stone is extensively diffused over the county; and sufficient proof remains of the existence of smelting houses in ancient times, when the woods supplied fuel in abundance. At the base of Benbo Mountain, where limestone is found reposing upon granite, rich veins of copper are known to exist. While this retired and remote district continues unnoticed by public speculators in mineral and other wealth, some few private individuals, possessing waste lands there, are exerting themselves, with spirit and judgment, for their improvement and reclamation. Amongst these lord Palmerston's extensive plans, now executing at Mullaghmore, should not pass unobserved. Here a safety harbour is erected for the fishing craft, a new village just arising, and 10,000 acres of land divided, enclosed, and furnished with excellent roads, at the sole expense of the noble proprietor. Piers have also been erected at and near to Sligo town by the fishery board, so that this bold coast will henceforth be less terrific to the boatman and the mariner. There is a good deal of export trade carried on along the coast of the county, and much direct communication with the ports in the wes of England. Of late years the linen trade has also greatly advanced through this district. Sligo |