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excessive. The long days of summer have hardly any night.Stoves and warm furs mitigate the cold of winter, which is so in-tense, that the noses and extremities of the inhabitants are some-times mortified. The Swedes, since t lie days of CharlesXll. havebeen at incredible pains to correct the native barrenness of (heirCountry, by erecting colleges of agriculture, and in some placeswith great success. The soil is much the same with that of Den-mark and some parts of Norway , generally very bail, but in somevalleys surprisingly fertile.
SWEDENBORG, Emanuel, was born at Stockholm on the29th Jan. 1689, His father was bishop of West Gotliia. YoungSwedenborg’s education, from the character of the father, musthave been pious ; and by his appearing with reputation as an author,at 20 years of age, it is proved successful. His first work was avolume of Latin poems, published in 1709; and in 1710, he pub-lished a collection of pieces, in Latin verse, intituled “ LudusHeliconius, sive Carmina Miscellanea, qua: variis in Lociscecinit. The same year he began his travels into England,Holland, France, and Germany; and returning to Stockholm in1714, he was in 1716 appointed assessor in the Metallic Collegeby Charles XII , which office he held till 1747, and then resignedit. He was ennobled in 1719. His scientific pursuits were highlyhonourable to him, and he published several excellent works, theprincipal of which was the Regnum Minerale, printed at Leipsicin I 734, 3 vols. folio. He also wrote a Treatise on the Positionand Course of the Planets, and another on the Tides . At lengthhe abstracted himself Irom those studies, imagining “ that he be-longed to the Society of Angels, in which things spiritual andheavenly are the only subjects of discourse and entertainment.”Filled with this notion, he sent into the world a number of mysti-cal hooks on the New Jerusalem ; on Heaven and Hell ; SpiritualInflux; the White Horse in the Revelations, &c. The baron diedin London in 1772. His opinions obtained little notice in his life-time, but since his death they have produced a sect. See next article.
SWEDENBORGIANS, a modern religious sect, so calledfrom their founder, Emanuel Swedenborg . They call themselvesthe New Jerusalem Church. The discriminating tenets of thissect seem to he the following: “'Holding the doctrine of oneGod, they maintain that this one God is no other than JesusChrist , and that he always existed in a human form; that for thesake of redeeming the world, he took upon himself a properhuman or material body, but not a human soul: that this redemp-tion consists in bringing the hells or evil spirits into subjection, andthe heavens into order and regulation, and thereby preparing theway for a new spiritual church; that without such redemption nouian could be saved, nor could the angels retain their state of in-tegrity ; that their redemption was effected by means of trials,temptations, or conflicts with evil spirits; and that the last of them,by which Clirict glorified his humanity, perfecting the union of hisdivine with his human nature, was the passion of the cross. r I houghthey maintain that there is but one God , and one divine person,they hold that in his person there is a real Trinity ; consisting ofthe divinity, the humanity, and the operation of them both in theLord Jesus ; a ’’Trinity which did not exist from eternity, butcommenced at the incarnation. They believe that the Scripturesare to be interpreted not only in a literal but in a spiritual sense,»ot known to the world till it was revealed to Baron Swedenborg,and that this spiritual sense extends to every part of Scripture , ex-cept the Acts of the Apostles . They believe that there are angelsattending upon men, residing, as Baron Swedenborg says, in theiraffections; that temptation consists in a struggle between good andbad angels within men ; and that by these means God assists men'it these temptations, since of themselves they could do nothing.
SWEE T, in the wine trade, denotes any vegetable juice, whe-•her obtained by means of sugar, raisins, or other foreign ordomestic fru it, which is added to wines with a design to improve them.SWEETWILLIAM. See Dianthus.
SW EUN1CK, a town of European Tuikey, on the confines ofServia and Bosnia, 70 miles S. W. of Belgrade .
SWERT1A, orSUERTIA, Maush-Gentian ; in botany, aS e nus of plant sbelonging to the class pentandria, and order digynia;Natural order, Rotareic. Corolla wheel shaped ; nectariferous poresthe base of the segments of the corolla; capsule one-celled, two-V ulved. There are six species.
SW1ETF.NIA, or SWK1TENIA, Mahogany; in botany, agenus of plants belonging to the class decandria, and order, mono-VOL. IV.—-no. 203.
gynia; natural order, Miscellanea;. Calyx five-cleft; petals five;nectarium cylindrical, supporting the anthers with its mouth;capsule five-celled, woody, opening at the mouth: seeds imbri-cated, winged. It has one species: S.Mahagoni. See Mahogany.
SWIF T, Dr. Jonathan, so universally admired as a wit amiclassical writer of the English language, was born in Dublin , Nov.30th, 1667. His lather was an attorney, and of a good family;but dying poor, the expence of his son’s education was defrayedby his friends. At the age of six years Jonathan was sent to Kil-kenny school, from whence, in 1682, he was removed to the uni-versity of Dublin, the expense of his education being defrayed byhis uncle. While at college he paid more attention to books ofhistory and poetry than logic and the classics, so that he was de-nied his degree on his first application, and obtained it with diffi-culty on the second. On the death of his uncle, in 1688, he cameto England, where he was hospitably entertained by Sir WilliamTemple , who had married a relation of his mother’s. During Irisresidence with Sir William , who employed him in revising biiworks, he formed the resolution of embracing the ecclesiasticallife; and basing taken his master’s degree he was ordained, andobtained the prebend of Kilroot, in the diocese of Connor, worthabout one hundred pounds a year. Being disappointed of prefer-ment in England, he accompanied the Earl of Berkeley, one ofthe lords justices of Ireland , as bis chaplain and private secretary ;but was again disappointed, and dismissed with the livings of La-racov and Rathbeggin, and the rectory of Augher, instead of thedeanry of Derry, which had been promised him. He then settledat Laracor, where he rebuilt the parsonage-house, repaifed thechurch, and discharged his parochial duties in an exemplary man-ner. About this time he was visited by Mrs. Johnson, the cele-brated Stella, whom he afterwards secretly married, but wouldnever own it, in consequence of which she broke her heait. Thisamiable woman was the daughter of Sir William Temple ’s steward,and had an independent property left her by that gentleman. Atthe accession of queen Anne, Swift embarked in politics in hopesof preferment in England, which he again missed, and in 1713was promoted to the deanry of St. Patrick’s Dublin . The deathof queen Anne closed all his prospects, and completely embitteredhis temper. He was for some time very unpopular in Dublin *but came at last to be revered as an oracle. One Wood project-ed a coinage of 180,0001. oflrish halfpence, for which he obtaineda patent. Swift immediately addressed a series of letters to thepeople, under the signature of a Drapier, urging them not to re-ceive this base coin ; and so successful was he that the patent waswithdrawn. After the death of Stella, in 1727, he led a veryretired life, and wasted his time in literary trifles which were un-worthy of public notice. In 1736 he entirely lost his memory,and almost to his death he was secluded from the visits of strangers,asjns passions still continued to be extremely violent. He died in1745, and was buried in the cathedral of St. Patrick . His ill-treatment of Stella having been mentioned, it is necessary to noticehis conduct to the lady celebrated in his works under the appella-tion of Vanessa. She was the daughter of Mr. Vanhomrigh, aDutch merchant at Dublin , and conceived a strong inclination forthe dean, which he seems to have encouraged; but when at lastshe declared her mind, lie told her he was married, which had suchan effect upon her that she died a few weeks afterwards. He leftthe greatest part of his property for the purpose of building a hos-,pital for lunatics at Dublin. The poetical pieces of Swift are mostlyof the hmnourous kind, and some of them very coarse and licenstious. His prose-style is remarkably clear and forcible. r l he prin-cipal of his works are, a satirical romance, called Gulliver’s Tra-vels ; the allegory of a Tale of a Tub, in which he ridicules po-pery and puritanism ; and Political Tracts against the Whigs. Allhis works have been collected into 22 vols. 8vo.
Swipt, Deane, Esq. a near relation of the dean, grandson toGodwin Swift, the (lean’s uncle, was born in Dublin , educated atthe university there, and completed his studies at Oxford. Hehad a fine (aste, wrote entertaining verses, and was esteemed aperfect master of the Greek and Roman classics. He published,An Essay upon the Life, Writings, and Character, of Dr. Jona-than Swift , 1755. 2. The eighth 4to. of the Dean’s works, 1765;and, 3. His Letters, in 2 vols. 1768. He died at Worcester , in I7S3.
SWILLY, an island in the S. Pacific Ocean, 13^ miles S. ofthe S. Cape of New Holland. Lon. 147. 6. E. Lat. 43.55. S.
SW IM MING, is the art of floating, or supporting the human-
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