ail-cloth, &c.

SPHINX, a fabled animal, an invention of the ancient Egyptians, with
the body and claws of a lioness, and the head of a woman, or of a ram, or
of a goat, all types or representations of the king, effigies of which
are frequently placed before temples on each side of the approach; the
most famous of the sphinxes was the one which waylaid travellers and
tormented them with a riddle, which if they could not answer she devoured
them, but which Oedipus answered, whereupon she threw herself into the
sea. "Such a sphinx," as we are told in "Past and Present," "is this life
of ours, to all men and nations. Nature, like the Sphinx, is of womanly
celestial loveliness and tenderness, the face and bosom of a goddess, but
ending in the claws and the body of a lioness ... is a heavenly bride and
conquest to the wise and brave, to them who can discern her behests and
do them; a destroying fiend to them who cannot. Answer her
riddle--Knowest thou the meaning of to-day?--it is well with thee. Answer
it not; the solution for thee is a thing of teeth and claws."

SPICE ISLANDS. See MOLUCCAS.

SPINELLO, ARETINO, a celebrated Italian fresco-painter, born at
Arezzo, where, with visits to Florence, his life was chiefly spent; was
in his day the rival of Giotto, but few of his frescoes are preserved,
and such of his paintings as are to be found in various galleries of
Europe are inferior to his frescoes (1330-1410).

SPINOLA, AMBROSIO, MARQUIS OF, great Spanish general under Philip
II. of Spain, born at Genoa, with a following of 9000, maintained at his
own expense, took Ostend after a resistance of 3 years, in consequence of
which feat he was appointed commander-in-chief, in which capacity
maintained and again maintained a long struggle with Prince Maurice of
Nassau, terminated only with the death of the latter; his services on
behalf of Spain, in the interest of which he spent his fortune, were
never acknowledged, and he died with poignant grief (1571-1630).

SPINOZA, BENEDICT, great modern philosopher, born in Amsterdam, of
Jews of Portuguese extraction in well-to-do circumstances, and had been
trained as a scholar; began with the study of the Bible and the Talmud,
but soon exchanged the study of theology in these for that of physics and
the works of Descartes, in which study he drifted farther and farther
from the Jewish creed, and at length openly abandoned it; this exposed
him to a persecution which threaten