SEMIRAMIS OF THE NORTH, a name given to Margaret, Queen of Denmark; also to Catharine II. of Russia.

SEMIRETCHINSK (758), a mountainous province of Asiatic Russia, stretches S. of Lake Balkash to East Turkestan and Ferghana on the S.; is traversed E. and W. by the lofty ranges of the Alatau and Tian-Shan Mountains; the vast bulk of the inhabitants are Kirghiz, and engaged in raising horses, camels, and sheep.

SEMITIC RACES, races reputed descendants of Shem, including the Jews, the Assyrians, the Chaldeans, the Syrians, the Phoenicians, and the Arabs, and are “all marked,” as the editor has observed elsewhere, “by common features; such appear in their language, their literature, their modes of thinking, social organisation, and religious belief.  Their language is poor in inflection, has few or no compound verbs or substantives, has next to no power of expressing abstract ideas, and is of simple primitive structure or syntax.  Their literature has neither the breadth nor the flow of that of Greece or Rome, but it is instinct with a passion which often holds of the very depths of being, and appeals to the ends of the earth.  In their modes of thinking they are taken up with concrete realities instead of abstractions, and hence they have contributed nothing to science or philosophy, much as they have to faith.  Their social order is patriarchal, with a leaning to a despotism, which in certain of them, such as the Jews and Arabs, goes higher and higher till it reaches God; called, therefore, by Jude ‘the Only Despot.’”

SEMMERING, a mountain of Styria, Austria, 60 m.  SW. of Vienna, 4577 ft. above sea-level; is crossed by the Vienna and Trieste railway, which passes through 15 tunnels and over 16 viaducts.

SEMPACH (1), a small Swiss town, 9 m.  NW. of Lucerne, on the Lake of Sempach; here on the 9th of July 1386 a body of 1500 Swiss soldiers completely routed the Austrians, 4000 strong, under Leopold, Duke of Austria.

SEN, CHUNDER.  See CHUNDER SEN.

SENANCOUR, ETIENNE PIVERT DE, French writer, born at Paris; delicate in his youth; was driven by an unsympathetic father to quit his home at 19, and for some time lived at Geneva and Fribourg, where a brief period of happy married life was closed by the death of his young wife; returned to Paris in 1798; supported himself by writing, and latterly by a small Government pension granted by Louis Philippe; is best known as the author of “Obermann,” a work of which Matthew Arnold wrote, “The stir of all the main forces by which modern life is and has been impelled, lives in the letters of Obermann....  To me, indeed, it will always seem that the impressiveness of this production can hardly be rated too high” (1770-1846).

SENATE (i. e. “an assembly of elders"), a name first bestowed by the Romans on their supreme legislative and administrative assembly; its formation is traditionally ascribed to Romulus; its powers, at their greatest during the Republic, gradually diminished under the Emperors; in modern times is used to designate the “Upper House” in the legislature of various countries, e. g.  France and the United States of America; is also the title of the governing body in many universities.