SWAN OF AVON, sweet name given by Ben Jonson to Shakespeare.

SWAN OF MANTUA, name given to Virgil, as born at Mantua.

SWANSEA (90), a flourishing and progressive seaport of Glamorganshire, at the entrance of the Tawe, 45 m. into Swansea Bay; has a splendid harbour, 60 acres of docks, a castle, old grammar-school, &c.; is the chief seat of the copper-smelting and of the tin-plate manufacture of England, and exports the products of these works, as well as coal, zinc, and other minerals, in large quantities.

SWATOW (30), a seaport of China, at the mouth of the Han, 225 m.  E. of Canton; has large sugar-refineries, factories for bean-cake and grass-cloth; since the policy of “the open door” was adopted in 1867 has had a growing export trade.

SWAZILAND (64), a small South African native State to the E. of the Transvaal, of which in 1893 it became a dependency, retaining, however, its own laws and native chief; is mountainous, fertile, and rich in minerals; the Swazis are of Zulu stock, jealous of the Boers, and friendly to Britain.

SWEATING SICKNESS, an epidemic of extraordinary malignity which swept over Europe, and especially England, in the 15th and 16th centuries, attacking with equal virulence all classes and all ages, and carrying off enormous numbers of people; was characterised by a sharp sudden seizure, high fever, followed by a foetid perspiration; first appeared in England in 1485, and for the last time in 1551.

SWEATING SYSTEM, a term which began to be used about 1848 to describe an iniquitous system of sub-contracting in the tailoring trade.  Orders from master-tailors were undertaken by sub-contractors, who themselves farmed the work out to needy workers, who made the articles in their own crowded and foetid homes, receiving “starvation wages.”  The term is now used in reference to all trades in cases where the conditions imposed by masters tend to grind the rate of payment down to a bare living wage and to subject the workers to insanitary surroundings by overcrowding, &c., and to unduly long hours.  Kingsley’s pamphlet, “Cheap Clothes and Nasty,” and novel, “Alton Locke,” did much to draw public attention to the evil.  In 1890 an elaborate report by a committee of the House of Lords was published, and led in the following year to the passing of the Factory and Workshops Act and the Public Health Act, which have greatly mitigated the evil.

SWEDEN (4,785), a kingdom of Northern Europe, occupying the eastern portion of the great Scandinavian Peninsula, bounded W. by Norway, E. by Russian Finland, Gulf of Bothnia, and the Baltic, and on the N. stretches across the Arctic circle between Norway (NW.) and Russia (NE.), while its southern serrated shores are washed by the Skager-Rack, Cattegat, and Baltic.  From the mountain-barrier of Norway the country slopes down in broad terrace-like plains to the sea, intersected by many useful rivers and diversified by numerous