496 MENSDORF-POUILLY, COUNT. 



MEBCADAOTE, SAVERIA. 



ship at St. Margaret's, Lothbury, which he re- 

 signed in 1856, on becoming a canon of St. 

 Paul's. He was appointed Rector of Barnes and 

 rural dean in 1863, and ten years earlier was 

 made one of the Queen's chaplains. His prin- 

 cipal published works were "Sermons preached 

 before the University of Cambridge in 1836-'37 

 and 1839 " (1845) ; " Sermons Preached on 

 Public Occasions " (1846) ; numerous other 

 volumes of sermons, many of them published 

 without his consent; "The Golden Lectures at 

 Lothbury" (1850 to 1856), 7 vols. ; " Thoughts 

 for the Season," Lenten Discourses (1851) ; 

 " Selections from Lectures at St. Margaret's " 

 (1853); "Voices of the Year: Readings for 

 the Sundays and Holidays through the Year " 

 (1856), 2 vols.; "Golden Counsels: Persua- 

 sives to a Christian Life " (1857) ; and other 

 works. His sermons have been several times 

 republished in this country. The edition first 

 published in 1847-'48, edited with an intro- 

 duction by Rt. Rev. C. P. Mcllvaine, in two 

 large 8vo vols., contains sixty-eight sermons. 

 No other clergyman of the English Church, 

 during the present century, has had the repu- 

 tation for eloquence and rhetorical finish in his 

 discourses which Mr. Melvill retained to the 

 last. His sermons were very carefully and 

 elaborately written, and delivered with great 

 earnestness and fervor. If there was fault 

 anywhere, it was in the superabundance of his 

 imagery, and the more than Oriental wealth 

 of his style. 



MENSDORF-POUILLY, Count ALEXAN- 

 DEE yon, a field-marshal and ultra-conserva- 

 tive statesman of Austria, born in 1812 ; died 

 at Prague, February 15, 1872. He was own 

 cousin to the Queen of England, his mother 

 being a sister of the Duchess of Kent. He en- 

 tered the Austrian Army at sixteen years of 

 age, and served first in the infantry, next in 

 the Uhlans, and finally in the Hussar regi- 

 ments. In 1848 he was only a major, but the 

 next year at the battle of Comorn won his 

 promotion to a colonelcy and the Cross of the 

 Order of Maria Theresa. In 1850 he was 

 made a general of brigade, and sent on a dip- 

 lomatic mission, in regard to the Schleswig- 

 Holstein difficulty, to London, and afterward 

 made ambassador to St. Petersburg. He sub- 

 sequently obtained the military command of 

 the Banat; and when the Emperor Francis 

 Joseph established, by the decree of October, 

 1851, the Servian Waywodeship, General Mens- 

 dorf-Pouilly was appointed to its command as 

 Imperial Commissioner. In 1859 he was pro- 

 moted to be lieutenant field-marshal, and took 

 a distinguished part in the campaign of Italy. 

 After this war he was made Governor and 

 military commandant of Galicia, and in Octo- 

 ber, 1864, appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs. 

 In June, 1865, he became president of the Cab- 

 inet, or, as one should say, premier. His 

 course was intensely, strongly conservative, 

 and his administration had greatly embar- 

 rassed the Austrian Empire. He was earnest 



in advocating the disastrous war between Aus- 

 tria and Prussia in 1866, and, after the Aus- 

 trian defeat, was compelled to resign his 

 position in the Cabinet to his able but stern 

 antagonist, the progressive Yon Beust. Re- 

 taining his seat in the House of Lords, he op- 

 posed with all his vigor every liberal measure, 

 and indeed every measure proposed by Von 

 Beust. After four years of this continued 

 struggle, he died suddenly, at Prague, retain- 

 ing till his last hours his hostility to the lib- 

 eral premier, and his intense conservatism. 



MERCADANTE, SAVEKIA, an Italian musi- 

 cal composer, born at Altamura, Italy, in 1798 ; 

 died at Florence, January 3, 1871. His career 

 was one of alternate failure and success. At 

 twelve years of age he entered the Musical 

 College of St. Sebastian, at Naples, and made 

 rapid progress in his musical studies. He had 

 become so skilful a player on the violin and 

 the flute that he was made chief of the or- 

 chestra before he was eighteen years old. Af- 

 ter two or three years the new musical direc- 

 tor, Signer Zingarelli, removed him, and he at 

 once devoted himself to musical composition 

 as a means of support. His first opera, " The 

 Apotheosis of Hercules," and an opera-boufl'e, 

 which he composed the same year, had a mod- 

 erate success, and " Anacreon at Samos," which 

 was played at the Theatre of San Carlo, Na- 

 ples, the following year, was triumphantly 

 successful, and opened the way to subsequent 

 good fortune. But Mercadante composed too 

 hastily and with too much reference to imme- 

 diate pecuniary results to meet with uniform 

 approbation. His fourth and fifth operas ob- 

 tained a moderately good reception ; his "Marie 

 Stuart" failed entirely at Bologna; while at 

 Milan his "Eliza and Claudius" (which is 

 really his best work) was so extravagantly 

 praised that lie was regarded as another Ros- 

 sini. After this he encountered a succession 

 of reverses ; at Venice, Mantua, Milan, Turin, 

 and Vienna, his failures were signal; only 

 Naples and Cadiz stood by him. In 1836, after 

 he had partially recovered his reputation, he 

 came to Paris, and there, though his first 

 opera, "The Brigands" (spite of the efforts 

 of Rubini, Lablache, Tamburini, and Madame 

 Grisi, to sustain it), was a complete failure, 

 his second, " The Two Illustrious Rivals," was 

 a most brilliant success. His subsequent ca- 

 reer at Paris was hardly in keeping with this 

 great triumph. In 1833 he had been made 

 master of the Chapel of Novara, and in 1839 

 he was appointed director of the Musical Con- 

 servatory at Naples. He wrote but few operas 

 in the latter part of his life; " Statira," pub- 

 lished in 1852; "La Violetta," in 1853; "II 

 Pelagio," in 1857, being those best known. 

 His music is very sweet and replete with sen- 

 timent, but it lacks depth and originality. In 

 1856 Signer Mercadante was elected a corre- 

 sponding member of the Institute of France 

 (Academy of Fine Arts), and in 1868 he 

 received from King Victor Emmanuel the 



