181 



MEIBOM, MARC. 



MELA., POMPONIUS. 



162 



and law-courts, abolished torture, and encouraged education. He did 

 his best to remove the prejudices felt by his countrymen against the 

 introduction of the arts and sciences of Europe ; he even went so 

 far as to establish European manufactures and machinery in his domi- 

 nions, including a printing office for the publication of a periodical 

 journal. He also formed schools and colleges for teaching the arts and 

 sciences and naval and military tactics. But with all these liberal 

 measures, his government was essentially despotic and absolute ; and 

 in order to support the expenditure necessary to maintain the insti- 

 tutions already mentioned as having been introduced by him, he was 

 obliged to have resort to a heavy forced taxation, and for his army 

 to an enormous conscription. 



Upon the whole however, it must be admitted that the Albanian 

 peasant was in his day a great benefactor not only to his country but 

 to society at large. Gifted with an admirable talent for organisation, 

 he introduced into one of the most neglected and disorganised of coun- 

 tries the first conditions of a civilised state, order and security, to such 

 an extent that it is said that a traveller, laden with gold, " could traverse 

 without fear the immense territories under his sway, from the Taurus 

 to the frontiers of Abyssinia, between sea and Nile and desert." In 

 the administration of j uskice and the general management of his empire 

 he introduced more of equity and settled principle than exists at the 

 present time in any Oriental state. He did his best to curb the fanati- 

 cism of his subjects and to protect the Christian population. He 

 not only encouraged commercial intercourse with Europe, but in a 

 great measure created it ; and by various enterprises of a grand and 

 striking character, awakened that beneficial spirit of industry which 

 for many a long century had laiu dormant in Egypt. He first called 

 into life the cultivation of cotton, indigo, and sugar, which has since 

 been pursued with increasing success a large portion of the produce 

 being manufactured in hia own dominions, in factories erected for that 

 purpose at his expense. At the same time he gave a great impetus to 

 the cultivation of silk in Syria by the plantation of mulberry-trees on 

 an extensive scale. He founded a system of national education, of 

 which no one for centuries past had conceived the idea in the East, 

 and he devoted immense Bums to that purpose. In fact he projected 

 and founded more useful institutions than any Egyptian rulersince the 

 days of Saladin. In addition to this, though at his accession to power 

 he found Egypt without a ship or a drilled and disciplined soldier, he 

 found means to build a fleet and to form an army trained after the 

 European fashion. Such are the means by which the Albanian peasant, 

 who only learned to read in his thirty-fifth year, and who often, during 

 his eventful life, did not know where to lay down his head in safety, 

 became a powerful prince, who twice made the Ottoman Sultan 

 tremble oa his throne at Constantinople, and whose personal energy 

 and public importance gave him a place among the potentates of the 

 earth. 



MEIBOM, MARC, a member of a numerous German family, who 

 were distinguished in the 17th century for their classical knowledge 

 and scientific attainment*. He was born at Touningen, in the duchy 

 of Schleswig, about the year 1 630, and died at Utrecht about the year 

 1711. Dr. Hutton gives 1590 as the year of his birth, and 1663 as 

 that of hU death, which are no doubt incorrect. Marc Meibom was 

 patronised by Christina, queen of Sweden, to whom he dedicated a 

 collection of seven Greek authors upon music, Amster., 1652, 4 to. 

 He was subsequently appointed to a professorship in the university of 

 Upsal, by Frederick III., to whom he acted in the capacity of 

 librarian. He quitted Upsal for the professorship of belles-lettres in 

 tho academy of Amsterdam, where he remained but a short time.- In 

 1674 ho came to England, where he proposed the publication of a new 

 edition of the Hebrew Bible, asserting that the edition then in use 

 waa full of errors; his pretensions appear however to have been 

 ridiculed by the learned. Among his published works, a list of 

 which will be found in the ' Biographie Universelle,' there is a curious 

 ' Dialogue on Proportion,' wherein he introduces the whole of the 

 ancient geometricians, Euclid, Theon, Apollonius, &c. Many of the 

 views advanced by Meibom in this work respecting the doctrine of 

 proportion were shown to be erroneous by Langius, and by Dr. Wallis 

 in a tract printed in the first volume of his works. (Hutton, Diet. ; 

 and Biayraph. Univ.) 



MEIS.SNER, AUGUSTUS GOTTLIEB, a popular and voluminous 

 German writer of the last century, was born at Bauzen in Upper 

 Silesia, November 4, 1753. In 1785 he was appointed professor of 

 ;f-.-ftliet,|C3 and classical literature at the University of Prague, and in 

 1805 director of the High school at Fulda, where he died, February 20, 

 1807. He wrote several dramatic pieces, including some translations 

 from Molicre and Destouches; also an abridgment in German of 

 Hume's ' England ; ' but it is his ' Skizzeu ' that rendered him a 

 favourite with the public. These sketches, extending to fourteen 

 ' sammlungen,' or series (the first of which appeared in 1778, the last 

 in 171W), consist of essays, tales, narratives, anecdotes, dialogues, &C. ; 

 and recommend themselves by their agreeable liveliness, shrewdness, 

 and pleasantry. Although not entirely free from blemishes of style, 

 they have the merit of being the most successful attempts in the lighter 

 walks of literature which Germany could then produce. Many of 

 these pieces were translated or imitated in French, Danish, and 

 . and one or two were translated by Thompson in hia ' German 

 Miscellany.' 



His ' Tales and Dialogues ' (1781-89) may be considered as a con- 

 tinuation of his sketches, being similar in plan. His ' Alcibiades,' 

 ' Massaniello,' ' Bianca Capello,' and ' Spartacus,' are productions of 

 greater length (the first-mentioned being in four volumes), and are 

 specimens of the historical and biographical romance. With the 

 exception of the last, they have all been translated into French. 

 Besides the above, aud a variety of other works, Meissner contri- 

 buted a great number of literary and historical articles to different 

 periodicals. 



*MEISSONIER, JEAN-LOUIS-ERNEST, one of the roost popular 

 French genre painters, was born at Lyon in 1815, and received his 

 professional education in the atelier of Le'ou Cogniet. By the first 

 pictures which he sent to the Salon in 1836, 'Les Joueurs d'Echecs,' 

 and ' Le Petit Messager," he caught the public attention. The favour- 

 able opinion was strengthened by his ' Religieux consolant un Malade,' 

 1838, which was purchased by the Due d'Orle'ans ; and still more by ' Le 

 Liseur,' 1840, which won for him the third-class medal (genre). In 

 1841 he exhibited 'La Partie d'Echecs,' and was honoured with the 

 second-class medal. In 1843 'La Peintre dans sou Atelier' was exhi- 

 bited, and he was accorded the first class medal ; thus, while under 

 thirty obtaining this, one of the highest objects of the French artist's 

 ambition. Since then distinctions have continued to be showered 

 upon him. He was created a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour in 

 1846 ; in 1848 the first-class medal was again bestowed upon him ; a 



| medal of honour in 1851 ; and at the Exposition Universelle of 1855 

 he was awarded one of the large gold medals. Amoug the 

 more celebrated of his works painted since those mentioned above 

 are: ' Le C'orps-de-Garde ; ' 'Jeune Homme regardant des Dessius ;' 

 ' La Partie de Piquet ;' 'La Partie de Boules;' 'LaFumeur;' 'Les 

 Sol. Uts ;' ' La Rixe," &c. A picture a good deal out of his usual stylo 

 representing a 'Barricade Juin 1848,' excited a " sensation " at the 

 Exposition of 1851. As will have been seen by the enumeration of 

 his pictures his subjects ars usually of a homely character. They are 

 in fact much of the class which the old Dutch aud Flemish painters 

 delighted to paint. His pictures are generally of small size, and 

 finished with Flemish care and neatness, but with sufficient Gallicism 

 of style to remove them from the class of imitative pictures. M. 

 Meissonier has an extremely light clean touch, but free and spirited ; 

 and his colour, though not comparable with that of the great 

 masters of his line of art, is far better than that of the majority of 

 French genre painters ; while both in composition aud chiaroscuro he 

 displays the knowledge aud the skill of a master. His works are in 

 great request, and though small in size, command high prices and find 

 many imitators. M. Meiesonier has painted a good many small 

 portraits, aud he has also made several vignette designs for illustrated 

 books, among others, 'Paul et Virgiuie,' Balzac's 'La Corne'dio 

 humaine,' 'Les Francois peiut par aux-mdmes," &c. 



MELA, POMPO'NIUS, a Koman writer on geography. He ia 

 thought by some critics to have been the same person as the A unions 

 Mella, or Mela, who was implicated in"a conspiracy against Nero, and 

 who put an end to his own life (Tac., ' Ann.,' xvi. 17 ; Plin., ' H. N.,' 

 xir. 6); but this opinion is only founded on the similarity of the 

 names. It is probable, from a passage in which Mela speaks of the 

 recent conquest of Britain (iii. 6), that he was contemporary with 

 the Emperor Claudius ; and it ia evident from many passages in his 

 work that he could not have lived before the time of Augustus (iii. 

 1, " turris Augusti titulo memorabilis ; " compare iii. 2, &c.). It 

 appears from a passage in his own work (ii. 6) that he was born at 

 Tiugitera in Spain; but the manuscripts differ so widely in this 

 passage, that it is difficult to determine the right reading : many 

 critics think that we ought to read Mellaria. 



Mela's work is entitled in most manuscripts, ' De Situ Orbis.' It is 

 divided into three books, and contains a very brief description of the 

 various parts of the world. In the first book, after giving a short account 

 of the great divisions of the earth, Mela commences with Mauritania (part 

 of Marocco), and following generally the coast, he describes successively 

 Numidia, the province of Africa, Cyrenaica, Egypt, Arabia, Syria, 

 Phoenicia, Cilicia, Pamphjlia, Lycia, Caria, Ionia, yEoli-i, Paphlagonia, 

 and the countries on the Euxine and the Mjeotis as far as the Rhipbscan 

 mountains. In the second book he commences at the river Tamils 

 (Don), and gives an account of the countries in Europe on the 

 western side of the Mscotis and the Euxine as far as Thrace. He 



i then proceeds to describe Greece, Italy, Gallia Narbonensis, and 

 the coast of Spain as far as the straits of Gibraltar, from which he 



i commenced his description in the first book. The remainder of the 

 second book is occupied with an account of the islands in the Medi- 

 terranean, Adriatic, yKgean Sea, &c. In the third book ho commences 



! again at the straits of Gibraltar, and follows the western coast of Spain 



1 till he reaches Gaul ; he then gives an account of the western coast 

 of Gaul, and afterwards describes Germany and the central parts of 



' Europe and Asia as far as the Caspian. After mentioning some of the 



i islands in the ocean, he next describes India and the maritime coast 

 of Carmania, Persia, and Arabia, and concludes with a description of 

 the central parts of Afca. 



Mela appears to have been a mere compiler, and to have had no 

 scientific knowledge of his subject. If we consider him later than 

 Strabo, it does not appear from Mela's work that geography had made 

 any progress in the meantime. Like Strabo, he considers the earth 



