LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE. 



131 



Man of Iron, The. Bismarck. 

 Man of Straw. An irresponsible person. 

 Mare's Nest. A matter which seems of importance 

 but turns out to be nothing. 



Marriage a la Mode. The title of six satirical pic- 

 tures by Hogarth. 



Marseillaise. The French national air, composed by 

 Rouget de Lisle. 



Martinet. A strict disciplinarian. So called from a 

 French officer of the seventeenth century. 



Mason and Dixon's Line. The north boundary of 

 the Slave States, dividing Virginia and Maryland from 

 Pennsylvania. 



Mausoleum. The tomb of Mausolus, built by Queen 

 Artemisia, one of the seven wonders of the world. 



Mayfair. The west end of London. 



Mercator's Projection (or Mercator's Chart) is so 

 called after Gerard Mercator, a Flemish geographer of 

 the sixteenth century, the first to give an unbroken 

 view of the whole surface of the earth. In it all the 

 meridians are straight lines perpendicular to the equa- 

 tor, and all the parallels parallel to the equator, the 

 effect being to greatly exaggerate the polar regions. 



Merry Andrew. A buffoon, from Andrew Borde, the 

 whimsical physician of Henry VIII. 



Merry Monarch, The. Charles II. of England. 



Mesmerism takes its name from Mesmer, a German 

 physician. 



Mezzo Relievo. Carved or cast figures projecting 

 from the tablet a little more than basso relievo, and 

 something less than alto relievo, are called mezzo re- 

 lievo. 



Middle Ages, The. The period between the destruc- 

 tion of the Roman Empire and the revival of learning 

 in Italy 476 to 1500. 



Middle States, The. New York, Pennsylvania, New 

 Jersey, and Delaware. 



Minnesingers. (Love singers.) The German lyric 

 poets of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. 



Miserere. The fifty-first psalm. 



Mississippi Bubble, The. A hollow financial scheme. 



Missouri Compromise, The. A measure that pro- 

 hibited slavery north of 36 30' north latitude. 



Mistress of the Seas. England. 



Molly Maguires. A secret society in the United 

 States. Many crimes were attributed to it, especially in 

 Pennsylvania. 



Monarch, t,e Grand. Louis XIV. of France. 



Monroe Doctrine. The United States is not to 

 meddle in European affairs, nor to allow European 

 Governments to meddle in the affairs of the American 

 Continent. 



Mont de Piete. A pawnbroker's shop. 



Montmartre. A Parisian cemetery. 



Monumental City, The. Baltimore, Md. 



Morey Letter, The. A forged letter attributing to 

 General Garfield anti-Chinese sentiments, 1880. 



Morganatic Marriage. A marriage between a man 

 of high rank and a woman of a lower one. She does not 

 take her husband's title. 



Mother of Presidents. Virginia ; having produced 

 seven Presidents of the United States. 



Mother Carey's Chickens. Stormy Petrels. 



Mother Goose. She lived near Boston, and was a 

 nursery rhymer. She sang rhymes to her grandson, 

 Thomas Fleet, who printed them in 1810. 



Mount Vernon. The home of Washington, in Vir- 

 ginia. 



Muscular Christianity. An expression of Charles 

 Kingsley. " A sound mind in a sound body." 



Music of the Spheres. Order, harmony. Plato 

 taught that each planet had a siren whose song 'har- 

 monized with the motion of our sphere and with that 

 of the others. 



Namby-Pamby. Childish. A term used for poor 

 literary productions. 



Nantes, Edict of. A decree issued at Nantes, 

 France, in 1598, by Henry IV., granting toleration to 

 the Protestant religion. Revoked by Louis XIV., Octo- 

 ber 22, 1685. 



.Nation of Shop-keepers. The name given to the 

 English by Napoleon. 



Natural Bridge, The. A natural arch over Cedar 

 Creek near Jaines River in Virginia. It is two hundred 

 feet high. 



Newgate. A London prison. 



New World. The Americas. 



Nibelungenlied. A German epic poem of the thir- 

 teenth century. 



Nine Worthies, The. Joshua, David, Judas Macca- 

 baeus, Hector, Alexander, Julius Caesar, Arthur, Charle- 

 magne, and Godfrey of Bouillon. 



Noctes Ambrosianae. The title of a work by Pro- 

 fessor Wilson (Christopher North). 



Noel. Christmas day. 



Non-Conformists. Dissenters from the Church of 

 England. 



Northern Giant, The. Russia. 



Notre Dame. The Cathedral of Paris. 



Odyssey. Homer's narrative poem of the adventures 

 of Ulysses on his voyage from Troy to Ithaca. 



Ogres. Giants who feed on human flesh. 



Oi Polloi. The multitude. 



Old Abe. Abraham Lincoln. 



Old Bailey. A London criminal court. 



Old Dominion, The. Virginia 



Old Guard, The. A favorite regiment of Napoleon 

 Bonaparte. In the Chicago Convention, 1880, the 

 friends of General Grant received this name. 



Old Hickory. Gen. Andrew Jackson. 



Old Probs. (Old Probabilities.) The United States 

 Signal Service. 



Old Public Functionary. President James Bu- 

 chanan. 



Old South, The. A famous church in Boston, Mass. 



Orangeman. A Protestant Irishman. Member of 

 an organization which cherishes the memory of William 

 Prince of Orange. 



Orange Peel. Sir Robert Peel. 



Ordinance of 1787. An act fixing the government 

 of the Northwest Territory of the United States. 



Orlando Furioso. An Italian poem by Ariosto. 



Ossian. The son of Fingal, a Scotch bard. Ossian's 

 poems, published in 1760, were the work of James 

 McPherson, a gifted Caledonian. 



Ostend Manifesto. Issued by the United States 

 Ministers to England, France, and Spain during 

 Pierce's administration, declaring that Cuba must be- 

 long to the United States. 



Ostracism. The Athenians expelled every public 

 man against whom a sufficient number of votes were 

 cast. The votes were written on oyster shells. 



Palimpsest. A parchment haying the original writ- 

 ing erased and new writing substituted. 



Pall Mall. A street in London. 



Palladium. Something that affords defense, pro- 

 tection, and safety. A statue of Pallas was the palla- 

 dium of Troy. 



Pantheon. A circular building in Rome erected in 

 the time of Augustus. It is now a church, the Rotunda. 



Paradise Lost. A poem by John Milton, treating 

 of the fall of man. 



Paradise Regained. Poem by Milton on the temp- 

 tation and triumph of Jesus. 



Paris of America, The. Cincinnati. 



Parthenon. A temple of Minerva in Athens. 



Partington, Mrs. The American Mrs. Malaprop. 

 The creation of B. P. Shillaber. 



Pasquinade. A lampoon or satirical writing. Po- 

 litical squibs used to be posted on an old statue that 

 stood in Rome near the house of a sneering old cobbler 

 named Pasquin. 



Peeler. A policeman. Sir Robert Peel founded the 

 Irish constabulary. 



Peninsular War. The war between England and 

 France in Spain and Portugal, 1808-1812. 



People's William. William E. Gladstone. 



Pere-la-Chaise. A cemetery near Paris. 



Philippic. An invective. The orations of I>emos- 

 thenes against P'lilip of Macedon originated this word. 



Philistine. A word in use in the German universi- 

 ties for a person below caste. 



Philosopher's Stone, The. A substance supposed 

 to have the property of turning anything else into gold. 



Phoenix. A mythical bird, without a mate, renews 

 itself every five hundred years by being consumed in a 

 fire of spices, whence it rises from the ashes and starts 

 for a new flight. 



Pied Piper of Hamelin, The. Not being paid for 

 having drawn, by the sound of his pipe, the rats and 

 mice out of Hamelic into the river, he piped the chil- 

 dren of the town into Koppelberg hill, whece 130 of 

 them died. 



Pigeon English. A mixture of English, Chinese, 

 and Portuguese. 



Plon-Plon. Prince Napoleon J. C. Bonaparte. 



Plumed Knight, The. J. G. Elaine, American 

 statesman. 



