224 



MIUABKAr 



mid eastern Italy were at the same time under 

 water, as was also tlie case with many part- f 

 eostein Europe and Asia .Minor. Suntliern Europe 

 wa- thus ill the Miocene period an extensive archi- 

 pelago, in wliieli the plateaus nf Spain and central 

 France, the Alps, the Carpathian*. \'e. existed as 

 i-lanil-. The nio-i iMintiiiiiniis land moss was in 

 the mirth of Kumpe : ami if the Miocene of the 

 Arctic region-, with its almmli<nt llora, lie of the 

 Mime age as the Miocene of Euro|x>, then we may 

 infer that a vast area of the North Atlantic 

 .-\isted on dry land, across which initiations of 

 the llora took place. ( 'onsideralile movements of 

 elevation seem to have occurred in Ktirnpu liefore 

 the close of Miocene times, causing the sea to 

 disappear from wiile regions which it liaii formerly 

 occupied. Thus, the Main/ basin and the sea 

 that occupied much of northern Switzerland. \e. 

 were replace<l by fresh-water lakes, while the wide 

 sea of the Vienna basin was much reduced in sue, 

 and eventually liecame freshened the conditions 

 resembling those that characterise the Black Sea. 



Jliqiirlon. (JitE.YT and LITTLE, two islands 

 connected hy a Ion;;, narrow, sandv isthmus, oil' 

 the south-west coast of Newfoundland, forming 

 with St Pierre the sole remaining colony of France 

 in northern America. Fishing is nearly the only 

 occupation, and dried and fresh cod and cod-liver 

 oil are exported. Area, 03 square miles ; pop. 

 (1896)6230. 



Mir. the Russian commune, consisting of the 

 inhahitants of one or more villages, who are as a 

 community owners of the surrounding land, and 

 redistribute the same to the members from time 

 to time. See LAND LAWS, Vol. VI. p. 602; 



Kl --IA : VlI.I.ACK < '(IMMUNITIES. 



MiralM-au, Virnut l!n;t KTI, MARQUIS DE, 



father of the great state-man of the French 

 Revolution, was horn, October 5, 1715, at Pertuis 

 in I'rovence, of a family that claimed a noble 

 Florentine descent, hut was really sprung from a 

 wealthy bonrraoia family <if Digne and Marseilles 

 that had acquired in 1570 the domain of Miiahcati 

 hv purchase. an<l the title in 1085. He was an 

 ahle hut eccentric ami exceedingly hot-headed and 

 self-willed man, ami he showed himself a senseless 

 and brutal tyrant in the treatment of his family. 

 It i.s said that he procured at one time or other no 

 fewer than fifty-four li-tlrcx ik- cachet against his 

 wife and children, and he strove to curb the extra- 

 ordinary geniu- , ( f ],U greatest son by a comse of 

 unnatural severity, which ended with shattering 

 all the ties of kindred anil driving him into the 

 moot defiant and reekle-s excesses. Vet he was 

 himself a theoretical philanthropist ami active 

 piomoter of physiocrat ic ideas, and in this ciinse 

 published a series of hooks, as Ami ifi-.i Homines 

 (~> vols. 17")")) and l.n PkitOtOpUt rundf, (4 voN. 

 I7(i.'t), in which the vigour ot phrase often fore 

 shallows the stronger hand of his son. lie died at 

 Argentenil, l:(th .Inly 1789. 



i '.iii.'-ii.e, Is* Mirahmu (1878-89), and Oncken, 

 Dtrnllcre Mirttlitau (Itvrn, 188(5). 



HiiNoltK CAIIIUKI. l:i(.TKTI, CciMTK 1)K MlRA- 

 IlKAf, the gieatest figure in the French Revolution, 

 and [icrhaps the ahlest statesman that France has 

 vet produced, was liorn at Itignon in Provence, llth 

 Man-li 174!), of a family that had l?en for three 

 generations famous for storn.y passions and great 

 abilities. \Vithin his vigorous frame and massive 

 intellect were concentrated all the good and all the 

 evil of his race; his unusually ugly face, -caned 

 with smallpox and crowned with an immense 

 mane of hlack hair. We unmistakably the stamp 

 ot pofi, and from 1 toy hood he possessed a marvel- 

 lous personal fascination which snhdued all men 

 and women to his will. Hi- i-.lncation was left to 



take cnre of itself, and at seventeen he entered as 



a lieutenant the Herri regiment of cavalry, and 

 lived a life of such rec&lewneM at tin- little 

 garrison-town of Saintes that hi- imperious father 

 imprisoned him in 17(18 on the- 1-le of Ifhe. near 

 l.a Kochelle, and next sent him with the Fieiich 

 legion of Lorraine to Corsica, where his conduct 

 earned him the confidence of his chiefs and the 

 affection of his men. But his father refusing to 

 purchase him a company, he left the service in 

 1770, and sett hit down to practise the physiocrat 

 system on an estate in Limousin. Two years later 

 his father married him to the only daughter of the 

 Marquis de Marignan, a sprightly and pretty, hnt 

 vain anil shallow woman, with whom he broke out 

 into lavish expenditure, and lived unhappily. On 

 account of his dehts his father confined him, in 

 May I77.S, in the town of Maiiosi|iif, next in the 

 Chateau d'lf. near Mai -cities, and at last in 177."> 

 in the castle of Joux, near Pontarlier. Here he 

 formed an intrigue with Sophie de Rufley, the 

 young wife of the gray-haired legal president, the 

 Marquis de Monnier, and lied with her to Switzer- 

 land and thence to Amsterdam, where for eight 

 months he made his hread hy lahorious hack-work 

 for the Dutch booksellers, among other tasks 

 translating from the English Watson's Life of 

 Philip II. His EsMti snr If. J)esjH>tixinr. hegun at 

 Manosque and now completed, made a sensation 

 by its audacity and vigour. Meantime the parle- 

 ment of Kc-ancon sentenced him to the penalty of 

 death, in contumacious ahsence. for adduction and 

 robbery, and caused a paper etligy of him to be 

 helieaded. The search made for him at the insti- 

 gation of his father at length proved successful, 

 and in May 1777 he was handed over by the 

 States general and flung into the frowning castle 

 of Vincennes, where, in a close imprisonment of 

 three years and a half, and after he had worked 

 oil his grosser feelings in writing the indecent 

 l-'.rnlirii Jli/i/iiiH and Ala Convemimi, he worked out 

 his own salvation by study and meditation, and 

 the writing of his famous Kuai sitr les Ltttrca tie 

 ( ',1,-fift et les Prisons tffilot (-2 vols. 1782). His too 

 glowing letters from the prison to Sophie wen- 

 di-covered later hy Manuel in the archive- :.f 

 police at Paris, and published under the title of 

 Lettres ori<iiiiulc.t <li M,rniiin, I'l-ntcs tin It' 

 df, I t vols. 1792). In Decemlicr 17>u 



Miralieau was released, and he nt once began hy a 

 bold process to lalMiur for his restoration to society. 

 At length, September ITS'.', alter eloquent plead- 

 ings that drew upon him all eyes in Franco, he 

 succeeded in getting his sentence annulled. Next 

 year he lo-t his suit at Aix for the restitution of 

 his conjugal rights, but did something by the 

 attempt to rehabilitate his reputation. Now also 

 he broke oil the illicit relation with I. is mistress, 

 who had not remained true to him, and whose 

 later disappointment- in love drove her to the 

 refuge of suicide in September ITs'.i. 



Again Hung upon his own resources, deeply 

 drowned ill debt, and thriflh-s and extiavngiint 

 by temperament, Miralwau made for some > 

 a shifty living by his pen. writing and compiling 

 innumerable book* anil pamphlets against specula- 

 tion, stock-jobbing, and other political and social 

 evils of the time, and Milling restlessly from France 

 to I'm i. i. to Holland, and to England. His 

 grosser pas-ion- had not yet binned themselves out, 

 and his life was stained by countless unworthy 

 luiisiiHx, amid which one woman alone the I hitch 

 Madame de Nehru-- stands out as an elevating 

 influence. In Kngland he was intimate with Sir 

 <;illx!rt Elliot, afterwards first Karl ot Minlo. Lord 

 Lansdowne, and Romilly, ami hi- close observation 

 of English politics taught him the "nod of modera- 

 tion, compromise, and opportunism. In 1780 he 



