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MELROSE MEMOIRS. 



MELROSE, the name of a parish and village in 

 Roxburghshire, Scotland. The parish is about seven 

 miles in length, and five in breadth, and is distin- 

 guished for its beauty and fertility. Population in 

 1831, 4,339. The village (distant from Edinburgh 

 thirty-five miles south), is small, and derives its main 

 importance from the ruins of the celebrated abbey of 

 Melrose, situated in its vicinity. Melrose abbey is, 

 on all hands, admitted to be the most beautiful of all 

 the ecclesiastical ruins in the island. It was built by 

 king David, in 1136. The public attention was first 

 particularly drawn to it by Sir W alter Scott, in his 

 Lay of the Last Minstrel, and it has since become a 

 favourite subject of the poet, the painter, and the 

 tourist 



MELUN ( Melodunum) an ancient city of France, 

 on the Seine, nine leagues from Paris ; lat. 48 32' 

 N. ; Ion. 2 39' E. It has some manufactures, and 

 three annual fairs ; population, 7,250. The Seine, 

 here forms an island, and is crossed by two stone 

 bridges, one of which has an arch of 159 feet ten 

 inches span, and fourteen feet ten inches high. Louis 

 XIV. and his court resided here some time during the 

 war of the Fronde. Abeillard established his school 

 here in the twelfth century. 



MELUSINA; a well known personage in the fairy 

 world ; according to some, a kind of female sea- 

 demon, according to others, the daughter of a king 

 of Albania, and a fairy. Paracelsus makes her a 

 nymph. She is generally considered a powerful fairy, 

 who married a prince of the house of Lusignan. She 

 was, like most fairies of her time, obliged, on certain 

 days of the month, to take the shape of a fish, at 

 least in respect to half her body ; she had, therefore, 

 strictly enjoined the prince, her husband, with whom 

 she lived most happily in the castle of Lusignan, to 

 leave her alone on such days, and not to dare to look 

 at her. The prince, however, like other mortals, 

 was curious, entered her chamber on one of the for- 

 bidden days, and saw her in her state of metamorphosis. 

 She immediately uttered a shriek, and disappeared ; 

 but ever after, when an important death was about 

 to take place in the family of Lusignan, and when 

 they became related to the kings of France, also in 

 the royal family, she appeared in a mourning dress, 

 on a lofty tower of the castle, until, at last, this tower 

 was demolished, in 1574, by order of the duke de 

 Montpensier, which she strove in vain to prevent, by 

 frequent apparitions. Various versions of this story 

 exist. 



MELVIL, SIR JAMES, a statesman and historian, 

 was born at Hall-hill, in Fifeshire, in 1530; and, at 

 the age of fourteen, became page to Mary, queen oi 

 Scots, then wife to the dauphin of France. Aftei 

 having travelled and visited the court of the elector 

 palatine, with whom he remained three years, on the 

 accession of Mary to the throne of Scotland, Melvil 

 followed her, and was made privy counsellor and 

 gentleman of the bed-chamber, and continued her 

 confidential servant until her imprisonment in Loch- 

 leven castle. He was sent to the court of Elizabeth, 

 and maintained correspondences in England in favour 

 of Mary's succession to the English crown. He dice 

 in 1606. He left a historical work in manuscript, 

 which was published in 1683, under the title o 

 Memoirs of Sir James Melvil, of Hall-hill, contain 

 ing an impartial Account of the most remarkable 

 Affairs of State during the last Age. 



MELVILLE ISLAND, in the Polar sea ; one o 

 the north Georgian group, between 74 and 76 50' N 

 lat., and 105 40' and 113 40' W. Ion. It is surround 

 ed with enormous masses of ice, and the only vegeta 

 tion is moss. Captain Parry discovered it in 1819, anc 

 passed the winter of 181920 there. Its only inha 

 bitant in winter is the white bear. See Polar Seas 



Melville is also the name given to an island of the 

 ndiau ocean, near the northern coast of New Hoi- 

 and ; lat. 11 20' S. ; Jon. 130 40' E. It was dis- 

 covered by captain King, in 1818, and, in 1824, the 

 British government formed a colony there, for the 

 >urpose of establishing commercial relations with the 

 Malays. The settlement received the name of King ' 

 cove, and the harbour that of Port Cockburn. 



MEMEL ; the most northern town of Prussia, at 

 Jie mouth of the Dange, on the Kurische Haff; lat. 

 55 42' N. ; Ion. 21 3' E. ; population 8400, en- 

 *aged in ship-building, manufactures, and commerce. 

 The harbour is good, safe, and strongly fortified. 

 About 600 ships enter and leave it yearly. Its ex- 

 jorts are corn, hemp, skins, with flax seed and wood 

 rum Lithuania. 



MEMEL. See Niemen. 



MEMNON, according to fable, was the son of 

 Tithonus and Aurora, and the brother of Emathon. 

 According to some, he was king of Ethiopia, 

 according to others, of the Assyrians. He built a 

 splendid palace and a labyrinth at Abydos, in Egypt, 

 and another palace at Susa, in Persia, which city 

 received from him the epithet of Memnonia, Priam, 

 king of Troy, induced him, by the present of a golden 

 vine, to come to his assistance against the Greeks. 

 He performed many valiant exploits, and wounded 

 Achilles himself, by whom he was finally killed. 

 Jupiter, being requested by Aurora to honour her son 

 with some peculiar mark of distinction, caused an 

 innumerable crowd of birds to arise from his ashes 

 (Memnonides) , which annually returned to his grave, 

 and fought with each other, thus solemnizing, as it 

 were, funeral games in honour of his memory. After 

 his death, he was worshipped as a hero. At Thebes, 

 on the left bank of the Nile, in the ruins of the Mem- 

 nonium (palace of Memnon), are still to be seen the 

 remains of colossal statues of Memnon. One of 

 these uttered a joyful sound when the sun rose and 

 shone upon it, but when the sun set, the sound was 

 mournful. It is also related, that it shed tears, and 

 gave out oracular responses in seven verses. This 

 sound was heard till the fourth century after 

 Christ. Descriptions of this sounding statue, and 

 accounts of the sounds heard, are to be found in the 

 works of Pausanias and Strabo, and among modern 

 authors, in those of Pococke and Norden. '1 here 

 have been many hypotheses concerning its nature, 

 and also concerning the story of Memnon. Bottiger, 

 in his Amalthea, (vol. ii. page 174), shows that 

 Memnon and Phamenophis were the same, and that 

 the statue of Memnon represents a hero worshipping 

 the sun, a king or priest saluting the god. Belzoni 

 deposited in the British museum, in 1818, the head 

 of such a statue of Memnon, which is called the 

 younger Memnon. 



MEMOIRS, HISTORICAL, are writings in which 

 a person sketches the events experienced and 

 witnessed by himself to furnish matter for his own 

 reflection. They differ from a complete history or 

 chronicle in the limited nature of their subject, treat- 

 ing only of particular events or persons ; their 

 authors, too, have either taken part, personally, in 

 the scenes described, or have been connected with 

 the actors so intimately as to have derived their infor- 

 mation from the most trustworthy sources. We are 

 not to expect from them the same precision of 

 arrangement and style which is required in a regular 

 historical work. They are, however, more valuable 

 in proportion as this license is not abused, and the 

 relation is easy without being negligent. They fur- 

 nish the inquirer with interesting individual anecdotes, 

 often expose the most secret motives, disclose the 

 whole character of events, which are often barely 

 mentioned, entirely omitted, or merely hinted at with 



