MARRYAT 



3661 



MARS 



Morganatic Marriage. This is a marriage 

 contracted by some member of a reigning house 

 or, in certain countries, by one of the higher 

 nobility, with a woman who is not his equal in 

 rank. It is thoroughly legal, but may not exist 

 side by side with another marriage; the chil- 

 dren of such a union may not inherit their 

 father's rank or his entailed estates. 



Consult Howard's The Family and Marriage; 

 Schuster's The Wife in Ancient and Modern 

 Times. 



MARRYAT, mair'iat, FREDERICK (1792-1848), 

 an English sailor and author of energetic sea 

 stories that have delighted the boys of two 

 generations. After running away from home 

 repeatedly with the intention of going to sea, 

 he was sent out by his father on the frigate Im- 

 perieuse when the lad was fourteen. He took 

 part in some fifty engagements against the 

 French, his ship being part of the squadron of 

 the Catalonians. He saved a great many lives 

 during his service in the navy and was given a 

 gold medal by the Royal Humane Society. The 

 hardships which he endured as a seaman under- 

 mined his health, and at the age of forty he 

 retired from naval service and devoted himself 

 to story-writing. 



His characters and incidents are taken from 

 his own actual experiences, and one of his old 

 shipmates used to say that to "read Midship- 

 man Easy or Jacob Faithful was like spending a 

 half day in the Captain's company in his best 

 mood." He has vividly portrayed his com- 

 mander, Lord Cochrane, in the characters of 

 Captain Savage in Peter Simple and Captain 

 M in The King's Own. His stories are un- 

 polished, and his thirty-five or forty volumes 

 manifest very little literary art, but with all 

 their faults they seem more like actual experi- 

 ences than fiction. Among his best-known 

 books, other than the above, are Adventures of 

 a Naval Officer, Newton Forster, The Pacha of 

 Many Tales, The Pirate and Three Cutters, 

 Japhet in Search of a Father, Peter Simple, 

 The Phantom Ship and Frank Mildmay. After 

 a visit to the 'United States in 1837 he pub- 

 lished a Diary in America. 



MARS, mahrz, in mythology, was the god of 

 war and one of the greatest of the gods in an- 

 cient Roman worship. His sacred emblems were 

 the shield and spear, which the ancients believed 

 had fallen from heaven. These symbols were 

 kept on the altar of the temple devoted to his 

 worship in the Campus Martius in Rome. In 

 legend Mars was the son of Jupiter and father, 

 by Rhea, of Romulus and Remus, the mythical 



MARS 



From a statue in the Vati- 

 can, Rome. 



founders of Rome. Because of his strength the 

 Romans regarded Mars as a god who could 

 accomplish all things. They prayed to him for 

 rain, consulted him on all affairs and offered 

 many sacrifices in 

 his honor. When 

 soldiers went to 

 war they carried 

 chickens sacred to 

 Mars, and corn 

 was given these 

 birds just before 

 a battle. If the 

 food was greedily 

 eaten it signified 

 that Mars was on 

 their side, but if 

 eaten sparingly 

 the battle would 

 turn against them. 

 The chief fes- 

 tivals of Mars 

 were in March 

 and October; 

 March was named 

 for the god. The 

 Grecian concep- 

 tion of Mars dif- 

 fers radically from the Roman. The Greeks 

 gave the god the name of Ares, and worshiped 

 him as the protector of fields and harvests. 



MARS, one of the planets that has been 

 known from very earliest times. It is more like 

 the Earth than any other planet, and more than 

 any other is the subject of study and specula- 

 tion. The question as to whether Mars is 

 inhabited is almost world old, yet whenever 

 revived is always greeted with interest. Stories, 

 books and plays have been written about in- 

 habitants of Mars; the other planets even in 

 imagination have not been peopled, but human 

 imagination has for many years been deter- 

 mined to people Mars. 



Mars is a fiery-red planet that moves with 

 great rapidity among the stars, strongly attract- 

 ing notice. It derives its name from Mars, the 

 mythological god of war, and is the most 

 aggressive, sturdy and vigorous of the planets. 

 It is 141,500,000 miles from the sun, and its 

 orbit is so eccentric that its radius varies more 

 than 26,000,000 miles. At aphelion (the point 

 most distant from the sun) the planet is 61,- 

 000,000 miles from the earth; at conjunction 

 it is 234,000,000 miles distant. At its nearest 

 approach, therefore, it is 148 times as far away 

 as the moon. 



