cles ascribed to him are numerous. He is said to have escaped from the Saxons in a ship of glass. Instead of dying, it was supposed that he fell into a magic sleep, from which, after a long period, he would awake; and to this fable Spenser alludes in his Faery Queen. In the British museum is Le Compte de la Vie de Merlin et de ses Faiz et Compte de ses Prophecies (2 vols., folio, on vellum, without date or place). We have also the Life of Merlin, surnamed Ambrosius, by T. Heywood. (See Warton's History of Poetry, and Spenser's Faery Queen, &c.)

MERLIN, Philip Antony, commonly called Merlin de Douai, was born in 1754, in the village of Arleux, in Flanders. His father, who was a farmer, had him placed in the rich abbey of Anchin, near Douai. The monks taught him to read and write, sent him to college, and educated him to the profession of the law. The young Merlin was no sooner admitted an advocate, than his benefactors gave him the direction of the legal concerns of their wealthy house, and obtained for him the same charge from the chapter of Cambray. In 1789, he was chosen deputy to the statesgeneral by the tiers-élat of Douai. When Necker called for a patriotic contribution, in the midst of the distresses of the treasury, M. Merlin offered to the public wants a fourth of his revenue, amounting to 10,000 francs. He was a member of the committee formed to prepare the means of abolishing the feudal system, and drew up many able reports on this subject. After the session, he was appointed president of the criminal tribunal of the North, and, in 1792, deputy to the convention for that department. He voted for the death of the king, without appeal to the people, and without respite. He endeavored to obtain a law, providing that no deputy should be sent before the revolutionary tribunal until the assembly itself should have decreed his accusation. Robespierre and Couthon opposed the law, with menaces against its advocates, and the proposition was lost. From that time till the 9th of Thermidor, Merlin was silent on all the most sevee of the revolutionary measures; but, immediately after that day, he spoke against the terrorists. He was afterwards successively president of the convention, and member of the committee of public safety. In March, 1795, he proposed a decree of accusation against Barrère, Billaud de Varennes, Collot d'Herbois, and Vadier; and demanded a new organization of the revolutionary tribunal, with a view to lessen its power.

When the sections of Paris were preparing to attack the convention, M. Merlin was one of the first to denounce the city; and, September 30, 1795, obtained a decree that the armed force should be at the sole disposal of the representatives of the people, and that any other authority which should call it into action should be punished with death. On the 5th of Brumaire, he presented in the tribune a code of crimes and punishments, which was decreed in two sittings, and remained in force until 1811. In 1795, the directory appointed M. Merlin minister of justice. After the 18th of Fructidor, in the events of which M. Merlin was one of the principal movers, he was appointed a member of the directory, in the room of M. Barthélemy, but resigned his seat in the executive_government in 1799, and retired to Douai. Napoleon recalled him from his retreat, and, under the imperial government, he became advocate-general, commandant of the legion of honor, and received the dignity of count. In 1806, he was appointed a member of the council of state, in which he acquired much influence. On the return of the king, in 1814, M. Merlin was permitted to resign, with a pension. On the return of Napoleon from Elba, M. Merlin hastened to offer him his homage, and was made one of his ministers of state; and he was afterwards chosen member of the chamber of representatives for the department of the North. He had been a member of the institute from its commencement. M. Merlin quitted France in 1816, with the design of passing to America; but being shipwrecked, he obtained permission to reside in the Netherlands. Among his writings are Traité des Offices de France (4 vols.); Recueil des Questions de Droi (6 vols., 4to.); and Répertoire de Jurisprudence (16 vols., 4to.).

MERLIN, Anthony Christopher, of Thionville, was born in that town in 1762 He embraced the revolutionary cause, was deputy to the legislative assembly in 1791, and, in 1792, to the national convention, and contracted a close intimacy with Chabot and Bazire. On his arrival in the capital, M. Merlin joined the Jacobin club, and was one of the fiercest enemies of the Feuillants. On the 10th of August, he was remarked as one of the heads of the patriots, and he was supposed to have given the advice to M. Roederer, to conduct the king to the hall of the assembly. He offered personally to serve in the tyrannicide corps of 1200 men, proposed by Jean Debry. At the

time of the king's trial, he was on a mission to Mentz, but, wrote from that city that he voted for the death of the tyrant. M. Merlin was shut up in Mentz when it was besieged, and contributed greatly to its defence. In La Vendée, also, he displayed the utmost courage as commissioner of the convention in the army which had been sent home from Mentz, and was employed against the rebels. Robespierre struck down his most intimate friends; and, although Merlin did not openly join in the struggle between that unsparing demagogue and his rivals, yet he readily joined the conquerors, and for ever quitted the Jacobins of the Mountain party. He was a member of the council of five hundred, but his influence had decreased; and, for a long time subsequently, he took no part in public affairs. During the invasion of 1814, he raised a corps of partisans destined to oppose the Russian colonel Guesmard, but had little success in this service. In 1815, the friends of Napoleon invited him to put himself at the head of a similar corps, but he declined it.

MERLON, in fortification, is that part of a parapet which is terminated by two embrasures of a battery. Its height and thickness is the same with that of the parapet; but its breadth is generally nine feet on the inside, and six on the outside. It serves to cover those on the battery from the enemy; and it is better when made of earth, well beat and close, than when built with stones, because they fly about, and wound those they should defend.

MERMAID (from the Anglo-Saxon mere, sea); a fabulous creature, which seamen have described as having the head and body of a woman with the tail of a fish. Mermaids are represented as having long green hair, breasts and arms, and as sometimes seen floating on the surface of the ocean. Shakspeare gives them a voice:

I heard a mermaid, on a dolphin's back, Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath, That the rude sea grew civil at her song.

Oberon, in Midsummer Night's Dream. This reminds us of the ancient syrens, who, however, were winged and clawed. (See Syrens.) Mermen have also been seen, if we may trust the sailors. The stories have probably arisen from the appearance of Phocæ, and similar creatures. MEROË; a city and state of ancient Ethiopia, in the north-easterly part of Africa, upon a fruitful peninsula, surrounded by sandy deserts, and bounded by the

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Astapus (Bahr el Abiad), the White river, or properly the Nile, on the west, and the Astaboras (now the Tacazze) on the east, as far as the modern province of Gojam. It now forms the district of Atbar, between 13° and 18° north latitude, with a town of the same name, and lies in the kingdom of Sennaar, which constitutes a part of Nubia. The people of the ancient priestly state of Meroë, according to Herodotus, were Negroes, and are the only black nation of which we have any account, that has made much progress in intellectual cultivation. They had a fixed constitution, a government, laws, and religion. The government was in the hands of a caste of priests, which chose a king from their own number, who was obliged to live and act according to certain prescribed rules. The priests at Meroë could doom the king to death in the name of the gods, and he must submit. It was customary for the friends (ministers) of the king to share the same fate with their master, even death. Ergamenes, king of Meroë, in the third century B. C., during the reign of Ptolemy II, in Egypt, first made himself independent of this oppressive priesthood by murdering the priests in the golden temple. Meroë was the centre of the great caravan trade between Ethiopia, Egypt, Arabia, Northern Africa and India. Several colonies went from Meroë, and the first civilized state in Egypt, that of Thebes, which, as a resort for the caravans, always remained intimately connected with Meroë, and was governed by priests, must have originated thence. The priests were of a lighter complexion than the others, and were probably descended from India, from which, generally speaking, Meroë and the Ethiopian coasts must have received their first inhabitants. Ammonium (see Ammon, and Oasis) also was a small priestly state, with a king, founded by Egyptians and by Ethiopians from Meroë. Meroë and Axum (in Abyssinia) which appears to have been also a colony from Meroë, remained the centre of the southern commerce till the time of the Arabians. The existing monuments of their architecture, and many other vestiges of them, prove their early religious and social cultivation. Frederic Cailliaud of Nantes has given us the latest accounts of these memorials of Indian and Ethiopian antiquity in his Voyage à Méroë, au Fleuve Blanc, &c., en 1819-22 (Paris, 1824, in 3 parts, with engravings and maps, 2 vols., folio). Cailliaud took advantage of the Nubian campaign of Ismail, the son of the

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pacha of Egypt, in 1821, to ascend the Nile farther than his predecessors had done. Gau (q. v.) reached only the second cataract; Browne, in 1793, went only to Cobbe, in Darfour (lat. 16° N.); Bruce went from Sennaar to the coast of the Red sea, as far as 13° 30; but Cailliaud penetrated into southern Ethiopia, following the principal branch of the Nile to 10° north, 100 leagues above Sennaar, and 300 leagues farther from the southern boundary of Egypt, than Gau, into a new country hitherto unknown to the geographers. He made observations and collections illustrating the physical geography and natural history, besides obtaining materials for an authentic map of the country through which he passed; but he attended particularly to the monuments and ruins of the most ancient architecture. His work, edited by Jomard, therefore forms a sequel to that of Gau, since Cailliaud begins where Gau finished. Cailliaud was well prepared for this second journey, and kept an accurate journal. With his companion Letorzec he settled more than fifty points astronomically, collected plants, animals, and minerals, and particularly took drawings of the remains of temples, pyramids, colossuses, bass-reliefs, and Greek and hieroglyphic inscriptions. He described and sketched about 100 ancient monuments, and discovered, on his way to Meroë, nearly 80 pyramidal sepulchres. The most remarkable are the temples of Naga and Soleb, the ruins of Subah (lat. 15° N.), the pyramids at Parkal and Shendy (Chandy), where the ancient Meroë was probably situated. Here he also found the beetle worshipped by the Egyptians (Scarabæus, or Atenchus sacer), a gold beetle, from which it may be concluded that the Egyptians derived their worship from the Ethiopians. The latter still wear about their necks the image of the Scarabæus. Cailliaud also found in the region of the ancient Meroë the hump-backed ox, and the true ibis, as it is delineated on the Egyptian monuments. Among the more recent travellers to Nubia are the Prussian naturalists doctor Ehrenberg and doctor Hemprich, who, in 1823 et seq., under royal patronage, examined the coasts of the Red sea as far as Nubia and Sennaar. Hemprich died at Massuah, the principal port of Abyssinia, June 30, 1825. Ehrenberg returned, in 1827, to Berlin. Edward Ruppel, a native of Frankfort on the Maine, in 1823, penetrated as far as Dongola, in the upper part of Nubia, and, in 1825, returned to Cairo from an excursion

in Nigritia. He then visited the coasts of the Red sea, went thence to Abyssinia, and, in June, 1827, again returned to Cairo. A Russian by the name of Ssenkowskey, who, since 1820, has travelled over some parts of the East and Africa, returned to St. Petersburg in 1822, and published his travels in the Russian language, which, among many other things, probably contain good accounts of Nubia.

MEROPE; the daughter of Cypselus, king of Arcadia, and the wife of Cresphontes, king of Messene. She bore him many children, of whom the youngest was pytus (according to some, Telephontes). Cresphontes having made many changes in favor of the common people, the nobles conspired, and slew him, with all his children except Æpytus, whom Merope concealed, and afterwards sent to her father, by whom he was secretly educated. Polyphontes, who assumed the government in Messene, caused a search to be made for him every where in vain, and offered a reward to whoever should kill him. As soon as the youth was grown up, he went secretly to Messene, with the determination of revenging his father's death. He there demanded of Polyphontes the price which was set upon his own life, pretending that he had killed Epytus. Merope, expecting a change in the government, had already sent a messenger to bring back her son. The messenger returned with the report that Epytus had disappeared. She did not therefore doubt that the stranger was actually the murderer of her son, and she determined to kill him while he was asleep. She was on the point of executing her design, when she recognised her son, and concerted measures with him to take vengeance on Polyphontes. She pretended a reconciliation with him, and promised to reciprocate his love. Polyphontes immediately prepared a sacrifice; but, while he was at the altar, Æpytus killed him, and ascended his paternal throne. This story has been dramatised by Voltaire, Maffei, Alfieri, &c.

MEROVINGIANS; the first dynasty of Frankish kings, which ruled in the northern part of Gaul, since called France. They derived their name from Merowig (Meroveus), the grandfather of Hlodowig (Clovis). They ruled from 496 till 752, when they were supplanted by the Karolingians (Carlovingians). Thierry (Lettres sur l'Histoire de France) has shown that this revolution was a national change, the second dynasty being eastern Franks (Austrasians), who had become

predominant over the Neustrians, or Western Franks, to whom the Merovingians belonged. (See France.)

MERRIMACK; a river which rises in New Hampshire. The most northern branch of it, the Pemigewasset, rises from the White mountains and Moosehillock, and, after a course of about seventy miles, is joined by the Winnipiseogee at Sanbornton, and then the river takes the name of Merrimack. The course of the river continues southerly about eighty miles, to Massachusetts, when it turns to the east, and, after running about fifty miles further, falls into the Atlantic at Newburyport. It is navigable for vessels of 200 tons to Haverhill. By means of this river and the Middlesex canal, an extensive boat navigation is opened between Boston and the state of New Hampshire as far as Concord. The canals constructed to render the river navigable are Bow canal, a few miles below Concord; Hookset canal, six miles lower; Amoskeag canal, eight miles lower; Union canal, below Amoskeag; a canal round Cromwell's falls, between Merrimack and Litchfield; Wicasee canal, around Wicasee falls, fifteen miles lower; and three miles still lower, commences the Middlesex canal.

MERSCH, van der, leader of the Brabant patriots, in 1789, was born at Menin, and entered the French service, in which he acquired the title of the brave Fleming. He afterwards served in the Austrian army, in which he rose to the rank of lieutenant-colonel. In the beginning of the opposition to Austria in the Low Countries, the command of a hastily raised body of troops was given to him, with which, though undisciplined and inferior to the enemy, he made a successful attack on the imperial forces at Hoogstraaten, near Antwerp. After some other successful operations, which placed Ghent and Brussels in his hands, the chief command of the Belgian troops was intrusted to him. Party divisions soon, however, found their way into the government, and the enemies of Van der Mersch succeeded, by their intrigues, in removing him from his command, and, although they could prove nothing against him, threw him into prison. He remained in confinement until the Austrians recovered possession of the country, and died at Menin, in 1792, esteemned and regretted.

MERSEBURG; on the Saal, over which is a stone bridge, seat of government of a circle of the same name, in the Prussian duchy of Saxony, with 8800 inhabitants. It is an old, badly built town. It has a

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good gymnasium, an obstetrical institute, several religious establishments, and some manufactures. The cathedral has four handsome towers, and an organ of a remarkable size. The bishop Ditmar (died 1018), one of the best historians of the middle ages, lies buried here. Merseburg is celebrated for its beer. Lon. 12° 0 E.; lat. 51° 21' N.

MERU, MOUNT, in the Hindoo cosmology and mythological geography; the sacred mountain, on whose summit resides Siva, situated in the centre of the earth, and sustaining and uniting earth, heaven and hell. It is surrounded by seven zones, or dwipas, and seven seas,-the salt sea, the sea of intoxicating liquor, the sea of sugar, the sea of clarified butter, the sea of curds, the sea of milk, and the fresh water sea. Its four sides of four different colors, are directed to the four cardinal points, and watered by four rivers, issuing from á common source.

MESCHID, OF MESGHID, or IMAN ALI, or MESCHED ALI; a town of Arabian Irak, 90 miles south of Bagdad; lon. 43° 34' E.; lat. 32° 5′ N.; population, 6000. It is near a large lake, called Ruhemat, which communicates with the Euphrates by a canal. This town was built on the spot where Ali, the cousin, friend, and one of the successors of Mohammed, was interred. His tomb is annually visited by a great number of Persian pilgrims, who esteem this point of devotion equal to a pilgrimage to Mecca.

MESCHID, OF MESCHED; a city of Persia, in Chorasan; lon. 57° E.; lat. 37° 35′ N.; population stated at 50,000. Five of its twelve quarters are now in ruins. The city is surrounded by a strong wall, seven miles in circumference, but the houses are meanly built. Velvet, of the finest quality, and fur pelisses, much esteemed, are manufactured here. There is also a manufacture of beautiful pottery. In time of peace, caravans pass continually through this town, from Bukharia, Balk, Candahar, Hindoostan, and all parts of Persia.

MESENTERY (mesenterium, from the Greek peros, middle, and repov, intestine); a membrane in the cavity of the abdomen, attached to the lumbar vertebra, and to which the intestines adhere. Its uses are to sustain the intestines in such a manner that they may possess both mobility and firmness, to support and conduct the bloodvessels, lacteals and nerves, to fix the glands, and give an external coat to the intestines.

MESMER, Frederic Anthony; a German physician, author of the famous doctrine

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of animal magnetism, called also Mesmerism. He was born at Mersburg, in Suabia, in 1734. He first made himself known in 1766, by the publication of a thesis De Planetarum Influxu, in which he maintained that the heavenly bodies exercised an influence on the bodies of animals, and especially on the nervous system, by means of a subtile fluid diffused through the universe. But this whimsical association of the Newtonian philosophy with the reveries of astrologers being too abstruse for general reception, he added the notion of curing diseases by magnetism, and went to Vienna to put his ideas in practice. Father Hell had previously performed some pretended cures by the application of magnets, and he, considering Mesmer as a rival, charged him with borrowing, or rather stealing, his invention. The new empiric thought it prudent, therefore, to renounce the use of common magnets, and declare that his operations were conducted solely by means of the magnetism peculiar to animal bodies. He had little success at Vienna, and his applications to the academies of sciences at Paris and Berlin, and the royal society of London, were treated with neglect. After an abortive attempt to cure Mlle. Paradis, a celebrated blind musician, by the exercise of his art, Mesmer quitted Vienna for Paris, in 1778. There he for some time in vain endeavored to attract the notice of men of science; but at length he succeeded in making a convert of M. Deslon, who, from being his pupil, became his rival, and whom he then represented as an impostor. Mesmer had the impudence to demand from the French government the gift of a castle and estate, as a reward for his pretended discoveries; and the baron de Breteuil actually carried on a negotiation with this pretender, offering him a large pecuniary reward, if he would establish a magnetic clinicum, and instruct three persons chosen by government, in his process. The latter condition induced him to reject the proposal, and he removed, with some credulous patients, to Spa. A subscription was opened, to induce him to return to Paris and reveal the principles of his professed discovery. He consequently went thither, gained a number of proselytes, and received 340,000 livres. Government at length appointed a committee of physicians, and members of the academy of sciences, among whom was Franklin, to investigate the pretensions of Mesmer; and the result of their inquiries appeared in an admirable memoir, drawn up by M. Bail

ly, which completely exposed the futility of animal magnetism, and the quackery of its author. He afterwards resided some time in England, under a feigned name, and then retired to Germany, and, in 1799, published a new exposition of his doctrine, which attracted no notice. He died at his native place, in 1815. He was the author of Mémoire de F. A. Mesmer sur ses Decouvertes, and other pieces. (See Magnetism, Animal.)

MESNE; he who is lord of a manor, and has tenants holding of him, yet himself holds of a superior lord.

MESNE PROCESS; an intermediate process which issues pending the suit, upon some collateral interlocutory matter. Sometimes it is put in contradistinction to final process, or process of execution; and then it signifies all such process as intervenes between the beginning and end of a suit.

MESOPOTAMIA (Greek, signifying the land between the rivers, called, by the Arabians, Al Gezira, or the island). The Greeks called by this name the extensive region enclosed by the Tigris and Euphrates, and bounded on the north by the Taurus and Masius. The northern part of this country was mountainous, and rich in grain, wine and pasturage; but the southern part was flat, dry and unfruitful. The principal cities were Charran, or Charræ, Edessa, Zoba (Nisibis), Antioch, Mygdoniæ, and Singara. This country has always been inhabited by husbandmen, who lived a settled life, and by shepherds, who wandered from place to place. The Mesopotamians sprang from the Chaldeans, the primitive inhabitants, from the Cushites, who, in the reign of Nimrod, built the cities of Edessa and Nisibis, and from the descendants of Shem, of the tribe of Thara. The latter first inhabited the region around Ur Chasdim, and then dwelt in and around Haran or Charre; but, in process of time, they spread throughout the whole country, even into Chaldea and Syria, so that the Cushites were compel led either to retire before them or submit to them. It was originally a part of Nimrod's dominion. After an interval of more than 700 years (B. C. 2000), Kusan Rischataim reigned in Mesopotamia, who extended his dominion over the Euphrates. The Israelites, who then possessed Palestine, were compelled to pay him tribute for the space of eight years. In the golden age of the Assyrian power (790 years B. C.), Mesopotamia was entirely subjected to that empire, and suffered the fate of its subsequent conquerors. Tra