Chapter 12

See T. H. S. Escott,Edward Bulwer, 1st Baron Lytton of Knebworth(1910).

(A. Wa.)

LYTTON, EDWARD ROBERT BULWER-LYTTON,1st Earl of(1831-1891), English diplomatist and poet, was the only son of the 1st Baron Lytton. He was born in Hertford Street, Mayfair, on the 8th of November 1831. Robert Lytton and his sister were brought up as children principally by a Miss Green. In 1840 the boy was sent to a school at Twickenham, in 1842 to another at Brighton, and in 1845 to Harrow. From his earliest childhood Lytton read voraciously and wrote copiously, quickly developing a genuine and intense love of literature and a remarkable facility of expression. In 1849 he left Harrow and studied for a year at Bonn with an English tutor, and on his return with another tutor in England. In 1850 he entered the diplomatic service as unpaidattachéto his uncle, Sir Henry Bulwer, who was then minister at Washington. His advancein the diplomatic service was continuous, his successive appointments being: as second secretary—1852, Florence; 1854, Paris; 1857, The Hague; 1859, Vienna; as first secretary or secretary of legation—1863, Copenhagen; 1864, Athens; 1865, Lisbon; 1868, Madrid; 1868, Vienna; 1873, Paris; as minister—1875, Lisbon. In 1887 he was appointed to succeed Lord Lyons as ambassador at Paris, and held that office until his death in 1891. This rapid promotion from one European court to another indicates the esteem in which Lytton was held by successive foreign secretaries. In 1864, immediately before taking up his appointment at Athens, he married Edith, daughter of Edward Villiers, brother of the earl of Clarendon, and in 1873, upon the death of his father, he succeeded to the peerage and the estate of Knebworth in Hertfordshire.

Early in 1875 Lord Lytton declined an offer of appointment as governor of Madras, and in November of that year he was nominated governor-general of India by Disraeli. The moment was critical in the history of India. In Central Asia the advance of Russia had continued so steadily and so rapidly that Shere Ali, the amir of Afghanistan, had determined to seek safety as the vassal of the tsar. Lytton went out to India with express instructions from the British government to recover the friendship of the amir if possible, and if not so to arrange matters on the north-west frontier as to be able to be indifferent to his hostility. For eighteen months Lytton and his council made every effort to conciliate the friendship of the amir, but when a Russian agent was established at Kabul, while the mission of Sir Neville Chamberlain was forcibly denied entrance into the amir’s dominions, no choice was left between acknowledging the right of a subsidized ally of Great Britain to place himself within Russian control and depriving him of the office which he owed to British patronage and assistance. The inevitable war began in November 1878, and by the close of that year the forces prepared by Lytton for that purpose had achieved their task with extraordinary accuracy and economy. Shere Ali fled from Kabul, and shortly afterwards died, and once more it fell to the Indian government to make provision for the future of Afghanistan. By the treaty of Gandamak in May 1879 Yakub Khan, a son of Shere Ali, was recognized as amir, the main conditions agreed upon being that the districts of Kuram, Pishin and Sibi should be “assigned” to British administration, and the Khyber and other passes be under British control; that there should be a permanent British Resident at Kabul, and that the amir should be subsidized in an amount to be afterwards determined upon. The endeavour of the Indian government was to leave the internal administration of Afghanistan as little affected as possible, but considerable risk was run in trusting so much, and especially the safety of a British envoy, to the power and the goodwill of Yakub Khan. Sir Louis Cavagnari, the British envoy entered Kabul at the end of July, and was, with his staff, massacred in the rising which took place on the 3rd of September. The war of 1879-80 immediately began, with the occupation of Kandahar by Stewart and the advance upon Kabul by Roberts, and the military operations which followed were not concluded when Lytton resigned his office in April 1880.

A complete account of Lytton’s viceroyalty, and a lucid exposition of the principles of his government and the main outlines of his policy, may be found inLord Lytton’s Indian Administration, by his daughter, Lady Betty Balfour (London, 1899). The frontier policy which he adopted, after the method of a friendly and united Afghanistan under Yakub Khan had been tried and had failed, was that the Afghan kingdom should be destroyed. The province of Kandahar was to be occupied by Great Britain, and administered by a vassal chief, Shere Ali Khan, who was appointed “Wali” with a solemn guarantee of British support (unconditionally withdrawn by the government succeeding Lytton’s). The other points of the Indian frontier were to be made as secure as possible, and the provinces of Kabul and Herat were to be left absolutely to their own devices. In consequence of what had been said of Lytton by the leaders of the parliamentary opposition in England, it was impossible for him to retain his office under a government formed by them, and he accordingly resigned at the same time as the Beaconsfield ministry. This part of his policy was thereupon revoked. Abdur Rahman, proving himself the strongest of the claimants to the throne left vacant by Yakub Khan’s deposition, became amir as the subsidized ally of the Indian government.

The two most considerable events of Lytton’s viceroyalty, besides the Afghan wars, were the assumption by Queen Victoria of the title of empress of India on the 1st of January 1877, and the famine which prevailed in various parts of India in 1876-78. He satisfied himself that periodical famines must be expected in Indian history, and that constant preparation during years of comparative prosperity was the only condition whereby their destructiveness could be modified. Accordingly he obtained the appointment of the famine commission of 1878, to inquire, upon lines laid down by him, into available means of mitigation. Their report, made in 1880, is the foundation of the later system of irrigation, development of communications, and “famine insurance.” The equalization and reduction of the salt duty were effected, and the abolition of the cotton duty commenced, during Lytton’s term of office, and the system of Indian finance profoundly modified by decentralization and the regulation of provincial responsibility, in all which matters Lytton enthusiastically supported Sir John Strachey, the financial member of his council.

Upon Lytton’s resignation in 1880 an earldom was conferred upon him in recognition of his services as viceroy. He lived at Knebworth until 1887, in which year he was appointed to succeed Lord Lyons as ambassador at Paris. He died at Paris on the 24th of November 1891, of a clot of blood in the heart, when apparently recovering from a serious illness. He was succeeded by his son (b. 1876) as 2nd earl.

Lytton is probably better known as a poet—under the pen-name of “Owen Meredith”—than as a statesman. The list of his published works is as follows:Clytemnestra, and other Poems, 1855;The Wanderer, 1858;Lucile, 1860;Serbski Pesme, or National Songs of Servia, 1861,Tannhäuser(in collaboration with Mr Julian Fane), 1861;Chronicles and Characters, 1867;Orval, or The Fool of Time, 1868;Fables in Song(2 vols.), 1874;Glenaveril, or The Metamorphoses, 1885;After Paradise, or the Legends of Exile, and other Poems, 1887;Marah, 1892;King Poppy, 1892. The two last-mentioned volumes were published posthumously. A few previously unpublished pieces are included in a volume ofSelectionspublished, with an introduction by Lady Betty Balfour, in 1894. His metrical style was easy and copious, but not precise. It often gives the impression of having been produced with facility, because the flow of his thought carried him along, and of not having undergone prolonged or minute polish. It was frequently suggestive of the work of other poets, especially in his earlier productions. The friend who wrote the inscription for the monument to be erected to him at St Paul’s described him as “a poet of many styles, each the expression of his habitual thoughts.”Lucile, a novel in verse, presents a romantic style and considerable wit; andGlenaveril, which also contains many passages of great beauty and much poetic thought, has much of the same narrative character. Besides his volumes of poetry, Lytton published in 1883 two volumes of a biography of his father. The second of these contains the beginning of the elder Lytton’s unfinished novel,Greville, and his life is brought down only to the year 1832, when he was twenty-six years of age, so that the completion of the book upon the same scale would have required at least four more volumes. The executrix of Lytton’s mother chose to consider that the publication was injurious to that lady’s memory, and issued a volume purporting to contain Bulwer-Lytton’s letters to his wife. This Lytton suppressed by injunction, thereby procuring a fresh exposition of the law that the copyright in letters remains in the writer or his representatives, though the property in them belongs to the recipient. Lytton’s appointment to the Parisian embassy caused the biography of his father to be finally laid aside.

ThePersonal and Literary Letters of Robert, 1st Earl of Lytton, have been edited by Lady Betty Balfour (1906).

(H. S*.)

MThe thirteenth letter of the Phoenician and Greek alphabets, the twelfth of the Latin, and the thirteenth of the languages of western Europe. Written originally from right to left, it took the formwhichsurvivesin its earliest representations in Greek. The greater length of the first limb ofmis characteristic of the earliest forms. From this form, written from left to right, the Latin abbreviation M’ for the praenomen Manius is supposed to have developed, the apostrophe representing the fifth stroke of the original letter. In the early Greek alphabets the four-stroke M with legs of equal length represents notmbuts;mwhen written with four strokes is. The five-stroke forms, however, are confined practically to Crete, Melos and Cumae; from the last named the Romans received it along with the rest of their alphabet. The Phoenician name of the symbol wasmem, the Greek nameμῦis formed on the analogy of the name forn. M represents the bilabial nasal sound, which was generally voiced. It is commonly a stable sound, but many languages,e.g.Greek, Germanic and Celtic, change it when final into -n, its dental correlative. It appears more frequently as an initial sound in Greek and Latin than in the other languages of the same stock, because in thesesbeforem(as also beforelandn) disappeared at the beginning of words. The soundsmandbare closely related, the only difference being that, in pronouncingm, the nasal passage is not closed, thus allowing the sound to be prolonged, whilebis an instantaneous or explosive sound. In various languagesbis inserted betweenmand a following consonant, as in the Gr.μεσημβρία“mid-day,” or the English “number,” Fr.nombrefrom Lat.numerus. The soundmcan in unaccented syllables form a syllable by itself without an audible vowel,e.g.theEnglishwordfathomcomes from an Anglo-Saxonfaþm, where themwas so used. (For more details as to this phonetic principle, which has important results in the history of language, see underN.)

(P. Gi.)

MAAS, JOSEPH(1847-1886), English tenor singer, was born at Dartford, and became a chorister in Rochester Cathedral. He went to study singing in Milan in 1869; in February 1871 he made his first success by taking Sims Reeves’s place at a concert in London. In 1878 he became principal tenor in Carl Rosa’s company, his beautiful voice and finished style more than compensating for his poor acting. He died in London on the 16th of January 1886.

MAASIN,a town on the S.W. coast of the island of Leyte, Philippine Islands, at the mouth of the Maasin River. Pop. (1903), 21,638. Maasin is an important port for hemp and copra. The well-built town occupies a narrow coastal plain. The river valleys in the vicinity produce cotton, pepper, tobacco, rice, Indian corn and fruit. Native cloths and pottery are manufactured. Maasin is the only place on the west coast of Leyte where a court of justice is held. The language is Visayan.

MAASSLUIS,a river port of Holland, in the province of South Holland, on the New Waterway, 10 m. by rail W. of Rotterdam. Pop. (1903), 8011. It rose into importance as a fishing harbour towards the end of the 16th century, and its prosperity rapidly increased after the opening of the New Waterway (the Maas ship canal) from Rotterdam to the sea. The fort erected here in 1572 by Philip of Marnix, lord of St Aldegonde, was captured by the Spanish in 1573.

MAASTRICHT,orMaestricht, a frontier town and the capital of the province of Limburg, Holland, on the left bank of the Maas at the influx of the river Geer, 19 m. by rail N.N.E. of Liége in Belgium. Pop. (1904), 36,146. A small portion of the town, known as Wyk, lies on the right bank. A stone bridge connecting the two replaced a wooden structure as early as 1280, and was rebuilt in 1683. Formerly a strong fortress, Maastricht is still a considerable garrison town, but its ramparts were dismantled in 1871-1878. The town-hall, built by Pieter Post and completed in 1683, contains some interesting pictures and tapestry. The old town-hall (Oud Stadhuis), a Gothic building of the 15th century, is now used as a museum of antiquities. The church of St Servatius is said to have been founded by Bishop Monulphus in the 6th century, thus being the oldest church in Holland; according to one account it was rebuilt and enlarged as early as the time of Charlemagne. The crypt with the tomb of the patron saint dates from the original building. The varied character of its late Romanesque and later Gothic architecture bears evidence of the frequency with which the church has been restored and altered. Over the porch is the fine emperor’s hall, and the church has a marble statue of Charlemagne. The church of Our Lady, a late Romanesque building, has two ancient crypts and a 13th-century choir of exceptional beauty, but the nave suffered severely from a restoration in 1764. The present Gothic building of St Martin (in Wyk) was erected in 1859; the original church is said by tradition to have occupied the site of an old heathen temple. The Protestant St Janskerk, a Gothic building of the 13th and 15th centuries, with a fine tower, was formerly the baptistery of the cathedral. The various hospitals, the poor-house, the orphanage and most of the other charitable foundations are Roman Catholic institutions. Maastricht contains the provincial archives, a library and geological collections. Though mainly indebted for its commercial prosperity to its position on the river, the town did not begin to reap the full advantages of its situation till the opening of the railways between 1853 and 1865. At first a trade was carried on in wine, colonial wares, alcoholic liquors and salt; there are now manufactures of earthenware, glass and crystal, arms, paper, woollens, tools, lead, copper and zinc work, as well as breweries, and tobacco and cigar factories, and a trade in corn and butter.

A short distance south of Maastricht are the great sandstone quarries of Pietersberg, which were worked from the time of the Romans to near the end of the 19th century; the result is one of the most extraordinary subterranean labyrinths in the world, estimated to cover an area 15 m. by 9 m. In the time of the Spanish wars these underground passages served to hide the peasants and their cattle.

Maastricht was originally thetrajectus superior(upper ford) of the Romans, and was the seat of a bishop from 382 to 721. Having formed part of the Frankish realm, it was ruled after 1204 jointly by the dukes of Brabant and the prince-bishops of Liége. In 1579 it was besieged by the Spaniards under the duke of Parma, being captured and plundered after a heroic resistance. It was taken by the French in 1673, 1748 and 1794.

MABILLON, JOHN(1632-1707), Benedictine monk of the Congregation of St Maur (seeMaurists), was the son of a peasant near Reims. In 1653 he became a monk in the abbey of St Remi at Reims. In 1664 he was placed at St Germain-des-Prés in Paris, the great literary workshop of the Maurists, where he lived and worked for twenty years, at first under d’Achery, with whom he edited the nine folio volumes of Acta of the Benedictine Saints. In Mabillon’s Prefaces (reprinted separately) these lives were for the first time made to illustrate the ecclesiastical and civil history of the early middle ages. Mabillon’s masterpiece was theDe re diplomatica(1681; and a supplement, 1704) in which were first laid down the principles for determining the authenticity and date of medieval charters and manuscripts. It practically created the science of Latin palaeography, and is still the standard work on the subject. In 1685-1686 Mabillon visited the libraries of Italy, to purchase MSS. and books for the King’s Library. On his return to Paris he was called upon to defend against de Rancé, the abbot of La Trappe, the legitimacy for monks of the kind of studies to which the Maurists devoted themselves: this called forth Mabillon’sTraité des études monastiquesand hisRéflexions sur la réponse de M. l’abbé de laTrappe(1691-1692), works embodying the ideas and programme of the Maurists for ecclesiastical studies. Mabillon produced in all some twenty folio volumes and as many of lesser size, nearly all works of monumental erudition (the chief are named in the articleMaurists). A very competent judge declared that, “he knew well the 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th and 11th centuries, but nothing earlier or later.” Mabillon never allowed his studies to interfere with his life as a monk; he was noted for his regular attendance at the choral recitation of the office and the other duties of the monastic life, and for his deep personal religion, as well as for a special charm of character. He died on the 26th of December 1707, in the midst of the production of the colossal Benedictine Annals.

The chief authority for his life is theAbrégé de la vie de D. J. M.(also in Latin), by his disciple and friend Ruinart (1709). See also, for a full summary of his works, Tassin,Hist. littéraire de la congr. de St Maur(1770), pp. 205-269. Of modern biographies the best are those of de Broglie (2 vols., 1888) and Bäumer (1892)—the former to be especially recommended. A brief sketch by E. C. Butler may be found in theDownside Review(1893).

(E. C. B.)

MABINOGION(plural of Welshmabinogi, frommabinog, a bard’s apprentice), the title given to the collection of eleven Welsh prose tales (from the Red Book of Hergest) published (1838) by Lady Charlotte Guest, but applied in the Red Book to four only. (SeeCelt:Welsh Literature.)

MABUSE, JAN(d. 1532), the name adopted (from his birthplace, Maubeuge) by the Flemish painterJenni Gosart, orJennyn van Hennegouwe(Hainault), as he called himself when he matriculated in the gild of St Luke, at Antwerp, in 1503. We know nothing of his early life, but his works tell us that he stood in his first period under the influence of artists to whom plastic models were familiar; and this leads to the belief that he spent his youth on the French border rather than on the banks of the Scheldt. Without the subtlety or power of Van der Weyden, he had this much in common with the great master of Tournai and Brussels, that his compositions were usually framed in architectural backgrounds. But whilst Mabuse thus early betrays his dependence on the masters of the French frontier, he also confesses admiration for the great painters who first gave lustre to Antwerp; and in the large altar-pieces of Castle Howard and Scawby he combines in a quaint and not unskilful medley the sentiment of Memling, the bright and decided contrasts of pigment peculiar to coloured reliefs, the cornered and packed drapery familiar to Van der Weyden, and the bold but Socratic cast of face remarkable in the works of Quentin Matsys. At Scawby he illustrates the legend of the count of Toulouse, who parted with hisworldlygoods to assume the frock of a hermit. At Castle Howard he represents the Adoration of the Kings, and throws together some thirty figures on an architectural background, varied in detail, massive in shape and fanciful in ornament. He surprises us by pompous costume and flaring contrasts of tone. His figures, like pieces on a chess-board, are often rigid and conventional. The landscape which shows through the colonnades is adorned with towers and steeples in the minute fashion of Van der Weyden. After a residence of a few years at Antwerp, Mabuse took service with Philip, bastard of Philip the Good, at that time lord of Somerdyk and admiral of Zeeland. One of his pictures had already become celebrated—a Descent from the Cross (50 figures), on the high altar of the monastery of St Michael of Tongerloo. Philip of Burgundy ordered Mabuse to execute a replica for the church of Middelburg; and the value which was then set on the picture is apparent from the fact that Dürer came expressly to Middelburg (1521) to see it. In 1568 the altar-piece perished by fire. In 1508 Mabuse accompanied Philip of Burgundy on his Italian mission; and by this accident an important revolution was effected in the art of the Netherlands. Mabuse appears to have chiefly studied in Italy the cold and polished works of the Leonardesques. He not only brought home a new style, but he also introduced the fashion of travelling to Italy; and from that time till the age of Rubens and Van Dyck it was considered proper that all Flemish painters should visit the peninsula. The Flemings grafted Italian mannerisms on their own stock; and the cross turned out so unfortunately that for a century Flemish art lost all trace of originality.

In the summer of 1509 Philip returned to the Netherlands, and, retiring to his seat of Suytburg in Zeeland, surrendered himself to the pleasures of planning decorations for his castle and ordering pictures of Mabuse and Jacob of Barbari. Being in constant communication with the court of Margaret of Austria at Malines, he gave the artists in his employ fair chances of promotion. Barbari was made court painter to the regent, whilst Mabuse received less important commissions. Records prove that Mabuse painted a portrait of Leonora of Portugal, and other small pieces, for Charles V. in 1516. But his only signed pictures of this period are the Neptune and Amphitrite of 1516 at Berlin, and the Madonna, with a portrait of Jean Carondelet of 1517, at the Louvre, in both of which we clearly discern that Vasari only spoke by hearsay of the progress made by Mabuse in “the true method of producing pictures full of nude figures and poesies.” It is difficult to find anything more coarse or misshapen than the Amphitrite, unless we except the grotesque and ungainly drayman who figures for Neptune. In later forms of the same subject—the Adam and Eve at Hampton Court, or its feebler replica at Berlin—we observe more nudity, combined with realism of the commonest type. Happily, Mabuse was capable of higher efforts. His St Luke painting the portrait of the Virgin in Sanct Veit at Prague, a variety of the same subject in the Belvedere at Vienna, the Madonna of the Baring collection in London, or the numerous repetitions of Christ and the scoffers (Ghent and Antwerp), all prove that travel had left many of Mabuse’s fundamental peculiarities unaltered. His figures still retain the character of stone; his architecture is as rich and varied, his tones are as strong as ever. But bright contrasts of gaudy tints are replaced by soberer greys; and a cold haze, thesfumatoof the Milanese, pervades the surfaces. It is but seldom that these features fail to obtrude. When they least show, the master displays a brilliant palette combined with smooth surface and incisive outlines. In this form the Madonnas of Munich and Vienna (1527), the likeness of a girl weighing gold pieces (Berlin), and the portraits of the children of the king of Denmark at Hampton Court, are fair specimens of his skill. As early as 1523, when Christian II. of Denmark came to Belgium, he asked Mabuse to paint the likenesses of his dwarfs. In 1528 he requested the artist to furnish to Jean de Hare the design for his queen Isabella’s tomb in the abbey of St Pierre near Ghent. It was no doubt at this time that Mabuse completed the portraits of John, Dorothy and Christine, children of Christian II., which came into the collection of Henry VIII. No doubt, also, these portraits are identical with those of three children at Hampton Court, which were long known and often copied as likenesses of Prince Arthur, Prince Henry and Princess Margaret of England. One of the copies at Wilton, inscribed with the forged name of “Hans Holbein, ye father,” and the false date of 1495, has often been cited as a proof that Mabuse came to England in the reign of Henry VII.; but the statement rests on no foundation whatever. At the period when these portraits were executed Mabuse lived at Middelburg. But he dwelt at intervals elsewhere. When Philip of Burgundy became bishop of Utrecht, and settled at Duerstede, near Wyck, in 1517, he was accompanied by Mabuse, who helped to decorate the new palace of his master. At Philip’s death, in 1524, Mabuse designed and erected his tomb in the church of Wyck. He finally retired to Middelburg, where he took service with Philip’s brother, Adolph, lord of Veeren. Van Mander’s biography accuses Mabuse of habitual drunkenness; yet it describes the splendid appearance of the artist as, dressed in gold brocade, he accompanied Lucas of Leyden on a pleasure trip to Ghent, Malines and Antwerp in 1527. The works of Mabuse are those of a hardworking and patient artist; the number of his still extant pictures practically demonstrates that he was not a debauchee. The marriage of his daughter with the painter Henry Van der Heyden of Louvain proves that he had a home, and did not live habitually in taverns, as Van Mander suggests. His death at Antwerp, on the 1st of October 1532, is recorded in the portrait engraved by Jerome Cock.

(J. A. C.)

MACABEBE,a town of the province of Pampanga, island of Luzon, Philippine Islands, on the Pampanga Grande river, about 10 m. above its mouth and about 25 m. N.W. of Manila. Pop. (1903), after the annexation of San Miguel, 21,481. The language is Pampango. Many of the male inhabitants serve in the U.S. Army as scouts. Macabebe’s principal industries are the cultivation of rice and sugar cane, the distilling of nipa alcohol, and the weaving of hemp and cotton fabrics.

MACABRE,a term applied to a certain type of artistic or literary composition, characterized by a grim and ghastly humour, with an insistence on the details and trappings of death. Such a quality, deliberately adopted, is hardly to be found in ancient Greek and Latin writers, though there are traces of it in Apuleius and the author of theSatyricon. The outstanding instances in English literature are John Webster and Cyril Tourneur, with E. A. Poe and R. L. Stevenson. The word has gained its significance from its use in French,la danse macabre, for that allegorical representation, in painting, sculpture and tapestry, of the ever-present and universal power of death, known in English as the “Dance of Death,” and in German asTotentanz. The typical form which the allegory takes is that of a series of pictures, sculptured or painted, in which Death appears, either as a dancing skeleton or as a shrunken corpse wrapped in grave-clothes to persons representing every age and condition of life, and leads them all in a dance to the grave. Of the numerous examples painted or sculptured on the walls of cloisters or churchyards through medieval Europe few remain except in woodcuts and engravings. Thus the famous series at Basel, originally at the Klingenthal, a nunnery in Little Basel, dated from the beginning of the 14th century. In the middle of the 15th century this was moved to the churchyard of the Predigerkloster at Basel, and was restored, probably by Hans Kluber, in 1568; the fall of the wall in 1805 reduced it to fragments, and only drawings of it remain. A Dance of Death in its simplest form still survives in the Marienkirche at Lübeck in a 15th-century painting on the walls of a chapel. Here there are twenty-four figures in couples, between each is a dancing Death linking the groups by outstretched hands, the whole ring being led by a Death playing on a pipe. At Dresden there is a sculptured life-size series in the old Neustädter Kirchhoff, removed here from the palace of Duke George in 1701 after a fire. At Rouen in theaitre(atrium) or cloister of St Maclou there also remains a sculptureddanse macabre. There was a celebrated fresco of the subject in the cloister of Old St Paul’s in London, and another in the now destroyed Hungerford Chapel at Salisbury, of which a single woodcut, “Death and the Gallant,” alone remains. Of the many engraved reproductions, the most celebrated is the series drawn by Holbein. Here the long ring of connected dancing couples is necessarily abandoned, and the Dance of Death becomes rather a series ofimagines mortis.

Concerning the origin of this allegory in painting and sculpture there has been much dispute. It certainly seems to be as early as the 14th century, and has often been attributed to the overpowering consciousness of the presence of death due to the Black Death and the miseries of the Hundred Years’ War. It has also been attributed to a form of the Morality, a dramatic dialogue between Death and his victims in every station of life, ending in a dance off the stage (see Du Cange,Gloss.,s.v.“Machabaeorum chora”). The origin of the peculiar form the allegory has taken has also been found, somewhat needlessly and remotely, in the dancing skeletons on late Roman sarcophagi and mural paintings at Cumae or Pompeii, and a false connexion has been traced with the “Triumph of Death,” attributed to Orcagna, in the Campo Santo at Pisa.

The etymology of the wordmacabreis itself most obscure. According to Gaston Paris (Romania, xxiv., 131; 1895) it first occurs in the formmacabrein Jean le Févre’sRespit de la mort(1376), “Je lis de Macabré la danse,” and he takes this accented form to be the true one, and traces it in the name of the first painter of the subject. The more usual explanation is based on the Latin name,Machabaeorum chora. The seven tortured brothers, with their mother and Eleazar (2 Macc. vi., vii.) were prominent figures on this hypothesis in the supposed dramatic dialogues. Other connexions have been suggested, as for example with St Macarius, or Macaire, the hermit, who, according to Vasari, is to be identified with the figure pointing to the decaying corpses in the Pisan “Triumph of Death,” or with an Arabic wordmagbarah, “cemetery.”

See Peignot,Recherches sur les danses des morts(1826); Douce,Dissertation on the Dance of Death(1833); Massmann,Litteratur der Totentänze(1840); J. Charlier de Gerson,La Danse macabre des Stes Innocents de Paris(1874); Seelmann,Die Totentänze des Mittelalters(1893).

McADAM, JOHN LOUDON(1756-1836), Scottish inventor, who gave his name to the system of road-making known as “macadamizing,” was born at Ayr, Scotland, on the 21st of September 1756, being descended on his father’s side from the clan of the McGregors. While at school he constructed a model road-section. In 1770 he went to New York, entering the counting-house of a merchant uncle. He returned to Scotland with a considerable fortune in 1783, and purchased an estate at Sauhrie, Ayrshire. Among other public offices he held that of road trustee. The highways of Great Britain were at this time in a very bad condition, and McAdam at once began to consider how to effect reforms. At his own expense he began at Sauhrie, despite much opposition, a series of experiments in road-making. In 1798 he removed to Falmouth, where he had received a government appointment, and continued his experiments there. His general conclusion was that roads should be constructed of broken stone (seeRoads). In 1815, having been appointed surveyor-general of the Bristol roads, he was able to put his theories into practice. In 1819 he published aPractical Essay on the Scientific Repair and Preservation of Roads, followed, in 1820, by thePresent State of Road-making. As the result of a parliamentary inquiry in 1823 into the whole question of road-making, his views were adopted by the public authorities, and in 1827 he was appointed general surveyor of roads. In pursuing his investigations he had travelled over thirty thousand miles of road and expended over £5000. Parliament recouped him for his expenses and gave him a handsome gratuity, but he declined a proffered knighthood. He died at Moffat, Dumfriesshire, on the 26th of November 1836.

MACAIRE,a Frenchchanson de geste.Macaire(12th century) andLa reine Sibille(14th century) are two versions of the story of the false accusation brought against the queen of Charlemagne, called Blanchefleur inMacaireand Sibille in the later poem.Macaireis only preserved in the Franco-Venetiangesteof Charlemagne (Bibl. St Mark MS. fr. xiii.).La Reine Sibilleonly exists in fragments, but the tale is given in the chronicle of Alberic Trium Fontium and in a prose version.Macaireis the product of the fusion of two legends: that of the unjustly repudiated wife and that of the dog who detects the murderer of his master. For the former motive seeGeneviève of Brabant. The second is found in Plutarch,Script. moral., ed. Didot ii. (1186), where a dog, like Aubri’s hound, stayed three days without food by the body of its master, and subsequently attacked the murderers, thus leading to their discovery. The duel between Macaire and the dog is paralleled by an interpolation by Giraldus Cambrensis in a MS. of theHexameronof Saint Ambrose. Aubri’s hound received the name of the “dog of Montargis,” because a representation of the story was painted on a chimney-piece in the château of Montargis in the 15th century. The tale was early divorced from Carolingian tradition, and Jean de la Taille, in hisDiscours notable des duels(Paris, 1607), places the incident under Charles V.

SeeMacaire(Paris, 1866), ed. Guessard in the series ofAnc. poètes de la France; P. Paris inHist. litt. de la France, vol. xxiii. (1873); L. Gautier,Épopées françaises, vol. iii. (2nd ed., 1880); G. Paris,Hist. poét. de Charlemagne(1865); M. J. G. Isola,Storie nerbonesi, vol. i. (Bologna, 1877); F. Wolf,Über die beiden ... Volksbücher von der K. Sibille u. Huon de Bordeaux(Vienna, 1857) andÜber die neuesten Leistungen der Franzosen(Vienna, 1833).The Dog of Montargis; or,The Forest of Bondy, imitated from the play of G. de Pixérécourt, was played at Covent Garden (Sept. 30, 1814).“Robert Macaire” was the name given to the modern villain in theAuberge des Adrets(1823), a melodrama in which FrédérickLemaître made his reputation. The type was sensibly modified inRobert Macaire(1834), a sequel written by Lemaître in collaboration with Benjamin Antier, and well-known on the English stage asMacaire. R. L. Stevenson and W. E. Henley used the same type in their playMacaire.

“Robert Macaire” was the name given to the modern villain in theAuberge des Adrets(1823), a melodrama in which FrédérickLemaître made his reputation. The type was sensibly modified inRobert Macaire(1834), a sequel written by Lemaître in collaboration with Benjamin Antier, and well-known on the English stage asMacaire. R. L. Stevenson and W. E. Henley used the same type in their playMacaire.

McALESTER,a city and the county-seat of Pittsburg county, Oklahoma, about 110 m. E.S.E. of Guthrie. Pop. (1900), 3479; (1907) 8144 (1681 negroes and 105 Indians); (1910) 12,954. McAlester is served by the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific and the Missouri, Kansas & Texas railways and is an important railway junction; it is connected with the neighbouring mining district by an electric line. There are undeveloped iron deposits and rich coal-mines in the surrounding country, and coke-making is the principal manufacturing industry of the city. There is a fine Scottish Rite Masons’ consistory and temple in McAlester. The city owns its waterworks. The vicinity was first settled in 1885. The city of South McAlester was incorporated in 1899, and in 1906 it annexed the town of McAlester and adopted its name.

MACALPINE(orMaccabeus),JOHN(d. 1557), Protestant theologian, was born in Scotland about the beginning of the 16th century, and graduated at some Scottish university. From 1532 to 1534 he was prior of the Dominican convent of Perth; but having in the latter year been summoned with Alexander Ales (q.v.) and others to answer for heresy before the bishop of Ross, he fled to England, where he was granted letters of denization on the 7th of April 1537, and married Agnes Macheson, a fellow-exile for religion; her sister Elizabeth became the wife of Miles Coverdale. The reaction of 1539 made England a doubtful refuge, and on the 25th of November 1540 Macalpine matriculated at the university of Wittenberg. He had already graduated B.A. at Cologne, and in 1542 proceeded to his doctorate at Wittenberg. In that year, being now known as Maccabeus, he accepted Christian III.’s offer of the chair of theology at the university of Copenhagen, which had been endowed out of the spoils of the Church. Melanchthon spoke well of Macalpine, and with Peter Plade (Palladius), who had also studied at Wittenberg, Macalpine took a prominent part in building up the Lutheran Church of Denmark. A joint exposure by Plade and Macalpine of Osiander’s errors was published in 1552 and reprinted at Leipzig and Copenhagen in 1768; and Macalpine was one of the four translators of Luther’s German Bible into Danish. He also encouraged Sir David Lindsay, who visited him in 1548, to publish hisMonarchie, and persuaded Christian III. to intercede with Queen Mary Tudor on behalf of Coverdale and invite him to Denmark. Macalpine died at Copenhagen on the 6th of December 1557.

SeeDict. Nat. Biog.and authorities there cited;Corpus reformatorum, iii. (1066), iv. 771, 793; Foerstemann,Album academiae vitebergensis(1841), p. 186, andLiber decanorum(1838), p. 32; Rockwell,Die Doppelehe des Landgrafen Philipp(1904), pp. 114-116;Letters and Papers of Henry VIII.(1537), i. 1103 (12); (1542), pp. 46,218.

(A. F. P.)

MACAO(A-Ma-ngao, “Harbour of the goddess A-Ma”; Port.Macau), a Portuguese settlement on the coast of China, in 22° N., 132° E. Pop. (1896), Chinese, 74,568; Portuguese, 3898; other nationalities, 161—total, 78,627. It consists of a tongue of land 2½ m. in length and less than 1 m. in breadth, running S.S.W. from the island of Hiang Shang (Port.Ançam) on the western side of the estuary of the Canton River. Bold and rocky hills about 300 ft. high occupy both extremities of the peninsula, the picturesque city, with its flat-roofed houses painted blue, green and red, lying in the undulating ground between. The forts are effective additions to the general view, but do not add much to the strength of the place. Along the east side of the peninsula runs the Praya Grande, or Great Quay, the chief promenade in Macao, on which stand the governor’s palace, the administrative offices, the consulates and the leading commercial establishments. The church of St Paul (1594-1602), the seat of the Jesuit college in the 17th century, was destroyed by fire in 1835. The Hospital da Misericordia (1569) was rebuilt in 1640. The Camoens grotto, where the exiled poet found leisure to celebrate the achievements of his ungrateful country, lies in a secluded spot to the north of the town, which has been partly left in its native wildness strewn with huge granite boulders and partly transformed into a fine botanical garden. During the south-west (summer) monsoon great quantities (67 in.) of rain fall, especially in July and August. The mean temperature is 74.3° F.; in July, the hottest month, the temperature is 84.2°; in February, the coldest, it is 59°. On the whole the climate is moist. Hurricanes are frequent. Of the Portuguese inhabitants more than three-fourths are natives of Macao—a race very inferior in point of physique to their European ancestors. Macao is connected with Hong-Kong by a daily steamer. Being open to the south-west sea breezes, it is a favourite place of resort from the oppressive heat of Hong-Kong. It is ruled by a governor, and, along with Timor (East Indies), constitutes a bishopric, to which belong also the Portuguese Christians in Malacca and Singapore. Though most of the land is under garden cultivation, the mass of the people is dependent more or less directly on mercantile pursuits; for, while the exclusive policy both of Chinese and Portuguese which prevented Macao becoming a free port till 1845-1846 allowed what was once the great emporium of European commerce in eastern Asia to be outstripped by its younger and more liberal rivals, the local, though not the foreign, trade of the place is still of very considerable extent. Since the middle of the 19th century, indeed, much of it has run in the most questionable channels; the nefarious coolie traffic gradually increased in extent and in cruelty from about 1848 till it was prohibited in 1874, and much of the actual trade is more or less of the nature of smuggling. The commodities otherwise mostly dealt in are opium, tea, rice, oil, raw cotton, fish and silk. The total value of exports and imports was in 1876-1877 upwards of £1,536,000. In 1880 it had increased to £2,259,250, and in 1898 to £3,771,615. Commercial intercourse is most intimate with Hong-Kong, Canton, Batavia and Goa. The preparation and packing of tea is the principal industry in the town. In fishing a large number of boats and men are employed.

In 1557 the Portuguese were permitted to erect factories on the peninsula, and in 1573 the Chinese built across the isthmus the wall which still cuts off the barbarian from the rest of the island. Jesuit missionaries established themselves on the spot; and in 1580 Gregory XIII. constituted a bishopric of Macao. A senate was organized in 1583, and in 1628 Jeronimo de Silveira became first royal governor of Macao. Still the Portuguese remained largely under the control of the Chinese, who had never surrendered their territorial rights and maintained their authority by means of mandarins—these insisting that even European criminals should be placed in their hands. Ferreira do Amaral, the Portuguese governor, put an end to this state of things in 1849, and left the Chinese officials no more authority in the peninsula than the representatives of other foreign nations; and, though his antagonists procured his assassination (Aug. 22), his successors succeeded in carrying out his policy.

Although Macao is de facto a colonial possession of Portugal, the Chinese government persistently refused to recognize the claim of the Portuguese to territorial rights, alleging that they were merely lessees or tenants at will, and until 1849 the Portuguese paid to the Chinese an annual rent of £71 per annum. This diplomatic difficulty prevented the conclusion of a commercial treaty between China and Portugal for a long time, but an arrangement for a treaty was come to in 1887 on the following basis: (1) China confirmed perpetual occupation and government of Macao and its dependencies by Portugal; (2) Portugal engaged never to alienate Macao and its dependencies without the consent of China; (3) Portugal engaged to co-operate in opium revenue work at Macao in the same way as Great Britain at Hong-Kong. The formal treaty was signed in the same year, and arrangements were made whereby the Chinese imperial customs were able to collect duties on vessels trading with Macao in the same way as they had already arranged for their collection at the British colony of Hong-Kong. For a short time in 1802, and again in 1808, Macao was occupied by the English as a precaution against seizure by the French.

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