Chapter 3

MacNALLY, LEONARD(1752-1820), Irish informer, was born in Dublin, the son of a merchant. In 1776 he was called to the Irish, and in 1783 to the English bar. He supported himself for some time in London by writing plays and editing thePublic Ledger. Returning to Dublin, he entered upon a systematic course of informing against the members of the revolutionary party, for whom his house had become the resort. He also betrayed to the government prosecutors political clients whom he defended eloquently in the courts. He made a fine defence for Robert Emmet and cheered him in his last hours, although before appearing in court he had sold, for £200, the contents of his brief to the lawyers for the Crown. After living a professed Protestant all his life, he received absolution on his deathbed from a Roman Catholic priest. He died on the 13th of February 1820.

MACNEE, SIR DANIEL(1806-1882), Scottish portrait painter, was born at Fintry in Stirlingshire. At the age of thirteen he was apprenticed, along with Horatio Macculloch and Leitch the water-colour painter, to John Knox, a landscapist of some repute. He afterwards worked for a year as a lithographer, was employed by the Smiths of Cumnock to paint the ornamental lids of their planewood snuff-boxes, and, having studied in Edinburgh at the “Trustees’ Academy,” supporting himself meanwhile by designing and colouring book illustrations for Lizars the engraver, he established himself as an artist in Glasgow, where he became a fashionable portrait painter. He was in 1829 admitted a member of the Royal Scottish Academy; and on the death of Sir George Harvey in 1876 he was elected president, and received the honour of knighthood. From this period till his death, on the 18th of January 1882, he resided in Edinburgh, where his genial social qualities and his inimitable powers as a teller of humorous Scottish anecdote rendered him popular.

MACNEIL, HERMON ATKINS(1866- ), American sculptor, was born at Chelsea, Massachusetts. He was an instructor in industrial art at Cornell University in 1886-1889, and was then a pupil of Henri M. Chapu and Falguière in Paris. Returning to America, he aided Philip Martiny in the preparation of sketch models for the Columbian exposition, and in 1896 he won the Rinehart scholarship, passing four years (1896-1900) in Rome. In 1906 he became a National Academician. His first important work was “The Moqui Runner,” which was followed by “A Primitive Chant,” and “The Sun Vow,” all figures of the North-American Indian. A “Fountain of Liberty,” for the St Louis exposition, and other Indian themes came later; his “Agnese” and his “Beatrice,” two fine busts of women, also deserve mention. His principal work is the sculpture for a large memorial arch, at Columbus, Ohio, in honour of President McKinley. In 1909 he won in competition a commission for a large soldiers’ and sailors’ monument in Albany, New York. His wife, Carol Brooks MacNeil, also a sculptor of distinction, was a pupil of F. W. MacMonnies.

McNEILE, HUGH(1795-1879), Anglican divine, younger son of Alexander McNeile (or McNeill), was born at Ballycastle, Co. Antrim, on the 15th of July 1795. He graduated at Trinity College, Dublin, in 1810. His handsome presence, and his promise of exceptional gifts of oratory, led a wealthy uncle, Major-General Daniel McNeill, to adopt him as his heir; and he was destined for a parliamentary career. During a stay at Florence, Hugh McNeile became temporarily intimate with Lord Byron and Madame de Staël. On returning home, he determined to abandon the prospect of political distinction for the clerical profession, and was disinherited. In 1820 he was ordained, and after holding the curacy of Stranorlar, Co. Donegal, for two years, was appointed to the living of Albury, Surrey, by Henry Drummond.

Edward Irving endeavoured, not without success at first, to draw McNeile into agreement with his doctrine and aims. Irving’s increasing extravagance, however, soon alienated McNeile. His preaching now attracted much attention; in London he frequently was heard by large congregations. In 1834 he accepted the incumbency of St Jude’s, Liverpool, where for the next thirty years he wielded great political as well as ecclesiastical influence. He repudiated the notion that a clergyman should be debarred from politics, maintaining at a public meeting that “God when He made the minister did not unmake the citizen.” In 1835 McNeile entered upon a long contest, in which he was eventually successful, with the Liverpool corporation, which had been captured by the Whigs, after the passing of the Municipal Reform Act. A proposal was carried that the elementary schools under the control of the corporation should be secularized by the introduction of what was known as the Irish National System. The threatened withdrawal of the Bible as the basis of denominational religious teaching was met by a fierce agitation led by McNeile, who so successfully enlisted public support that before the new system could be introduced every child was provided for in new Church of England schools established by public subscriptions. At the same time he conducted a campaign which gradually reduced the Whig element in the council, till in 1841 it almost entirely disappeared. To his influence was also attributed the defeat of the Liberal parliamentary candidates in the general election of 1837, followed by a long period of Conservative predominance in Liverpool politics. McNeile had the Irish Protestant’s horror of Romanism, which he constantly denounced in the pulpit and on the platform; and Macaulay, speaking in the House of Commons on the Maynooth endowment in April 1845, singled him out for attack as the most powerful representative of uncompromising Protestant opinion in the country. As the Tractarian movement in the Church of England developed, he became one of its most zealous opponents and the most conspicuous leader of the evangelical party. In 1840 he published a volume ofLectures on the Church of England, and in 1846 (the year after Newman’s secession to Rome)The Church and the Churches, in which he maintained with much dialectical skill the evangelical doctrine of the “invisible Church” in opposition to the teaching of Newman and Pusey. Hugh McNeile was in close sympathy with the philanthropic work as well as the religious views of the 7th earl of Shaftesbury, who more than once tried to persuade Lord Palmerston to raise him to the episcopal bench. But although Palmerston usually followed the advice of Shaftesbury in the appointment of bishops, he would not consent to the elevation to the House of Lords of so powerful a political opponent as McNeile, whom Lord John Russell had accused of frustrating for thirty years the education policy of the Liberal party. In 1860 he was appointed a canon of Chester; and in 1868 Disraeli appointed him dean of Ripon. This preferment he resigned in 1875, and he lived in retirement at Bournemouth till his death on the 28th of January 1879. McNeile married, in 1822, Anne, daughter of William Magee, archbishop of Dublin, and aunt of William Connor Magee, archbishop of York, by whom he had a large family.

Although a vehement controversialist, Hugh McNeile was a man of simple and sincere piety of character. Sir Edward Russell, an opponent alike of his religious and his political opinions, bears witness to the deep spirituality of his teaching, and describes him as an absolutely unique personality. “He made himself leader of the Liverpool people, and always led with calm and majesty in the most excited times. His eloquence was grave, flowing, emphatic—had a dignity in delivery, a perfection of elocution, that only John Bright equalled in the latter half of the19th century. Its fire was solemn force. McNeile’s voice was probably the finest organ ever heard in public oratory. His action was as graceful as it was expressive. He ruled an audience.”

See J. A. Picton,Memorials of Liverpool, vol. i. (1873); Sir Edward Russell, “The Religious Life of Liverpool,” in theSunday Magazine(June 1905); Charles Bullock,Hugh McNeile and Reformation Truth.

(R. J. M.)

MACNEILL, HECTOR(1746-1818), Scottish poet, was born near Roslin, Midlothian, on the 22nd of October 1746, the son of an impoverished army captain. He went to Bristol as a clerk at the age of fourteen, and soon afterwards was despatched to the West Indies. From 1780 to 1786 he acted as assistant secretary on board the flagships of Admiral Geary and Sir Richard Bickerton (1727-1792). Most of his later life was spent in Scotland, and it was in the house of a friend at Stirling that he wrote most of his songs and hisScotland’s Skaith, or the History of Will and Jean(1795), a narrative poem intended to show the deteriorating influences of whisky and pothouse politics. A sequel,The Waes of War, appeared next year. In 1800 he publishedThe Memoirs of Charles Macpherson, Esq., a novel understood to be a narrative of his own hardships and adventures. A complete edition of the poems he wished to own appeared in 1812. His songs “Mary of Castlecary,” “Come under my plaidy,” “My boy Tammy,” “O tell me how for to woo,” “I lo’ed ne’er a lassie but ane,” “The plaid amang the hether,” and “Jeanie’s black e’e,” are notable for their sweetness and simplicity. He died at Edinburgh on the 15th of March 1818.

MACOMB,a city and the county-seat of McDonough county, Illinois, U.S.A., in the W. part of the state, about 60 m. S.W. of Peoria. Pop. (1890), 4052; (1900), 5375 (232 foreign-born); (1910), 5774. Macomb is served by the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy, and the Macomb & Western Illinois railways. The city is the seat of the Western Illinois state normal school (opened in 1902), and has a Carnegie library and a city park. Clay is found in the vicinity, and there are manufactures of pottery, bricks, &c. The city was founded in 1830 as the county-seat of McDonough county, and was called Washington by the settlers, but the charter of incorporation, also granted in 1830, gave it the present name in honour of General Alexander Macomb. Macomb was first chartered as a city in 1856.

MACOMER,a village of Sardinia in the province of Cagliari, from which it is 95 m. N.N.W. by rail, and the same distance S.W. of Golfo degli Aranci. Pop. (1901), 3488. It is situated 1890 ft. above sea-level on the southern ascent to the central plateau (the Campeda) of this part of Sardinia; and it is the junction of narrow-gauge lines branching from the main line eastwards to Nuoro and westwards to Bosa. The old parish church of S. Pantaleone has three Roman mile-stones in front of it, belonging to the Roman high-road from Carales to Turris Libisonis. The modern high-road follows the ancient. The district, especially the Campeda, is well fitted for grazing and horse and cattle breeding, which is carried on to a considerable extent. It is perhaps richer innuraghithan any other part of Sardinia.

MACON, NATHANIEL(1758-1837), American political leader, was born at Macon Manor, Warren county, North Carolina, on the 17th of December 1758. He studied at the college of New Jersey (now Princeton University) from 1774 to 1776, when the institution was closed on account of the outbreak of the War of Independence; served for a short time in a New Jersey militia company; studied law at Bute Court-house, North Carolina, in 1777-1780, at the same time managing his tobacco plantation; was a member of a Warren county militia company in 1780-1782, and served in the North Carolina Senate in 1781-1785. In 1786 he was elected to the Continental Congress, but declined to serve. In 1791-1815 he was a member of the national House of Representatives, and in 1815-1828 of the United States Senate. Macon’s point of view was always local rather than national. He was essentially a North Carolinian first, and an American afterwards; and throughout his career he was an aggressive advocate of state sovereignty and an adherent of the doctrines of the “Old Republicans.” He at first opposed the adoption of the Federal constitution of 1787, as a member of the faction led by Willie Jones (1731-1801) of Halifax, North Carolina, but later withdrew his opposition. In Congress he denounced Hamilton’s financial policy, opposed the Jay Treaty (1795) and the Alien and Sedition Acts, and advocated a continuance of the French alliance of 1778. His party came into power in 1801, and he was Speaker of the house from December 1801 to October 1807. At first he was in accord with Jefferson’s administration; he approved the Louisiana Purchase, and as early as 1803 advocated the purchase of Florida. For a number of years, however, he was politically allied with John Randolph.1As speaker, in spite of strong opposition, he kept Randolph at the head of the important committee on Ways and Means from 1801 to 1806; and in 1805-1808, with Randolph and Joseph H. Nicholson (1770-1817) of Maryland, he was a leader of the group of about ten independents, called the “Quids,” who strongly criticized Jefferson and opposed the presidential candidature of Madison. By 1809, however, Macon was again in accord with his party, and during the next two years he was one of the most influential of its leaders. In December 1809 he introduced resolutions which combined the ideas of Peter Early (1773-1817) of Georgia, David R. Williams (1776-1830) of South Carolina, and Samuel W. Dana (1757-1830) of Connecticut with his own. The resolutions recommended the complete exclusion of foreign war vessels from United States ports and the suppression of illegal trade carried on by foreign merchants under the American flag. The substance of these resolutions was embodied in the “Macon Bill, No. 1,” which passed the House but was defeated in the Senate. On the 7th of April 1810 Macon reported from committee the “Macon Bill, No. 2,” which had been drawn by John Taylor (1770-1832) of South Carolina, and was not actively supported by him. This measure (amended) became law on the 1st of May, and provided for the repeal of the Non-Intercourse Act of 1809, authorized the president, “in case either Great Britain or France shall before the 3rd day of March next so revoke or modify her edicts as that they shall cease to violate the neutral commerce of the United States,” to revive non-intercourse against the other, and prohibited British and French vessels of war from entering American waters. In 1812 Macon voted for the declaration of war against Great Britain, and later was chairman of the Congressional committee which made a report (July 1813) condemning Great Britain’s conduct of the war. He opposed the Bank Act of 1816, the “internal improvements” policy of Calhoun (in the early part of his career) and Clay, and the Missouri Compromise, his speech against the last being especially able. In 1824 Macon received the electoral vote of Virginia for the vice-presidency, and in 1826-1828 was president pro tempore of the Senate. He was president of the North Carolina constitutional convention in 1835, and was an elector on the Van Buren ticket in 1836. He died at his home, Buck Springs, Warren county, North Carolina, on the 29th of June 1837.

See William E. Dodd,The Life of Nathaniel Macon(Raleigh, N.C., 1903); E. M. Wilson,The Congressional Career of Nathaniel Macon(Chapel Hill, N.C., 1900).

1Their names are associated in Randolph-Macon College, named in their honour in 1830.

MÂCON,a town of east-central France, capital of the department of Saône-et-Loire, 45 m. N. of Lyons on the Paris-Lyon railway. Pop. (1906), 16,151. Mâcon is situated on the right bank of the Saône facing the plain of the Bresse; a bridge of twelve arches connects it with the suburb of St Laurent on the opposite bank. The most prominent building is the modern Romanesque church of St Pierre, a large three-naved basilica, with two fine spires. Of the old cathedral of St Vincent (12th and 13th centuries), destroyed at the Revolution, nothing remains but the Romanesque narthex, now used as a chapel, the façade and its two flanking towers. The hôtel de ville contains a library, a theatre and picture-gallery. Opposite to it stands a statue of the poet Alphonse Lamartine, a native of the town. Mâcon is the seat of a prefecture, and has tribunals of first instance and of commerce, and a chamber of commerce. There arelycées and training colleges. Copper-founding is an important industry; manufactures include casks, mats, rope and utensils for the wine-trade. The town has a large trade in wine of the district, known as Mâcon. It is a railway centre of considerable importance, being the point at which the line from Paris to Marseilles is joined by that from Mont Cenis and Geneva, as well as by a branch from Moulins.

Mâcon (Matisco) was an important town of the Aedui, but under the Romans it was supplanted by Autun and Lyons. It suffered a succession of disasters at the hands of the Germans, Burgundians, Vandals, Huns, Hungarians and even of the Carolingian kings. In the feudal period it was an important countship which in 1228 was sold to the king of France, but more than once afterwards passed into the possession of the dukes of Burgundy, until the ownership of the French crown was established in the time of Louis XI. In the 16th century Mâcon became a stronghold of the Huguenots, but afterwards fell into the hands of the League, and did not yield to Henry IV. until 1594. The bishopric, created by King Childebert, was suppressed in 1790.

MACON,a city and the county-seat of Bibb county, Georgia, U.S.A., in the central part of the state, on both sides of the Ocmulgee river (at the head of navigation), about 90 m. S.S.E. of Atlanta. Pop. (1900), 23,272, of whom 11,550 were negroes; (1910 census) 40,665. Macon is, next to Atlanta, the most important railway centre in the state, being served by the Southern, the Central of Georgia, the Georgia, the Georgia Southern & Florida, the Macon Dublin & Savannah, and the Macon & Birmingham railways. It was formerly an important river port, especially for the shipment of cotton, but lost this commercial advantage when railway bridges made the river impassable. It is, however, partially regaining the river trade in consequence of the compulsory substitution of drawbridges for the stationary railway bridges. The city is the seat of the Wesleyan female college (1836), which claims to be the first college in the world chartered to grant academic degrees to women; Mercer university (Baptist), which was established in 1833 as Mercer Institute at Penfield, became a university in 1837, was removed to Macon in 1871, and controls Hearn Academy (1839) at Cave Spring and Gibson Mercer Academy (1903) at Bowman; the state academy for the blind (1852), St Stanislaus’ College (Jesuit), and Mt de Sales Academy (Roman Catholic) for women. There are four orphan asylums for whites and two for negroes, supported chiefly by the Protestant Episcopal and Methodist Churches, and a public hospital. Immediately east of Macon are two large Indian mounds, and there is a third mound 9 m. south of the city. Situated in the heart of the “Cotton Belt,” Macon has a large and lucrative trade; it is one of the most important inland cotton markets of the United States, its annual receipts averaging about 250,000 bales. The city’s factory products in 1905 were valued at $7,297,347 (33.8% more than in 1900). In the vicinity are large beds of kaolin, 30 m. wide, reaching nearly across the state, and frequently 35 to 70 ft. in depth. Macon is near the fruit-growing region of Georgia, and large quantities of peaches and of garden products are annually shipped from the city.

Macon (named in honour of Nathaniel Macon) was surveyed in 1823 by order of the Georgia legislature for the county-seat of Bibb county, and received its first charter in 1824. It soon became the centre of trade for Middle Georgia; in 1833 a steamboat line to Darien was opened, and in the following year 69,000 bales of cotton were shipped by this route. During the Civil War the city was a centre for Confederate commissary supplies and the seat of a Treasury depository. In July 1864 General George Stoneman (1822-1894) with 500 men was captured near the city by the Confederate general, Howell Cobb. Macon was finally occupied by Federal troops under General James H. Wilson (b. 1837) on the 20th of April 1865. In 1900-1910 the area of the city was increased by the annexation of several suburbs.

MACPHERSON, SIR DAVID LEWIS(1818-1896), Canadian financier and politician, was born at Castle Leathers, near Inverness, Scotland, on the 12th of September 1818. In 1835 he emigrated to Canada, settling in Montreal, where he built up a large fortune by “forwarding” merchandise. In 1853 he removed to Toronto, and in the same year obtained the contract for building a line of railway from Toronto to Sarnia, a project from which sprang the Grand Trunk railway, in the construction of which line he greatly increased his wealth. In 1864 he was elected to the Canadian parliament as member of the Legislative Council for Saugeen, and on the formation of the Dominion, in 1867, was nominated to the Senate. In the following years he published a number of pamphlets on economic subjects, of which the best-known isBanking and Currency(1869). In 1880 he was appointed Speaker of the Senate, and from October 1883 till 1885 was minister of the interior in the Conservative cabinet. In 1884 he was knighted by Queen Victoria. He died on the 16th of August 1896.

MACPHERSON, JAMES(1736-1796), Scottish “translator” of the Ossianic poems, was born at Ruthven in the parish of Kingussie, Inverness, on the 27th of October 1736. He was sent in 1753 to King’s College, Aberdeen, removing two years later to Marischal College. He also studied at Edinburgh, but took no degree. He is said to have written over 4000 lines of verse while a student, but though some of this was published, notablyThe Highlander(1758), he afterwards tried to suppress it. On leaving college he taught in the school of his native place. At Moffat he met John Home, the author ofDouglas, for whom he recited some Gaelic verses from memory. He also showed him MSS. of Gaelic poetry, supposed to have been picked up in the Highlands, and, encouraged by Home and others, he produced a number of pieces translated from the Gaelic, which he was induced to publish at Edinburgh in 1760 asFragments of Ancient Poetry collected in the Highlands of Scotland. Dr Hugh Blair, who was a firm believer in the authenticity of the poems, got up a subscription to allow Macpherson to pursue his Gaelic researches. In the autumn he set out to visit western Inverness, the islands of Skye, North and South Uist and Benbecula. He obtained MSS. which he translated with the assistance of Captain Morrison and the Rev. A. Gallie. Later in the year he made an expedition to Mull, when he obtained other MSS. In 1761 he announced the discovery of an epic on the subject of Fingal, and in December he publishedFingal, an Ancient Epic Poem in Six Books, together with Several Other Poems composed by Ossian, the Son of Fingal, translated from the Gaelic Language, written in the musical measured prose of which he had made use in his earlier volume.Temorafollowed in 1763, and a collected edition,The Works of Ossian, in 1765.

The genuineness of these so-called translations from the works of a 3rd-century bard was immediately challenged in England, and Dr Johnson, after some local investigation, asserted (Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, 1775) that Macpherson had only found fragments of ancient poems and stories, which he had woven into a romance of his own composition. Macpherson is said to have sent Johnson a challenge, to which Johnson replied that he was not to be deterred from detecting what he thought a cheat by the menaces of a ruffian. Macpherson never produced his originals, which he refused to publish on the ground of the expense. In 1764 he was made secretary to General Johnstone at Pensacola, West Florida, and when he returned, two years later, to England, after a quarrel with Johnstone, he was allowed to retain his salary as a pension. He occupied himself with writing several historical works, the most important of which wasOriginal Papers, containing the Secret History of Great Britain from the Restoration to the Accession of the House of Hanover; to which are prefixed Extracts from the Life of James II., as written by himself(1775). He enjoyed a salary for defending the policy of Lord North’s government, and held the lucrative post of London agent to Mahommed Ali, nabob of Arcot. He entered parliament in 1780, and continued to sit until his death. In his later years he bought an estate, to which he gave the name of Belville, in his native county of Inverness, where he died on the 17th of February 1796.

After Macpherson’s death, Malcolm Laing, in an appendix to hisHistory of Scotland(1800), propounded the extreme view thatthe so-called Ossianic poems were altogether modern in origin, and that Macpherson’s authorities were practically non-existent. For a discussion of this question seeCelt:Scottish Gaelic Literature. Much of Macpherson’s matter is clearly his own, and he confounds the stories belonging to different cycles. But apart from the doubtful morality of his transactions he must still be regarded as one of the great Scottish writers. The varied sources of his work and its worthlessness as a transcript of actual Celtic poems do not alter the fact that he produced a work of art which by its deep appreciation of natural beauty and the melancholy tenderness of its treatment of the ancient legend did more than any single work to bring about the romantic movement in European, and especially in German, literature. It was speedily translated into many European languages, and Herder and Goethe (in his earlier period) were among its profound admirers. Cesarotti’s Italian translation was one of Napoleon’s favourite books.

Authorities.—For Macpherson’s life, seeThe Life and Letters of James Macpherson ...(1894, new ed., 1906), by T. Bailey Saunders, who has laboured to redeem his character from the suspicions generally current with English readers. The antiquity of the Ossianic poems was defended in the introduction by Archibald Clerk to his edition of thePoems of Ossian(1870). Materials for arriving at a decision by comparison with undoubtedly genuine fragments of the Ossianic legend are available inThe Book of the Dean of Lismore, Gaelic verses, collected by J. McGregor, dean of Lismore, in the early 16th century (ed. T. McLauchlan, 1862); theLeabhar na Feinne(1871) of F. J. Campbell, who also discusses the subject inPopular Tales of the Western Highlands, iv. (1893). See also L. C. Stern, “Die ossianische Heldenlieder” inZeitschrift für vergleichende Litteratur-geschichte(1895; Eng. trans. by J. L. Robertson inTrans. Gael. Soc. of Inverness, xxii., 1897-1898); Sir J. Sinclair,A Dissertation on the Authenticity of the Poems of Ossian(1806);Transactions of the Ossianic Society(Dublin, 1854-1861);Cours de littérature celtique, by Arbois de Jubainville, editor of theRevue celtique(1883, &c.); A. Nutt,Ossian and the Ossianic Literature(1899), with a valuable bibliographical appendix; J. S. Smart,James Macpherson: an Episode in Literature(1905).

McPHERSON, JAMES BIRDSEYE(1828-1864), American soldier, was born at Sandusky, Ohio, on the 14th of November 1828. He entered West Point at the age of twenty-one, and graduated (1853) at the head of his class, which included Sheridan, Schofield and Hood. He was employed at the military academy as instructor of practical military engineering (1853). A year later he was sent to engineer duty at New York, and in 1857, after constructing Fort Delaware, he was sent as superintending engineer to San Francisco, becoming 1st lieutenant in 1858. He was promoted captain during the first year of the Civil War, and towards the close of 1861 became lieutenant-colonel and aide-de-camp to General Halleck, who in the spring of 1862 sent him to General Grant as chief engineer. He remained with Grant during the Shiloh campaign, and acted as engineer adviser to Halleck during the siege operations against Corinth in the summer of 1862. In October he distinguished himself in command of an infantry brigade at the battle of Corinth, and on the 8th of this month was made major-general of volunteers and commander of a division. In the second advance on Vicksburg (1863) McPherson commanded the XVII. corps, fought at Port Gibson, Raymond and Jackson, and after the fall of Vicksburg was strongly recommended by Grant for the rank of brigadier-general in the regular army, to which he was promoted on the 1st of August 1863. He commanded at Vicksburg until the following spring. He was about to go on leave of absence in order to be married in Baltimore when he received his nomination to the command of the Army of the Tennessee, Grant’s and Sherman’s old army, which was to take part under Sherman’s supreme command in the campaign against Atlanta (1864). This nomination was made by Sherman and entirely approved by Grant, who had the highest opinion of McPherson’s military and personal qualities. He was in command of his army at the actions of Resaca, Dallas, Kenesaw Mountain and the battles about Atlanta. On the 22nd of July, when the Confederates under his old classmate Hood made a sudden and violent attack on the lines held by the Army of the Tennessee, McPherson rode up, in the woods, to the enemy’s firing line and was killed. He was one of the most heroic figures of the American Civil War, and Grant is reported to have said when he heard of McPherson’s death, “The country has lost one of its best soldiers, and I have lost my best friend.”

MACQUARIE,a British island in the South Pacific Ocean, in 54° 49′ S. and 159° 49′ E. It is about 20 m. long, and covered with a grassy vegetation, with some trees or shrubs in the sheltered places which afford food to a parrot of the genusCyanorhamphus, allied to those of the Auckland Islands. Although it has no settled population, Macquarie is constantly visited by sailors in quest of the seals which abound in its waters.

MACRAUCHENIA,a long-necked and long-limbed, three-toed South American ungulate mammal, typifying the suborderLitopterna(q.v.).

MACREADY, WILLIAM CHARLES(1793-1873), English actor, was born in London on the 3rd of March 1793, and educated at Rugby. It was his intention to go up to Oxford, but in 1809 the embarrassed affairs of his father, the lessee of several provincial theatres, called him to share the responsibilities of theatrical management. On the 7th of June 1810 he made a successful first appearance as Romeo at Birmingham. Other Shakespearian parts followed, but a serious rupture between father and son resulted in the young man’s departure for Bath in 1814. Here he remained for two years, with occasional professional visits to other provincial towns. On the 16th of September 1816, Macready made his first London appearance at Covent Garden as Orestes inThe Distressed Mother, a translation of Racine’sAndromaqueby Ambrose Philips. Macready’s choice of characters was at first confined chiefly to the romantic drama. In 1818 he won a permanent success in Isaac Pocock’s (1782-1835) adaptation of Scott’sRob Roy. He showed his capacity for the highest tragedy when he played Richard III. at Covent Garden on the 25th of October 1819. Transferring his services to Drury Lane, he gradually rose in public favour, his most conspicuous success being in the title-rôle of Sheridan Knowles’sWilliam Tell(May 11, 1825). In 1826 he completed a successful engagement in America, and in 1828 his performances met with a very flattering reception in Paris. On the 15th of December 1830 he appeared at Drury Lane as Werner, one of his most powerful impersonations. In 1833 he played inAntony and Cleopatra, in Byron’sSardanapalus, and inKing Lear. Already Macready had done something to encourage the creation of a modern English drama, and after entering on the management of Covent Garden in 1837 he introduced Robert Browning’sStrafford, and in the following year Bulwer’sLady of LyonsandRichelieu, the principal characters in which were among his most effective parts. On the 10th of June 1838 he gave a memorable performance ofHenry V., for which Stanfield prepared sketches, and the mounting was superintended by Bulwer, Dickens, Forster, Maclise, W. J. Fox and other friends. The first production of Bulwer’sMoneytook place under the artistic direction of Count d’Orsay on the 8th of December 1840, Macready winning unmistakable success in the character of Alfred Evelyn. Both in his management of Covent Garden, which he resigned in 1839, and of Drury Lane, which he held from 1841 to 1843, he found his designs for the elevation of the stage frustrated by the absence of adequate public support. In 1843-1844 he made a prosperous tour in the United States, but his last visit to that country, in 1849, was marred by a riot at the Astor Opera House, New York, arising from the jealousy of the actor Edwin Forrest, and resulting in the death of seventeen persons, who were shot by the military called out to quell the disturbance. Macready took leave of the stage in a farewell performance ofMacbethat Drury Lane on the 26th of February 1851. The remainder of his life was spent in happy retirement, and he died at Cheltenham on the 27th of April 1873. He had married, in 1823, Catherine Frances Atkins (d. 1852). Of a numerous family of children only one son and one daughter survived. In 1860 he married Cecile Louise Frederica Spencer (1827-1908), by whom he had a son.

Macready’s performances always displayed fine artistic perceptions developed to a high degree of perfection by very comprehensive culture, and even his least successful personations had the interest resulting from thorough intellectualstudy. He belonged to the school of Kean rather than of Kemble; but, if his tastes were better disciplined and in some respects more refined than those of Kean, his natural temperament did not permit him to give proper effect to the great tragic parts of Shakespeare,King Learperhaps excepted, which afforded scope for his pathos and tenderness, the qualities in which he specially excelled. With the exception of a voice of good compass and capable of very varied expression, Macready had no especial physical gifts for acting, but the defects of his face and figure cannot be said to have materially affected his success.

SeeMacready’s Reminiscences, edited by Sir Frederick Pollock, 2 vols. (1875);William Charles Macready, by William Archer (1890).

MACROBIUS, AMBROSIUS THEODOSIUS,Roman grammarian and philosopher, flourished during the reigns of Honorius and Arcadius (395-423). He himself states that he was not a Roman, but there is no certain evidence whether he was of Greek or perhaps African descent. He is generally supposed to have been praetorian praefect in Spain (399), proconsul of Africa (410), and lord chamberlain (422). But the tenure of high office at that date was limited to Christians, and there is no evidence in the writings of Macrobius that he was a Christian. Hence the identification is more than doubtful, unless it be assumed that his conversion to Christianity was subsequent to the composition of his books. It is possible, but by no means certain, that he was the Theodosius to whom Avianus dedicates his fables.

The most important of his works is theSaturnalia, containing an account of the discussions held at the house of Vettius Praetextatus (c.325-385) during the holiday of the Saturnalia. It was written by the author for the benefit of his son Eustathius (or Eustachius), and contains a great variety of curious historical, mythological, critical and grammatical disquisitions. There is but little attempt to give any dramatic character to the dialogue; in each book some one of the personages takes the leading part, and the remarks of the others serve only as occasions for calling forth fresh displays of erudition. The first book is devoted to an inquiry as to the origin of the Saturnalia and the festivals of Janus, which leads to a history and discussion of the Roman calendar, and to an attempt to derive all forms of worship from that of the sun. The second book begins with a collection ofbons mots, to which all present make their contributions, many of them being ascribed to Cicero and Augustus; a discussion of various pleasures, especially of the senses, then seems to have taken place, but almost the whole of this is lost. The third, fourth, fifth and sixth books are devoted to Virgil, dwelling respectively on his learning in religious matters, his rhetorical skill, his debt to Homer (with a comparison of the art of the two) and to other Greek writers, and the nature and extent of his borrowings from the earlier Latin poets. The latter part of the third book is taken up with a dissertation upon luxury and the sumptuary laws intended to check it, which is probably a dislocated portion of the second book. The seventh book consists largely of the discussion of various physiological questions. The value of the work consists solely in the facts and opinions quoted from earlier writers, for it is purely a compilation, and has little in its literary form to recommend it. The form of theSaturnaliais copied from Plato’sSymposiumand Gellius’sNoctes atticae; the chief authorities (whose names, however, are not quoted) are Gellius, Seneca the philosopher, Plutarch (Quaestiones conviviales), Athenaeus and the commentaries of Servius (excluded by some) and others on Virgil. We have also two books of a commentary on theSomnium Scipionisnarrated by Cicero in hisDe republica. The nature of the dream, in which the elder Scipio appears to his (adopted) grandson, and describes the life of the good after death and the constitution of the universe from the Stoic point of view, gives occasion for Macrobius to discourse upon many points of physics in a series of essays interesting as showing the astronomical notions then current. The moral elevation of the fragment of Cicero thus preserved to us gave the work a popularity in the middle ages to which its own merits have little claim. Of a third work,De differentiis et societatibus graeci latinique verbi, we only possess an abstract by a certain Johannes, identified with Johannes Scotus Erigena (9th century).

See editions by L. von Jan (1848-1852, with bibliog. of previous editions, and commentary) and F. Eyssenhardt (1893, Teubner text); on the sources of theSaturnaliasee H. Linke (1880) and G. Wissowa (1880). The grammatical treatise will be found in Jan’s edition and H. Keil’sGrammatici latini, v.; see also G. F. Schömann,Commentatio macrobiana(1871).

MACROOM,a market town in the western part of county Cork, Ireland, on the river Sullane, an affluent of the Lee, 24½ m. W. of Cork by the Cork & Macroom railway, of which it is the terminus. Pop. (1901), 3016. Besides a fine Roman Catholic church, a court house and barracks, Macroom possesses a modernized castle, which is said to have been founded by King John, though it is more probably attributable to Norman invaders. It was besieged more than once in the 17th century, and is said to have been the birthplace of Admiral Sir William Penn, whose more famous son founded Pennsylvania. Here some rebels of 1798 were executed and their heads exhibited on the spikes of the castle gate. Macroom has trade in corn-milling, leather-work and dairy produce, and is a good centre for salmon and trout fishing. It is governed by an urban district council.

MACUGNAGA,a village of Piedmont, Italy, in the province of Novara, 20 m. W.S.W. of Piedimulera, which is 7 m. S. of Domodossola by rail. Pop. (1901), 798. It is situated 4047 ft. above sea-level, and is 10 m. N.E. of the highest summit of Monte Rosa. It is frequented as a summer resort.

MacVEAGH, WAYNE(1833- ), American lawyer and diplomatist, was born near Phoenixville, Chester county, Pa., on the 19th of April 1833. He graduated at Yale in 1853, was admitted to the bar in 1856, and was district attorney of Chester county in 1859-1864. He held commands in militia forces raised to meet threatened Confederate invasions of Pennsylvania (1862-63). He became a leader in the Republican party, and was a prominent opponent of his father-in-law, Simon Cameron, in the fight within the party in 1871. MacVeagh was minister to Turkey in 1870-1871; was a member of the state constitutional convention of 1872-1873; was chairman of the “MacVeagh Commission,” sent in 1877 by President Hayes to Louisiana, which secured the settlement of the contest between the two existing state governments and thus made possible the withdrawal of Federal troops from the state; and was attorney-general of the United States in 1881 under President Garfield, but resigned immediately after Garfield’s death. In 1892 he supported Grover Cleveland, the Democratic nominee for the presidency, and from 1893 to 1897 was ambassador to Italy. He returned to the Republican party in 1896. In 1903 he was chief counsel of the United States before the Hague tribunal in the case regarding the claims of Germany, Great Britain and Italy against the republic of Venezuela.

MADÁCH, IMRE(1829-1864), Hungarian dramatist, was born at Alsó-Sztregova. He took part in the great revolution of 1848-49 and was imprisoned; on his return to his small estate in the county of Nógrád, he found that his family life had meanwhile been completely wrecked. This only increased his natural tendency to melancholy, and he withdrew from public life till 1861, devoting his time mainly to the composition of his chief work,Az ember tragoediája(“The Tragedy of Man”). John Arany, then at the height of his fame as a poet, at once recognized the great merits of that peculiar drama, and Madách enjoyed a short spell of fame before his untimely death of heart-disease in 1864. InThe Tragedy of ManMadách takes us from the hour when Adam and Eve were innocently walking in the Garden of Eden to the times of the Pharaohs; then to the Athens of Miltiades; to declining Rome; to the period of the crusades; into the study of the astronomer Kepler; thence into the horrors of the French Revolution; into greed-eaten and commerce-ridden modern London; nay, into the ultra-Socialist state of the future, when all the former ideals of man will by scientific formulae be shown up in their hollowness; still further, the poet shows the future of ice-clad earth, when man will be reduced to a degraded brute dragging on themisery of his existence in a cave. In all these scenes, or rather anticipatory dreams, Adam, Eve and the arch-fiend Lucifer are the chief and constantly recurringpersonae dramatis. In the end, Adam, despairing of his race, wants to commit suicide, when at the critical moment Eve tells him that she is going to be a mother. Adam then prostrates himself before God, who encourages him to hope and trust. The diction of the drama is elevated and pure, and although not meant for the stage, it has proved very effective at several public performances.

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