The Nuttall Encyclopaedia Part 311

MILETUS, the foremost Ionian city of ancient Asia Minor, at the mouth of the Maeander, was the mother of many colonies, and the port from which vessels traded to all the Mediterranean countries and to the Atlantic; its carpets and cloth were far-famed; its first greatness pa.s.sed away when Darius stormed it in 494 B.C., and it was finally ruined by the Turks; Thales the philosopher and Cadmus the historian were among its famous sons.

MILITARY ORDERS were in crusading times a.s.sociations of knights sworn to chast.i.ty and devoted to religious service; the Hospitallers, the earliest, tended sick pilgrims at Jerusalem; the Templars protected pilgrims and guarded the Temple; the Knights of St. John were also celibate, but the orders of Alcantara and others in Spain, of St. Bennet in Portugal, and others elsewhere, with different objects, were permitted to marry.

MILITIA, a body of troops in the British service for home defence, the members of which have as a rule never served in the regular army, nor have, except for a short period each year, any proper military training.

MILKY WAY. See GALAXY.

MILL, JAMES, economist, born in Logie Pert, near Montrose, the son of a shoemaker, bred for the Church; was a disciple of Locke and Jeremy Bentham; wrote a "History of British India," "Elements of Political Economy," and an "a.n.a.lysis of the Human Mind"; held an important lucrative post in the East India Company's service (1773-1836).

MILL, JOHN STUART, logician and economist, born in London, son of the preceding; was educated pedantically by his father; began to learn Greek at 3, could read it and Latin at 14, "never was a boy," he says, and was debarred from all imaginative literature, so that in after years the poetry of Wordsworth came to him as a revelation; entered the service of the East India Company in 1823, but devoted himself to philosophic discussion; contributed to the _Westminster Review_, of which he was for some time editor; published his "System of Logic" in 1843, and in 1848 his "Political Economy"; entered Parliament in 1865, but lost his seat in 1868, on which he retired to Avignon, where he died; he wrote a book on "Liberty" in 1859, on "Utilitarianism" in 1863, on "Comte" in 1865, and on "Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy" the same year, and left an "Autobiography"; he was a calm thinker and an impartial critic; he befriended Carlyle when he went to London, and Carlyle rather took to him, but divergences soon appeared, which, as it could not fail, ended in total estrangement; he had an Egeria in a Mrs. Taylor, whom he married when she became a widow; it was she, it would almost seem, who was responsible for the fate of Carlyle's MS. (1806-1873).

MILLAIS, SIR JOHN EVERETT, painter, born of Jersey parentage, at Southampton; studied at the Royal Academy, and at 17 exhibited a notable historical work; early a.s.sociated with Rossetti and Holman Hunt, he remained for over 20 years under their influence; to this period belong "The Carpenter's Shop," 1851, "Autumn Leaves," 1856, and "The Minuet,"

1866; "The Gambler's Wife" marks the transition from Pre-Raphaelitism; his chief subsequent work, in which technical interest predominates, was portraiture, including Gladstone and Beaconsfield; he was a profuse ill.u.s.trator, and wrought some etchings; he was made R.A. 1864, a baronet in 1885, and P.R.A. February 1896 (1829-1896).

MILLBANK PRISON, Westminster, constructed 1812-21 on the plans of Howard and Bentham, so that each of its 1100 cells were visible from the governor's room, was used for solitary confinement preparatory to penal servitude, and as a convict prison until 1886, and demolished 1890.

MILLER, HUGH, journalist and geologist, self-taught, born in Cromarty, of sailor ancestry; began life as a stone-mason; editor of the _Witness_ newspaper from 1839 till his death; wrote the "Old Red Sandstone," "Footprints of the Creator," and the "Testimony of the Rocks," books which awakened an interest in geological subjects, besides being the author of an account of his life, "My Schools and Schoolmasters"; died by his own hand at Portobello; he was a writer of considerable literary ability, and "nothing," says Prof. Saintsbury, "can be more hopelessly unliterary than to undervalue Hugh Miller"

(1802-1856).

MILLER, WILLIAM, line-engraver, lived at Millerfield, Edinburgh; famed for his engravings of Turner; was a member of the Society of Friends, and stood high in his art as an engraver (1797-1882).

MILLET, JEAN FRANcOIS, French painter of French peasant life, born near Greville, of a peasant family; sent to Paris, studied under Paul Delaroche, withdrew into rustic life, and took up his abode at the village of Barbizon, near the Forest of Fontainebleau, where he spent as a peasant the rest of his life, honoured though poor by all his neighbours, and produced inimitable pictures of French country life, completing his famous "Sower," and treating such subjects as the "Gleaners," the "Sheep-Shearers," "Shepherdess and Flock," &c., with an evident appreciation on his part of the life they depicted so faithfully (1814-1875).

MILMAN, HENRY HART, dean of St. Paul's, ecclesiastical historian, born in London; edited Gibbon's "Decline and Fall," wrote "History of the Jews," "History of Christianity to the Abolition of Paganism under the Empire," and "History of Latin Christianity," all learned works, particularly the last in 9 vols., described by Dean Stanley as "a complete epic and philosophy of mediaeval Christianity"; was professor of Poetry at Oxford (1791-1865).

MILNE-EDWARDS, HENRI, eminent naturalist, born at Bruges, of English parentage; wrote extensively and learnedly on natural history subjects, dissented from Darwin, and held to the theory of different centres of creation, and to this he stoutly adhered to the last (1800-1885).

MILNER, VISCOUNT, High Commissioner of South Africa since 1897, and Governor of the Transvaal and Orange River Colonies since 1901; a student of Balliol (graduating with a first cla.s.s in cla.s.sics), and a Fellow of New College, Oxford; called to the bar in 1881; Private Secretary to Mr.

Goschen (1887-1889); Under-Secretary for Finance in Egypt (1889-1892); Chairman of the Inland Revenue Board, from 1892 to 1897, when he succeeded Lord Rosmead at the Cape; represented the Mother Country with great ability before and during the Boer War; visited England and raised to the peerage in 1901; declined the Colonial Secretarys.h.i.+p in 1903; resigned in 1905; _b_. 1854.

MILNER, JOSEPH, Church historian; master of the Grammar School, Hull; his "History of the Church" reaches down to the 16th century (1744-1797).

MILO, a celebrated athlete, born at Crotona, of extraordinary strength, said to have one day carried a live bullock 120 paces along the Olympic course, killed it with his fist, and eaten it up entire at one repast; in old age he attempted to split a tree, but it closed upon his arm, and the wolves devoured him.

MILTIADES, an Athenian general, famous for his decisive defeat of the Persians at Marathon, 490 B.C.; failing in a naval attack on Paros, and fined to indemnify the cost of the expedition, but unable to pay, was cast into prison, where he died of his wounds inflicted in the attempt.

MILTON, JOHN, poet, born in London, son of a scrivener; graduated at Cambridge, and settled to study and write poetry in his father's house at Horton, 1632; in 1638 he visited Italy, being already known at home as the author of the "Hymn on the Nativity," "Allegro," "Penseroso,"

"Comus," a mask, and "Lycidas," an elegy on his friend King, who was drowned in the Irish Sea in 1637, besides much excellent Latin verse; the outbreak of the Civil War recalled him, and silenced his muse for many years; settling in London he took pupils, married in 1643 Mary Powell, and became active as a writer of pamphlets on public questions; his first topic was Church Government, then his wife's desertion of him for two years called forth his tracts on Divorce, a threatened prosecution for which elicited in turn the "Areopagitica, a Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing"; his father died in 1647, his wife in 1652; under the Common wealth he was "Secretary of Foreign Tongues," and successfully defended the execution of Charles I. in his Latin "Defence of the English People," and other bitter controversial works; he married in 1656 his second wife, who died two years later; the Restoration gave him back to leisure and poetry; his greatest work, "Paradise Lost," was composed rapidly, dictated to his daughters, and completed in 1663, but not published till 1667; 1671 saw "Paradise Regained" and "Samson Agonistes"; he had been blind since 1652; he married Elizabeth Minshull in 1663, who comforted him in his closing years; a man of fervent, impulsive temperament, and a lover of music, he was sincere in controversy, magnanimous in character, and of deep religious faith; the richness, melody, and simplicity of his poetry, the sublimity of his great theme, and the adequacy of its treatment, place him among the greatest poets of the world; in later years he leaned to Arianism, and broke away from the restraints of outward religious practice; his last prose work, a Latin treatise on "Christian Doctrines," was lost at the time of his death, and only recovered 150 years later (1608-1674).

MILWAuKEE (285), chief city of Wisconsin, U.S., on W. sh.o.r.e of Lake Michigan, 80 miles N. by W. of Chicago. Exports grain, iron ore, &c.; manufactures flour, machinery, and pig-iron.

MIMES, dramatic performances among the Greeks and Romans, in comic representation of scenes in ordinary life, often in extempore dialogue.

MIMIR, in the Norse mythology the G.o.d of wisdom, guardian of the sacred well which nourished the roots of the TREE IGGDRASIL (q. v.), and a draught of whose waters imparted divine wisdom.

MINARETS, a salient feature of Mohammedan architecture, are tall slim towers, in several storeys with balconies, from which the muezzin calls the people to prayer, and terminated by a spire or finial.

MINERVA, the Roman virgin G.o.ddess of wisdom and the arts, identified with the GREEK ATHENA (q. v.); born full-armed from the brain of Jupiter, and representing his thinking, calculating, inventive power, and third in rank to him.

MINERVA PRESS, a printing establishment in Leadenhall Street, London, which about a century ago issued a set of trashy, extremely sentimental novels with complicated plots, in which hero and heroine were involved before they could get married.

MINGHETTI, MARCO, Italian patriot and statesman, born at Bologna; a man of liberal views; a friend and a.s.sociate of Cavour; held office under him as Minister of the Interior in 1862; was amba.s.sador to the Court of St. James's in 1868, and Prime Minister at Rome from 1873 to 1876 (1818-1886)

MINIMS, an order of monks founded by St. Francis of Paula in 1453, a name which signifies "the least" to express super-humility.

MINNEAPOLIS (203), city of U.S., Minnesota, on both sides of the Mississippi, the greatest centre of the wheat and flour trade in U.S.

MINNESINGERS (i. e. love-singers), a name given to the lyric poets of Germany during the latter part of the 12th and the first half of the 13th centuries.

MINNESOTA (1,302), one of the United States of America; lies between the Dakotas on the W. and Wisconsin on the E., Canada on the N., and Iowa on the S., round the upper waters of the Mississippi, the St. Lawrence, and the Red River of the North; the State is largely prairie, with hundreds of lakes, the largest Red Lake, and is chiefly a wheat-producing area; there are pine forests in the N., iron mines, slate and granite quarries; the climate is dry, equable, and bracing; education is good; the State university is at Minneapolis; the capital is ST. PAUL (133), where the Mississippi is still navigable, a fine city, founded in 1840, the centre of the grocery and dry-goods trade; the largest city is Minneapolis (203), which has great lumber and flour mills; Duluth (33) has a magnificent harbour and good s.h.i.+pping trade.

MINORCA (34), the second of the Balearic Isles, hilly, with stalact.i.te caves and rocky coast; is less fertile than Majorca, from which it is 25 m. distant NE.; it produces oil, wine, and fruits, and makes boots and shoes, but under Spanish misrule is not prosperous; the capital Mahon (17), in the SE., is strongly fortified, and has a good harbour.

MINOS, an ancient king of Crete, celebrated for his administration of justice; was fabled to have been appointed, along with aeacus and Rhadamanthus, one of the judges of the dead on their descent into the nether world.

MINOTAUR, in the Greek mythology a monster, half-man half-bull with a bull's head, confined in the Labyrinth of Crete, fed by the annual tribute of seven youths and seven maidens of Athenian birth, till he was slain by Theseus with the help of ARIADNE (q. v.).