the Great Fire (1666), but soon afterwards rebuilt.

Moat of Knockgraffon.

A very singular artificial mound in Tipperary county, Ireland, built, according to tradition, in 1108, and invested with much legendary lore.

Mock Election. A noted picture by Benjamin Robert Haydon (1786-1846).

Modern Italy. A picture by Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851), the celebrated English painter.

Modesty and Vanity. A celebrated picture by Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519). In the Palazzo Sciarra, Rome.

"One of Leonardo's most beautiful pictures, . . . remarkably powerful in coloring and wonderfully fin ished." Kugler.

"Mary Magdalene rebuked by her sister Martha for her vanity and luxury.' I believe I am the first to suggest that the famous picture in the Sciarra Palace, by Leonardo da Vinci, known as Modesty and Vanity,' is a version of this subject."

Mrs. Jameson.

"One of the masterpieces of this gallery [in the Sciarra Palace], and perhaps the greatest, I find to be the Modesty and Vanity of Leonardo da Vinci. It is simply two female figures on a dark background... The expression of the face representing Vanity is extraordinary. We can never know the research, the combinations, the internal spontaneous reflective la bor, the ground traversed by his spirit and intellect in order to evolve a head

like this. She is much more delicately formed and more noble and elegant than Mona Lisa. The luxuriance and taste of the coiffure are remarkable. She has a strange, melancholy smile, one peculiar to Da Vinci, combining the sadness and irony of a superior nature." Taine, Trans.

Moris, Lake. See LAKE MERIS.

Mogul. See COURT OF THE GREAT MOGUL.

Mohammed Ali, Mosque of. See MERGE OF MOHAMMED ALI.

The. A name under us and villians com

mitted dastardly assaults and various cruelties in London. This fraternity assembled in the time of Queen Anne, and was not broken up till nearly the end of George the First's reign. Α royal proclamation was issued against them in 1712, but with little result.

"Here is the devil and all to do with these Mohocks. Grub-street papers about them fly like lightning, and a list printed of near eighty put into several prisons, and all a lie; and I begin to think there is no truth, or very little, in the whole story.... My man tells me that one of the lodgers heard in a coffee-house, publicly, that one design of the Mohocks was upon me, if they could catch me; and though I believe nothing of it, I forbear walking late."

Dean Swift (Journal to Stella, 1712). Who has not trembled at the Mohock's name?

Was there a watchman took his hourly rounds

Safe from their blows or new-invented wounds?

I pass their desperate deeds and mischiefs, done

Where from Snow-hill black steepy tor

Molière, Fontaine. See FONTAINE MOLIÈRE.

Molle, Ponte. See PONTE MOLLE.

Momba Devi. A famous Hindoo

temple in Bombay, India.

Mona Lisa. See BELLE JOCONDE. "Monaco di Leonardo." A picture by Leonardo da Vinci (1452– 1519). In the Palazzo Pitti, Florence, Italy.

Monadnock, The. A formidable armor-plated vessel of the United States navy in the Civil War of 1861-65. She was one of the vessels of Admiral Porter's flotilla in the attack upon Fort Fisher, Dec. 14, 1864.

Monarch of the Glen. A wellknown picture by Sir Edwin Landseer (1803-1873), the most

celebrated modern painter of animals.

Monastery, The. A picture by Jacob Ruysdael (1625?-1681), and considered one of his masterpieces. In the Dresden Galfery.

Monboddo. A country-seat in Scotland, near Fordoun, formerly the seat of Lord Monboddo, distinguished for the remarkable speculations upon the origin of man, contained in his "Dissertations upon the Origin and Progress of Language."

Monceaux, Parc de. A promenade and garden in Paris, tastefully laid out, containing flowers, shrubs, some fine ancient trees, and various artificial adornments. Here is a small lake surrounded by a partly ruined portico of Corinthian columus. It was originally laid out in 1778 with grottos, bowers, fountains, etc., by Carmontel, for Philippe Egalité. It is now the property of the municipality of Paris, and is open to the public.

Monitor, The. A novel American gunboat, built in New York by John Ericsson (b. 1803), a Swedish engineer, during the war of the Rebellion. Her first engagement was with the Confederate ram Merrimack, in Hampton Roads, on the 9th of March, 1862. The Merrimack was quickly put to flight. The Monitor was a sort of flat iron raft with a heavy-plated revolving turret containing two powerful guns. The name Monitor has since been applied to ironclad vessels of similar construction.

"The Monitor was built almost wholly of three-inch iron, pointed at both ends like a whale-boat, her deck only a few inches above the water. It was 124 feet in length, 34 in width, and six in depth, with a flat bottom. Over this hull was another that extended over the lower one three feet all round, excepting at the ends, where the projection was 25 feet, for the protection of the anchor, propeller, and rudder. On her deck was a revolving turret made of eight thicknesses of one-inch wrought-iron plates, round, 20 feet in

diameter, and 10 feet high. The smokestack was telescopic in construction, so so as to be lowered in battle. Within this revolving turret or citadel (which was easily turned by a contrivance) were two heavy Dahlgren cannons. By turning the turret these 'bull-dogs' might look straight into the face of an attacking enemy, wherever he might be, without changing the position of the vessel. The Monitor was propelled by a powerful steam-engine."

Lossing. Monmouth Street. A well-known London street, called by Dickens, from its shops for old clothes, "the burial-place of the fashions." It is now Dudley Street.

"If Field Lane, with its long fluttering rows of yellow handker chiefs, be a Dionysius' Ear, where, in stifled jarring hubbub, we hear the Indictment which Poverty and Vice bring against lazy Wealth, that it has left them there cast-out and trodden under foot of Want, Darkness, and the - then is Monmouth Street a Devil, Mirza's Hill, where, in motley vision, the whole Pageant of Existence passes awfully before us; with its wail and jubilee, mad loves and mad hatreds, church-bells and gallows-ropes, farcetragedy, beast-godhood, the Bedlam of Creation!"

Mons Meg. A famous piece of ancient ordnance in Edinburgh Castle, Scotland, supposed to have been forged at Mons, in Flanders, in the fifteenth century. Mons Sacer. [Ital. Monte Sacro, The Sacred Mount.] A hill three miles from Rome, and beyond the Anio, to which the plebeians withdrew at the time of their famous secession under Menenius

Agrippa, B.C. 494. A second secession took place, after the death of Virginia, when the plebeians revolted against Appius Claudius, and retired again to Mons Sacer. The epithet Sacer is derived, according to Dionysius, from an altar erected το Ζευς Δειμάτιος. According to others it was from the Lex Sacrata decreed upon the occasion of the first secession. Monserrat. [From Mons Serratus, the jagged mountain.] This famous Benedictine convent, near Barcelona, Spain, was founded A.D. 976. It owes its origin, according to the Catholic legend, to the miraculous image of the Virgin, which was brought to Barcelona by St. Peter himself, A. D. 50. Upon reaching the summit of the Mons Serratus, where the convent now stands, the Virgin refused to proceed any farther; upon which a chapel with a cross was built over her, where she remained 100 years. It is said that not less than 100,000 persons, including tourists and pilgrims, visit this convent yearly.

Mont Brilliant. A royal country residence, with a fine picture-gallery, near Hanover, Germany. Mont de Piété. The great pawnbroking concern of Paris, established in 1777.

"The name Mons Pietatis came with the invention from Italy. In the first century of the Christian era, free gifts were collected, and preserved in churches, to defray the expenses of divine service, and for the relief of the poor. The collections thus made were called Montes or Mounts, a name originally applied to all moneys procured or heaped together; and it has ap

peared that the inventor added the word Pietas to give to his institution a sacred or religious character, and to procure for it universal approbation and support. In Italy their establishment is of very early date, and in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the plan had spread to nearly all the cities. In 1777 a Mont de Piété was estab lished in Paris by a royal ordinance of Louis XVI." Mr. and Mrs. Hall.

"Pawnbroking in France, as in most parts of the Continent, is a municipal monopoly. It was established in 1777, but is now regulated by the law of June, 1851, and the necessary capital taken from the general hospital fund, which also receives the net prof its for charitable purposes. About 1,000,000. is usually lent out. The average of articles pledged is 17f.; the lowest value rate of interest is about six per cent. The articles pledged, if not redeemed, are sold at the expiration of 14 months; and the surplus money, if any, is paid to the owner if application is made within three years. There are two large branch establishments in the Rue Bonaparte and Rue de la Roquette, and about 20 branches (Commissionaires) in different parts of Paris. The profit annually to the institution is about 233,000f." Murray's Handbook.

"I must own, however, that although the interior of the Mont de Piété was repulsive to witness, I left its central office with an impression which reflection has strengthened rather than removed. that that portion of the community of any country, whose necessities force them occasionally to pawn their effects, have infinitely less to fear from an establishment guided by fixed principles, and open every day from nine till four to the public, than they would be, and in England are, in transacting the same business in private, cooped with an individual who, to say the least, may encourage the act which nothing but cruel necessity can authorize."

Sir Francis B. Head. Mont Parnasse, Boulevard du. This quarter of Paris is said to have been so called because the students were accustomed to declaim verses here.

Mont Valérien. [Mount Valérien.] An eminence near Paris, rising 343 feet above the Seine, on the route to St. Germain, converted into a citadel, which is considered one of the strongest of the fortifications of Paris.

In Mount Valérien's chestnut wood
The Chapel of the Hermits stood;
And thither at the close of day
Came two old pilgrims, worn and gray.
Forth from the city's noise and throng,
Its pomp and shame, its sin and wrong,
The twain that summer day had strayed
To Mount Valérien's chestnut shade.

Whittier.

Montague House. 1. The city residence of the Duke of Buccleuch, London, who inherits it from the family of Montague. The mansion contains some fine pictures by Vandyke, and a valuable collection of historical miniatures. The present house is modern.

2. A former mansion situated in Bloomsbury, London. Its site is now occupied by the British Museum.

3. A London mansion, noted as the residence of Mrs. Elizabeth Montague.

Montauk. A noted armor-plated

vessel of the United States navy - of the "Monitor" class-in the Civil War of 1861-65. She was commanded by Capt. Worden, and among other achievements captured the Confederate steamer Nashville.

Monte Beni. A hill in the immediate neighborhood of Florence, Italy. Hawthorne has made its scenery familiar in his "Romance of Monte Beni."

Monte Caprino. [Goat Hill.] A hill in Rome, being the southeastern summit of the Capitoline. In a garden on this hill may be seen what remains of the Tarpeian Rock.

Monte Casino. A famous monastic establishment, of the Benedictine order, near San Germano, on the route between Rome and Naples, Italy. The monastery was founded by St. Benedict in 529, and is the parent of all the greatest Benedictine monasteries in the world. It was rebuilt towards the end of the sixteenth century. The interior of the abbey church is one of the most splendid in Europe.

"There is scarcely a Pope or Emperor of importance who has not

been personally connected with its his. tory. From its mountain crag it has seen Goths, Lombards, Saracens, Normans, Frenchmen, Spaniards, Germans, scour and devastate the land which, through all modern history, has attracted every invader."

London Daily News, 1866.

"From this centre monastic life spread over barbarous Europe in the darkest period of the Middle Ages. Whatever remained of ancient civilization reposed thus in remote corners, within a monastic shell, like a chrysalis within its covering. You have every thing here, not only the arts and the sciences, but the grand spectacles of nature. This is what the old feudal and religious society provided for its pensive, solitary spirits; for minds which, repelled by the bitterness of life, reverted to speculation and self-culture. The race still subsists: only they no longer possess an asylum; they live in Paris and in Berlin in garrets. I know of many that are dead, of others saddened and chilled, others again worn out and disgusted. Will science ever do for its faithful servants what religion has done for hers? Will there ever be a laic Monte Casino" Taine, Trans. That mountain on whose slope Cassino stands

Was frequented of old upon its summit
By a deluded folk and ill-di-posed;
And I am he who first up thither bore
The name of Him who brought upon the
earth

The truth that so much sublimateth us.
Dante.

And there, uplifted, like a passing cloud That pauses on a mountain summit high, Monte Cassino's convent rears its proud And venerable walls against the sky. Longfellow. Monte Cavallo, and Piazza di Monte Cavallo. See QUIRINAL HILL. See also OBELISK OF THE MONTE CAVALLO. Monte Mario.

[Mount Mario.] An eminence in the neighborhood of Rome, deriving its name from Mario Mellini, who owned it in the time of Sixtus V. In ancient times it was called Clivus Cinnæ, the hill of Cinna. In the Middle Ages it was known as Monte Malo. It is crowned with cypresses, and commands a beautiful and extensive view.

"The Monte Mario, like Coop. er's Hill, is the highest, boldest, and most prominent part of the line; it is about the height and steepness, too, of Cooper's Hill, and has the Tiber at the