congress.

delegates are annually chosen by all the citizens, four for each county, and two for each of the cities of Annapolis and Baltimore. The executive power is vested in a governor and council, consisting of five members, who are elected annually by the joint ballot of the two legislative bodies. Maryland sends two senators and eight representatives to (Darby's View of the United States; Warden's Account of the United States of North America; Keating's Expedition to the Source of St. Peter's River; Pitkin's Statistical View of the Commerce of the United States of America.) MARYLEBONE. [LONDON.] MARY PORT. [CUMBERLAND.] MASA'CCIO, called MASO DA SAN GIOVANNI, one of the earliest painters of the Florentine school, was born at San Giovanni in Val d'Arno, in the year 1401, and died in 1443. He was a disciple of Masolino da Panicali, to whom he proved as much superior as his master was to all his contemporaries. He had great readiness of invention, with unusual truth and elegance of design. He made nature his constant study; and he gave in his works examples of that beauty which arises from a judicious and pleasing choice of attitudes, accompanied with spirit, boldness, and relief. He was the first who studied to give more dignity to his draperies, by designing them with greater breadth and fulness, and omitting the multitude of small folds. He was also the first who endeavoured to adapt the colour of his draperies to the tints of his carnations, so that they might harmonise with each other.

He was remarkably well skilled in perspective, which he was taught by P. Brunelleschi. His works procured him great reputation, but excited the envy of his competitors. He died, to the regret of all lovers of the art, not without strong suspicions of having been poisoned. Fuseli says of him Masaccio was a genius, and the head of an epoch in the art. He may be considered as the precursor of Raphael, who imitated his principles, and sometimes transcribed his figures. He had seen what could be seen of the antique in his time at Rome, but his most perfect works are the frescos of S. Pietro del Carmine at Florence, where vigour of conception, truth and vivacity of expression, correctness of design, and breadth of manner, are supported by truth and surprising harmony of colour.'

MASANIELLO. [ANIELLO. MASCAGNI, PAUL, was born in 1752. He studied medicine in the university of Siena, and in 1774 succeeded his master, Tabarani, in the professorship of anatomy in that institution. He is chiefly celebrated for his admirable work on the absorbent system, and the beauty of his anatomical preparations, of which the greater part are preserved in the Anatomical Museum of Florence. An outline of his great work was published in 1784 in French, under the title, Prodrome d'un Ouvrage sur le Système des Vaisseaux Lymphatiques,' and was sent to the Académie des Sciences in competition for a prize offered for the best essay on the subject. In 1787 the more complete work, Vasorum Lymphaticorum Corporis Humani Historia et Ichnographia,' was published in folio at Siena. It contains twenty-seven large plates, finished and in outline, of the lymphatics in different parts of the body, engraved with extreme delicacy by Cyro Sancti. It was dedicated to the reigning duke of Tuscany, under whose patronage Mascagni afterwards rapidly advanced in reputation. In 1800 he left the university of Siena for that of Pisa, and the year after went to that of Florence. He died in 1815.

6

After his death two large works were published from his papers, Anatomia per uso degli Studiosi di Scultura e Pittura,' Florence, 1816, and Prodromo della Grande Anatomia, Florence, 1819, by Antommarchi. Mascagni also published works of some celebrity on the lagunes and hot-springs of Tuscany, and on the cultivation of the potato and other branches of agriculture, to which he devoted all his leisure time.

MASCAGNIN, volcanic sulphate of ammonia, occurs stalactitic and pulverulent. Colour yellowish or greyish; faste acrid and bitter; translucent or opaque. Volatilized entirely at a high temperature. Occurs among the lavas of Etna and Vesuvius, &c.

By the analysis of Gmelin it contains-
Sulphuric acid .
Ammonia

Water

53.29

22.80 23.91

100⚫

MASCLEF, FRANCIS, was born at Amiens, in the year 1662. He very early devoted himself to the study of Oriental languages, in which he attained an extraordinary degree of proficiency. Having been brought up to the church, he became first a curate in the diocese of Amiens, and afterwards obtained the confidence of De Brou, bishop of Amiens, who placed him at the head of the theological seminary of the district and made him a canon. De Brou died in 1706, and Masclef, whose opinions on the Jansenist controversy were not in accordance with those of the new prelate Sabbatier, was compelled to resign his place in the theological seminary and to retire from public life. From this time he devoted himself to study with such close application as to bring on a disease, of which he died, on the 24th of November, 1728, at the age of sixty-six. Though austere in his habits, he was amiable and pious. Masclef's chief work is the Grammatica Hebraica, à punctis aliisque inventis Massorethicis libera,' in which he embodied an elaborate argument against the use of the vowel points. The first edition was published in 1716, and speedily called forth a defence of the points from the Abbé Guarin, a learned Benedictine monk. In the year 1731 a second edition of- Masclef's work was published at Paris, containing an answer to Guarin's objections, with the addition of grammars of the Syriac, Chaldee, and Samaritan languages. This work still ranks as the best Hebrew grammar without points. The other works of Masclef were, 'Ecclesiastical Conferences of the Diocese of Amiens;" Catechism of Amiens; and, in MS., Courses of Philosophy and Divinity.' The last-mentioned work was not printed, on account of its being thought to contain Jansenist opinions.

MASCULINE and NEUTER. [GENDER.]

MASERES, FRANCIS. The dates and facts in the following account are taken from 'The Gentleman's Magazine' for June, 1824.

He was born in London, December 15, 1731. His father was a physician, descended of a family which was driven out of France by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. He was educated at Clare Hall, Cambridge, and took the degree of B.A. in 1752, obtaining the highest place, both in classics and mathematics. He then (having first obtained a fellowship in his college) removed to the Temple, was in due time called to the bar, and went the Western circuit for some years with little success. He was then appointed (the date is not mentioned) attorneygeneral for Canada, in which province he remained till 1773, distinguished by his loyalty during the American contest, and his zeal for the interests of the province. On his return in 1773 he was appointed cursitor baron of the Exchequer, which office he held till his death. He was also at different times deputy recorder of London and senior judge of the sheriff's court. He died May 19, 1824, at Reigate, in the 93rd year of his age.

Baron Masères (as he was commonly called) has left behind him a celebrity arising partly from his own writings and partly from the munificence with which he devoted a part of his income to reprinting such works as he thought useful, either in illustration of mathematical history or of that of his own country. These were the objects of his private studies, and a peculiarity of his mathematical views which tinctured the whole of his writings, as well as his selection of works to be reprinted, requires some expla nation.

It is well known that the art of algebra grew faster than the science, and that, at the time when Masères began his studies, a branch of knowledge which is essentially distinct from arithmetic, or rather of which arithmetic is one particular case, had been pushed beyond the simple science of numbers in its methods, reasonings, and results, while its fundamental definitions were allowed to be expressed 11 arithmetical language, and restricted by arithmetical conceptions. [NEGATIVE AND IMPOSSIBLE QUANTITIES.] The consequence was, that the algebraical books were anything but logical; and while those who could make for themselves the requisite generalization at the proper time were more likely to employ themselves in extending the boundary of the science than in writing elementary works, all other students had to take a large part of algebra on trust, their faith being built partly on authority, partly on continually seeing verifiable truths produced by its operations. Msères, when a young man, rejected all of algebra which is not arithmetic, as being what he could not comprehend him

self, though he admitted that others might do so. In his earliest publication but one (Dissertation on the Use of the Negative Sign in Algebra,' London, 1758), which is in fact a treatise on the elements of algebra, after rejecting an equation in which negative quantities occur, he adds: 'I speak according to the foregoing definition, by which the affirmativeness or negativeness of any quantity implies a relation to another quantity of the same kind, to which it is added, or from which it is subtracted; for it may perhaps be very clear and intelligible to those who have formed to themselves some other idea of affirmative and negative quantities different from that above defined.'

The other works of Masères are, Elements of Plane Trigonometry, London, 1750; Principles of the Doctrine of Life Annuities, London, 1783; Appendix to Frend's Principles of Algebra,' 1799; tracts on the Resolution of Equations, 1800; various remarks on the tracts published in the Scriptores Logarithmici, presently to be noticed; papers in the Philosophical Transactions;' and political writings, a list of which will be found in the Genleman's Magazine' above cited. The characteristic of all these writings is an extreme prolixity, occasioned by his rejection of algebra, and the consequent multiplication of particular cases. In his 'Dissertation,' &c. above noticed, the four rules, and the solution of equations of the second and third degree, occupy three hundred quarto pages.

Of the reprints which Baron Masères made at his own expense, the most important is the 'Scriptores Logarithmici,' a collection, in six volumes quarto, published in various years from 1791 to 1807, of writings on the subject of logarithms. Here we find the works of Kepler, Napier, Snell, &c., interspersed with original tracts on kindred subjects. The republication of these old writings has put them in the way of many students to whom they would otherwise have been inaccessible, and has thus tended to promote historical knowledge and to excite inquiry. The Scriptores Optici,' 1823, a reprint of the optical writings of James Gregory, Descartes, Schooten, Huyghens, Halley, and Barrow, has a merit of the same kind: it was begun at an earlier period, but having been delayed by circumstances, was completed under the superintendence of Mr. Babbage. Besides these, he also reprinted the tract of James Bernoulli on Permutations and Combinations, and discovered and printed Colson's translation of Agnesi's 'Analytical Institutions. He also reprinted a large number of tracts on English history. The expense of Hales's Latin treatise on Fluxions, 1800, was defrayed by him, and we understand that more than one other author was indebted to him for assistance of the same kind.

MASHAM, ABIGAIL, the favourite of Queen Anne, noted in the history of the time for her political intrigues, was the daughter of Francis Hill, a Levant merchant of London, who married the sister of Mr. Jennings, the father of the Duchess of Marlborough. Upon the bankruptcy of her father she became the attendant of a baronet's lady, whence she removed into the service of her relative, then Lady Churchill, who procured her the place of waiting maid to the Princess Anne. She retained her situation after the princess ascended the throne, and by her assiduity and complaisance acquired a great degree of influence over her. The high church principles in which she had been educated contributed to increase her credit with the queen, who was secretly attached to the tory party, though obliged, in the beginning of her reign, to favour the whigs. The marriage of Miss Hill with Mr. Masham (son of Sir Francis Masham, of Otes in Essex) in 1707, occasioned an open quarrel with the Duchess of Marlborough, who was, in consequence of it, deprived of her majesty's confidence. Harley, afterwards earl of Oxford, connected himself with the new favourite; a change of ministry took place, and in 1711 Mr. Masham was raised to the peerage. He and his wife appear to have been actively engaged in the intrigues of the tories in favour of the exiled House of Stuart. Lady Masham lived a long time in retirement after the death of the queen, and died herself at an advanced age, December 6,

1734.

(Life of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, 8vo., London, 1745, p. 48; Polit. State of Brit., vol. xlviii., p. 656; see also a character of Mr. Masham in Manley's Secret Memoirs from the New Atalantis, 12mo., London, 1709, vol. ii., p. 147.) MASKELYNE, NEVIL, was born in London, October 6, 1732, was educated at Westminster, and afterwards at Catherine Hall and Trinity College, Cambridge, in which P. C., No. 911.

university he took the degree of B.A., with distinction, in 1754. In 1755 he took orders, but he had previously been led to turn his attention to astronomy by the solar eclipse of 1748, and by becoming acquainted with Bradley, whom he assisted in the formation of his tables of refraction. In 1761 he went to St. Helena, to observe the transit of Venus, and to detect, if possible, the parallax of the fixed stars. In this voyage, and in one undertaken to Barbadoes in 1764, to try the merits of Harrison's new chronometers, he acquired that knowledge of the wants of nautical astronomy, which afterwards led to the formation of the Nautical Almanac. In 1765 he was appointed to succeed Mr. Bliss as astronomer royal, and from this time, with the exception of his voyage to Scotland in 1772, to determine the mean density of the earth by observing the effect of the mountain Schehallien upon the plumb-line, his life was one unvaried application to the practical improvement of astronomical observation. He died February 9, 1811.

Delambre dates the commencement of modern astronomical observation, in its most perfect form, from Maskelyne, who was the first who gave what is now called a standard catalogue (A.D. 1790) of stars; that is, a number of stars observed with such frequency and accuracy, that their places serve as standard points of the heavens. His suggestion of the Nautical Almanac, and his superintendence of it to the end of his life, from its first publication in 1767, are mentioned in ALMANAC (vol. i., p. 364); his Schehallien experiment, in ATTRACTION (vol. iii., p. 69); and the character of his Greenwich observations, in GREENWICH OBSERVATORY (vol. xi., p. 442).

Dr. Maskelyne, as arbitrator on the part of the government of the merits of the chronometers which were submitted by their makers as competitors for the prize, had more than one public accusation of partiality to bear. The now celebrated Harrison was one of his oppugners, and Mr. Mudge, junior, on the part of his father, another. The only publication (as far as we know) which he ever made out of his official capacity (with the exception of papers in the Philosophical Transactions'), was a reply to a pamphlet by the latter, London, 1792. He edited Mayer's lunar tables, and was the means of five thousand pounds being awarded to the widow of the author.

MASON, WILLIAM, born in 1725, was the son of a clergyman at Hull. He took his B.A. degree at Cambridge in 1745, after which he removed from St. John's College to Pembroke, of which college he was elected fellow in 1747. Having taken orders, he was presented to the rectory of Aston in Yorkshire, and became chaplain to the king. His political principles strongly opposed him to the American war, and he was a member of the Yorkshire association for obtaining reform of parliament. The horrors of the French Revolution however are said to have caused a change in his opinions, but as he was growing an old man when it broke out, the timidity of age probably worked as strongly as the reign of terror. He died in 1797, aged 72; having been for years precentor and canon-residentiary of York. There is a tablet to his memory in Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey.

Mason's Poems are now almost forgotten. Two tragedies, Elfrida' and 'Caractacus,' a descriptive poem called The English Garden,' and some odes, are his principal productions, but he is now perhaps best remembered as Gray's biographer and friend. His style is that of an imitator of Gray, and not being so perfect an artist in language as his master, he has been proportionally less successful. In addition to his poetical reputation he possessed considerable skill in painting and music, and in the latter subject entertained opinions not at all consonant to those of musicians in general. He wished to reduce church music to the most dry and mechanical style possible, excluding all such expression as should depend on the powers and taste of the organist. (Mason's Compendium of the History of Churc Music.)

MASONRY (from the French maison and maçon) signifies both the operation of constructing with stone and the parts of a building consisting of such material. It is a most important branch of architectural practice, because much, both of the durability and beauty of an edifice so constructed, depends upon the excellence of the workmanship and the quality and colour of the stone. Owing to its expense, masonry is comparatively rarely employed in this country, except for public buildings or others of the highest class, the mason's work being in other cases restricted to such VOL. XIV.-3 Q

parts as steps to doors, string-courses, facias, and plain cornices externally, and to pavements and stairs in the interior. Yet that degree of stone-work does not constitute what is termed a brick and stone building, because such term implies a considerable mixture of stone and brick, namely, that the doorways, window dressings, columns, parapets, angle-quoins, and all the ornamental parts are of stone, the nude or plain face of the wall only being of brick. But such mode is now fallen into disuse, except for buildings in some of the later Gothic styles, the brick-work being now covered with stucco, cement, or mortar, to resemble as far as possible the stone, when the latter is used for columns, pilasters, and ornamental parts; or, as is now more frequently the case, the whole, even the columns themselves are formed of brick, and afterwards stuccoed. In other instances, while the building itself is entirely faced with stone, all the richer and more elaborate decorations, such as capitals, carved mouldings, and other sculptured ornament, are composed of ferra-cotta, or burnt artificial composition, which is said to be not only more economical, but far more durable than stone itself, owing to its being to a certain extent vitrified. This mode has been resorted to with great success for the Ionic capitals of St. Pancras Church, London.

Of all our freestones, Portland stone is perhaps the very best yet discovered, both for durability and colour; but its high price and the expense of working it prevent its being so often employed as could be wished. Of late years therefore Bath stone is the kind more generally made use of for building purposes, it being soft when first taken out of the quarry, and very easily worked. Neither its texture nor tint however is so good; and when discoloured by time, as is quickly the case, it has a certain shabbiness of appearance. In fact a living architect (Mr. A. Bartholomew) describes it, in his Hints on Fire-proof Buildings,' as the vilest of material, which, when new, is mean and swarthy, and which decays before I myself am old;' and he further mentions St. Bartholomew's Hospital as the earliest instance of the extensive use in London of Bath stone. Ketton stone, which has been used for the tower of St. Dunstan's in the West, Fleet Street, is, though not equal to Portland, greatly superior to Bath stone. Cornwall granites and Dundee stone are now in great requisition for constructions demanding strength and solidity, and have been used in several of the docks and new bridges.

Walls which are not of solid masonry throughout, but built either of brick or inferior stone and rubble, with only an external facing of squared stone laid in courses, are termed ashler, or ashlering. [ASHLER.]

Rusticated ashler or stone work is that where the separate stones are divided at their seams or joints, which is done either by bevelling off or chamfering their arrises or edges to a certain depth, or sinking them by cutting each stone so that it has a general projecting surface, by which means, when united together, those surfaces are flush with the plane of the wall, and the sunk margin round each forms rectangular grooves or channels between them. This latter mode is always adopted when horizontal rustics alone are used, as is now too frequently the practice, for it is not only poor and monotonous, in comparison with rusticating with both vertical and horizontal joints, but unmeaning in itself, and therefore justly condemned by Sir W. Chambers. Though generally made quite smooth, the faces of the rustics are sometimes tooled, or else, though very rarely, hatched, vermiculated, or frosted; all which varieties may likewise be combined, with exceedingly good effect and great diversity, with smooth-faced rustics. Such rough rustics are sometimes distinguished by the name of bossages.

Stones inserted quite through a wall, in order to bind it firmly together (in the absence of which the ashlering would be a mere external coating, adhering to the brickwork only by mortar), are called bond stones; and those at the base of the wall, projecting beyond its general plane, for the purpose of giving greater solidity just above the foundation, are termed footings.

Walls built with unhewn stones, either with or without mortar, are called rubble walls, and the stone itself rubble. MASONS, FREE. According to the extravagant and whimsical hypotheses entertained by some of those who have written upon the subject of freemasonry, it is an institution of almost incredible antiquity. We are told by some that it originated with the builders of the tower of Babel, though hers are content with tracing it no farther back than the

temple of Solomon. If we are to believe them, the institution has been continued down in uninterrupted succession from that very remote time to the present day, through all the changes of governments, religion, civilization, and knowledge. Against this there exists one very simple, yet fatal, argument, namely, that were this really the case, such an uninterrupted series of tradition must have kept alive and handed down to us much information that has, on the contrary, been utterly lost. Instead of accumulated knowledge, we find that even a technical knowledge of architecture itscif has not been so preserved; else how are we to account for the ignorance which every where prevailed with respect to Gothe architecture and its principles almost as soon as the style itself fell into disuse? That there may have been many points of resemblance between the fraternities of masons in the middle ages, and such institutions as those of the Eleusinian mysteries, and the corporation of Ionian architects, is not only possible, but highly probable, because similarity of carcumstances would almost necessarily lead to it. Before the invention of printing, when the means of communicating knowledge were few and imperfect, no readier mode presented itself of extending and keeping up the speculative and practical information spread among any profession, than by establishing the profession itself into a community or order, all the members of which would have one object and one interest in common. This would be more particularly the case with regard to architecture, which calls for the co-operation of various branches of science and the mechanical arts, and was moreover for several ages the paramount art, all the other arts of decoration being, as far as they then existed, subservient to it.

The importance of architecture to the church, on account of the impressive dignity it conferred upon religious rites and the ministers of religion, naturally induced the clergy to take it under their especial protection. For a long time not only were ecclesiastics the chief patrons but almost the chief professors of the art; yet as they had occasion for the assistance of practical artificers in various branches, they admitted them into fellowship with themselves, establish ing a kind of order of a mixed character, just as the orders of chivalry combined at their origin the principles of military and religious discipline. Hence some have sup posed freemasonry to have been a branch of chivalry, and to have been established at the time of the Crusades. The more probable hypothesis perhaps is that they were related to each other only in emanating from the same sourcefrom the influence of ecclesiastical power; and their bein so derived would alone account for the mystery and secre which the guilds of masons affected; and, together wit their zeal in accumulating knowledge for themselves, ther desire to confine it to their own body.

By means of these associations the inventions and improvements made in architecture were communicated from one country to another, a circumstance which at once accounts for the sudden spread of pointed or Gothic archite ture throughout the whole of the west of Europe; and at the same time renders it so exceedingly difficult to determin at all satisfactorily where that style actually originated, cr what nation contributed most towards its advancement. Owing also to the jealousy with which the masons kept ther knowledge to themselves, it is not at all surprising that the history of the art during the middle ages should be involve i in so much obscurity that it can now be traced only by ts monuments, all documents relative to the study of it having been concealed as much as possible, even when something of the kind must have been in existence. Among the causes which led afterwards to the decline of these institutics was, on the one hand, the suspicion with which the chur itself began to regard them as societies that might in time acquire an influence not easily watched, and which m be turned against itself; and on the other, the spread information, together with the revival of the arts, wh deprived such bodies of their utility and importance, and rendered it impossible for them to confine their knowledge exclusively within their own pale.

In this country an act was passed against Masonry in the third year of Henry VI., at the instigation of the bishop... Winchester. It was however never enforced, and H himself afterwards countenanced the brethren by his preset/Y at lodges of masons. It was also patronised by James I. < Scotland: but it was no longer indispensable to the chur which accordingly withdrew its protection-an event th would otherwise have been occasioned by the Reformatio