Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 15.djvu/587

M A ft M A R 559 it lie served at the battles of Liitzen, Bautzen, and Dresden, and throughout the great defensive campaign of 1814, until the last desperate battle before the walls of Paris, from which he drew back his forces to the commanding position of Essonne. Here he had 20,000 men in splendid condition, and was the pivot of all thoughts. Napoleon said of Essoime, "C est la queviendront s addresser toutes les intrigues, toutes les trahisons ; aussi y ai-je place Marmont, mon enfant e leve sous ma tente." Marmont betrayed this trust and suffered for it. On the restoration of the Bourbons he was made a peer of France, and a major- general of the royal guard, and in 1820 a knight of St Esprit and a grand officer of the order of St Louis, but he was never trusted, never popular. He was the major- general of the guard on duty in July 1830, and was ordered to put down with a strong hand any opposition to the ordinances (see TRANCE). After persevering some time he gave way, and allowed the republicans to succeed in their revolution. This defection brought more obloquy upon him, and the Due d Angouleme even ordered him under arrest, saying, " Will you betray us, as you betrayed him?" After this Marmont left France and wandered about the Continent for twenty years, publishing many volumes of travels, an edition of Caesar and of Xenophon, and his Esprit des Institutions Militaires. Much of his time was spent upon his Memoires, which are of real value for the military history of his time, though they must be read as a personal defence of himself in various junctures rather than as an unbiassed account of his times. They show Marmont, as he really was, an embittered man, who never thought Ids services sufficiently requited, a great artillery general indeed, but without the fire of genius which is so striking in several of his contemporaries, and above all, a man too much in love with himself and his own glory to be a true friend or a faithful servant. For Marmont s military ability consult Napier, Jomini, and the- historians of the time, particularly General Pelet. His own works are Voyagecn ffongrie, &c., 4 vols., 1837 ; Voyagecn Sidle, 1838 ; Esprit des Institutions Militaires, 1845 ; Cesar ; Xenophon ; and Memoires, 8 vols., published after his death in 1856. See also a long and careful notice by Sainte-Beuve, Causcrics du Lundi, vol. vi. MARMONTEL, JEAN FRANCOIS (1723-1799), one of the most distinguished men of letters in Paris during the latter half of the 18th century, was born of poor parents in Limousin, on the llth July 1723. After studying with the Jesuits at Mauriac, he taught in their colleges at Clermont and Toulouse ; and in 1745, acting on the advice of Voltaire, he set out for Paris to try for literary honours. From 1748 to 1753 ho wrote a succession of tragedies which, 1 though for the most part considered prolix and artificial by modern readers, had great success on the stage, and secured to Voltaire s new disciple a good position in literary and fashionable circles. Being now associated with Diderot and D Alembert, he wrote for the great Encyclopedic a series of articles evincing considerable critical power and insight, which in their collected form, under the title Elements de Litterature, still rank among the higher French classics. He also wrote several comic operas, the two best of which probably are Sylvain and Zemirc et Azore. In 1758 he gained the patronage of Madame Pompadour, and was soon after appointed manager of the official journal Le Mercure, in which he had already commenced a series of elegant and attractive tales. These were the Contes Moraux, on which, according to some critics, Marmontel s literary reputation mainly rests. Their merit lies partly in the literary style, which in delicate finish frequently rivals that of his master Voltaire, but mainly in their graphic and charming pictures of 1 Denys le Tyran, 1748 ; Aristomene, 1749 ; Cleop&tre, 1750 ; Heradides, 1752; Egyptus, 1753. French society under Louis XV. After being elected to the French Academy, in 1763, he appears to have been ambitious to create a new literary style, exemplified notably in his dull prose-epic romance Bclisaire, now remarkable only on account of a chapter on religious toleration which incurred the censure of the Sorbonne and the archbishop of Paris. Marmontel retorted in J^es Incas, by tracing the cruelties in Spanish America to the religious fanaticism of the Roman Catholic invaders. After being appointed historiographer of France, secre tary to the Academy (1783), and professor of history in the Lyce e (1786), Marmontel in 1788 wrote a history of the regency, which is of little value. To compensate for this, however, he in 1795 began his Memoires, the most interesting and valuable if not the greatest of his works, being a picturesque review of his whole life, a literary history of two important reigns, a great gallery of portraits extending from the venerable Massillon, whom more than half a century previously he had seen at Clermont, to the fiery Mirabeau amidst the tempestuous first years of the French Revolution. Reduced to. poverty by the Revolution, Marmontel in 1792 retired from the Reign of Terror to Evreux, and soon after to a cottage near Gaillon, in the department of Eure. To that retreat we owe the Memoires, and there, after a short stay in Paris when elected in 1797 to the Conseil des Anciens, he died on the 31st December 1799. See Villenave, Notices stir Marmontel ; Saiute-Beuve, Causcrics, vol. iv. ; Morellet, Eloge, 1805; Edinburgh Review, January 1806. MARMORA, SEA OF. See BLACK SEA. MARMOT. The word marmot may be considered to include animals belonging to the three following genera: the true marmots, forming the genus Arctomys (" bear- rnouse "), so called from the thickset, bear-like form of its members ; the prairie marmots of North America, better known as the " prairie dogs " (Cynomys, " dog-mouse ") ; and the pouched marmots, or sousliks, comprising the genus Spermopldlus, or seed -lovers, so named from the character of their food. These three genera are all closely allied to each other, and together form the subfamily Arctomyinse. of the great squirrel family, the Sciuridte, of which the only other subfamily, the Sciurinx, consists of the true squirrels (Sciurus) and the flying-squirrels (Ptero- mys). The members of the marmot subfamily are con fined to the northern hemisphere, and in fact are almost entirely limited to the north temperate zone, in marked contrast to the genera of the subfamily Sciurinse, which attain their greatest development in tropical or semi- tropical countries. The Ardomyinx agree in the possession of somewhat short, stumpy bodies, comparatively short tails (except in certain sousliks), and long and powerful claws suitable for burrowing. They all have broad, strong, and ungrooved incisors or cutting teeth, two pairs of premolars above and one below, and three pairs of true molars in each jaw. The grinding teeth are all on the whole very similar, the first upper premolar much smaller than the others, and nearly round, the next three teeth triangular in outline, and each with either two or three transverse grooves upon the crown ; the last molar is rather broader and more com plicated than the others, as is shown in fig. 2. The general form of the skeleton is very similar to that of the true squirrels, but the bones as a rule are stouter and heavier. 1. The following are the generic characters of Arctomys. External form stout and heavy, ears short, tail short and hairy, cheek -pouches rudimentary or absent. Fore feet with four well-developed toes, and a rudimentary thumb provided with a flat nail; skull (see MAMMALIA, p. 417, fig. 92) similar in general form to that of the other genera,

but very much larger and heavier, the post-orbital processes