Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 15.djvu/874

842 M E L -M E L figs and fuller s earth (Kt.coX a yi}), and contained a considerable city, the remains of which still cover the cliff of St Andrews. Polinos, Polybos or Folivo, and .Kaimeni, or " Burned Island," the lie Brulee or Isola Bwiciata of the French and Italians, lies rather more than a mile south-east of Cimolos. It was in antiquity the subject of dispute between the Meliaus and Cimolians. It has long been almost uninhabited. In ancient times the city of Melos, built terrace -fashion round a hill in the north-east of the main island, was a place of considerable size; "the western wall, of Cyclopean masonry, is traceable all the way down from the summit to the sea," and among the ruins are a temple in the Corinthian style and a beautiful little theatre cleared in 1836 by order of the king of Bavaria. Painted rases (the ancient Melians were great makers of this kind of ware), bronzes, gold ornaments, and similar specimens of art workmanship have been recovered from the debris ; and in 1820 the " Venus of Milo," now in the Louvre, the noblest extant representation of Aphrodite, was found in the neighbourhood of the theatre. The top of the hill is now occupied by Castro, the principal village in the island. At some distance to the south-east, at the place called Tripiti (i.e., rpvwr]TTj, " the perforated "), lies a remarkable cluster of catacombs containing frescos, &c. , of evidently Christian origin. Palsea Chora, about 5 miles farther south-east, is now an almost deserted village, but down to the beginning of the last century it had about 5000 inhabit ants, and it continued for a time to be considered the capital of the island. The first occupants of Melos were probably Phoenicians, but the island was Hellenized at an early date by Minyans and Dorians from Laconia. Though its inhabitants sent a contingent to the Greek fleet at Salamis, they held aloof from the Attic league, and sought to remain neutral during the Peloponnesian War. But in 416 B.C. the Athenians, having attacked the island and compelled the Melians to surrender at discretion, slew all the men capable of bearing arms, made slaves of the women and children, and introduced a body of five hundred Athenian colonists. Lysander restored the island to its old Dorian possessors, but it never recovered its former prosperity. There were many Jewish settlers in Melos in the beginning of the Christian era, and Christianity was early introduced. During the " Frankish " period the island formed part of the duchy of Naxos, except for the few years (1341-83) when it was a separate lordship under Marco Sanudo and his daughter. See Leycester, " The Volcanic Group of Milo, Anti-Milo, &c.," in Jour. Hoy. Oeog. Soc., 1852 ; Tournefort, Voyage ; Leake, Northern Greece, vol. Hi.; Prokesch von Osten, Denkwiirdiykeitm, etc.; and Bursian, Geog. von Griechenland, vol. ii. MELROSE, a village of Roxburghshire, Scotland, on the south bank of the Tweed, 37 miles by rail south- south-east of Edinburgh. Its population has steadily advanced from 966 in 1851 to 1550 in 1881. Though a burgh of barony since 1609, it is a purely agricultural village, and would be of little interest but for the ruins of its abbey, now the property of the duke of Buccleuch. It was formerly called Little Fordell, and its present name even dates from the foundation of the monastery by David II. in 1136. There had been a Columbite monastery of Melrose at the place now known as Old Melrose, about a mile and a half to the east of the village, but this establishment, probably never of much architectural magnificence, had, according to the Chronicle of the Picts and Scots, been destroyed by Kenneth M Alpin in 839, and may never have recovered from the disaster. King David s abbey, which he entrusted to a body of Cistercian monks from Rievaulx (Riuall) in Yorkshire, was dedicated on Sunday 28th July 1146 ; it was laid in ruins by Edward II. of England in 1322; Bruce caused the work of restoration to be vigorously prosecuted, but the edifice was again burned by Richard II. in 1385. The abbey church as it now stands consequently belongs in the main to the latter half of the 14th century and the first half of the 15th, with a good many portions of a considerably later date. Architecturally the abbey may be described as a splendid example of the Middle Pointed style, strongly affected on the one hand by Flamboyant and Perpendicular tendencies, and on the other by the individuality of some of the builders. Cruciform in plan, it measured 21 4| feet from east to west, the width of the nave being 69 feet, and across the transepts 115^. The noble edifice was damaged by the English in 1545 ; and since the Reformation it has been altered to suit the necessities of Presbyterian worship (1618-1810), and plundered by builders to supply ornaments for houses. The whole building is now in ruins. The west end and a good part of the north side have disappeared ; but the elevation of the south side is nearly entire, both the transepts and the east end are externally in very fair preservation, part of the central tower is standing, and the sculptured roof still covers the east end of the chancel. Of the individual features of the building, the great eastern window has been generally most admired since Sir Walter Scott celebrated the moonlit aspect of its "slender shafts of shapely stone." It has five lights ; the height is 37 feet and the width 16 ; and the upper portion is filled in with delicate tracery of a geometri cal design. Very beautiful too is the whole gable of the south transept. In the interior, on the north side of the nave, there still stand four of the original square piers, and one of them shows a Norman " cap." The choir, the west end of which is shut off by a massive rood-screen, has been largely "spoiled by rough 17th cen tury work"; but enough remains of the decorative detail to provoke the admiration and despair of the modern artist in stone. The facile and at the same time elaborate rendering of vegetable forms, such as the Scotch "kail," is particularly striking. It was in the abbey-church of Melrosp, where Alexander II. had long before been buried near the high altar, that the heart of Bruce found its final resting-place ; and among the many tombs which afterwards gathered under the same roof were those of his faithful knight James Lord Douglas, Sir William the dark knight of Liddesdale, and the hero of Chevy Chase. The ancient muniments of the abbacy have been preserved in the archives of the earl of Morton ; they were published by the Bannatyne Club (2 vols., 1837, Liber Sancte Marie de Melros], under the editorship of Cosmo Innes. Among the many interesting docu ments is one of the very earliest specimens of the Scotch tongue. The Chronica de Mailros, preserved among the Cotton MSS., has been twice printed, at Oxford (1684) by Fulman, and by the Banna tyne Club (1835), edited by John Stevenson. From about 1140 till its close in 1265 the chronicle may be considered original ; it was put largely under contribution by later compilers. See Walcott, The Ancient Church of Scotland; W. Hu .cliinson, A View of Northumberland, d-c., Newcastle, 1778; Adam Milne, Description of the Parish of Melrose, Kelso, 1782; J. Bower, Description of the Abbeys of Melrose and Old Melrose, Kelso, 1813 ; J. A. Wade, History of St Mary s Abbey, Melrose, Edin burgh, 1861 ; Fred. Pinches, The Abbey Church of Melrose (a series of architectural drawings), London, 1879. MELTON MOWBRAY, a market-town of England, county of Leicester, is pleasantly situated in a fertile vale, at the confluence of the Wreake and Eye, 15 miles north east of Leicester and 104 north of London by rail. The Eye is spanned by a bridge of four arches. The town consists principally of two main streets, and is substan tially built of brick. The church of St Mary, a hand some cruciform structure partly in the Early English style, and adorned by a lofty and richly ornamented tower, was heightened and otherwise enlarged in the reign of Elizabeth, and has also undergone modern improvements. There are largely endowed almshouses and several other charities. Melton is the seat of a celebrated hunting district, in connexion with which there are stables in the town capable of accommodating about eight hundred horses. It is also well known for its pork pies, and has a very large trade in Stilton cheese. There are breweries and tan neries, as well as an important cattle market. Iron works have lately been erected. The town possesses great railway facilities. The population of the urban sanitary district in 1871 was 5033, and in 1881 it was 5766. The old name of Melton was Medeltone, and the place is of con siderable antiquity. During the Civil AVar it was in February 1644 the scene of the defeat, with great slaughter, of the parliamentary forces by the royalists. It is the birthplace of John Henley the orator. MELON, capital of the department of Seine-et-Marne, France, 2S miles south-east of Paris by railway, occupies a hill on the right bank of the Seine and the level ground at its foot. It owes its rank as " chef-lieu" to its central position merely ; for there are two other towns in the department, Meaux and Fontainebleau, which have a larger population. Melun is near one of the most beautiful parts of the forest of Fontainebleau. Among the rich estates in its neighbourhood the most remarkable is the magnificent chateau of Vaux-Praslin, which belonged to Fouquet,

superintendant of finances under Louis XIV. The church