M
MAAS or MAES, Nicolas, an excellent Dutch painter, was born at Dort in 1632, and studied with Rembrandt in Amsterdam. He excelled both as a portrait and genre painter; his earlier works, executed much in the taste of his great master, being the best. Maas settled in Amsterdam in 1678, and died there in 1693. He executed a large number of portraits, and etched a few plates. The National gallery possesses three examples of this painter, one, a "Girl Scraping Parsnips," of the early date of 1655.—R. N. W.
MABILLON, Jean, was born on the 23rd November, 1632, at Piérremont, a village of the diocese of Rheims, and was educated for the Church of Rome in the college and priests' seminary of that city. In 1654 he joined the congregation of St. Maur, in the abbey of St. Remi, and was soon after, though not yet an ordained priest, made master of the novices in that house. In 1660 he was ordained at Amiens, and returned to the abbey of Corbie (to which he had been sent two years before for the improvement of his health), to occupy himself with the manuscript treasures of its library. In 1663 he was appointed treasurer of the abbey of St. Denis, in which capacity it was his duty to show the tombs of the French kings and other remarkable objects of the abbey, to the numerous visitors who repaired to that celebrated spot. It was during his residence there that he began his labours upon the works of St. Bernard, on hearing that it was the intention of his order to bring out a new and corrected edition of the writings of the Fathers. In 1664 he was removed by his order to the abbey of St. Germain in Paris, to assist D'Achery in the preparation of his Spicilegium, and to take part in the great undertaking just referred to, by preparing an edition of St. Bernard's works, corrected by the aid of ancient manuscripts. From this time till his death in 1707 his whole life was devoted to literary pursuits; and during the whole of that time, with the exception of five months which he spent in visiting the great libraries of Germany, and fifteen months which he employed in the same manner in Italy, he lived a quiet and ascetic life in the abbey of St. Germain. His visit to Germany was for the purpose of collecting materials for the history of France; and he was sent into Italy by Louis XIV. to purchase books and manuscripts for the royal library, of which he brought home no fewer than three thousand volumes. He gives an account of his travels and acquisitions in his "Musæum Italicum, sen collectio veterum scriptorum ex bibliothecis Italicis eruta." In 1667 he brought out two editions of St. Bernard, the one in two volumes, folio, and the other in eight octavo volumes; after which he was intrusted with a "Collection of the Acts of the Saints of St. Bernard," which should be so arranged as to form a continuous history of the order. This immense undertaking extended to nine folio volumes, and was not completed at his death; the tenth volume, which contained the seventh century of the history of the order, being added by Franz le Tescier. He farther gratified his own pride as a benedictine, and that of his brethren, by drawing up "Annales ordinis Sti. Benedicti, occidentalium monachorum patriarchæ, in quibus non modo res monasticæ, sed etiam ecclesiasticæ historiæ non minima pars continetur," of which he was able to complete five volumes. His other writings upon points of monastic, ecclesiastical, or general history, were very numerous. But of all his works, the most celebrated and important was his "De Re Diplomatica libri vi.," which appeared at Paris in 1681, and in which he gives explanations and illustrations of everything relating to the age of ancient manuscripts, their material, writing and style, seals, monograms, subscriptions, &c. The idea of the work was quite new, viz., to reduce what has been called diplomatic knowledge to settled rules, and establish it upon fixed principles. The importance of such an object for literary, antiquarian, and forensic purposes is obvious; and it was the distinguished merit of Mabillon not only to suggest the idea, but to realize it; and the utility of his work has been gratefully acknowledged by all subsequent labourers in the same field. In 1701 he was made a member of the Royal Academy of Inscriptions, and read a paper soon after on the tombs of the kings of France. In 1707 the pope sent him a cardinal's hat, but before it reached Paris he died, in his seventy-sixth year. The titles of his works amount to twenty-four, and have procured for him the distinction of one of the most learned men of the period of Louis le Grand, and the chief ornament of the benedictine order of St. Maur.—P. L.
MABLY, Gabriel Bonnot, Abbé de, one of the fathers of French socialism, was born at Grenoble in 1709. He was the elder brother of Condillac, and a connection of Cardinal de Tencin. Educated for and entering the church, he went to Paris; and after publishing in 1740 his "Parallèle des Romains et des Français"—apolitical disquisition, temperate and rational, of which he was afterwards ashamed—he became secretary to Cardinal de Tenein when the latter entered the ministry. He resigned his secretaryship after a disagreement with the cardinal on the subject of mixed marriages—a question on which he leaned to the protestants; and he then devoted himself to literature. In some sections of his "Droit public de l'Europe," 1748—otherwise a useful work, epitomizing the public treaties of Europe subsequent to the peace of Westphalia—he first broached his socialistic theories, further developed in several works, especially in his treatise "De la legislation, ou principes des lois," 1776. Complete equality of condition was the keynote of his political philosophy, which powerfully influenced the development of the French revolution. Mably was disinterested, independent, and sincere. He died in 1785. Several editions of his collective writings have been published. A selection from them entitled "Mably, Théories sociales et politiques," was published at Paris so late as 1849.—F. E.
MABUSE, Jan de, the name by which Jan Gossaert, of Mabuse (now Maubeuge), is commonly known; he was born about 1470. He came young to England, and in 1495 painted the three children of Henry VII. at Hampton court. He spent also some years in Italy; returned to his own country, where he lived first at Utrecht, and after 1528 at Middleburg, where a fine work by him, an altar-piece representing the "Descent from the Cross," was destroyed by lightning, January 14, 1568. Mabuse died at Antwerp, October 1, 1532. He painted history and portrait; and his works are carefully drawn, elaborately modelled, and highly coloured, but somewhat Gothic in their taste. A magnificent representation of the "Adoration of the Kings," at Castle Howard, is one of the masterpieces of this painter; and there is also a fine portrait of a man, in the National gallery, ascribed to him. He sometimes signed himself Joannes Malbodius, from the ancient name of his native town.—(Van Mander Het Schilder-Boek, 1604; Catalogue du Musée d'Anvers, 1857.)—R. N. W.
MACADAM, John Loudon, the great improver of the art of making roads, son of James MacAdam, Esq. of Waterhead of Deugh, in the stewartry of Kirkendbright, was born at Ayr on the 21st of September, 1756, and died at Moffat in Dumfriesshire, on the 26th of November, 1836. He was educated at the parish school of Maybole. On the death of his father in 1770, he was sent to learn the business of a merchant under an uncle, who had for some time been settled at New York. About four-
