further to aggrandize the house of Medici. Yet while gaining political importance, they were losing those elements of strength which had first raised the family—commercial ability and wealth. Lorenzo still kept up a banking business in various parts of Europe, employing agents whom he could not, however, or would not overlook. His munificent expenditure reduced his fortune and increased his debts. The state of Florence was called upon to help him, and he received from the Council of Seventy-two public money for his private use. There may have been equity in this, since he spent so much of his fortune in the adornment of Florence and in the encouragement of her artists and men of letters; but the insolvency of the house of Medici was no less mischievous to the liberties of Florence than had been its wealth. In 1487 Lorenzo's daughter, Madeleine, was married to the pope's son, Francesco Cibo, and in 1489 John Medici entered the sacred college. This family connection with the papacy may serve to explain Lorenzo's opposition to Savonarola, whom, on the recommendation of Pico de la Mirandola, he had invited to preach at the convent of St. Mark. The enthusiastic reformer had little in common with the refined Platonist, who was virtually sovereign of Florence. He inveighed against the luxury and corruption of the time, and refused to see in Lorenzo more than a citizen bound to respect the rights of his fellow-citizens. In 1490 Lorenzo, being completely disabled by gout, gave up public business to his two sons, Peter and Julian, and retired to his country seat at Careggi, where his existence was painfully prolonged for two years, while his sufferings were assuaged by the society of Politian and other cherished friends. Politian's account of the deathbed scene is very touching. Another account, describing the final interview with Savonarola somewhat differently, is given by Burlamacchi, and presents a very striking scene.—(See Madden's Life of Savonarola, vol. i., p. 153.) Lorenzo confessed to three great offences—the sacking of Volterra, the appropriation of charitable funds, and the execution of innocent persons at the time of the Pazzi plot. The high-minded priest required three things before he granted absolution—a lively faith in God, a restoration as far as possible of everything wrongfully acquired, leaving enough to maintain his children decently as private citizens, and the restitution of liberty to Florence. The dying man agreed to the two first demands, but on hearing the third, turned his back to the speaker and made no answer. Lorenzo died on the 11th April, 1492, in his forty-fourth year. His character for humanity, generosity, and many noble virtues, has remained unimpeached. If he was a usurper, he was so with the people's wish; and in comparison with neighbouring states where liberty had been extinguished in blood, Florence under Lorenzo enjoyed a large amount of rational freedom.—R. H.
Medici, Salvestro de', a Florentine statesman of the same family as the foregoing, flourished in the latter half of the fourteenth century. At this time a law prevailed in Florence, whereby many leading men were excluded from office; it was called the law "degli Ammoniti" (of the men under Admonition). In 1357 the pressure of this law produced a conspiracy headed by Bartolommeo de' Medici, and two of the Ammoniti—del Buono and Bandini. Through the treachery of a papal legate the plot miscarried; Salvestro managed to save his kinsman, but the other two leaders were beheaded. At length, however, in 1378, Salvestro, holding then the office of gonfalonier of justice, succeeded, after a sanguinary contest between the middle class and the nobility and people, in getting the law rescinded. Under Guelph influence he was banished in 1381; but he left the power of his family securely rooted.—W. M. R.
MEDINA, Sir John Baptist, a celebrated portrait-painter, was the son of Don Medina de l'Asturias, a Spanish captain settled at Brussels, where the son was born in 1660. He learned painting of Du Chatel; married young; came to London in 1686, where he painted many portraits: but the promises of support made by the earl of Leven induced him to remove to Edinburgh. Here he found abundant employment. He painted most of the Scottish nobility; but he had twenty children, writes Walpole, and he did not grow rich. He revisited England, but soon returned to Edinburgh, where he died in 1711. Medina was knighted by the duke of Queensberry, lord high commissioner, being the last knight made in Scotland prior to the Union. Sir John Medina was among the best portrait-painters of his day. He has preserved the likenesses of many distinguished Scotsmen. Examples of his pencil are in many of the residences of the old Scottish nobility; and in Surgeon's hall, Edinburgh, are portraits of some of the professors, and two small historical subjects, attributed to him. He is also said to have painted a few landscapes; and he made the designs for an edition of Milton.—J. T—e.
MEDWYN, Thomas, Captain, a cousin of the poet Shelley, was a schoolfellow of his at Eton. When travelling in Italy, he was introduced by Shelley to Lord Byron, then living with the Guicciolis. In 1824, when all England was startled by the premature death of the noble poet, who had roused so deep and universal an interest in his own personal history, Captain Medwyn published the fruits of his intercourse with Byron, under the title of "Conversations of Lord Byron, noted during a residence with his lordship at Pisa in 1821-22," 4to. The book was eagerly bought, but excited much indignation in many minds, being deemed a betrayal of the confidence on which freedom of social intercourse is based. Mr. Medwyn was roughly handled by the critics, in reply to whom a defence was published in 1825 under the title of "Captain Medwyn vindicated from the calumnies of the Reviewers." In 1834 he published a useful and popular book, "The Angler in Wales," 2 vols., and in 1842 a novel, "Lady Singleton," 2 vols. "The Shelley Papers: Memoirs of Percy Bysshe Shelley," which he published in 1847, hardly do justice to a subject so difficult as the character of that great, yet eccentric poet. Captain Medwyn is very bitter in his attack upon Shelley's assailants, but does not succeed in explaining the inconsistencies of his unhappy life.—R. H.
MEERMAN, Gerard, pensionary of Rotterdam was born at Leyden in 1722, and died in 1771. His principal professional work was a "Thesaurus Juris Civilis," in seven volumes, to which an eighth was afterwards added by his son. He wrote also "Origines Typographiæ," in which he endeavoured to prove that Haarlem was the birthplace of the art of printing.—W. B.
MEERMAN, John, son of the preceding, born in 1753; died in 1815. He wrote a "History of William Count of Holland;" a "Historical Account of the Prussian, Austrian, and Sicilian Monarchies;" a "Historical Account of the North and Northeast of Europe;" a poem entitled "Montmartre," and a translation of Klopstock's Messiah.—W. B.
MEGASTHENES, flourished about 300 b.c., author of a work much quoted by the ancients, containing the knowledge of India he acquired when sent on an embassy by Seleucus Nicator, king of Syria, to Sandracottus, king of the Prasii, whose capital, Palibrotha, was situate on the Ganges.
MEHEMET ALI, Viceroy of Egypt, one of the greatest men whom the East has produced in modern times, was born at Cavalla in Roumelia, in 1769, the birth-year of Napoleon and of Wellington. His father, a Roumeliot of Turkish origin, held a small official position in his native place; and early left an orphan, Mehemet was adopted by an officer of janissaries commanding at Pravusta. At fourteen he did good service to his patron by coercing into submission a village-population which refused payment of taxes, and he was rewarded by a commission in the militia and a marriage which brought him a little money. A connection which he formed with a French merchant led him into commercial speculation (a taste for which he ever afterwards retained), and increased his slender fortune. Sent by his early patron in virtual command of a small detachment of soldiers from Pravusta to join the Turkish forces in Egypt, then occupied by the French (1800), he distinguished himself by his bravery; and attracting the notice of Khosrew, pacha of Egypt, he rose to be general of the Arnauts, those hardy and valiant Albanians who formed the flower of the Ottoman army. This position gave ample scope to the ambition of a man of resolution and ability, in the midst of the disorganization which the expulsion of the French bequeathed to Egypt. After a great deal of intriguing and manœuvring, by which he contrived to make the pacha and the old masters of the country, the Turkish Mamelukes, unpopular with the Egyptians, he was appointed a pacha in 1805, and became viceroy of Egypt. Six years later he resolved to rid himself of the Mamelukes, who still threatened to form an imperium in imperio, though their power had been somewhat broken at the battle of the Pyramids. He invited them to a military banquet on the 1st of March, 1811, and having made his arrangements for the coup, he treacherously massacred them en masse as they withdrew from it. Called on the same year by the sultan to reduce the Wahabees, he ultimately triumphed over them, through the skill and valour of his son, Ibrahim Pacha, (q.v.) with whose aid he organized and disciplined a formidable army on the European model. The part
