generally regarded as his masterpiece in fresco, as his "Nativity" in the royal collection, Madrid, is considered his finest work in oil. The climate of Spain not agreeing with him, Mengs obtained in 1775, with some difficulty, the king's permission to return to Rome. But his health was greatly enfeebled, and from the death in 1778 of his wife, to whom he was greatly attached, he rapidly sunk. He died on the 29th of June, 1779. Mengs was in his lifetime looked upon as the greatest painter and art critic of his age. Winckelmann not only places him far above all his contemporaries, but doubts whether so great a painter is likely ever again to arise. Lanzi calls him "the unrivalled," follows Boni in comparing him to Protogenes, and seems to hesitate about placing him below Raphael; while by others he is placed above the great Italian master. Over his contemporaries his influence was supreme, and the historical and religious art of every country was undoubtedly for many years greatly influenced by his example and his theories. Now, perhaps, it is everywhere acknowledged that his influence was injurious, and recent art is almost everywhere a reaction from his teaching. Mengs' system was pure eclecticism. He taught that the perfection of art would be a combination of the design of Raphael, the grace of Correggio, and the colour of Titian. In his own pictures he endeavoured to embody these qualities, and his contemporaries believed that he had succeeded. But his success is that of a pedagogue. You can trace his purpose and may admit his correctness; but there is no individuality, and none of the living energy of genius. A certain amount of invention and skilful adaptation are easily recognized; but there is no imagination, no active spontaneity of purpose. For form he went beyond Raphael, seeking to reproduce in his pictures the sculpturesque ideal of the Greeks; but he had in truth as little genuine feeling for Greek form as he had for Venetian colour. Mengs wrote many treatises on art, some of which were published during his life, and the whole in a collected form after his death. They are often obscurely written, but they contain much valuable matter; and however erroneous may be his theories, his writings are always worthy of consideration as the deliberate opinions of a thoroughly accomplished painter who had reflected much on the art to which his whole life was dedicated. When published they were received as oracular, and were translated into most European languages.—J. T—e.
MENG-TSEU. See Mencius.
MENINSKI, Francis Meognien, was born in Lorraine about 1623, and studied at Rome. In 1652 he became interpreter to the Polish embassy at Constantinople; on which appointment he altered his family name of Menin by the addition of the Polish termination. After a prosperous and honourable course of service in various official capacities, he died in 1698. His great work is his "Thesaurus Linguarum Orientalium," published at Vienna in 4 vols., folio, 1680.—W. J. P.
MENIPPUS, a cynic philosopher, was born at Gadara in Coele-Syria; but the year of his birth and death are alike unknown. It is probable that he lived about sixty years b.c. He amassed great riches as a usurer, but lost them by fraud, and committed suicide. He was a hearer of Diogenes, who says that he wrote nothing serious, but that his works were full of jests, like those of Meleager his contemporary. Philosophers were the chief objects of his ridicule. His books are entirely lost. Diogenes also states that they were thirteen in number. Varro's Saturæ Menippeæ were imitations.—S. D.
MENNAIS. See Lamennais.
MENNES or MENNIS, Sir John, was born at Sandwich, Kent, in 1598, and educated at Corpus Christi, Oxford. During the civil war he was a devoted loyalist, and was implicated in the Kentish insurrection of 1648. On the Restoration he became governor of Dover castle and chief comptroller of the navy, retaining the latter office until his death, which occurred in 1671. He wrote many poems, which are chiefly contained in a volume called "Musarum Deliciæ, or the Muses' Recreations," 1651. The only poem of his that is known to general readers, is the sarcastic ballad in which he mocks the alleged cowardice of Sir John Suckling—"Sir John got him an ambling nag."—W. J. P.
MENNO, Simon, the leader of the Netherlands baptists of the sixteenth century, was born in the village of Witmarsum in Friesland, in or about the year 1498. Nothing is known of his early life or the education which he received farther than that he was brought up in the superstitions of the church of Rome, and was trained to be a parish priest. Probably in 1524 he was appointed to his first charge, in which his life and character were, by his own confession, no better than those of other ignorant country priests. But in 1531 his attention was drawn to the teaching of the anabaptists, by the violent proceedings of that sect at Munster and other places; and in 1535, having learned to distinguish between the fanatical principles of John of Leyden and his followers, and the more sober views which had been long held by the anabaptists of the Netherlands—a sect much older than the Lutheran reformation—he went over cordially to the latter, and published a severe writing against the errors and excesses of the Munster anabaptists In the same year his spiritual character had so far ripened that he was prepared to become a sufferer for the evangelical faith; and renouncing for ever the communion of Rome, he devoted the rest of his life to the propagation of his new principles. To the scattered and persecuted societies of that persuasion he became a signal benefactor, not only adding greatly to their number by the success of the preaching in Holland, Brabant, North Germany, and the German countries of the Lower Rhine—a preaching everywhere carried on under the cross of persecution—but also settling their forms of worship, organizing their church-order, and giving a fixed expression to their dogmatical and ecclesiastical views. He was not properly the father of the sect, because, as already stated, it had existed in an imperfect and unorganized condition long before his time; but he may fairly claim to be the founder of its settled constitution, usages, and order, and the chief teacher and apostle of its peculiar doctrines. These doctrines differed from those of the Lutheran and Helvetic reformations, chiefly in the matter of church discipline. Menno and his followers aimed at great stringency of discipline; they regarded the power of excommunication as the very "jewel" of the christian church, and. they sought to realize in their communities the ideal of a church "without spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing." But on such a subject there was room even among them for a narrower and a more liberal way of thinking; and Menno's later life was much harassed by divisions arising from this cause. He survived till 1561. His Writings were collected after his death. The best and completest edition is that of 1681, "Opera omnia Theologica," in one small folio. His memory is still held in high respect in Holland and Germany; and the Mennonites ought always to be carefully distinguished from the fanatical anabaptists of the sixteenth century.—P. L.
MENOU, Jacques Francois, Baron de, was born at Boussay de Loches in Touraine in 1750. In 1793 he commanded against the royalists in La Vendée, but showed too much moderation to retain the favour of Robespierre. At the head of the national guard of Paris he suppressed the insurrection of May, 1795. In 1798 he accompanied Bonaparte to Egypt, and after his chief's return he became a Mahometan, submitting to all the rites of Islamism, in order that he might many the daughter of a rich bath-keeper at Rosetta. Abdallah Jacques Menou, as he now called himself, commanded the French army at the battle of Aboukir. Defeated by Sir Ralph Abercromby, and driven into Alexandria, he was obliged to capitulate, 1801. Bonaparte made him governor of Piedmont, and subsequently of Venice, where he died, 13th August, 1810.—W. J. P.
MENSCHIKOFF, Alexander Danilovitch, a celebrated personage in the annals of Russia, was born in 1670, of humble parentage, and at the age of thirteen gained his livelihood by hawking pies in Moscow. He subsequently entered the service of Le Fort, Peter the Great's favourite counsellor, and was admitted into the small band of soldiers with which the young czar was trained in the German drill. Peter, pleased with his good looks and activity, made the youth his orderly, and retained him about his person in his various expeditions. At the frightful execution of the revolted Strelitzi, Menschikoff was ordered to shoot the surviving victims. After the death of Le Fort in 1699, his favour with the czar increased, although he had occasionally to feel the weight of the monarch's cudgel on his shoulders. In the war with Charles XII. he did good service, and showed no mean military capacity. Much of the glory of the victory at Poltava is due to him. Dignities and wealth were showered upon him. The Emperor Joseph made him a prince of the holy Roman empire. Menschikoff's military career terminated with the campaign in Pomerania in 1713, when he took Stettin. In the exercise of his many civil functions he gave occasion to his rivals to accuse him of peculation, and Peter, in a moment of anger, had him tried by a tribunal composed of his enemies, who condemned him to death. The czar was satisfied, how-
