the drawing-room to make her preparations for the visit (it being, I
suppose, a little before seven in the evening), when a servant arrived
with an urgent summons. As we drove up to the porch of my uncle's house,
the maids ran, crying, out into the darkness to meet us, and we knew
that all was over. We found him in the library, seated in his easy
chair, and dressed as usual; with his book on the table beside him,
still open at the same page. He had told his butler that he should go to
bed early, as he was very tired. The man proposed his lying on the sofa.
He rose as if to move, sat down again, and ceased to breathe. He died as
he had always wished to die--without pain; without any formal farewell;
preceding to the grave all whom he loved; and leaving behind him a great
and honorable name, and the memory of a life every action of which was
clear and transparent as one of his own sentences.--_G. Otto Trevelyan._
MACCAIL (his given name has not been preserved, a Scots Covenanter who
expired under torture in the time of Charles II. of England), 1668. He
died in an ecstasy of joy, and his last words were: "_Farewell sun, moon
and stars; farewell, world and time; farewell, weak and frail body;
welcome, eternity; welcome, angels and saints; welcome, Saviour of the
world; welcome, God, the Judge of all._"
MACHIAVELLI, or MACCHIAVELLI, sometimes MACHIAVEL (Nicholas, a
celebrated atheist, and the author of "The Prince"), 1469-1530. "_I
desire to go to hell, and not to heaven. In the former place I shall
enjoy the company of popes, kings, and princes, while in the latter are
only beggars, monks, hermits, and apostles._"
MACKINTOSH (Sir James, philosopher and politician), 1765-1832.
"_Happy!_"
MALHERBE (Francois de, the "Father of French lyric poetry"), 1555-1628.
"_Hold your tongue; your wretched style only makes me out of conceit
with them_," to his confessor, who was presenting the joys of heaven in
vulgar and trite phrases.
His ruling passion was purity of diction. He would destroy a quire of
paper in composing a single stanza; and it is said that during the
twenty-five most prolific years of his life he made only about
thirty-three verses a year.
MARAT (Jean Paul, court-physician, author of several scientific works,
and later the main promoter of the Reign of Terror in France),
1743-1793. "_Help, my dear--help!_" As Marat uttered these words he fell
at the feet of Charlotte Corday, and immediately expired.
Charlotte, motionless, and as if petrified at her crime, was standing
behind the window curtain. The transparent material allowed her form to
be easily distinguished. Laurent, taking up a chair, struck her a clumsy
blow on the head, which knocked her to the floor, where Marat's mistress
trampled her under foot in her rage. At the noise that ensued, and the
cries of the two women, the occupants of the house hastened thither,
neighbors and persons passing in the streets ascended the staircase and
filled the room, the courtyard, and very speedily the whole quarter,
demanding, with fierce exclamations, that they would throw the assassin
out to them, that they might avenge the dead--yet still warm--body of
the people's idol. Soldiers and national guards entered, and order was,
in some measure, re-established. Surgeons arrived, and endeavored to
stanch the wound. The reddened water gave to the sanguinary democrat the
appearance of having died in a bath of blood.--_Larmartine._
The veneration for the monster Marat knew no bounds. Hymns were written
in his honor. On divers stamps he was placed by the side of Christ. Men
swore by the sacred heart of Marat. The new worship was complete, it had
prostitutes for goddesses, and a man of violence and blood for a martyr
and a saint. All it yet lacked was to engage in persecution; and it
failed not in this worthy business.--_De Pressense._
MARCUS (of Arethusa), being hung up in a basket smeared with honey, to
be stung to death by bees, exclaimed,[30] "_How am I advanced, despising
you that are upon the earth!_"
[30] To some of the most distinguished of our race death has come in
the strangest possible way, and so grotesquely as to subtract
greatly from the dignity of the sorrow it must certainly have
occasioned. AEschylus, whose seventy tragedies, to say nothing of his
many satiric dramas, have given their author an immortal name, was
killed by the fall of a tortoise on his bald head from the talons of
an eagle high in the air above him.
There was a singular propriety in the death of Anacreon by choking
at a grape stone or a dried grape. The poet whose sweetest and most
enticing lines celebrate wine and love came to his death at the ripe
age of eighty-five from the fruit of the vine. Agathocles, the
tyrant of Syracuse, was given by the treacherous Maenon a poisoned
toothpick which soon rendered his mouth incurably gangrened, and
deprived him of the power of speech. While in this miserable and
helpless condition he was stretched upon the funeral pile and burned
alive.
Fabius, the Roman praetor, died from the same cause that occasioned
the death of Anacreon. A single goat hair in the milk he was
drinking, lodged in his trachea and choked him. Chalchas, the
soothsayer, outlived the time predicted for his death, which struck
him as so comical that he burst into a fit of most immoderate
laughter from which he died. Thus also died the famous Marquette,
who was convulsed with a fatal merriment on seeing a monkey trying
to pull on a pair of boots. Philomenes was seized with an equally
disastrous merriment when he came suddenly upon an ass that was
devouring with greediness the choice figs that had been prepared for
his own desert.
Laughter killed the great Zeuxis, of whom Pliny relates the story of
a trial of skill with the painter Parrhasius. The former painted a
bunch of grapes that were so natural a bird endeavored to eat the
fruit. Charles VIII., while gallantly conducting his queen into the
tennis court, struck his head against the lintel and died soon after
from the accident.
Frederick Lewis, Prince of Wales, was struck by a cricket ball,
which caused his death. A pig occasioned the death of Louis VI., the
creature ran under the monarch's horse causing it to stumble. But of
all strange deaths that of Itadach is the strangest. He expired from
thirst while toiling in the harvest field, because, in obedience to
the rule of St. Patrick, he would not drink "a drop of anything."
MARGARET (of Scotland, wife of Louis XI. of France), 1420-1445. "_Fi de
la vie! qu'on ne m'en parle plus._"
Margaret was devoted to literature, and, while she lived, patronized men
of learning and genius. Her admiration for the poet Alain Chartier is
said to have induced her to kiss his lips as he sat asleep one day in a
chair. Her attendants being astonished at this act of condescension, the
princess replied that "she did not kiss the man, but the lips which had
given utterance to so many exquisite thoughts." She died at the age of
twenty-five, before her husband had ascended the throne.
_Mrs. Hale's "Sketches of Distinguished Women."_
MARGARET (of Valois, Queen of Navarre and sister of Francis I., of
France), 1492-1549. "_Farewell, and remember me._" Some say, upon what
authority I do not know, that the queen's last words were: "I never
departed from the true church."
She inclined to the Protestant faith, but Roman Catholic writers assert
that before her death she acknowledged her religious errors, and De
Remond even goes so far as to imply that she denied on her death-bed
having ever swerved from the standard of Roman authority.--_Memoir of
Margaret, attached to the English translation of her Heptameron._
She was a brilliant writer in both prose and verse, and was called the
"Tenth Muse." Several authors speak of her as "Margaret the Pearl,
surpassing all the pearls of the Orient." She composed a religious work
called "Miroir de l'ame Pecheresse," which was condemned by the
Sorbonne, on the ground that it inclined to Protestant doctrines. She
also wrote the "Heptameron, or Novels of the Queen of Navarre."
MARIE ANTOINETTE (Marie Antoinette Josephine Jeanne de Lorraine,
daughter of Francis I., Emperor of Germany, and Maria Theresa, and wife
of Louis XVI., of France; she was guillotined October 16, 1793),
1755-1793. "_Farewell, my children, forever. I go to your father._"
The king perished on the scaffold January 21, 1793. The queen had four
children, Marie Therese Charlotte, who married the oldest son of Charles
X.; the dauphin, Louis, born in 1781 and died in 1789; Charles Louis,
who died a victim to the brutality of the cobbler Simon; and a daughter
who died in infancy.
MARTINEAU (Harriet, English author, and translator of "The Positive
Philosophy of Auguste Comte"), 1802-1876. "_I have had a noble share of
life, and I do not ask for any other life. I see no reason why the
existence of Harriet Martineau should be perpetuated._"
During the last one-and-twenty years of her life, death was the idea
most familiar and most welcome. It was spoken of and provided for with
an easy freedom that I never saw approached in any other home, yet she
never expressed a wish respecting a place of burial. But a few days
before her death, when asked if she would be laid in the burial-place of
her family, she assented; and she lies with her kindred, in the old
cemetery at Birmingham.[31]
_Maria Weston Chapman._
[31] Her Will, by which her personalty, sworn under L10,000, is
suitably divided among her brothers and sisters, an old servant, and
a few friends, contains one peculiar provision which indicates the
desire of the testatrix, even when dead, to benefit the living. "It
is my desire," she says, "from an interest in the progress of
scientific investigation, that my Skull should be given to Henry
George Atkinson, of Upper Gloucester Place, London, and also my
Brain, if my death should take place within such distance of his
then present abode, as to enable him to have it for the purposes of
scientific observation." By the second codicil, dated October 5th,
1872, this direction is revoked; "but," the codicil proceeds, "I
wish to leave it on record that this alteration in my testamentary
directions is not caused by any change of opinion as to the
importance of scientific observation on such subjects, but is made
in consequence merely of a change of circumstances in my individual
case." The "circumstances" alluded to were doubtless these. When the
removal of Miss Martineau to London took place, the "Burke and Hare"
murders, and "body-snatching" generally, were the special horrors of
the day. The only authorized supply of "subjects" for dissection was
from the gallows; and philanthropic persons sought by selling the
reversion of their bodies (a transaction which, legally, does not
hold good), or like Jeremy Bentham, leaving them to some
institution, or medical expert, by a special bequest (also
nugatory), to dissolve the association of disgrace with the
necessary procedure of dissection. The difficulty was, in great
measure, relieved by the passing of Mr. Warburton's Bill; and hence
the necessity for such an arrangement as that made by Miss Martineau
ceased to exist. The singular provision, had however, become known;
and shortly after the execution of the document, the testatrix
received a letter from the celebrated aurist, Mr. Toynbee, asking
her point-blank to bequeath him a "legacy of her ears." She had
suffered from deafness all her life; a large amount of mischief and
misery was caused by the ignorance of surgeons with regard to the
auditory apparatus; and this ignorance could only be removed by such
means as he proposed. The lady to whom this strange request was
made, says with grim humour, that she felt "rather amused when she
caught herself in a feeling of shame, as it were, at having only one
pair of ears,--at having no duplicate for Mr. Toynbee, after having
disposed otherwise of her skull." She, however, told him how the
matter actually stood; and a meeting took place between the doctor
and the legatee, "to ascertain whether one head could, in any way,
be made to answer both their objects."
An autopsy of her body was eventually made by Dr. T. M. Greenhow, of
Leeds; a full detail of the appearances at which will be found in
the _British Medical Journal_, for April 14th, 1877, p.
449.--_William Bates in "The Maclise Portrait Gallery._"
MARY (Queen of Scots), 1542-1587. "_O Lord, into Thy hands I commend my
spirit._"
The first blow of the executioner inflicted a ghastly wound on the
lower part of the skull. Not a scream nor groan, not a sigh escaped her,
but the convulsion of her features showed the horrible suffering caused
by the wound. The eye-witness of the execution, whose account is
published, thus relates this incident: "Thereupon the headsman brought
down his axe, but missing the proper place, gave her a horrible blow
upon the upper extremity of the neck; but, with unexampled fortitude,
she remained perfectly still, and did not even heave a sigh. At the
second stroke the neck was severed and the head held up to the gaze of
bystanders with 'God save Queen Elizabeth!'"--_Meline's "Mary Queen of
Scots."_
When the psalm was finished she felt for the block, and laying down her
head muttered: "In manus, Domine, tuas commendo animam meam." The hard
wood seemed to hurt her, for she placed her hands under her neck. The
executioners gently removed them lest they should deaden the blow, and
then one of them, holding her slightly, the other raised the axe and
struck. The scene had been too trying even for the practised headsman of
the Tower. His arm wandered. The blow fell on the knot of the
handkerchief and scarcely broke the skin. She neither spoke nor moved.
He struck again, this time effectively. The head hung by a shred of
skin, which he divided without withdrawing the axe, and at once a
metamorphosis was witnessed strange as was ever wrought by wand of
fabled enchanter. The coif fell off and the false plaits; the labored
illusion vanished; the lady who had knelt before the block was in the
maturity of grace and loveliness. The executioner, when he raised the
head as usual to show it to the crowd, exposed the withered features of
a grizzled, wrinkled old woman.
_Froude's "History of England."_
MARY (Countess of Warwick),--1678. "_Well, ladies, if I were one hour in
heaven, I would not be again with you, as much as I love you._"
She is the author of the famous question: "Why are we so fond of that
life which begins with a cry, and ends with a groan?"
MARY I. (Queen of England, commonly called "Bloody Queen Mary" on
account of her violent and cruel persecution of the Protestants),
1517-1558. "_After I am dead, you will find Calais written upon my
heart._"
The loss of Calais just before her death affected her deeply.
Of the first Mary, long and too deservedly known by the title of "Bloody
Mary," we confess we can never think without commiseration. Unamiable
she certainly was, and deplorably bigoted. She sent two hundred and
eighty-four people to the stake during a short reign of five years and
four months; which, upon an average, is upwards of four a week! She was
withal plain, petty of stature, ill-colored, and fierce-eyed, with a
voice almost as deep as a man's; had a bad blood; and ended with having
nobody to love her, not even the bigots in whose cause she lost the love
of her people.
_Leigh Hunt: "Men, Women and Books."_
MARY II. (Queen of England and wife of William III.), 1662-1694. "_My
Lord, why do you not go on? I am not afraid to die._" Said to Archbishop
Tillotson who, reading to her, when she was upon her death-bed, the
commendatory prayer in the office for the sick, was so overcome by grief
that he was compelled to pause.
MASANIELLO (Tommaso Aniello, the fisherman of Amalfi, who headed the
revolt which occurred in Naples in 1647 against the Spanish viceroy, the
Duke of Arcos. His victory lasted nine days, during which time he had
one hundred and fifty thousand men under arms and at his command. He was
murdered by his own soldiers), 1623-1646. "_Ungrateful traitors!_" said
to the assassins.
MATHER (Cotton), 1633-1728. "_I am going where all tears will be wiped
from my eyes_," to his wife, who wiped his eyes with her handkerchief.
Just before this he exclaimed: "Is this dying? Is this all? Is this all
that I feared when I prayed against a hard death? Oh! I can bear this! I
can bear it! I can bear it!"
He was a masterful man, abundant in labors, the organizer of over twenty
charitable societies, a leader of all movements in church and state, an
omnivorous reader, and the author of 382 separate publications, besides
his enormous "Biblia Americana," which remains to this day in
manuscript. He surmounted the prejudices of his age in defending
inoculation, but not with regard to witchcraft and some other matters.
His character was marred by certain restless infirmities; "it was his
unconcealed grief that he was never elected to preside over Harvard."
His greatest work, "Magnalia Christi Americana," 1702, was reprinted in
two volumes, with memoir, and translations of the numerous Hebrew,
Greek, and Latin quotations, Hartford, 1855.
_Biographical Dictionary._
MATHER (Increase, distinguished New England divine), 1639-1723. "_Be
fruitful._"
MATHER (Richard, celebrated Congregational minister in Dorchester, Mass.
He was a voluminous author), 1596-1669. "_Far from well, yet far better
than mine iniquities deserve_," in response to a question about his
health.
MATHEWS (Charles, English Comedian), 1776-1836. "_I am ready._"
MAURICE (John Frederick Denison, English divine and leader of the Broad
Church party), 1805-1872. "_The knowledge of the love of God--the
blessing of God Almighty, the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost be
amongst you--amongst us--and remain with us forever._"
During the early days of his last sickness he suffered greatly in mind,
but as the end approached the sky cleared as after a shower, and his
spirit passed away under the bright rainbow of hope.
MAZARIN (Jules, cardinal and chief minister of France during the
minority of Louis XIV.), 1602-1661. "_O, my poor soul, what is to become
of thee? Whither wilt thou go?_"
MAZARIN (Hortense Mancini, sister of the celebrated cardinal),
1647-1699. "_Debt!_"
She was so heavily in debt at the time of her death that her body was
seized by her creditors.
MAXIMILIAN I. (Emperor of Germany), 1459-1519. His last words are not
recorded, but just before his death he left directions that as soon as
he was dead all his hair should be plucked out of his body, all his
teeth should be drawn, and that both his teeth and his hair should be
burned. His body was to be scourged, and then wrapped in quicklime,
after which, clad in silk and damask, it was to be buried under the high
altar in such position that the priest who said mass should always rest
his feet above the emperor's breast. His body is entombed in Wienerisch
Neustadt under the altar as he directed.
MAXIMILIAN (Ferdinand Joseph, Emperor of Mexico and Archduke of
Austria), 1832-1867. "_Lotte._" His last word would seem to indicate
that he was thinking of his wife, the unfortunate Carlotta, daughter of
Leopold, King of Belgium.
In 1865 Maximilian was tempted by Napoleon III. to act the part of
Emperor of Mexico, then partly governed by the republican President
Juarez and partly conquered by the French. He arrived at the Mexican
capital in June 1864. He issued a decree that all who adhered to the
republic or resisted his authority should be shot. Many prisoners,
including General Orteaga, accordingly suffered death by his order.
According to the "New York Evening Post" of July 1st, 1867, he ordered
the enslavement of the whole laboring population of Mexico. The United
States refused to recognize him as Emperor, and required Napoleon to
withdraw his army. Maximilian was embarrassed by want of money, and
offended the clerical party (which had favored him) by refusing to
restore the property of the Church, which had been confiscated by the
Liberals. The French troops departed about the end of 1866, after which
the republicans gained several victories and the empire quickly
collapsed. Maximilian was captured at Queretaro, and shot on the 19th of
June 1867.--_Lippincott._
MELANCHTHON (Philip. His original German name was Schwarzerdt, which he
Grecized into Melanchthon, or, as he sometimes spelled it Melanthon.
Both names denote "black earth"), 1497-1568. "_Nothing else but
heaven_," in answer to a friend who enquired if he wanted anything
further.
MERICOURT (Anne Joseph Theroigne de, the famous "Goddess of
Reason"[32]), 1760-1817. This woman's last words were partly reminiscent
and partly the incoherent ravings of a disordered brain. The old scenes
rose before her with startling vividness.
"Died, within these few days, in the hospital of pauper lunatics of
Saltpetriere, where she had lived unpitied and unknown for many years,
the famous Theroigne de Mericourt (the Goddess of Reason), the most
remarkable of the heroines of the revolution."--_A Paris paper of August
1, 1817._
[32] Mlle. Maillard, the actress, is mentioned by Lamartine as one
of the Goddesses, who was compelled to play the part much against
her will. "Chaumette, assisted by Lais, an actor of the Opera, had
arranged the fete of December 20, 1793. Mademoiselle Maillard, an
actress, brilliant with youth and talents, played the part of the
goddess. She was borne in a palanquin, the canopy of which was
formed of oak branches. Women in white, with tri-colored sashes,
preceded her. Attired with theatrical buskins, a Phrygian cap and a
blue chlamys over a transparent tunic, she was taken to the foot of
the altar and seated there. Behind her burnt an immense torch,
symbolizing 'the flame of philosophy,' the true light of the world.
Chaumette, taking a censer in his hands, fell on his knees to the
goddess, and offered incense, and the whole concluded with dancing
and song."--_Lamartine._
There was also a Goddess of Liberty. The wife of Momoro went
attended by the municipal officers, national guards and troops of
ballet girls to the cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris. Gobet (the
archbishop of Paris), and nearly all the bishops, vicars, canons,
priests, and cures of Paris stripped themselves of their canonicals,
donned the red nightcap, and joined in this blasphemous mockery.
METASTASIO (Pietro Bonaventura, originally named Trapassi, but changed
to Metastasio, "a changing," in allusion to his adoption by the
celebrated jurist Gravina, from whom he received a large property),
1698-1782. After he had received the sacrament, and a few minutes before
his death, the poet uttered with unusual enthusiasm the following
beautiful stanzas:
"_T'offro il tuo proprio Figlio,
Che gia d'amore in pegno,
Racchiuso in picciol segno
Si volle a noi donar.
A lui rivolgi il ciglio.
Guardo chi t'offro, e poi
Lasci, Signor, se vuoi,
Lascia di perdonar._"
I offer to Thee, O Lord, Thy own Son, who already has given the
pledge of love, inclosed in this thin emblem; turn on Him thine
eyes; oh! behold whom I offer to Thee and then desist, O Lord! if
Thou canst desist from mercy.
MIRABEAU (Honore Gabriel Riquetti, Comte de), 1749-1791. "_When nature
has abandoned an unhappy victim, when a miracle only can save his life,
how can you have the barbarity to let him expire on the wheel?_" spoken
in support of a request for laudanum.
At daybreak he said to Cabanis:--"My friend I shall die to-day. When one
is in this situation, there remains but one thing more to do, and that
is to perfume me, to crown me with flowers, to environ me with music, so
that I may enter sweetly into that slumber wherefrom there is no
awaking."[33]
Later in the day he uttered these memorable words:--"I carry in my
heart the dirge of the monarchy, the ruins whereof will now be the prey
of the factions."