lycées and training colleges. Copper-founding is an important industry; manufactures include casks, mats, rope and utensils for the wine-trade. The town has a large trade in wine of the district, known as Mâcon. It is a railway centre of considerable importance, being the point at which the line from Paris to Marseilles is joined by that from Mont Cenis and Geneva, as well as by a branch from Moulins.
Mâcon (Matisco) was an important town of the Aedui, but under the Romans it was supplanted by Autun and Lyons. It suffered a succession of disasters at the hands of the Germans, Burgundians, Vandals, Huns, Hungarians and even of the Carolingian kings. In the feudal period it was an important countship which in 1228 was sold to the king of France, but more than once afterwards passed into the possession of the dukes of Burgundy, until the ownership of the French crown was established in the time of Louis XI. In the 16th century Mâcon became a stronghold of the Huguenots, but afterwards fell into the hands of the League, and did not yield to Henry IV. until 1594. The bishopric, created by King Childebert, was suppressed in 1790.
MACON, a city and the county-seat of Bibb county, Georgia,
U.S.A., in the central part of the state, on both sides of the
Ocmulgee river (at the head of navigation), about 90 m. S.S.E.
of Atlanta. Pop. (1900), 23,272, of whom 11,550 were negroes;
(1910 census) 40,665. Macon is, next to Atlanta, the most important
railway centre in the state, being served by the Southern,
the Central of Georgia, the Georgia, the Georgia Southern &
Florida, the Macon Dublin & Savannah, and the Macon & Birmingham
railways. It was formerly an important river port,
especially for the shipment of cotton, but lost this commercial
advantage when railway bridges made the river impassable. It is,
however, partially regaining the river trade in consequence of the
compulsory substitution of drawbridges for the stationary railway
bridges. The city is the seat of the Wesleyan female college
(1836), which claims to be the first college in the world chartered
to grant academic degrees to women; Mercer University (Baptist),
which was established in 1833 as Mercer Institute at Penfield,
became a university in 1837, was removed to Macon in 1871, and
controls Hearn Academy (1839) at Cave Spring and Gibson
Mercer Academy (1903) at Bowman; the state academy for the
blind (1852), St Stanislaus’ College (Jesuit), and Mt de Sales
Academy (Roman Catholic) for women. There are four orphan
asylums for whites and two for negroes, supported chiefly by
the Protestant Episcopal and Methodist Churches, and a public
hospital. Immediately east of Macon are two large Indian
mounds, and there is a third mound 9 m. south of the city.
Situated in the heart of the “Cotton Belt,” Macon has a large
and lucrative trade; it is one of the most important inland cotton
markets of the United States, its annual receipts averaging about
250,000 bales. The city’s factory products in 1905 were valued
at $7,297,347 (33.8% more than in 1900). In the vicinity are
large beds of kaolin, 30 m. wide, reaching nearly across the state,
and frequently 35 to 70 ft. in depth. Macon is near the fruit-growing
region of Georgia, and large quantities of peaches and
of garden products are annually shipped from the city.
Macon (named in honour of Nathaniel Macon) was surveyed in 1823 by order of the Georgia legislature for the county-seat of Bibb county, and received its first charter in 1824. It soon became the centre of trade for Middle Georgia; in 1833 a steamboat line to Darien was opened, and in the following year 69,000 bales of cotton were shipped by this route. During the Civil War the city was a centre for Confederate commissary supplies and the seat of a Treasury depository. In July 1864 General George Stoneman (1822–1894) with 500 men was captured near the city by the Confederate general, Howell Cobb. Macon was finally occupied by Federal troops under General James H. Wilson (b. 1837) on the 20th of April 1865. In 1900–1910 the area of the city was increased by the annexation of several suburbs.
MACPHERSON, SIR DAVID LEWIS (1818–1896), Canadian
financier and politician, was born at Castle Leathers, near Inverness,
Scotland, on the 12th of September 1818. In 1835 he
emigrated to Canada, settling in Montreal, where he built up a
large fortune by “forwarding” merchandise. In 1853 he removed
to Toronto, and in the same year obtained the contract
for building a line of railway from Toronto to Sarnia, a project
from which sprang the Grand Trunk railway, in the construction
of which line he greatly increased his wealth. In 1864 he
was elected to the Canadian parliament as member of the Legislative
Council for Saugeen, and on the formation of the Dominion,
in 1867, was nominated to the Senate. In the following years
he published a number of pamphlets on economic subjects, of
which the best-known is Banking and Currency (1869). In 1880
he was appointed Speaker of the Senate, and from October 1883
till 1885 was minister of the interior in the Conservative cabinet.
In 1884 he was knighted by Queen Victoria. He died on the 16th
of August 1896.
MACPHERSON, JAMES (1736–1796), Scottish “translator” of the Ossianic poems, was born at Ruthven in the parish of Kingussie, Inverness, on the 27th of October 1736. He was sent in 1753 to King’s College, Aberdeen, removing two years later to Marischal College. He also studied at Edinburgh, but took no degree. He is said to have written over 4000 lines of verse while a student, but though some of this was published, notably The Highlander (1758), he afterwards tried to suppress it. On leaving college he taught in the school of his native place. At Moffat he met John Home, the author of Douglas, for whom he recited some Gaelic verses from memory. He also showed him MSS. of Gaelic poetry, supposed to have been picked up in the Highlands, and, encouraged by Home and others, he produced a number of pieces translated from the Gaelic, which he was induced to publish at Edinburgh in 1760 as Fragments of Ancient Poetry collected in the Highlands of Scotland. Dr Hugh Blair, who was a firm believer in the authenticity of the poems, got up a subscription to allow Macpherson to pursue his Gaelic researches. In the autumn he set out to visit western Inverness, the islands of Skye, North and South Uist and Benbecula. He obtained MSS. which he translated with the assistance of Captain Morrison and the Rev. A. Gallie. Later in the year he made an expedition to Mull, when he obtained other MSS. In 1761 he announced the discovery of an epic on the subject of Fingal, and in December he published Fingal, an Ancient Epic Poem in Six Books, together with Several Other Poems composed by Ossian, the Son of Fingal, translated from the Gaelic Language, written in the musical measured prose of which he had made use in his earlier volume. Temora followed in 1763, and a collected edition, The Works of Ossian, in 1765.
The genuineness of these so-called translations from the works of a 3rd-century bard was immediately challenged in England, and Dr Johnson, after some local investigation, asserted (Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, 1775) that Macpherson had only found fragments of ancient poems and stories, which he had woven into a romance of his own composition. Macpherson is said to have sent Johnson a challenge, to which Johnson replied that he was not to be deterred from detecting what he thought a cheat by the menaces of a ruffian. Macpherson never produced his originals, which he refused to publish on the ground of the expense. In 1764 he was made secretary to General Johnstone at Pensacola, West Florida, and when he returned, two years later, to England, after a quarrel with Johnstone, he was allowed to retain his salary as a pension. He occupied himself with writing several historical works, the most important of which was Original Papers, containing the Secret History of Great Britain from the Restoration to the Accession of the House of Hanover; to which are prefixed Extracts from the Life of James II., as written by himself (1775). He enjoyed a salary for defending the policy of Lord North’s government, and held the lucrative post of London agent to Mahommed Ali, nabob of Arcot. He entered parliament in 1780, and continued to sit until his death. In his later years he bought an estate, to which he gave the name of Belville, in his native county of Inverness, where he died on the 17th of February 1796.
After Macpherson’s death, Malcolm Laing, in an appendix to his History of Scotland (1800), propounded the extreme view that
