Ancient Society, or Researches in the Lines of Human Progress from Savagery, through Barbarism, to Civilization, in which he divided the progress of culture into seven stages— “lower savagery,” “middle savagery,” “upper savagery,” “lower barbarism,” “middle barbarism” and “upper barbarism,” and “civilization.” The book was in four parts, dealing with (1) the growth of intelligence through inventions and discoveries; (2) the growth of the idea of government; (3) the growth of the idea of the family; and (4) the growth of the idea of property. Morgan was a member of the New York assembly in 1861 and of the New York senate in 1868–1869. In 1880 he was president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He died in Rochester, New York, on the 17th of December 1881. In addition to the works above mentioned and many magazine articles, he published The American Beaver and his Works (1868) and Houses and House-life of the American Aborigines (1881).
MORGAN, SYDNEY, Lady (c. 1783–1859), British authoress,
daughter of Robert Owenson, an Irish actor, was born in 1783
in Dublin. She was one of the most vivid and hotly discussed
literary figures of her generation. She began her career with
a precocious volume of poems. She collected Irish tunes, for
which she composed the words, thus setting a fashion adopted
with signal success by Tom Moore. Her St Clair (1804), a novel
of ill-judged marriage, ill-starred love, and impassioned nature-worship,
in which the influence of Goethe and Rousseau was
apparent, at once attracted attention. Another novel, The
Novice of St Dominick (1806), was also praised for its qualities of
imagination and description. But the book which made her
reputation and brought her name into warm controversy was
The Wild Irish Girl (1806), in which she appeared as the ardent
champion of her native country, a politician rather than a
novelist, extolling the beauty of Irish scenery, the richness of
the natural wealth of Ireland, and the noble traditions of its
early history. She was known in Catholic and Liberal circles
by the name of her heroine “Glorvina.” Patriotic Sketches and
Metrical Fragments followed in 1807. Miss Owenson entered
the household of the marquess of Abercorn, and in 1812, persuaded
by Lady Abercorn, she married the surgeon to the
household, Thomas Charles Morgan, afterwards knighted; but
books still continued to flow from her facile pen. In 1814 she
produced her best novel, O’Donnell. She was at her best
in her descriptions of the poorer classes, of whom she had a
thorough knowledge. Her elaborate study (1817) of France
under the Bourbon restoration was attacked with outrageous
fury in the Quarterly, the authoress being accused of Jacobinism,
falsehood, licentiousness and impiety. She took her
revenge indirectly in the novel of Florence Macarthy (1818),
in which a Quarterly reviewer, Con Crawley, is insulted with
supreme feminine ingenuity. Italy, a companion work to her
France, was published in 1821; Lord Byron bears testimony to
the justness of its pictures of life. The results of Italian historical
studies were given in her Life and Times of Salvator Rosa (1823).
Then she turned again to Irish manners and politics with a
matter-of-fact book on Absenteeism (1825), and a romantic
novel, The O’Briens and the O’Flahertys (1827). From Lord
Melbourne Lady Morgan obtained a pension of £300. During
the later years of her long life she published The Book of the
Boudoir (1829), Dramatic Scenes from Real Life (1833), The
Princess (1835), Woman and her Master (1840), The Book without
a Name (1841), Passages from my Autobiography (1859). She
died on the 14th of April 1859.
Her autobiography and many interesting letters were edited with a memoir by W. Hepworth Dixon in 1862.
MORGAN, THOMAS (d. 1743), English deist, of Welsh extraction,
became an independent minister, but soon after 1720
lost his position owing to the growing unorthodoxy of his views.
He took up medicine and became a freethinker, though he
describes himself as a Christian deist. He was an energetic
controversialist. Among his works are Philosophical Principles
of Medicine (1725); Collection of Tracts (1726), essays dealing
with the Trinitarian controversy; The Moral Philosopher (1737),
a dialogue between a Christian Jew, Theophanus, and a
Christian deist, Philalethes. He died on the 14th of January 1742/3.
MORGANATIC MARRIAGE, a form of marriage properly
peculiar to the German peoples, but also found in the royal
families of other European countries. It is one in which the
contracting parties are not by birth of equal status or rank
(ebenbürtig), and under which the wife, if not ebenbürtig, does not
take the rank of her husband, and the children, whether it be
the wife or husband that is of lower rank, have no right of
succession to the dignities, fiefs or entailed property of the
parent of higher rank. This equality by birth was formerly
throughout Germany the necessary condition to a complete
and perfect marriage, but it is now only applicable to members
of reigning houses or of the higher nobility (hoher Adel ), and it
is thus of force among the “mediatized” princes of the German
Empire. In the constitution of the various states, and in the
“house laws” (Hausgesetze) of the reigning families, the rules
are laid down as to what constitutes ebenbürtigkeit. Generally
it may be said that members of a present or former reigning
house, either in Germany or Europe, would be recognized as
ebenbürtig, but a former morganatic marriage would be taken
as destroying the qualification. In Great Britain the regulations
as to the marriages of members of the royal family are
contained in the Royal Marriage Act 1772 (see Marriage).
The term “morganatic marriage” is applied generally to any
marriage of a person of royal blood with one of inferior rank.
The origin of the term, in medieval Latin matrimonium ad
morganaticam, is usually taken to refer to the Morgengabe, i.e.
the morning gift, made by a husband to his wife on marriage.
The German name is Ehe zur linken Hand (marriage by the left
hand, whence the phrase a “left-handed marriage”), the husband
of such marriage ceremonies giving the left instead of the right
hand to the bride. Such marriages are recognized as fully binding
by the Church, and the children are legitimate, and no other
marriage can take place during the lifetime of the contracting
parties.
MORGANTOWN, a city and the county-seat of Monongalia
county, West Virginia, U.S.A ., on the Monongahela river, about
50 m. S.E. of Wheeling. Pop. (1890), 1011; (1900), 1895;
(1910 census), 9150. The city is served by the Baltimore
& Ohio and the Morgantown & Kingwood railways, and by
several steamboat lines, the Monongahela being navigable
to Fairmont, about 25 m. above Morgantown. Morgantown
is the seat of the West Virginia University (co-educational),
formed from the Monongalia Academy (incorporated, 1814) and
the Woodburn Female Seminary (incorporated, 1858), and
chartered in 1867 as the Agricultural College of West Virginia;
in 1868 the present name was adopted. In 1908 the university
had 80 instructors and 1534 students. Coal, glass-sand and
limestone are found in the vicinity of Morgantown. The first
settlement here was made about 1768 by the brothers David
and Zackwill Morgan, and was named in honour of the latter.
It was incorporated as Morgan’s Town in 1785; and in 1905 a
city charter was granted to it after the annexation of Greenmont
(pop. 1900, 349), Seneca (pop. 1900, 723), and South Morgantown
(pop. 1900, 405).
MORGARTEN, the name of the pasture slopes that descend westwards to the south end of the lake of Aegeri in the Swiss canton of Zug, about 2 m. by road from the Sattel station on the railway line from Schwyz to Zürich. It was at the foot of these slopes and on the shore of the lake that the small Swiss force defeated the large Austrian army, advancing from Zug on Schwyz, on the 15th of November 1315, and so laid the foundations of Swiss liberty. As the lake has shrunk, the exact site of the battle has been disputed. It seems most probable that it took place near the Haselmatt Chapel, in the territory of Zug, where is the official monument, but some hold that the real site was in Schwyz territory, near the old tower and battle chapel of Schornen, in the gorge between the lake and Sattel.
