MONGEZ
MONTAGU
father saved him from their intrigues, and
sent him to the Military Engineering
School at Mezieres. In 1768 he was
appointed professor of mathematics there,
and in 1780 professor of hydraulics at
Paris. He became Examiner to the Navy
in 1783, and Minister of Marine in 1792.
In 1794 he founded the famous Polytechnic
School and taught mathematics there.
Monge accompanied Bonaparte to Egypt
in 1798 as part of his scientific staff. He
entered the Senate in 1805, and was
created Count de Peluse in 1808. His
mathematical works are of the first impor
tance in the development of modern
geometry, and he is hardly less distin
guished as a physicist. He was one of the
greatest of the great French mathe
maticians. Marechal classes him as an
Atheist in his Dictionnaire des Athees, and
at the restoration of royalty he was
stripped of all his dignities and regarded as
irreconcilable. He was a man of high
character, and is said to have astonished
Napoleon by his disinterestedness. D.
July 28, 1818.
MONGEZ, Antoine, French archaeolo gist. B. Jan. 20, 1747. Mongez joined the Eegular Canons of St. Genevieve, and he was entrusted with the care of their archaeological collection. His first work (Marguerite d Ecosse, 1777) was historical ; but in 1783 he won the prize of the Academy of Inscriptions, and he was admitted to that body two years later. He accepted the Kevolution with enthu siasm, and quitted the Church. In the Convention he was associated with the painter David on the committee in charge of historical monuments. He was admitted to the Institut in 1796, and in 1804 he became Administrator of the Mint, a posi tion which he occupied for twenty-three years, until the royalist-clericals deposed him in 1827. His Dictionnaire d Antiquites (5 vols., 1786-94) was of great importance at the time. Mongez declared before the Institut that he " had the honour of being an Atheist." D. July 30, 1835.
519
MONROE, J. R., M.D., American
physician. B. 1825. Ed. Louisville School
of Medicine. He settled in pracbice at
Eockford in 1848, devoting his leisure to-
journalism and literature. The Abolitionist
agitation roused him to public action, and
he in 1855 established the Rockford Herald
to support that and other reforms. He
removed to Seymour in 1857, and there
founded the Seymour Times. During the-
Civil War he rendered devoted medical
service, and at the close of the war h&
took up with great ardour and self-sacrifice-
the Eationalist cause. His paper, which
still flourished, was very outspoken, and
when it was changed into The Ironclad
Age in 1882 it became an aggressive
Eationalist journal. Dr. Monroe was a
caustic and effective writer, a prosperous
physician, and a high-minded reformer.
D. Nov. 9, 1891.
MONSEY, Messenger, B.A., F.E.C.P., physician. B. 1693. Ed. Cambridge (Pem broke College). Monsey studied medicine after leaving Cambridge, and was admitted to the College of Physicians in 1723. He settled in practice at Bury St. Edmunds. Moving from there to London, he was appointed physician to the Chelsea Hos pital. A friend of Sir E. Walpole and Lord Chesterfield, he took a very prominent, position in London society, and was well known as a Eationalist. He to quote the quaint language of a religious writer in- Monk s Boll of the Royal College of Physi cians (ii, 85) " shook off the manacles of superstition and fell into the comfortless, bigotry of scepticism." He left his body for dissection, directing that the useless remnants should be thrown away. D. Dec. 26, 1788.
MONTAGU, Basil, M.A., K.C., writer and philanthropist. B. Ap. 24, 1770. Ed. Cambridge (Charterhouse and Christ s College). A natural son of the Earl of Sandwich, Montagu failed to get the money which was settled on him, and he. studied law. He was called to the Bar in 520
