forms of tissue, such as the cambium from which new wood is developed.
MERIVALE, CHARLES (1808–1893), English historian and
dean of Ely, the second son of John Herman Merivale and
Louisa Heath Drury, daughter of Dr Drury, head master of
Harrow, was born on the 8th of March 1808. His father
(1779–1844) was an English barrister, and, from 1831, a commissioner
in bankruptcy; he collaborated with Robert Bland
(1779–1825) in his Collections from the Greek Anthology, and
published some excellent translations from Italian and German.
Charles Merivale was at Harrow School (1818 to 1824) under
Dr Butler. His chief friends were Charles Wordsworth, afterwards
bishop of St Andrews, and Richard Chenevix Trench,
afterwards archbishop of Dublin. In 1824 he was offered a
writership in the Indian civil service, and went for a short
time to Haileybury College, where he was distinguished for
proficiency in Oriental languages. But he eventually decided
against an Indian career, and went up to St John’s College,
Cambridge, in 1826. Among other distinctions he came out
as fourth classic in 1830, and in 1833 was elected fellow of St
John’s. He was a member of the Apostles’ Club, his fellow-members
including Tennyson, A. H. Hallam, Monckton Milnes,
W. H. Thompson, Trench and James Spedding. He was fond
of athletic exercises, had played for Harrow against Eton in
1824, and in 1829 rowed in the first inter-university boat-race,
when Oxford won. Having been ordained in 1833, he undertook
college and university work successfully, and in 1839 was
appointed select preacher at Whitehall. In 1848 he took the
college living of Lawford, near Manningtree, in Essex; he
married, in 1850, Judith Mary Sophia, youngest daughter of
George Frere. In 1863 he was appointed chaplain to the
Speaker of the House of Commons, declined the professorship
of modern history at Cambridge in 1869, but in the same year
accepted from Mr Gladstone the deanery of Ely, and until his
death on the 27th of December 1893 devoted himself to the
best interests of the cathedral. He received many honorary
academical distinctions. His principal work was A History
of the Romans under the Empire, in seven volumes, which came
out between 1850 and 1862; but he wrote several smaller
historical works, and published sermons, lectures and Latin
verses. Merivale as a historian cannot be compared with
Gibbon for virility, but he takes an eminently common-sense
and appreciative view. The chief defect of his work, inevitable
at the time it was composed, is that, drawing the materials
from contemporary memoirs rather than from inscriptions,
he relies on literary gossip rather than on numismatics and
epigraphy; The dean was an elegant scholar, and his rendering
of the Hyperion of Keats into Latin verse (1862) has received
high praise.
See Autobiography of Dean Merivale, with selections from his correspondence, edited by his daughter, Judith A. Merivale (1899); and Family Memorials, by Anna W. Merivale (1884).
MERIVALE, HERMAN (1806–1874), English civil servant
and author, elder brother of the preceding, was born at Dawlish,
Devonshire, on the 8th of November 1806. He was educated
at Harrow School, and in 1823 entered Oriel College, Oxford.
In 1825 he became a scholar of Trinity College and also won
the Ireland scholarship, and three years later he was elected
fellow of Balliol College. He became a member of the Inner
Temple and practised on the western circuit, being made in
1841 recorder of Falmouth, Helston and Penzance. From
1837 to 1842 he was professor of political economy at Oxford.
In this capacity he delivered a course of lectures on the British
Colonies in which he dealt with questions of emigration, employment
of labour and the allotment of public lands. The reputation
he secured by these lectures had much to do with his appointment
in 1847 as assistant under-secretary for the colonies, and in
the next year he became permanent under-secretary. In 1859
he was transferred to the permanent under-secretaryship for
India, receiving the distinction of C.B. In 1870 Merivale
was made D.C.L. of Oxford. He died on the 8th of February
1874. Besides his Lectures on Colonization and Colonies (1841),
he published Historical Studies (1865), and completed the
Memoirs of Sir Philip Francis (1867); he wrote the second
volume of the Life of Sir Henry Lawrence (1872) in continuation
of Sir Herbert Edwardes’s work.
A tribute to his powers as an original thinker by his chief at the Colonial Office, Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton, is printed with a notice of his career which his brother contributed to the Transactions (1884) of the Devonshire Association.
MERKARA, the capital of the province of Coorg, in Southern
India, situated on a plateau about 4000 ft. above the sea. Pop.
(1901), 6732. It consists of two quarters: the fort, containing
the public offices, the old palace, and the residence of the commissioner;
and the native town of Mahadevapet. Here are
the headquarters of the Coorg and Mysore Rifles, a body of
volunteers chiefly composed of coffee planters.
MERLIN, ANTOINE CHRISTOPHE (1762–1833), French
revolutionist, called “of Thionville” to distinguish him from
his namesake of Douai (see below), was born at Thionville on
the 13th of September 1762, being the son of a procureur in
the bailliage of Thionville. After studying theology, he devoted
himself to law, and in 1788 was an avocat at the parlement
of Metz. In 1790 he was elected municipal officer of Thionville,
and was sent by the department of Moselle to the Legislative
Assembly. On the 23rd of October 1791 he moved and carried
the institution of a committee of surveillance, of which he
became a member. It was he who proposed the law sequestrating
the property of the émigrés, and he took an important part
in the émeute of the 20th of June 1792 and in the revolution
of the 10th of August of the same year. He was elected deputy
to the National Convention, and pressed for the execution of
Louis XVI., but a mission to the army prevented his attendance
at the trial. He displayed great bravery in the defence of
Mainz. He took part in the reaction which followed the fall
of Robespierre, sat in the Council of the Five Hundred under
the Directory, and at the coup d’état of the 18th Fructidor
(Sept. 4, 1797) demanded the deportation of certain republican
members. In 1798 he ceased to be a member of the
Council of Five Hundred, and was appointed director-general
of posts, being sent subsequently to organize the army of Italy.
He retired into private life at the proclamation of the consulate,
and lived in retirement under the consulate and the
empire. He died in Paris on the 14th of September 1833.
See J. Reynaud, Vie et correspondance de Merlin de Thionville (Paris, 1860).
MERLIN, PHILIPPE ANTOINE, Count (1754–1838), French
politician and lawyer, known as Merlin “of Douai,” was born
at Arleux (Nord) on the 30th of October 1754, and was called
to the Flemish bar in 1775. An indefatigable student, he
collaborated in the Répertoire de jurisprudence published by
J. N. Guyot, the later editions of which appeared under Merlin’s
superintendence, and also contributed to other important
legal compilations. Elected to the states-general as deputy
for Douai, he was one of the chief of those who applied the
principles of liberty and equality embodied in the decree of
the 4th of August 1789 to actual conditions. On behalf
of the committee appointed to deal with feudal rights, he presented
to the Convention reports on the seignorial rights which were
subject to compensation, on hunting and fishing rights, forestry,
and kindred subjects. He carried legislation for the abolition
of primogeniture, secured equality of inheritance between
relations of the same degree, and between men and women.
His numerous reports to the Constituent Assembly were supplemented
by popular exposition of current legislation in the
Journal de législation. On the dissolution of the Constituent
Assembly he became judge of the criminal court at Douai.
He was no advocate of violent measures; but, as deputy to
the Convention, he voted for the death of Louis XVI., and
as a member of the council of legislation he presented to the
Convention on the 17th of September 1793 the infamous
law permitting the detention of suspects. He was closely allied
with his namesake Merlin “of Thionville,” and, after the
counter-revolution which brought about the fall of Robespierre,
