Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 15.djvu/317

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M A I M A I 297 4. Ki sponsa and other letters (Tcskuboth Sheeloth ve-Iggeroth], These do not belong exclusively to Mairnonides. The first edition came out without place or date, but at Constantinople about 1520, folio. 5. Jlcspoiisa (printed under the title Peer Haddor) translated by E. Mordekhai Tammah, Amsterdam, 1765, 4to. III. Works composed by Maimonidcs in Arabic and translated into Hebrew by himself. 1. The commentary on the Mishnah of the whole Seder Tohoroth. As is well known, the translation of this Seder has been hitherto regarded as anonymous. But the writer of this article has shown ru the Cambridge Catalogue, ut supra, ii. p. 17, note 2, the high probability, amounting to a moral certainty, that nobody else could have been, and that Maimonides himself must have been, the translator of this Seder, which more than any other demanded the three necessary qualifications of a good translator. 2. The letter on the sanctification of the name of God (Iggcrcth Hasshemad, or Maamar Kiddush Hasshem 1 ). Although the proofs which one can adduce for the translation by the author himself of this treatise are not so telling, as those in the case just mentioned before, the moral certainty is not less. The treatise details (1) how much a Jew may yield, and how much he must resist, if forced to embrace another religion, and (2) that Mohammedanism is not a heathenish religion. It is generally held, though not quite conclusively proved, that Maimonides wrote this treatise pro domo sua, he and his family having been themselves forced to embrace Mohammedanism during the persecution by Ibn Tamurt. It ought to be borne in mind that the Jews generally look upon Christianity and Mohammedanism as having each taken a large share in their mother s (Judaism s) inheritance, and that, whilst the former looked more for her moral, the latter coveted her doc trinal possessions. Since morality, however, consists more in negatives than positives, and since doctrines are more openly challenged and openly avowed than morals, the Jews have always manifested less repugnance to profess, under pressure, Mohammed anism than Christianity. There are other works both in Hebrew and in Arabic extant by our author. These relate mostly either to ritual affairs, and consist of letters to various rabbis, and colleges of rabbis, notably in the south of France, to congregations in Yemen and elsewhere, or to medical matters, and consist of short treatises, such as aphorisms, &c but do not come up in interest to the great Avorks already named. (S. M. S.-S.) MAINE, a province of France, was bounded on the N. by Normandy, on the W. by Brittany, on the S. by Anjou and Touraine, and on the E. by Orle"anais; along with the northern part of Anjou it is now represented by the depart ments of Sarthe and Mayenne. Together with a portion of Perche which was conterminous with it on the north east, and the countship of Laval on the west, it constituted a great military government, of which Le Mans was the capital. Before the Roman conquest Maine was held by the Aulerci Cenomani, whence probably its name. Le Mans, a great city, was connected by the conquerors by good roads with Chartres, Orleans, Vendome, Tours, Angers, Jublains (capital of the Aulerci Diablintes, inhabiting the western portion of Maine), and Sdes. Under the later Caesars the Cenomani became almost independent, and joined the Armorican republic. Christianity was first introduced in the 3d century by St Julian, first bishop of Le Mans. Down to the time of Hugh Capet the bishops were the real rulers of the country; but in consequence of the incursions of the Northmen, who came up the Sarthe and Mayenne, the erection of strongholds became necessary, and Hugh Capet made the countship of Maine hereditary in the person of Hugh I. One of the descendants of the latter, Count Herbert, having acknowledged the suzerainty of William, duke of Normandy, the people of Le Mans availed themselves of the absence of the Conqueror in England to rise against him, and were ultimately success ful in gaining their freedom, Maine became united with Anjou by the marriage of its heiress with Fulk of Anjou, father of Geoffrey Plantagenet. Henry II. of England, the son of Geoffrey, was born at Le Mans. On the confiscation of the estates of King John, Maine passed to Philip Augustus of France ; by Louis IX., the grandson of See Geiger, Moses b. Maimon, Breslau, 1850, 8vo. Philip, it was handed over iu 1245 to Charles, count of Provence, afterwards king of Naples; and in 1328 it was reunited to the domains of the crown by Philip of Valois, who was count of Maine. It was again separated by his grandson Louis of Anjou, the brother of King Charles V. During the Hundred Years War, Maine was a continual battlefield ; the English were at last driven out by Dunois, who took possession of Le Mans in 1447. In 1481, on the death of Charles of Maine, the last scion of the house of Anjou, Maine was again united to the French crown by Louis XL The province suffered much during the wars of religion ; its strong places were dismantled by Henry IV. and Richelieu. At the Revolution the troops of La Vende e entered Maine, and took possession of Laval, Mayenne, and Le Mans at the end of 1793; after they had been defeated by the republican forces under Marceau and Westermann, their place was taken by the Chouans ; and the pacification of the province, begun by General Hoche, was not completed until 1800. Towards the close of 1870 the second army of the Loire, retreating before the Prussians, was reformed in Maine, and in the neighbour hood of Le Mans one of the last great struggles in the Franco-German war took place in January 1871. MAINE Copyright, 1882, by Joshua L, Chamberlain. MAINE, the most north-easterly of the United States, Plate V. lies between 43 4 and 47 27 33" N. lat., and be tween 66 56 48" and 71 6 41" W. long. It is 302 miles in extreme length and 285 in width, with a total area of 33,040 square miles (of which 29,895 square miles are land), being nearly, as large as all the other New England States combined. Its figure resembles that of a moun tain peak, broken at the top. Its S.E. base rests on the Atlantic Ocean. On the E. and N. it has the province of New Brunswick, and on the N.W. the province of Quebec, while its southern half is bounded on the W. by the State of New Hampshire. The coast-line measured direct is about 225 miles in Coast- extent ; but the numerous river mouths and indentations l mc - of the sea make an actual tide-water line of not less than 2500 miles. The headlands and far-stretching narrow points, together with innumerable outlying islands, give to the whole ocean front the appearance of a fringed and tasselled border. This striking feature, which gives peculiar interest in many ways to the coast of Maine, is chiefly the result of a southward glacial movement, which, coinciding with the trend of the rocks produced by a remote geologic upheaval, cut these fiord valleys far out into the sea, the prolongation of their edges being marked by islands, reefs, and scattered knobs of rock. In these deep bays and river mouths, and behind these outlying islands, are numerous harbours, convenient, safe, and capacious, and the poet is well within the truth who sings of " hundred-harboured Maine." There are no better harbours on the Atlantic coast than those of Portland and Wis- casset. The beaches and marshes and low grassy islands common in the west are scarcely found east of the Ken- nebec river, beyond which the shore becomes more and more bold, rising in the precipitous cliffs and rounded summits of Mount Desert and Quoddy Head to a height of from 1000 to 1500 feet. The general slope of the land Drainage surface falls from an extreme elevation of 2000 feet^on sl P es - the west, in the neighbourhood of the White Mountains, to 600 feet on the east. Two principal drainage slopes stretch respectively southward and northward from a watershed which crosses the State in a general easterly and westerly direction, at a distance of about 140 miles from the coast, while the northward slope has an extreme

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