the pretensions of Prussia and Russia. Even after Waterloo he preserved a not unfriendly leaning towards France. The peace of 1815 bequeathed to Metternich a legacy of troubles. The Germans had been promised liberty at the threshold of the war of liberation, and revolutionism began to rear its head in Italy. It was Metternich, whose influence was now supreme, who by a policy of repression procured a temporary appearance of order at the price of future convulsions. At his instance the severest measures were taken against free discussion by the German newspapers and universities, and Austrian troops extinguished the revolutions of Naples and Piedmont. After the Three Days he saw, or thought he saw in Louis Philippe, the best barrier against the triumph of revolution, and he recognized the monarchy of July, while Austrian troops, however, entered the legations as a check to revolution in Italy. The death of the Emperor Francis in 1835 made no change in the authority of Metternich, who continued under Ferdinand his old policy of repression, keeping down the various nationalities of the Austrian empire by means of each other, until the revolution of February, 1848, following on a financial crisis in 1847, realized the celebrated saying, rightly or wrongly attributed to him:—"Après moi le deluge." Revolution broke out at Vienna on the 13th of March, 1848. One of the first acts of the exasperated people was to sack the palace of the absolutist premier. True to himself even at this crisis, Metternich offered his services to the emperor, if a policy of repression, not of concession, was to be followed; and when he heard that concession was resolved on, he fled—ultimately to England. In the autumn of 1851 he returned to Vienna, but was not asked to take any part in the conduct of public affairs, and remained in a private station until his death in the Austrian capital on the 5th of June, 1859, the day after the battle of Magenta.—F. E.
METZ, or rather METSU, Gabriel, one of the most excellent of the Dutch genre painters, was born at Leyden in 1615, and settled early in Amsterdam. His master is not known. He soon distinguished himself by his portraits and excellent small conversation pieces, which are most elaborately finished, and richly and forcibly coloured. His scenes are sometimes taken from common life, but generally from the middle classes. He seems to have commonly signed his pictures G. Metsu, and he often dated them. He is generally reported to have died at the age of forty-three in 1658, as stated by D'Argenville, and the new catalogue of Amsterdam repeats this date; but there are at Dresden signed pictures by Metsu dated 1662 and 1664, and M. Burger lately discovered the date 1667 on a picture by him in the Van Loon gallery at Amsterdam. Metsu in his various works displays alternately all the excellent qualities of Terburg, Gerard Dow, or even Jan Steen, and to a nearly equal degree. He perhaps carried mere imitative painting to perfection on the small scale he usually adopted; but he sometimes ventured on life-size figures, as in the portrait of Admiral Cornelis Van Tromp in the Louvre.—R. N. W.
METZ, Conrad Martin, German engraver, was born at Bonn in 1755. He was a scholar of Bartolozzi, and like him engraved chiefly in the chalk manner, but he also executed some aquatints. He resided in London about twenty years, and whilst here engraved numerous plates, of which the most important are a series of thirty-three imitations of drawings by Parmigiano in the collection of George III., and sixty-three of drawings by Caravaggio in the collection of Sir Abraham Hume. In 1801 he went to Rome, where he produced a series of engravings on fifteen sheets from the Last Judgment of Michelangelo; also several other prints after the old masters. He died at Rome in 1827.—J. T—e.
* METZGER, Eduard, German architect and writer on architecture, was born at Pappenheim in 1807. He studied architecture in the Munich art-academy under Von Gärtner and Von Klenze, and then (1831) proceeded to Greece to examine the remains of Grecian art. On his return he was nominated professor in the Munich polytechnic school. Herr Metzger has erected several buildings in Munich and other towns of Bavaria, completed the Siegesthor, &c., commenced by Von Gärtner, made the designs for a monument to Francis I. of Austria, laid out a new street in Prague, &c. He has written a treatise on the "Influence of the principles of construction on the Forms of Buildings," 1837, illustrating his views chiefly by an examination of the structure of the Greek temple; an elaborate work on Greek elevations, 1839; and several professional memoirs. Herr Metzger is said to be a skilful painter as well as an accomplished architect.—J. T—e.
MEULEMEESTER, Joseph Charles de, Belgian engraver, was born 28th April, 1771, at Bruges, and learned engraving of Bervic. In 1806 he went to Rome, and made an elaborate copy in water-colours of Raphael's fresco of the Finding of Moses, which was so much admired that he was induced to copy the series of fifty-two Bible-pictures by Raphael, on the ceilings of the Toggle of the Vatican. On this undertaking he was engaged twelve years, almost every day being spent on the lofty ladders, by which alone he could gain proper access to the pictures. In 1819 he returned to Antwerp, was nominated engraver to the king, and entered zealously upon the other part of his great task, the engraving of the pictures he had spent so many years in copying. The first part of "Les Loges de Raphaël," containing four coloured plates, appeared in 1825. After the Belgian revolution he removed to Paris, hoping to carry on his work there with less interruption. He died during a visit to Antwerp, November 5, 1836. Meulemeester's Loggie prints are remarkably faithful renderings of the originals; unfortunately he only lived long enough to complete nine parts (thirty-six plates) in colours; of the uncoloured series much fewer were issued. Meulemeester finished comparatively few other plates; the chief are a St. Cecilia of Raphael, and a portrait of Rubens.—J. T—e.
MEULEN. See Vandermeulen.
MEUNG or MEHUN, Jean de, also known as Clopine from his lameness, was born at Meung sur Loire, near Orleans, in the middle of the thirteenth century, of a noble family which still exists. Few details of his life have been ascertained with absolute exactitude, but it is known that he excelled in astrology, chemistry, alchemy, and in all other studies which were then cultivated; that he was a man much given to satire, a propensity that often involved him in personal danger; and, above all, that he devoted himself to poetry and continued the "Roman de la Rose." Far inferior in poetic freshness and feeling to the portion written by William de Lorris, Jean de Meung's continuation has yet a value of its own. Keen, sarcastic, acute, it paints the men and manners of the day. Among the numerous editions of the "Roman de la Rose," we may specially note that of Meon, printed by the Didots, Paris, 1814. Besides this most famous work, the lame satirist translated Boethius' treatise De Consolatione, the Letters of Abelard, and a work on the Response of the Sybils.—W. J. P.
MEURSIUS, John, an eminent Dutch scholar and archæologist; was born in 1579 at Losduinen, near the Hague. His proper name was De Meurs. His father had been a canon of Utrecht, and gave him his earliest instruction. He was sent to Leyden while still a mere boy, and at twelve and thirteen he was able to write Latin essays and Greek verses. At the end of his university career he was appointed by the grand-pensionary Barneveldt travelling tutor to his sons, and accompanied them in their travels through several countries of Europe. While at Orleans he took the degree of doctor of law. In 1610 he was nominated professor of history at Leyden, and in 1611 professor of Greek literature. The states-general made him their historiographer, and loaded him with many other testimonies of their esteem. After the execution of his unfortunate patron Barneveldt, he shared in the persecution directed against all the friends of the fallen statesman, although he carefully abstained from politics, and was at last fain to accept an invitation from the king of Denmark to settle at Soroe as professor of history, and there he continued till his death in 1639. His works were collected and republished at Florence, in 12 vols., folio, in 1741-63. The most valuable part of them was a series of monographs on the antiquities of Greece, which had previously appeared in the Thesaurus Antiquitatum Græcarum of Gronovius. He wrote also "Athenæ Batavæ," 1625; "Res Belgicæ," 1612; "Lectiones Atticæ," 1617. He edited besides many of the later Greek writers. His erudition is that of his time, comprehensive and bulky, but deficient in criticism and taste.—P. L.
MEUSEL, Johann Georg, a distinguished German litterateur, was born at Eyrichshof, near Bamberg, in 1743. He studied at Göttingen, and successively held the professorships of history at Erfurt and Erlangen, at which latter place he died, September 19, 1820. His "Gelehrtes Deutschland" (continued by Ersch and Lindner), 23 vols., is a standard work, and will always be held in esteem.—K. E.
