to edit classics and correct for the Clarendon press, even that resource had failed him when, towards the close of his life, he was aided by a donation, through Sir R. Peel, from the royal bounty fund. He died near Woodstock in May, 1845.—F. E.
MITCHELL, Sir Thomas Livingstone, Knight, was the son of a gentleman of Stirlingshire, where he was born in 1792. Entering the army he served in the peninsula, attained the rank of major, and at the close of the contest was commissioned to make surveys for the government of the chief battle-fields in Spain and Portugal. Publishing in 1827 a valuable work on geographical and military surveying, he was appointed in the same year deputy surveyor-general, becoming afterwards surveyor-general of New South Wales. Between 1831 and 1836, under circumstances of difficulty and danger, he made personal explorations, of which he published in 1838 his well-known account—"Three expeditions into the interior of Eastern Australia," followed in 1848 by a narrative of another expedition performed in 1845-46, "Journal of an expedition into the interior of Tropical Australia." The discovery of Australia Felix and of the river which he named Victoria, were among the more important results of these expeditions. During a visit to England he was knighted in 1839. Among his official publications was an elaborate map of New South Wales and a manual of Australian geography for the use of the schools of the colony. Although not himself a naturalist, he kept in view during his expeditions the claims of science, and added largely to our knowledge of the natural history, &c., of the regions which he explored. He died a colonel in the neighbourhood of Sydney in 1855.—F. E.
MITELLI, Agostino, an eminent painter of the Bolognese school, was born at Battidizzo, near Bologna, March 16, 1609. He was a scholar of Dentone, and painted like him architectural interiors, elevations, buildings in ruins, &c.; but added a softness, variety, and grace which were seldom found in the works of his master; and he drew the figure with skill, an attainment he is said to have acquired in the school of the Carracci. Mitelli formed a warm friendship with Colonna; and as the styles of the two friends blended well together, they worked in concert; and their paintings became universally popular as decorations of the public apartments of palaces, &c. They painted together at Bologna the chapel of Rosario; the hall of the villa Caprara; the Bentivogli and Pepoli palaces, &c.; and elsewhere the archiepiscopal palace at Ravenna, and palaces and convents at Parma, Florence, Rome, Modena, and Genoa. By Philip IV. they were invited to Madrid, where they decorated a magnificent hall and three saloons. They remained at Madrid two years, when Mitelli was taken ill and died, August 2, 1660.—J. T—e.
MITELLI, Giuseppe Maria, son and scholar of Agostino Mitelli, was born at Bologna in 1634. He painted the figures in some of his father's decorative works; executed several altarpieces for churches in Bologna, and a few historical pictures. But his reputation was never very high as a painter. As an engraver he was more esteemed. His prints are, however, slight, feeble, and often inaccurate. Among them are twenty plates of the history of Æneas, after the Carracci; the Cries of Bologna, in twenty plates, after An. Carracci; the "Twenty-four Hours of Human Happiness," twenty-six plates from his own designs; and various separate prints—in all nearly two hundred. He died in 1718.—J. T—e.
MITFORD, John Freeman, Baron Redesdale of Redesdale, an English lawyer and statesman, was born in 1748, and educated at Winchester school and at New college, Oxford. He was descended from an old Northumbrian family, and was the brother of Mr. Mitford, the historian of Greece. Having studied at Lincoln's inn, he was called to the bar and soon obtained a high reputation as a chancery lawyer. He entered the house of commons in 1789 as member for Beer-Alston, and in 1793 was appointed solicitor-general. In that capacity he assisted Sir John Scott, afterwards Lord Eldon, in conducting the trials for high treason of Hardy, Horne Tooke, and Thelwall, which reflected no great credit on the managers, and ended in the triumphant acquittal of the accused. He was made attorney-general in 1799, and was chosen speaker of the house of commons in 1801. In the following year, upon the death of Lord Clare, he was elevated to the peerage and appointed lord chancellor of Ireland. He held this office till the death of Mr. Pitt, in 1806, broke up the government. He died in 1830. Lord Redesdale was the author of a treatise on "Pleadings in Suits in the Court of Chancery," published in 1782.—J. T.
MITFORD, Mary Russell, the author of "Our Village," and other works, was born at Alresford, Hampshire, on the 16th December, 1786. Her father was a physician with but little practice, but of a sanguine, cheerful, speculative temper, which involved him in pecuniary losses, and made him at length dependent on the exertions of Mary, his only child, for a livelihood. The fortune derived from a lottery ticket given to this little girl on her tenth birth-day, and which won a prize of £20,000 at Dublin, was dissipated in rash speculations. Mary was educated at a school in Hans Place, Chelsea, where one of the governesses turned the mind of the pupil strongly in the direction of the drama. In her twentieth year she published three separate volumes of poetry, which had all the faults incident to a young lady's poetry, and were severely criticised in the Quarterly Review. Another poem, "Watlington Hill," in commemoration of a coursing match, appeared in 1812. Her dramatic compositions saw the light at a later period—"Julian" in 1823, "Foscari" in 1826, "Rienzi" in 1828, and after that "Charles the First." The last-named was suppressed by George Colman the licenser, as of dangerous principles, but subsequently appeared at the Coburg theatre, and was found to do no harm. Indeed, Miss Mitford's genius lay in describing scenes far removed from the stage; and when in 1819 she contributed to the Lady's Magazine those charming sketches of English and rural life, entitled "Our Village," she secured her true place in the history of English literature. The charm of these simple stories and descriptions is indescribable. In a similar strain, but with not quite the same success, she wrote "Belford Regis, or sketches of a country town;" the materials of which were gathered from the town of Reading, near which she resided. Though less under the pressure of necessity in her later years than she once had been, her literary industry continued unabated, and she was a large contributor to various collections of tales. In 1852 she brought out her "Recollections of a Literary Life, or books, places, and people," 3 vols., which is not a narrative of the personal events of her life, so much as an account of her reading and reflections. Her last publication was "Atherton, and other Tales," 3 vols., 1854. On the 10th of January, 1855, she died amid regrets as general as they were sincere.—R. H.
MITFORD, William, the historian of Greece, was born in London in February, 1744. He was the eldest son of John Mitford, Esq., of Exbury, near Southampton. He received his education at Queen's college, Oxford; and after quitting the university, began to read law at the Middle temple, where he was joined by his younger brother. Upon the death of his father, leaving him in possession of the family inheritance, Mitford abandoned his legal studies, and soon after obtained a commission in the South Hampshire militia. His brother worked on at the law, and finally rose to the woolsack, and was created Lord Redesdale. At the mess table of his regiment Mitford had the good fortune to be brought in contact with a mind of a breadth and capacity not often met with at such reunions; he became the friend of Captain Edward Gibbon, whom he succeeded as lieutenant-colonel of the regiment in 1779. Conversation with Gibbon awakened in him a like ardour for historical research; and the plan of the history of Greece was conceived and sketched out during the intervals of his military avocations. Entering parliament, Mitford sat successively for the boroughs of Newport (Isle of Wight), Beer-Alston, and Romney. He scarcely ever spoke except upon military questions, when he expressed himself with sense and clearness. He wrote in 1774 a "Treatise on the Military Force, and particularly on the militia of this kingdom." The first volume of the "History of Greece" was published in 1784, and the remainder appeared in successive volumes in 1790, 1797, 1808, and 1818. His other works are "Observations on the History of Christianity;" a pamphlet on the corn-laws (of course upholding them, for Mitford was a zealous tory); and an "Inquiry into the Principles of Harmony in Language and of the Mechanism of Verse, modern and ancient." The "History of Greece," though it has lost the position which it once held, since the publication of the more learned and critical works of Thirlwall and Grote, can still be read with interest and pleasure. It is written in the spirit of a thorough-going partisan of aristocracy, who sees in the democracy of Athens the same terrific bugbear which the detested French convention was actually presenting to his eyes, and is thence incapable of doing justice to its champions. This is especially manifest in the narrative given by the historian of the struggle between Demos-
