Her virtues are commemorated in Watford church, to which she was a great benefactor. The singularity of her third marriage was that her husband, Francis earl of Bedford, had a son. Lord Edward Russell, who was married to her daughter by the first husband, Jona-Sibilla Morrison. Sir Richard wrote several books, of which a list is given in Lowndes' Manual.—(See also Wood's Athenæ Oxon., and Fuller's Worthies.)—R. H.
MORRISON, Robert, D.D., the father of protestant missionary effort in China, was born at Morpeth on the 5th of January, 1782. He was the son of a Scotchman, a last and boot-tree maker, who, when Morrison was three years old, removed with his family from Morpeth to Newcastle. Brought up to his father's trade, he received a little education, and at sixteen became a member of the presbyterian church in Newcastle. He began to study at intervals of leisure; and having made some progress in learning, religious and secular, was, through his pastor, admitted to the Independent college at Hoxton (now at Highbury) in 1801; and in 1804 his services were accepted by the London Missionary Society, who placed him in their college at Gosport. In 1805 the directors of the society began to turn their attention to China, and Morrison was recommended to commence the study of Chinese, with the view of qualifying himself for missionary effort in that empire. With the scanty aid of a MS. Latin and Chinese dictionary lent him by the Royal Asiatic Society, and a Harmony of the Gospels and Pauline epistles translated into Chinese by some one unknown, and preserved in the British museum, he began the study of that most difficult language. In January, 1807, he was ordained a missionary, and in September of the same year he arrived at Canton. In 1808 he was considered competent for the appointment of translator to the East India Company's factory at Canton, which rendered him independent of the pecuniary aid of the London Missionary Society, while it afforded him great facilities for the acquisition of Chinese. In 1810 he printed a revised and amended edition of the Chinese version of the Acts of the Apostles, which he had studied at home; in 1811 he transmitted to Bengal a Chinese grammar, not printed until 1815; and in 1812 the gospel of St. Luke was printed in Chinese. In January, 1814, he announced to the Bible Society the completion of the printing of the New Testament in Chinese; the translation of the gospels, the closing epistles, and the book of Revelations being entirely his own, while the central section of the volume was based on the Museum MS. During this year the East India Company sent him out an experienced printer with the necessary apparatus, and in the previous year he had been joined by Mr. (afterwards Dr.) Milne, as a fellow-missionary and translator. In 1818 the printing of the Old Testament in Chinese, translated by Morrison and Milne, was completed; and in 1822 that of his great Chinese dictionary, at an expense to the East India Company of £15,000. The expense of printing the Bible in Chinese was defrayed, mainly but not wholly, by the Bible Society. Meanwhile, Morrison had accompanied Lord Amherst in his embassy to Pekin; had received the degree of D.D. from the university of Glasgow; and, besides other publications, had added to his former Chinese version of the Shorter Catechism one of the Liturgy of the Church of England. In 1824 he visited England, and presented to George IV. a copy of the Chinese Bible and an account of the Anglo-Chinese college at Malacca, founded at his suggestion, and of which his fellow-labourer Milne had been appointed president. In 1808 he had married at Macao a Miss Morton, who died of cholera in 1821. Before leaving England a second time he married a Miss Armstrong of Liverpool, and returned to China. The rest of his life was spent in the routine of missionary duty, in his case multifarious. On the termination of the East India Company's exclusive trade with China, Morrison was appointed by the crown to the same post which he held under the company. He did not long perform its duties, dying on the 1st of August, 1834. Morrison mastered Chinese at a time when Sir George Staunton was the only Englishman who could be said to know the language, and he was the earliest protestant missionary in a country the government of which was singularly jealous of innovation. In his studies and work of translation he displayed the perseverance, and in his relations, official and unofficial, with the Chinese and their authorities, the caution, both of which characterize the Scotch. Besides the works already mentioned, he was the author of the following, among others—"Horæ Sinicæ," translations from the popular literature of the Chinese, 1812; "A View of China for Philological Purposes," 1817; "Memoirs of the Rev. Dr. Milne," 1824; "Chinese Miscellany," 1825; and of contributions to the Chinese Repository. Memoirs of the Life and Labours of Robert Morrison, by his widow, were published in 1839; and there is a good synopsis of his missionary biography in Medhurst's China, its state and prospects.—F. E.
MORSE, Samuel Finley Breeze, an American artist, one of the inventors of the electric telegraph, was born at Charleston in the state of Massachusetts on the 27th of April, 1791. He was the son of Jedediah Morse, an eminent geographer. He was educated at Yale college. In 1811 he went to London to become a pupil of his countryman, the painter West. He remained there about four years, in the course of which he exhibited at the Royal Academy some paintings in an ideal and classical style. In 1815 he returned to America, where for several years he practised his art, chiefly as a portrait painter. It is well known that almost since the first discovery of the conduction of electricity, schemes for using that force as a means of telegraphic communication had been written and spoken of by various projectors; but they were all vague and speculative, and unfit for practical execution and use, until different forms of efficient working electric telegraphs were invented independently, and nearly at the same time, in Europe and America. Mr. Morse's telegraph was first exhibited at work over a short distance at the City university of New York in 1835. Its peculiar mode of transmitting, making, and recording signals by the alternate magnetizing and unmagnetizing of a bar, which causes a point to mark dots and scores on a travelling strip of paper, is remarkable for its ingenuity, simplicity, and convenience. It was first carried out on a great scale in 1844 between Washington and Baltimore, and has since been extended in all directions over the United States, besides having been partially adopted in Europe. Morse died in 1872.—R.
MORTIER, Edouard Adolph Casimir Joseph, Duke of Treviso and Marshal of France, was born at Chateau-Cambresis in 1768, and in 1791 joined the first battalion of the volunteers of the department with the rank of captain. He served with the army of the north, and was at Maubeuge, Mons, Brussels, Louvain, and Fleurus. At Maestricht, under Kleber, he commanded the attack on fort St. Pierre. In 1796 he was adjutant-general, and after the peace of Campo Formio, refused the rank of general of brigade, preferring the command of the 23rd regiment of cavalry. In 1799 he was made general of division, and in the army of the Danube commanded the advanced post and the vanguard. In the operations that led to the capture of Zurich, he commanded the right wing of Massena's army. After their defeat he pursued the Russians with brilliant success, and was appointed to command the second division of the army of the Danube. This post he quitted to command the 15th and 16th military divisions of Paris. In 1804 Napoleon made him one of his marshals, and sent him to take command of the army in Hanover. On his return to Paris he was appointed one of the chiefs of the consular guard—the artillery being committed to his especial care. In September, 1806, he was named annual president of the electoral college of the Gard, and in 1807 he distinguished himself at the battle of Friedland. He then went to Spain, and won the battle of Ocana. In 1812 he went to Russia, and served in the wars of that year and of 1813 and 1814. With Marshal Marmont he defended Paris against the allies, but when the allies were victorious, he sent in his adhesion to the new order of affairs. He was then made governor of Lisle. On the return of Napoleon he was made a peer, a title suppressed by the Bourbons, who, however, acknowledged his high merit by making him governor of the 15th division. He was afterwards restored to his peerage. Louis Philippe placed great confidence in him, and it was while accompanying the king to a review of the national guard in July, 1835, that he was shot by the infernal machine of Fieschi.—P. E. D.
MORTIMER, John, an English gentleman, who died in 1736, published, in the early part of the last century, a treatise on husbandry, which was much esteemed. His grandson, Thomas, was born in London in 1730, and became vice-consul of the Austrian Netherlands. On losing this appointment he adopted literature as his profession, and published numerous works, amongst the chief of which are the British Plutarch; Dictionary of Trade; Elements of Commerce, Politics, and Finances; and History of England. He also translated a treatise of Necker's on French finance. He died in 1800.—W. J. P.
