Page:A biographical dictionary of modern rationalists.djvu/306

 MOSSO

engaged for a long period under the London School Board, which for a time forbade him to lecture, and retired on a pension in 1920.

MOSSO, Professor Angelo, M.D.,

Italian physiologist. B. May 30, 1846. Ed. Asti Lyceo, and Turin and Leipzig Universities. Of poor parents, Mosso sup ported himself while studying at the uni versity, but he attained such a command of his science, as well as of French and German, that he was appointed assistant to Moleschott at Turin University. Later he was nominated professor of physiology, and he came to be recognized as one of the greatest Italian physiologists, and an inter national authority in certain fields of his science. His works were numerous and important ; and he was a Commander of the Order of S.S. Maurice and Lazarus and of the Crown of Italy, Member of the Accademia dei Lincei, the Eoyal Society of Naples, and the Turin Academy of Sciences, and Senator. He was an Agnostic (see the memorial volume, Angelo Mosso : la sua vita e le sue opere, 1912, p. 105) ; and his funeral, at which learned societies were imposingly represented, was purely secular. D. Nov. 24, 1910.

MOTLEY, John Lothrop, D.C.L., American historian. B. Apr. 15, 1814. Ed. Harvard, Gottingen, and Berlin Uni versities. Motley was so precocious and gifted a scholar that he entered Harvard at the age of thirteen. After his return to the United States he took up the study of law, but he had little love of it. In 1839 he made an unsuccessful venture in letters with a novel, and two years later he was appointed under-secretary of the American Legation at Petrograd. The Eussian climate proved too rigorous for him, and he returned to the States and began to win attention by his brilliant essays in the North American Review. His novel Merry Mount appeared in 1849. He decided to write a history of Holland, and, after study ing in Holland and America, he in 1856 issued his famous History of the Rise of

539

the Dutch Eepublic (3 vols.). The first two volumes of his History of the United Netherlands followed in 1860, and the third and fourth volumes in 1868. Motley had settled in England in 1858. From 1861 to 1867 he was American Minister at Vienna, and in 1869-70 at London. He then retired from public work and confined himself to history. In power of research, fineness of sentiment, and literary excel lence Motley is the first American historian, and one of the great historians of the nine teenth century. The Eev. L. P. Jacks says in his Life and Letters of Stopford Brooke (1917, i, 312) that Motley frankly acknow ledged his Eationalism to Stopford Brooke, saying that he did not believe in personal immortality. D. May 29, 1877.

MOZART, Wolfgang Amadeus,

musical composer. B. Jan. 27, 1756. Mozart was the son of a Catholic musician, and he began himself to compose at the age of five. Seven years later he conducted a Mass of his own composition at Vienna. In 1769 he was taken by his father to Italy, and the Pope was so impressed by his playing that he made him a Knight of the Golden Spur. He was for many years concert master to the Archbishop of Salzburg, but in 1781 he threw up his appointment in disgust. He was already accused of neglect of the practice of his religion, and in 1786, the year in which he brought out Le nozze di Figaro, he joined the Freemasons at Vienna. In the follow ing year he composed Don Giovanni, and in 1791, just before he died, The Magic Flute. Catholics emphasize that his last composition was his beautiful Eequiem Mass, but the circumstances in which he composed this famous piece of church music are now well known. A mysterious stranger (who turned out to be Count Walsegg, an amateur) had paid him a large sum of money to compose the Mass and allow him (Walsegg) to pass it off as his own. Mozart was poor until his last year. As to his religion, Wilder makes it clear in his Mozart (Eng. trans., 1908) that the 540