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 order of the king Frederick William IV, he illustrated the works of Frederick the Great, Illustrationen zu den Werken Friedrichs des Grossen (1843–1849). By these works Menzel established his claim to be considered one of the first, if not actually the first, of the illustrators of his day in his own line. Meanwhile Menzel had set himself to study unaided the art of painting, and he soon produced a great number and variety of pictures, always showing keen observation and honest workmanship—subjects dealing with the life and achievements of Frederick the Great, and scenes of everyday life, such as “In the Tuileries,” “The Ball Supper,” and “At Confession.” Among the most important of these works are “The Forge” (1875) and “The Market-place at Verona.” Invited to paint “The Coronation of William I. at Koenigsberg,” he produced an exact representation of the ceremony without regard to the traditions of official painting. Menzel died at Berlin on the 9th of February 1905. In Germany he received many honours, and was the first painter to be given the order of the Black Eagle.

 MENZEL, WOLFGANG (1798–1873), German poet, critic and literary historian, was born on the 21st of June 1798, at Waldenburg in Silesia, studied at Breslau, Jena and Bonn, and after living for some time in Aarau and Heidelberg finally settled in Stuttgart, where, from 1830 to 1838, he had a seat in the Württemberg Diet. His first work, a clever and original volume of poems, entitled Streckverse (Heidelberg, 1823), was followed in 1824–1825 by a popular Geschichte der Deutschen in three volumes and in 1829 and 1830 by Rübezahl and Narcissus, the dramatized fairy-stories upon which his reputation as a poet chiefly rests. In 1851 he published the romance of Furore, a lively picture of the period of the Thirty Years’ War; his other writings include Geschichte Europas, 1789–1815 (2 vols. Stuttgart, 1853), and histories of the German War of 1866 and of the Franco-German War of 1870–71. From 1826 to 1848 Menzel edited a “Literaturblatt " in connexion with the Morgenblatt; in the latter year he transferred his allegiance from the Liberal to the Conservative party, and in 1852 his “Literaturblatt” was revived in that interest. In 1866 his political sympathies again changed, and he opposed the “particularism” of the Prussian “junkers” and the anti-unionism of south Germany. He died on the 23rd of April 1873 at Stuttgart. His library of 18,000 volumes was afterwards acquired for the university of Strassburg.

 MENZELINSK, a town of eastern Russia, in the government of Ufa, 142 m. N.W. of the town of Ufa, and 10 m. from the left bank of the Kama. Pop. (1897), 7542. Its fair is one of the most important in the southern Ural region for cattle, hides, furs, grain, tea, manufactured articles, crockery, &c., which are sold to the annual value of £500,000. The town was founded in 1584.

 MEPHISTOPHELES, in the Faust legend, the name of the evil spirit in return for whose assistance Faust signs away his soul. The origin of the conception and name of Mephistopheles has been the subject of much learned debate. In Dr Fausts Höllenzwang “Mephistophiel” is one of the seven great princes of hell; “he stands under the planet Jupiter, his regent is named Zadkiel, an enthroned angel of the holy Jehovah ; his form is firstly that of a fiery bear, the other and fairer appearance is as of a little man with a black cape and a bald head.” The origin of the idea of Mephistopheles in Faust’s mind is thus clear. He was one of the evil demons of the seven planets, the Maskim of the ancient Akkadian religion, a conception transmitted through the Chaldeans, the Babylonians and the Jewish Kabbala to medieval and modern astrologers and magicians. This fact suggests a plausible theory of the origin of the name. In the ancient Mesopotamian religion the Intelligence of Jupiter was Marduk, “the lord of light,” whose antithesis was accordingly conceived as the lord of darkness. Mephistopheles, then (or rather Mephostophiles, as the Faust-books spell the name) is “he who does not love light” (Gr. ,  ,  ).

To Faust himself, somnambulist and medium, Mephistopheles had—according to Kiesewetter—a real existence: he was “the objectivation of the transcendental subject of Faust,” an experience familiar in dreams and, more especially, in the visions of mediums and clairvoyants. He was thus a “familiar spirit,” akin to the “ daemon” of Socrates; and if he was also half the devil of theology, half the kobold of old German myth, this was only because such “objectivations” are apt to clothe themselves in forms borrowed from the common stock of ideas current at the time when the seer lives; and Faust lived in an age obsessed with the fear of the devil, and by no means sceptical of the existence of kobolds. It is suggested, then, in the light of modern psychical research, that Mephistopheles, though (as the Faust-books record) invisible to any one else, was visible enough to Faust himself and to Wagner, the famulus who shared his somnambulistic experiences. He was simply Faust’s “other self,” appearing in various guises—as a bear, as a little bald man, as a monk, as an invisible presence ringing a bell—but always recognizable as the same “familiar.”

 MEPPEL, a town in the province of Drente, Holland, 16 m. by rail N. by E. of Zwolle. Pop. (1903), 10,470. It is favourably situated at the confluence of a number of canals and rivers which communicate hence with the Zuider Zee by the Meppeler Diep, and rose rapidly into prominence in the 19th century. The chief business is in butter, eggs, cattle and pigs, while bleaching, dyeing and shipbuilding are also carried on here.

 MEQUINEZ (the Spanish form of the Arabic Miknasa), a city of Morocco, situated 1600 ft. above the sea, about 70 m. from the west coast and 36 m. W.S.W. of Fez, on the road to Rabat, in 33° 56′ N., 5° 50′ W. The town wall with its four-cornered towers is pierced by nine gates, one, the Báb Bardain, with fine tile-work. A lower wall of wider circuit protects the luxuriant gardens in the outskirts. Mequinez at a distance appears a city of palaces, but it possesses few buildings of any note except the palace and the mosque of Mulai Ismail, which serves as the royal burying-place. The palace, founded in 1634, was described in 1821 by John Windus in his Journey to Mequinez (London 1825) as “about 4 m. in circumference, the whole building exceeding massy, and the walls in every part very thick; the outward one about a mile long and 25 ft. thick.” The interior is composed of oblong court-yards surrounded by buildings and arcades. These buildings are more or less square with pyramidal roofs ornamented outside with green glazed tiles, and inside with<section end="Mequinez" />