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 de Rome. His first great popular successes were the “David” and “Gloria Victis,” which was shown and received the medal of honour of the Salon. The bronze was subsequently placed in the Square Montholon. “The Genius of the Arts” (1877), a relief, is in the Tuileries, in substitution for Barye’s “Napoleon III.”; a similar work for the tomb of Michelet (1879) is in the cemetery of Père la Chaise; and in the same year Mercié produced the statue of Arago with accompanying reliefs, now erected at Perpignan. In 1882 he repeated his great patriotic success of 1874 with a group “Quand Même!” replicas of which have been set up at Belfort and in the garden of the Tuileries. “Le Souvenir” (1885), a marble statue for the tomb of Mme Charles Ferry, is one of his most beautiful works. “Regret,” for the tomb of Cabanel, was produced in 1892, along with “William Tell,” now at Lausanne. Mercié also designed the monuments to “Meissonier” (1895), erected in the Jardin de l’Infante in the Louvre, and “Faidherbe” (1896) at Lille, a statue of “Thiers” set up at St Germain-en-Laye, the monument to “Baudry” at Père-la-Chaise, and that of “Louis-Philippe and Queen Amélie” for their tomb at Dreux. His stone group of “Justice” is at the Hôtel de Ville, Paris. Numerous other statues, portrait busts, and medallions came from the sculptor’s hand, which gained him a medal of honour at the Paris Exhibition of 1878 and the grand prix at that of 1889. Among the paintings exhibited by the artist are a “Venus,” to which was awarded a medal in 1883, “Leda” (1884), and “Michaelangelo studying Anatomy” (1885)—his most dramatic work in this medium. Mercié was appointed professor of drawing and sculpture at the École des Beaux Arts, and was elected a member of the Académie Française in 1891, after being awarded the biennial prize of the institute of £800 in 1887.

MERCIER, HONORÉ (1840–1894), Canadian lawyer and statesman, was the son of Jean Baptiste Mercier, farmer, and of Marie Kimener, his wife. He was born in the village of St Athanase d’Iberville on the 15th of October 1840. The family came from France, and settled in the district of Montmagny, and later removed to Iberville. Mercier entered the Jesuit College of St Mary, Montreal, at the age of fourteen, and throughout his life retained a warm friendship for the society. He married, firstly in 1866 Leopoldine Boivin, and secondly in 1871 Virginie St Denis. On the completion of his course at St Mary’s he studied law in the office of Laframboise and Papineau, in St Hyacinthe, and was admitted to the bar of the province in April 1865. At the age of twenty-two he became the editor of the Conservative Courrier de St Hyacinthe, and in this journal supported the policy of the Sicotte administration, which then represented the interests of Quebec, under the Act of Union (1840); but when Sicotte accepted a seat on the bench Mercier joined the Opposition, and contributed largely to the defeat of the Ministerial candidate. In 1864 he vigorously opposed the scheme of confederation, on the ground that it would prove fatal to the distinctive position held by the French Canadians. He resumed the editorship of the Courrier in 1866; but after a few months retired from journalism, and for the next five years devoted all his energy to his profession. At the commencement of the year 1871 the national party was organized in Quebec, and Mercier supported the candidates of the party on the platform. In August 1872 he was elected as a member of the House of Commons for the county of Rouville, and proved a vigorous opponent of Sir John A. Macdonald on the question of separate schools for New Brunswick. He was a candidate at the general elections in 1874; but retired on the eve of the contest in favour of another candidate of his own party. Mercier entered the arena of provincial politics in May 1879 as solicitor-general in the Joly government, representing the county of St Hyacinthe; and on the defeat of the ministry in October he passed, with his leader, into opposition. On the retirement of M. Joly from the leadership of the Liberal party in Quebec in 1883 Mercier was chosen as his successor. Towards the close of 1885 the French-Canadian mind was greatly agitated over the execution of Louis Riel, leader of the north-west rebellion, and in consequence of the attitude of Mercier on this question the Liberal minority in the Legislative Assembly, which had been reduced to fifteen, rapidly gained strength, until at the general elections held in October 1886 the province was carried in the Liberal interest. In January 1887 Mercier was sworn in as premier and attorney-general, and from this moment he exercised an extraordinary influence in the province. He succeeded in passing without opposition the Jesuit Estates Act, a measure to compensate the order for the loss of property confiscated by the Crown. This act came before the Federal House for disallowance, but, was carried on division. When Mercier appealed to the electorate in 1890, his policy was endorsed, and he was able to give effect to many important measures. Early in 1891 he negotiated a loan in Europe for the province, and whilst on a visit to Rome he was created a count of the Roman Empire by Leo XIII., who three years previously had conferred upon him the rank of a commander of the order of St Gregory the Great. Of commanding presence, firm, decisive, courteous in manner, convincing in argument, and deeply attached to his native province, he had all the qualities of a popular leader. For a few years he was the idol of the people of Quebec, and French Canada loomed large in the public eye; but towards the end of 1891 serious charges were preferred against his ministry, on the ground that subsidies voted for railways had been diverted to political use, and he was dismissed by the lieutenant-governor. At the subsequent elections held in March 1892 he was returned for the county of Bonaventure, but his party was hopelessly defeated. On the formation of a new government he was brought to trial, and declared not guilty; his health, however, gave way, and he never regained his former influence.

MERCIER, LOUIS SEBASTIEN (1740–1814), French dramatist and miscellaneous writer, was born in Paris on the 6th of June 1740. He began his literary career by writing heroic epistles, but early came to the conclusion that Boileau and Racine had ruined the French language, and that the true poet was he who wrote in prose. The most important of his miscellaneous works are L’ An 2440 (1770); L’Essai sur l’art dramatique (1773); Néologie (1801); Le Tableau de Paris (1781–1788); Le nouveau Paris (1799); Histoire de France (1802) and Satire contre Racine et Boileau (1808). He decried French tragedy as a caricature of antique and foreign customs in bombastic verse, and advocated the comédie larmoyante as understood by Diderot. To the philosophers he was entirely hostile. He denied that modern science had made any real advance; he even carried his conservatism so far as to maintain that the earth was a circular flat plain around which revolved the sun. Mercier wrote some sixty dramas, among which may be mentioned Jean Hennuyer (1772); La Destruction de la ligue (1782); Jennéval (1769); Le Juge (1774); Natalie (1775) and La Brouette du vinaigrier (1775). In politics he was a Moderate, and as a member of the Convention he voted against the death penalty for Louis XVI. During the Terror he was imprisoned, but was released after the fall of Robespierre. He died in Paris on the 25th of April 1814.

MERCK, JOHANN HEINRICH (1741–1791), German author and critic, was born at Darmstadt on the 11th of April 1741, a few days after the death of his father, a chemist. He studied law at Giessen, and in 1767 was given an appointment in the paymaster’s department at Darmstadt, and a year later himself became paymaster. For a number of years he exercised considerable influence upon the literary movement in Germany; he helped to found the Frankfurter gelehrte Anzeigen in 1772, and was one of the chief contributors to Nicolai’s Allgemeine Bibliothek. In 1782 he accompanied the Landgravine Karoline of Hesse-Darmstadt to St Petersburg, and on his return was a guest of the duke Charles Augustus of Weimar in the Wartburg. Unfortunate speculations brought him into pecuniary embarrassment in 1788, and although friends, notably Goethe, were ready to come to his assistance, his losses—combined with the death of five of his children—so preyed upon his mind that he committed