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 MERIVALE, CHARLES (1808–1893), English historian and dean of Ely, the second son of John Herman Merivale and Louisa Heath Drury, daughter of Dr Drury, head master of Harrow, was born on the 8th of March 1808. His father (1779–1844) was an English barrister, and, from 1831, a commissioner in bankruptcy; he collaborated with Robert Bland (1779–1825) in his Collections from the Greek Anthology, and published some excellent translations from Italian and German. Charles Merivale was at Harrow School (1818 to 1824) under Dr Butler. His chief friends were Charles Wordsworth, afterwards bishop of St Andrews, and Richard Chenevix Trench, afterwards archbishop of Dublin. In 1824 he was offered a writership in the Indian civil service, and went for a short time to Haileybury College, where he was distinguished for proficiency in Oriental languages. But he eventually decided against an Indian career, and went up to St John’s College, Cambridge, in 1826. Among other distinctions he came out as fourth classic in 1830, and in 1833 was elected fellow of St John’s. He was a member of the Apostles’ Club, his fellow-members including Tennyson, A. H. Hallam, Monckton Milnes, W. H. Thompson, Trench and James Spedding. He was fond of athletic exercises, had played for Harrow against Eton in 1824, and in 1829 rowed in the first inter-university boat-race, when Oxford won. Having been ordained in 1833, he undertook college and university work successfully, and in 1839 was appointed select preacher at Whitehall. In 1848 he took the college living of Lawford, near Manningtree, in Essex; he married, in 1850, Judith Mary Sophia, youngest daughter of George Frere. In 1863 he was appointed chaplain to the Speaker of the House of Commons, declined the professorship of modern history at Cambridge in 1869, but in the same year accepted from Mr Gladstone the deanery of Ely, and until his death on the 27th of December 1893 devoted himself to the best interests of the cathedral. He received many honorary academical distinctions. His principal work was A History of the Romans under the Empire, in seven volumes, which came out between 1850 and 1862; but he wrote several smaller historical works, and published sermons, lectures and Latin verses. Merivale as a historian cannot be compared with Gibbon for virility, but he takes an eminently common-sense and appreciative view. The chief defect of his work, inevitable at the time it was composed, is that, drawing the materials from contemporary memoirs rather than from inscriptions, he relies on literary gossip rather than on numismatics and epigraphy; The dean was an elegant scholar, and his rendering of the Hyperion of Keats into Latin verse (1862) has received high praise.

 MERIVALE, HERMAN (1806–1874), English civil servant and author, elder brother of the, was born at Dawlish, Devonshire, on the 8th of November 1806. He was educated at Harrow School, and in 1823 entered Oriel College, Oxford. In 1825 he became a scholar of Trinity College and also won the Ireland scholarship, and three years later he was elected fellow of Balliol College. He became a member of the Inner Temple and practised on the western circuit, being made in 1841 recorder of Falmouth, Helston and Penzance. From 1837 to 1842 he was professor of political economy at Oxford. In this capacity he delivered a course of lectures on the British Colonies in which he dealt with questions of emigration, employment of labour and the allotment of public lands. The reputation he secured by these lectures had much to do with his appointment in 1847 as assistant under-secretary for the colonies, and in the next year he became permanent under-secretary. In 1859 he was transferred to the permanent under-secretaryship for India, receiving the distinction of C.B. In 1870 Merivale was made D.C.L. of Oxford. He died on the 8th of February 1874. Besides his Lectures on Colonization and Colonies (1841), he published Historical Studies (1865), and completed the Memoirs of Sir Philip Francis (1867); he wrote the second volume of the Life of Sir Henry Lawrence (1872) in continuation of Sir Herbert Edwardes’s work.

 MERKARA, the capital of the province of Coorg, in Southern India, situated on a plateau about 4000 ft. above the sea. Pop. (1901), 6732. It consists of two quarters: the fort, containing the public offices, the old palace, and the residence of the commissioner; and the native town of Mahadevapet. Here are the headquarters of the Coorg and Mysore Rifles, a body of volunteers chiefly composed of coffee planters.

MERLIN, ANTOINE CHRISTOPHE (1762–1833), French revolutionist, called “of Thionville” to distinguish him from his namesake of Douai (see ), was born at Thionville on the 13th of September 1762, being the son of a procureur in the bailliage of Thionville. After studying theology, he devoted himself to law, and in 1788 was an avocat at the parlement of Metz. In 1790 he was elected municipal officer of Thionville, and was sent by the department of Moselle to the Legislative Assembly. On the 23rd of October 1791 he moved and carried the institution of a committee of surveillance, of which he became a member. It was he who proposed the law sequestrating the property of the émigrés, and he took an important part in the émeute of the 20th of June 1792 and in the revolution of the 10th of August of the same year. He was elected deputy to the National Convention, and pressed for the execution of Louis XVI., but a mission to the army prevented his attendance at the trial. He displayed great bravery in the defence of Mainz. He took part in the reaction which followed the fall of Robespierre, sat in the Council of the Five Hundred under the Directory, and at the coup d’état of the 18th Fructidor (Sept. 4, 1797) demanded the deportation of certain republican members. In 1798 he ceased to be a member of the Council of Five Hundred, and was appointed director-general of posts, being sent subsequently to organize the army of Italy. He retired into private life at the proclamation of the consulate, and lived in retirement under the consulate and the empire. He died in Paris on the 14th of September 1833.

MERLIN, PHILIPPE ANTOINE, (1754–1838), French politician and lawyer, known as Merlin “of Douai,” was born at Arleux (Nord) on the 30th of October 1754, and was called to the Flemish bar in 1775. An indefatigable student, he collaborated in the Répertoire de jurisprudence published by J. N. Guyot, the later editions of which appeared under Merlin’s superintendence, and also contributed to other important legal compilations. Elected to the states-general as deputy for Douai, he was one of the chief of those who applied the principles of liberty and equality embodied in the decree of the 4th of August 1789 to actual conditions. On behalf of the committee appointed to deal with feudal rights, he presented to the Convention reports on the seignorial rights which were subject to compensation, on hunting and fishing rights, forestry, and kindred subjects. He carried legislation for the abolition of primogeniture, secured equality of inheritance between relations of the same degree, and between men and women. His numerous reports to the Constituent Assembly were supplemented by popular exposition of current legislation in the Journal de législation. On the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly he became judge of the criminal court at Douai. He was no advocate of violent measures; but, as deputy to the Convention, he voted for the death of Louis XVI., and as a member of the council of legislation he presented to the Convention on the 17th of September 1793 the infamous law permitting the detention of suspects. He was closely allied with his namesake Merlin “of Thionville,” and, after the counter-revolution which brought about the fall of Robespierre,