Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 15.djvu/140

Rh 124 M MTHE letter M denotes a nasal sound, which varies little, if at all, in different languages. Nasal sounds are produced as follows. The breath turned into voice at its passage through the glottis does not pass out wholly through the mouth. Part of it is diverted behind the soft palate, and so through the nostrils ; the remainder passes through the mouth-cavity, and is there completely checked at some point of its course. When that check is taken away, we hear, not the sonant which would have been produced if all the breath had passed through the mouth, but a nasal varying in nature according to the part of the cavity where the check of the tongue or the lips has been applied. There may be as many definite nasal sounds in any language as there are recognized classes of consonants, as guttural, palatal, dental, labial. In Sanskrit there were even five nasal sounds so clearly differentiated that each had a special symbol to denote it ; the cerebral class of sounds (produced by turning the tip of the tongue slightly back against the middle of the palate) had its nasal as well as each of the other four classes above mentioned. In English we have three sounds, but only two simple symbols, m and n ; for the guttural nasal heard in sing, &c., we employ the digraph ng. Spanish has a palatal nasal. The nasal sound denoted by M is the labial nasal. It corresponds to the sonant 6-sound; for each of them the lips are completely closed, and if no voice were diverted through the nostrils a 6-sound only would be heard when the lips are opened ; all the organs of the mouth are in exactly the same position for one sound as for the other, but, the soft palate being lowered, the voice is divided in its egress. Hence we see why a man who has a cold pronounces m as b; the voice cannot get through the nostrils, which are blocked up; it must therefore escape mainly or entirely through the lips, and so produce a i-sonnd. Therefore, instead of &quot;talking through his nose,&quot; as the phrase goes, such a person tries to talk through his nose, but cannot. The symbol M stands in numeration for 1000. See ALPHABET. MAAS. See MEUSE. MABILLON, JEAN (1632-1707), the learned and dis criminating historian of the Benedictine order, was born at the village of Saint Pierremont, Champagne (now in the department of Ardennes), on November 23, 1632. He received his early education from an uncle who held the post of village cure&quot; in the neighbourhood, and afterwards he went to Kheims, where, hi 1653, he entered upon his noviciate in the Benedictine Abbey of Saint Remy, taking the vows in the following year. The following four years were spent at various houses of the order, to which he was sent on account of his health, impaired by excessive study. From 1658 to 1663 he was at Corbie, and in 1664 he assisted Chantelon at Saint Denis in the preparation of a new edition of the works of St Bernard. Shortly after wards he was removed to Saint-Germain-des-Pre s, and charged with the task of editing materials which had already been amassed for a general history of the Benedic tine order. While engaged on this work (Ada Sanctorum ordinis S. Benedicti in sgeculorum classes distributa], the publication of which, in 9 vols. fulio, extended from 1668 to 1701, he made several journeys, for literary research, into Germany and Italy, as well as into the provinces of France ; amongst the more important of the numerous monographs to which his investigations gave rise, the work De Re Diplomatica, which appeared in 1681, deserves special mention (see DIPLOMATICS). Mabillon died at Saint-Germain-des-Pre s, on December 27, 1707. For a complete list of his works reference may be made to Baylu s Didionnairc, or to the Bioyraphie Generate. They include, be sides those mentioned above, Vttcra Analcda, 1675-85 (a work similar in character to the Miscellanea of Baluze) ; Animadvcr stones in Vindicias Kcmpcnses, 1677 (in which he claims the Imitatio for Gersen) ; De Liturcjia Gallicana, 1685 ; Museum Italicum, ] 687-89; and Annalcs Ordinis 8. Benedicti, 6 vols. fol., 1703-39. MABINOGION. See CELTIC LITERATURE, vol. v. p. 321. MABUSE. See GOSSART. MACAO (A-Ma-ngao, &quot; Harbour of the goddess A-Ma &quot;; Portuguese, Macau], a Portuguese settlement on the coast of China, in 22 N. lat. and 132 E. long., consists of a tongue of land li- square miles in extent, running south-south-west from the island of Hiang Shang (Portuguese, Anc,am) on the western side of the estuary of the Canton river, Bold and rocky hills about 300 feet in height occupy both extremities of the peninsula, the picturesque-looking city, with its flat-roofed houses painted blue, green, and red, lying in the far from level stretch of ground between. The forts are effective additions to the general view, but do not add much to the real strength of the place. Along the east side of the peninsula runs the Praya Grande, or Great Quay, the chief promenade in Macao, on which stand the governor s palace, the administrative offices, the consulates, and the leading commercial estab- I lishments. The church of St Paul, erected between 1594 ! century, was destroyed by fire in 1835. The Hospital j da Misericordia (1569) was rebuilt in 1640. The Camoens grotto where the exiled poet found leisure to celebrate the achievements of his ungrateful country lies in a secluded spot to the north of the town, which has been partly left in its native wildness strewn with huge granite boulders and partly transformed into a fine botanical garden. In 1871 there were in Macao 5375 persons of European birth or extraction, 53,761 Chinese living on land and 10,268 in boats. Half-castes are very numerous. Though most of the land is under garden cultivation, the mass of the people is dependent more or less directly on mercantile pursuits ; for, while the exclusive policy both of Chinese and Portuguese which prevented Macao becoming a free port till 1845-46 allowed what was once the great emporium of European commerce in eastern Asia to be outstripped by its younger and more liberal rivals, the trade of the place is still of very considerable extent Since the middle of the century indeed much of it has run in the most questionable channels : the nefarious coolie traffic gradually increased in extent and in cruelty from about 1848 till it was prohibited in 1874, and much of the actual trade is more or less of the nature of smuggling. The total value of exports and imports was in 1876-77 upwards of 1,536,000. Commercial intercourse is most intimate with Hong-Kong, Canton, Batavia, and Goa. The pre paration and packing of tea is the principal industry in the town. The colonial revenue, which is largely recruited by a tax on the notorious gambling tables, increased from 104,643 dollars in 1856-57 to 380,012 in 1872-73, while the expenditure rose from 69,757 to 266,344. In 1557 the Portuguese were permitted to erect factories on the peninsula, and in 1573 the Chinese built the wall across the isthmus which still cuts off the barbarian from the rest of the island. Jesuit missionaries established themselves on the spot, and in 1580 Gregory XIII. constituted a bishopric of Macao. A senate was
 * and 1602, the seat of the Jesuit college in the 17th