Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 15.djvu/554

Rh 526 M A R M A R tions are watered by canals from a small river crossed here by two good bridges built in 1809. At the village of Dash-Kesen, 6 miles from Deh Kurgan in this district, are the famous Maragha marble pits, occupying a space half a mile in circumference, and sunk to a depth of about 12 feet. Here a multitude of springs charged with carbonic acid gas bubble up in all directions, precipitating large quantities of carbonate of lime. The marble in the semi- crystallized formation, of this deposit forms horizontal layers, which when cut in thin slabs are nearly transparent, and serve as windows in the Tabriz baths and elsewhere. Larger blocks are also used as pavements in bazaars and palaces, and the famous throne in the Diwan Khdna at Tehran is made of the same material. Maragha was formerly the capital of Hulaku, grandson of Jenghis Khan, and its fifteen thousand inhabitants still belong mostly to the MukadamJTurki tribe. MARANHAO, or MARANHAM (Latinized as Marag- nanurn), in full form SAO Luiz DE MARANHAO, the chief town of the province of Maranhao in Brazil, is situated in 2 30 S. lat. and 44 17 W. long., on the west side of an island of the same name 28 miles long and 15 broad. Though built on so hilly a surface that carriages cannot be used, it is laid out with regularity, and has straight, wide, and clean-looking streets. The public institutions comprise a naval arsenal, a high court of appeal, a tribunal of commerce, a military hospital, several general hospitals, a theatre, a museum, a public library, and a botanic garden, as well as a cathedral and an episcopal palace, both built by the Jesuits. Maranhao has some commercial import ance, exporting cotton, sugar, hides, &c., from a wide region of the interior, and receiving manufactured goods from Europe, and especially from England. Though some what difficult of access to large sailing vessels, the port affords good anchorage to all drawing less than 20 feet. Steamers ply to Rio de Janeiro and Para, as well as up the rivers Itapicurn, Guajahu, and Pindare ; and direct steam communication is maintained with Lisbon and Liverpool. The population of the island Maranhao was 34,023 in 1872, about 30,000 belonging to the city. French colonists settled at St Luiz in 1612, but they were expelled by Jeronimo d Albuquerque in 1614. The Dutch were in possession from 1641 to 1653. The bishopric was created in 1676. The city was captured in 1823 by Lord Cochrane, who was afterwards created marquis of Maranham. MARAT, JEAN PAUL (1743-1793), a famous revolution ary leader, was the eldest child of Jean Paul Mara of Cagliari and Louise Cabrol of Geneva, and was born at Boudry, in the principality of Neuchatel, on May 24, 1743. His father was a doctor of some learning, who had aban doned his country and his religion, and had married a Swiss Protestant. It was he that laid the basis of the young Jean Paul s scientific learning, and the son at the same time imbibed the doctrines of Rousseau. On his mother s death in 1759 he set out on his travels, and spent two years at Bordeaux in the study of medicine, whence he moved to Paris, where he made use of his knowledge of his two favourite sciences, optics and electricity, to subdue an obstinate disease of the eyes. After some years in Paris he went to Holland, the retreat of philosophers, where all the works of the Encyclopedists were printed for the French market, and then on to London, where he settled in Church Street, Soho, a fashionable district, and practised his profession. In 1773, at the age of thirty, he made his first appearance as an author with a Philosophical Essay on Man, being an Attempt to Investigate the Principles and Laws of the Recip rocal Infliience of the Soul on the Body, of which only two volumes are extant, though at the end of the second volume he speaks of a third. The book shows a wonder ful knowledge of English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish philosophers, and directly attacks Helvetius, who had in his L Esprit declared a knowledge of science un necessary for a philosopher. Marat, as he now began to call himself, declares that physiology alone can solve the problems of the connexion between soul and body, and proposes the existence of a nervous fluid as the true solution. In 1774 he published a political work, The Chains of Slavery, which appeared without his name, and was intended to influence constituencies to return popular members, and reject the king s friends, with innumerable examples from classical and modern history of the ways in which kings enslaved their peoples. The book was too late to have any influence on the general election, and was got up in a style too costly for a wide circulation, but its author declared later that it procured him an honorary membership of the patriotic societies of Carlisle, Berwick, and Newcastle. He remained devoted to his profession, and in 1775 published in London a little Essay on Gleets, price Is. 6d., of which no copy is to be found, and in Amsterdam a French translation of the first two volumes of his Essay on Man. In this year, 1775, he visited Edin burgh, and on the recommendation of certain Edinburgh physicians, was, on June 30, made an M.D. of St Andrews University. On his return to London he published an Enquiry into the Nature, Cause, and Cure of a Singular Disease of the Eyes, with a dedication to the Royal Society. In the same year there appeared the third volume of the French edition of the Essay on Man, which reached Ferney, and exasperated Voltaire, by its onslaught on Helvetius, into a sharp attack, that only made the young author more conspicuous. His fame as a clever doctor was now great, and on June 24, 1777, the Comte d Artois, afterwards Charles X, of France, &quot; owing to the report he had heard of the good and moral life, and of the knowledge and experience in the art of medicine, of J. P. Marat,&quot; made him by brevet physician to his guards, with 2000 livres a year and allowances. Marat was soon in great request as a court doctor among the aristocracy ; and even Brissot, in his Memoires, admits his influence in the scientific world of Paris. The next years were much occupied with scientific- work, especially the study of heat, light, and electricity, on which he pre sented memoirs to the Acade mie des Sciences, but the Academicians were horrified at his temerity in differing from Newton, and, though acknowledging his industry, would not receive him among them. His experiments greatly interested Benjamin Franklin, who used to visit him ; and Goethe always regarded his rejection by the Academy as a glaring instance of scientific despotism. In 1780 he had published at Neuchatel without his name a Plan de Legislation Criminelle, founded on the humane principles established by Beccaria. In April 1786 he resigned his court appointment. The results of his leisure were in 1787 a new translation of Newton s Optics, and in 1788 his Memoires Academiques, on Nouvelles Decouvertes sur la Lumiere. His scientific life was now over, his political life was to begin; in the notoriety of that political life his great scientific and philosophical knowledge was to be forgotten, the high position he had given up denied, and he himself to be scoffed at as an ignorant charlatan, who had sold quack medicines about the streets of Paris, and been glad to earn a few sous in the stables of the Comte d Artois. In 1788 the notables had met, and advised the assembling of the states-general. The elections were the cause of a flood of pamphlets, of which one, Offrande a la Patrie, was by Marat, and, though now forgotten, dwelt on much the same points as the famous brochure of the Abbe&quot; Sieyes. When the states-general met, Marat s interest was as great