Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 16.djvu/253

Rh M I C M I C 237 spective in which these tableaux are drawn, a perspective so strange that a reader unacquainted with the actual size and relation of the objects represented is certain to be deceived. Nothing indeed is further from Michelet s purpose than deceit. Although a strong republican, an ardent anti-sacerdotalist, and a patriot of fanatical enthusiasm, he is always scrupulously fair as far as he understands what he is doing. For instance, his hatred for England and Englishmen is one of the most comically intense passions in litera ture. He is never tired of exclaiming against their diabolical pride, their odious jealousy of France, their calculating covetousness, and so forth. In his excited imagination the long drama of European history is a kind of conflict of Ormuzd and Ahriman, in which France, it is needless to say, plays the first part and England the second. Yet he is never unfair to English fortitude and coolness, never (after the childish fashion of some of his countrymen) slurs over English victories, and often expresses genuine admiration (mixed, it is true, with a shudder or two of aversion ) for the master ful ways and constantly advancing prosperity of the English people. So, with all his dislike to the priesthood, he never is chary of praise to pope or monk whenever it can fairly be given, and, with all his republicanism, he is never weary of worshipping the heroism of a great king. But his poetical fashion of dealing with events, his exaggeration of trivial incidents into great facts of history, his fixed ideas, especially in reference to the intellectual and social condition of mediaeval times, the evils of which he enormously exaggerates, and his abiding prejudices of a general kind combine to distort his accounts in the strangest fashion. A laborious person might pick out of contemporary authors a notable collection of erroneous views of which Michelet is not so much the author as the suggester, for it is when his brilliant exaggerations are torn from their context and set down in some quite other context as sober gospel that they are most misleading to those who do not know the facts, and most grotesque to those who do. This is especially the case in regard to literature. Michelet began his great work too early to enjoy the benefit of the resurrection of old French literature which has since taken place ; and though his view of that literature partakes of the amorous enthusiasm which colours his view of everything French, it is astoundingly incorrect in detail. The most remarkable passage of all perhaps is the passage in his Renaissance relating to Rabelais, Ronsard, and Du Bellay, a passage so widely inconsistent not only with sound criticism but with historic fact that the anthor(a very rare thing with him) makes a kind of half apology for it elsewhere. Of the work of the age of chivalry proper, the chansons de gestes, the Arthurian romances, the early lyrics and dramas, he evidently knew but little, and chose to subordinate what he did know to his general theories of the time. Even much later his praise and blame, though transparently honest, are quite haphazard. Unless, therefore, the reader be gifted with a very rare faculty of applying the &quot; grain of salt &quot; to what he reads, or unless he be well acquainted with the actual facts before coming to Michelet s version of them, he will almost certainly be misled. But despite this grave drawback (which attends all picturesque history) the value of Michelet merely as an historian is immense. Not only are his separate tableaux, the wonderful geographical sketch of France in the beginning of the book, the sections devoted to the Templars, to Joan of Arc, to the Renaissance, to the Camisards, almost unequalled, but the in spiriting and stimulating effect of his work is not to be surpassed. If his reconstruction is often hazardous and conjectural, sometimes definitely and demonstrably mistaken, and nearly always difficult to adjust entirely to the ascertained facts, it is always possible in itself, always instinct with genius, and always life-like. There are no dead bones in Michelet ; they are if anything only too stirring and lively. These criticisms apply equally to the minor books, though these are necessarily fuller of the author s somewhat weari some propaganda, and less full of brilliantly painted facts. The great fault of Michelet as of not a few other modern authors is the comparatively improvised and ephemeral character of too much of his work. His immense volume is, much of it, mere brilliant pamphleteering, much more mere description equally brilliant but equally liable to pass. Nevertheless he is (especially in French, the language par excellence of measured and academic perfection) so characteristic and singular a figure in his turbid eloquence and fitful flashing insight that he is never likely to lose a place, and a notable one, in literary history. Almost all Michelet s works, the exceptions being his translations, compilations, &c. , are published in uniform size and in about fifty volumes, partly by Marpou and Flammarion, partly by Calmann Levy. (G. SA.) MICHELL, JOHN, an eminent English man of science of the 18th century. He received his university education at Queen s College, Cambridge. His name appears fourth in the Tripos list for 1748-49 ; and in 1755 he was moderator in that examination. He was a fellow of his college, and became successively Woodwardian professor of geology (in 1762) and rector of Thornhill in Yorkshire. He was elected a member of the Royal Society in the same year as Henry Cavendish (1760). He died in 1793. In 1750 he published at Cambridge a small work of some eighty pages, entitled A Treatise of Artificial Magnets, in which is shoivn an easy and expeditious method of making them superior to the best natural ones. Besides the descrip tion of the method of magnetization which still bears his name, this work contains a variety of acute and accurate magnetic observations, and is particularly distinguished by a lucid exposition of the nature of magnetic induction. He is now best known as the original inventor of the torsion balance, which afterwards became so famous in the hands of its second inventor Coulomb. Michell described it in his proposal of a method for obtaining the mean density of the earth. He did not live to put his method into practice ; but this was done by Henry Cavendish, who made, by means of Michell s apparatus, the celebrated determination that now goes by the name of Cavendish s experiment (Phil. Trans., 1798). Michell s other contributions to science are &quot; Conjectures con cerning the Cause and Observations upon the Phenomena of Earth quakes,&quot; Phil. Trans., 1760 ; &quot; Observations on the Comet of January 1760 at Cambridge, Ib., 1760 ; &quot;A Recommendation of Hadley s Quadrant for Surveying,&quot; Ib., 1765 ; &quot; Proposal of a Method for measuring Degrees of Longitude upon Parallels of the Equator,&quot; Ib., 1766 ; &quot;An Inquiry into the Probable Parallax and Magnitude of the Fixed Stars,&quot; Ib., 1767; &quot; On the Twinkling of the Fixed Stars,&quot; Ib., 1767 ; &quot;On the Means of Discovering the Distance, Magnitude, &c., of the Fixed Stars,&quot; Ib., 1784. MICHELOZZI, MICHELOZZO (1391-1472?), was a Florentine by birth, the son of a tailor, and in early life a pupil of Donatello. He was a sculptor of some ability in marble, bronze, and silver. The statue of the young St John over the door of the Duomo at Florence, opposite the Baptistery, is by him ; and he also made the beautiful silver statuette of the Baptist on the altar-frontal of San Giovanni. Michelozzi s great friend and patron was Cosimo I. dei Medici, whom he accompanied to Venice in 1433 during his short exile. While at Venice, Michelozzi built the library of San Giorgio Maggiore, and designed other buildings there. The magnificent Palazzo dei Medici at Florence, built by Cosimo, was designed by him ; it is one of the noblest specimens of Italian 15th-century architec ture, in which the great taste and skill of the architect has combined the delicate lightness of the earlier Italian Gothic with the massive stateliness of the Classical style. With great engineering skill Michelozzi shored up, and partly rebuilt, the Palazzo Vecchio, then in a ruinous condition, and added to it many important rooms and staircases. When, in 1437, through Cosimo s liberality, the monastery of San Marco at Florence was handed over to the Dominicans of Fiesole, Michelozzi was employed to rebuild the domestic part and remodel the church. For Cosimo I. he designed numerous other buildings, mostly of great beauty and importance. Among these were a guest-house at Jerusalem, for the use of Florentine pilgrims, Cosimo s summer villa at Careggi, and the strongly fortified palace of Cafagiuolo in Mugello. For Giovanni dei Medici, Cosimo s son, he built a very large and magnificent palace at Fiesole. In spite of Vasari s statement that he died at the age of sixty-eight, he appears to have lived till 1472. He is buried in the monastery of San Marco, Florence. Though skilled both as a sculptor and engineer, his fame chiefly rests on his architectural works, which claim for him a position of very high honour even among the greatest names ! of the great 15th-century Florentines. MICHIGAN, one of the States of the American Union, Plate II. situated in the region of the great lakes. It lies between 41 42 and 47 32 N. lat., and 82 241 and 90 31 W. long., the centre of the State being 670 miles north of west from New York, the nearest point on the seaboard. The area is 58,915 square miles. The State consists of two