Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 16.djvu/812

Rh 782 N M O N now a sleepy place, straggling and dirty, with many of its adobe buildings abandoned to decay. The flourishing Mon terey whaling company (chiefly Portuguese from the Azores) has its station under the old fort ; and, the Southern Pacific Railroad Company having erected (1881) a magnificent hotel, the place bids fair to become one of the leading water ing-places on the California!! coast. The mission church of San Carlos, about four miles from the town, is a curious and striking ruin. Population is now (1883) about 1400. See Franc. Palou, Vida del vcn. padre fray J. Serra, Mexico, 1787 ; Lady Duffus Gordon, Through Cities and Prairie-lands, 1882 ; and Harper s Monthly Magazine, October 1882. MONTEREY, a city of Mexico, capital of the state of Nuevo Leon, lies 1600 feet above the sea on a sub-tributary of the Rio Grande del Norte, 150 miles south- south-west of Nuevo Laredo, and 190 west-south-west of Matamoras. A handsome and well-planned city, with a cathedral and a number of good public buildings, Monterey is also in com mercial and manufacturing activity the most important place in the northern parts of the republic, and one of the principal stations on the railway opened in 1882 between the city of Mexico and the United States frontier (at Matamoras and Nuevo Laredo). The population was about 37,000 in 1880. The city was founded in 1596, became a bishopric in 1777, and was captured by the United States forces under General Taylor in September 1846. MONTE SAN GIULIANO, a city of Sicily, in the pro vince of Trapani and 12 miles north-east of the town of Trapani, occupies the summit of the mountain from which it takes its name. Rising in the midst of an undulating plain, this magnificent and conspicuous peak (the Eryx of the ancients) has, whether seen from sea or land, such an appearance of altitude that, while it really does not exceed 2464 feet, it has for ages been popularly considered the culminating point of western Sicily, and second only to Mount Etna. By the Phoenicians it was early chosen as the site of a temple, which continued down to the time of the Roman empire to be one of the most celebrated of all the shrines of Venus (Venus Erycina). The ancient city of Eryx, situated lower down the mountain side, disappears from history after the establishment of the Roman power in Sicily, the inhabitants having probably taken advan tage of the protection afforded by the sanctity, fortifica tions, and garrison of the temple-enclosure. In the modern town, the population of which has recently decreased to about 3000 by the migration of considerable numbers to the plain, the chief points of interest are the cathedral, internally restored in 1865, the castle, which occupies the site of the temple, and the three so-called torri del Balio, which probably represent the propykea. Remains of Phoenician masonry are still seen on the north side of the town. The great rock-hewn cistern in the garden of the castle is very like one of the cisterns of the Haram at Jerusalem. The antiquities of Monte San Giuliano have been carefully in vestigated by Giuseppe Polizzi (7 Monumenti d Antichita dclla Provincia di Trapani), and by Professor Salinas (ArcMvio Storico Siciliano, L, &c.). Compare Renan, Melancjcs d Histoire et dc Voyages; and Sayce in Academy, 30th December 1882. MONTE SANT ANGELO, a city of Italy in the pro vince of Foggia (Capitanata), 10 miles north of Manfre- donia, stands on an offshoot of Monte Gargano 2824 feet high. In 491 the archangel Michael pointed out the place to St Laurentius, archbishop of Sipontum (Man- fredonia), and the chapel, which was built over the cave, to which he drew more particular attention, soon became a famous place of pilgrimage. Though plundered by the Lombards in 657, and by the Saracens in 869, St Michael s was already a wealthy sanctuary in the llth century, and its prosperity continued till the time of the French occupation. The canons (Canonid Garganici, as they are usually called) maintained a prolonged contest with the Sipontine archbishops for episcopal independence. According to Ughelli (Italia Sacra, vol. vii. p. 816), a marble statue of the saint by Michelangelo Buonarroti took the place of a silver image. The bronze doors still preserved are fine pieces of Byzantine work, made, as an inscription bears witness, in Constantinople in 1076. The town of Sant Angelo, which had only about 3000 inhabitants in the 17th century, numbered 14,759 in 1861, and 13,902 in 1871. Besides the festival of the saint celebrated on the 9th of May, there is a great fair on the 29th of September. MONTESQUIEU, CHARLES Louis DE SECONDAT, BARON DE LA BREDE ET DE (1689-1755), philosophical his torian, was born at the chateau of La Brede, about 10 miles to the south-east of Bordeaux, in January 1689 (the exact date being unknown), and was baptized on the 18th of that month. His mother was Marie Franchise de Penel, the heiress of a Gascon-English family. She had brought La Brede as a dowry to his father, Jacques de Secondat, a mem ber of a good if not extremely ancient house, which seems first to have risen to importance in the early days of the 16th century. The title of Montesquieu came from his uncle, Jean Baptiste de Secondat, &quot;president & mortier&quot; in the parliament of Bordeaux, an important office, which, as well as his title, he left to his nephew. Montesquieu was in his youth known as M. de la Brede. His mother died when he was seven years old, and when he was eleven he was sent to the Oratorian school of Juilly, near Meaux, where he stayed exactly five years, and where, as well as afterwards at Bor deaux, he was thoroughly educated. The family had long been connected with the law, and Montesquieu was destined for that profession. He was made to work hard at it not withstanding his prospects (for his uncle s office was his by reversion) ; but, as in his later life, he seems to have tempered much study with not a little society. His father died in 1713, and a year later Montesquieu, or, as he should at this time strictly be called, La Brede, was admitted coun sellor of the parliament. In little more than another twelve month he married Jeanne Lartigue, an heiress and the daughter of a knight of the order of St Louis, but plain, somewhat ill-educated, and a Protestant. Montesquieu does not seem to have made the slightest pretence of affection or fidelity towards his wife things which, indeed, the times did not demand ; but there is every reason to believe that they lived on perfectly good terms. Like the three previous years, 1716 was an eventful one to him ; for his uncle died, leaving him his name, his important judicial office, and his whole fortune. He thus became one of the richest and most influential men in the district. He continued to hold his presidency for twelve years, in the course of which he had much judicial work to perform, as well as the nonde script administrative functions which under the old regime fell to the provincial parliaments. He was none the less addicted to society, and he took no small part in the pro ceedings of the Bordeaux Academy, to which he contributed papers on philosophy, politics, and natural science. He also wrote much less serious things, and it was during the earlier years of his presidency that he finished, if he did not begin, the Lettres Persanes. They were completed before 1721, and appeared in that year anonymously, with Cologne on the title-page, but they were really printed and published at Amsterdam. This celebrated book (the original notion of which is generally set down to a work of Dufresny, the comic author, but which is practically original) would have been surprising enough as coining from a magistrate of the highest dignity in any other time than in the regency of thu duke of Orleans, and even as it was it rather scandalized the graver among Montesquieu s contemporaries. In the guise of letters written by and to two Persians of distinction