Page:Imperialdictiona03eadi Brandeis Vol3a.pdf/437

MIC of truth, is made to invest the insect and the bird. In "L'Amour," 1858, and "La Femme," 1859, the intrusion of physiology into the domain of thought and feeling was too much for English tastes. In "La Mer," 1861, Michelet addresses himself to the natural history and the poetry of the sea. In history it is his boast, that "while Thierry called it narrative, and M. Guizot analysis, I called it resurrection." But while this indicates his aim, it cannot be accepted as the result of Michelet's historical efforts. The resurrectionist is more prominent than the resurrection. Michelet was less a historian than an eloquent soliloquizer on the facts and personages of history. His works have at once the emphasis and the monotony of soliloquies. But his style is rich, many-coloured, sonorous; his wide sympathies with man and nature, his keen sensibility for the heroic and the pathetic, whether in high or in humble life; his patriotism, though it sometimes dwindles into a morbid and irrational pride of nation; his varied learning; his accessibility to the ideas of every time and region—mark him out as one of the most gifted men of modern France. He died in February, 1874.—F. E.  * MICHELET,, a distinguished German philosopher, was born at Berlin, 4th December, 1801, of a French refugee family. He first devoted himself to the study of law, and afterwards to that of philosophy and philology. He then for a time held a mastership in the French gymnasium of his native town, but resigned; began lecturing in the university; and in 1829 was appointed to a professorship, the duties of which he still discharges with unabated vigour. Although a pupil and follower of Hegel, he deviates in several respects from his great master. In his excellent edition of Aristotle's Ethics he has shown this hero of ancient philosophy to be not only the greatest empirical, for whom Hegel took him, but also the greatest speculative philosopher of antiquity. In 1836 he was awarded a prize by the French Academy for his "Examen critique du livre d'Aristote intitulé Metaphysique." When Schelling was called to Berlin in order to uproot the obnoxious system of Hegel, Michelet took up his master's defence with marked success. His own doctrine has been most distinctly expounded in his "Epiphanie der ewigen Persönlichkeit des Geistes, eine philosophische Trilogie." He has also published some valuable contributions to the history of modern philosophy, and assisted in editing the works of Hegel. Conjointly with Count Lieszkowski he originated the Berlin Philosophical Society, the Transactions of which were published in Noack's Jahhrbücher für speculative Philosophie.—K. E.  MICHELOZZI,, a famous Florentine architect and sculptor, was born towards the end of the fourteenth century. A pupil of Ghiberti and Donatello, he at first practised chiefly as a sculptor, executing, besides many of Donatello's later designs both in bronze and marble, the silver statue of San Giovanni in the Baptistery at Florence; a marble statue of Faith in the same building; some rilievi, &c.; but being employed by Cosmo de' Medici as an architect, he early abandoned sculpture as a profession. His first great commission from Cosmo was the erection of a palace in the Via Larga, now known as the Riccardi palace—a work of much nobleness of character, and the more noteworthy as being the first important building erected in Florence in what was then designated "the new style," but is now known as renaissance. When Cosmo went into exile in 1433 Michelozzi accompanied him, and was employed by the duke in making drawings of the older structures in Venice, in building the fine library of San Giorgio Maggiore, and in erecting various residences for Cosmo and his friends. On the return of Cosmo to Florence he employed Michelozzi in altering and enlarging the Palazzo Vecchio, but which was again remodelled by Vasari. Michelozzi continued throughout the life of Cosmo his trusted adviser, along with Brunelleschi, in his plans for the embellishment of Florence. Among other edifices which he erected for Cosmo were the convent of San Marco; the chapel and noviciate of Santa Croce; the palaces of Cafaggiuolo and Tornabuoni. He also enlarged and decorated the Sforza palace at Milan, and the Villa Careggi. For Giovanni, the son of Cosmo, he erected a palace at Fiesole; and for Piero de' Medici the marble Chapel of the Crucifix in the centre of the church of San Miniato, as a monument to his father Cosmo. Michelozzi was a man of less genius than his rival Brunelleschi; but his works are in some respects of a higher order of architectural excellence; and his is undoubtedly one of the great names in Italian palatial architecture of the early renaissance period. He is believed to have died in 1470.—J. T—e.  MICKIEWICZ,, the "Byron of Poland," was born in 1778 at Novogrodek in Lithuania. The son of an advocate, he studied at Wilna, where he joined the secret societies rife then and there for the liberation of Poland, and distinguished himself sufficiently by his scholarship to be appointed professor of classical literature at Kowno. While there he published in 1822 some poems, which at once placed him at the head of the poets of Poland, and which remind their English admirers at once of Byron and of Tennyson. But scarcely had he acquired his reputation when he was condemned to banishment from Poland, for his connection with secret societies. He was allowed to reside in St. Petersburg, where he increased his poetical fame, but where his liaisons with well-known Russian malcontents irritated the government. He left Russia for ever about 1829. visited Germany and Italy, and was hastening to aid in the Polish revolution, when he heard at Posen the tidings that it had been crushed. Composing and publishing the while remarkable poems, some of which, however, betrayed an ominous mysticism and exaggeration, he was ultimately invited by Cousin, then minister of public instruction, to fill a new chair of Slavonic literature in Paris. His first lectures were appreciated and admired; but before long he succumbed to the influence of Towianski, a Polish fanatic, who had repaired to Paris to greet the arrival of the remains of Napoleon from St. Helena, and who claimed to be the founder of a new religion, a singular compound of Napoleonolatry and Panslavism. The later lectures delivered by Mickiewicz under this influence could not be tolerated, and his academic teachings were suspended; 1848 revived in vain his hopes for the liberation of Poland; and in 1851 he was content to sink into the sub-librarian of the Arsenal, one of the public libraries of Paris. On the breaking out of the war with Russia he reappeared in public, at the head of a deputation of Poles who claimed from Napoleon III. the liberation of their country. In the same year he was even sent by the emperor of the French to the East on a secret mission, the object of which is variously stated. He died at Galata of cholera, on the 28th of November, 1856. His poems have been translated into French by Ostiowski, 1841 and 1845; and the first volumes of his lectures, "Les Slaves," Paris, 1840-42, form a really instructive and interesting work. "Adam Mickiewicz, eine Biographische Skizzie," appeared at Leipsic in 1857, professedly as the precursor of a larger biography; but, so far as we are aware, the promise has not been fulfilled.—F. E.  MICKLE,. See.  MICON, the son of Phanachus of Athens, about 450 ., was a celebrated painter and a sculptor, contemporary with Polygnotus and Phidias. He was one of the principal contributors to the historical decorations of the public buildings of Athens, after the completion of the great Persian war. He assisted Panænus, the nephew of Phidias, in a great picture of the battle of Marathon, painted in the Athenian gallery called the Pœcile; and the public took offence because he represented the Persians as larger men than the Greeks; for which indignity the painter was fined thirty minæ, better than a hundred guineas sterling. Micon was particularly distinguished for his skill in painting horses; and as this was at a time when we know—from the Phidias frieze of the Parthenon now in the Elgin room in the British Museum—that the Greeks greatly excelled in the representation of horses, he must have painted them absolutely well. Pausanias particularly praises the horses, in the picture of the "Return of the Argonauts to Thessaly," in the temple of the Dioscuri. One Simon, a writer on equitation and skilled in the knowledge of horses, criticised this painter for having given under-eyelashes to some of his horses, which horses have not. This defect, if the only one a man so skilled in the matter could detect, speaks rather in favour of the horses of Micon. Apelles is accused of having fallen into the same error. As regards style, Micon belonged to the early hard, generic school of painters. The Roman writer, Varro, objects to his pictures on this account, comparing them disadvantageously with the more finished and refined works of Apelles and his contemporaries. Such comparisons were quite possible in Varro's time; as the Romans had then formed several picture galleries, of which the chief ornaments were art trophies from the conquered cities of Greece It does not, however, follow of necessity that the more refined works in execution are absolutely the better pictures. Raphael would not compare with Guido, if refinement of execution were the chief test of excellence.—R. N. W. 