Prime Minister for four months in 1834, and then
from 1835 till 1841, when he retired from public life; he was a man of
sound sense, and showed admirable tact in introducing the young queen to
her various duties in 1837 (1779-1848).

MELCHIZEDEK (i. e. king of righteousness or justice), a
priest-king of Canaan, to whom, though of no lineage as a priest, but as
a minister of God's justice, Abraham did homage and paid tithes; a true
type of priest as ordained of God, and one in that capacity "without
father and without mother."

MELEAGER, a Greek mythic hero, distinguished for throwing the
javelin, and by his skill in it slaying a wild boar which devastated his
country, and whose life depended on the burning down of a brand that was
blazing on the hearth at the time of his birth, but which his mother at
once snatched from the flames. But a quarrel having arisen between him
and his uncles over the head of the boar, in which they met their death,
the mother to be avenged on him for slaying her brothers threw back into
the fire the brand on the preservation of which his life depended, and on
the instant he breathed his last.

MELIORISM, the theory that there is in nature a tendency to better
and better development.

MELODRAMA, a play consisting of sensational incidents, and arranged
to produce striking effects.

MELPOMENE, the one of the nine muses which presides over tragedy.

MELROSE, a small town in Roxburghshire, at the foot of the Eildons,
on the S. bank of the Tweed, famed for its abbey, founded by David I. in
1136; it is celebrated by Sir Walter Scott in his "Lay of the Last
Minstrel."

MELTON-MOWBRAY (6), a town 15 m. NE. of Leicester, the centre of the
great hunting district; celebrated for its pork pies.

MELUSINA, a fairy of French legend, who married Raymond, a knight,
on condition that on a particular day of the week he would not visit her,
a stipulation which he was tempted to break, so that on a day of her
seclusion he broke into her chamber, and found the lower part of her body
from the waist downwards transformed into that of a serpent, upon which
she straightway flew out at the window, to hover henceforth round the
castle of her lord and only appear again on the occasion of the death of
any of the inmates.

MELVILLE, ANDREW, Scottish Presbyterian ecclesiastic, born near
Montrose; of good and even wide repute as a scholar; became Principal
first of Glasgow College and then of St.