h and all unworth throughout the universe, yet
knowing and boastful of knowledge, by means of which he sees only "the
ridiculous, the unsuitable, the bad, but for the solemn, the noble, the
worthy is blind as his ancient mother."

MERCATOR, a celebrated Dutch geographer who has given name to a
projection of the earth's surface on a plane (1512-1592).

MERCENARIES, originally hired soldiers as distinguished from feudal
levies, now bodies of foreign troops in the service of the State; the
Scots Guards in France from the 15th to 18th centuries were famous, and
Swiss auxiliaries once belonged to most European armies; William III. had
Dutch mercenaries in England; under the Georges, German were hired and
were used in the American War, the Irish rebellion, and the Napoleonic
struggle; in the Crimean War German, Swiss, and Italian were enrolled.

MERCIA, one of the three chief kingdoms of early England; founded by
Anglian settlers in the Upper Trent Valley (now South Staffordshire) In
the 6th century; it rose to greatness under Penda 626-655, subsequently
succeeded Northumberland in the supremacy, but after the death of Cenwulf
819, waned in turn before Wessex and the Danes.

MERCURY, the Roman name for the Greek Hermes, the son of Jupiter and
Maia, the messenger of the gods, the patron of merchants and travellers,
and the conductor of the souls of the dead to the nether world.

MERCURY, an interior planet of the Solar system, whose orbit is
nearest the sun, the greatest distance being nearly 43,000,000 m. and the
least over 28,000,000, is one-seventeenth the size of the earth, but is
of greater density, and accomplishes its revolution in about 84 days; it
is visible just before the sun rises and after it sets, but that very
seldom owing to the sun's neighbourhood.

MER-DE-GLACE, the great glacier of the Alps near Chamouni, was the
subject of the experiments of Professor J. D. Forbes of Edinburgh about
1843, and on which the movement of the glaciers was first observed.

MEREDITH, GEORGE, poet and novelist, born in Hampshire; began his
literary career 1851 as a poet, in which capacity he has since
distinguished himself and given expression to his deepest personal
convictions, but it is chiefly as a novelist he is most widely known and
is generally judged of; as a novel-writer he occupies a supreme place,
and is reckoned superior in that department to all his contemporaries in
the same line by the unanimous c