MITFORD, MARY RUSSELL, authoress, born at Alresford, Hants, lived with her father, an extravagant physician, at Lyme Regis and London; she published poems in 1810-11-12, but, forced to earn a living, took to dramatic work; “Julian,” “The Foscari,” and “Rienzi” were successful if ephemeral tragedies; her best work was “Our Village,” sketches of homely English life written with much care, and after appearing in the London Magazine, published in 5 vols., 1824-32 (1786-1855).

MITFORD, WILLIAM, English author; wrote a “History of Greece” and on the “English Metre, or the Harmony of Language” (1744-1827).

MITHRAS (i. e. the Friend), the highest of the second order of deities in the ancient Persian religion, the friend of man in this life and his protector against evil in the world to come, sided with Ormuzd against Ahriman, incarnated in the sun, and represented as a youth kneeling on a bull and plunging a dagger into his neck, while he is at the same time attacked by a dog, a serpent, and a scorpion.

MITHRIDATES THE GREAT, surnamed Eupator, king of Pontus from 123 to 63 B.C.; an implacable enemy of the Romans, between whom and him there raged from 90 to 63 a succession of wars, till he was defeated by Pompey near the Euphrates, when, being superseded by his son, he put an end to his life; he was a great man and conqueror, subdued many surrounding nations, and was a collector of works of art; he made a special study of poisons, and familiarised himself with all their antidotes, in view of possible attempts by means of them to take away his life.

MITRAILLEUSE, a gun consisting of several, as many as 25, barrels, from which a number of shots may be fired simultaneously or in rapid succession, used by the French in the Franco-German War.

MIVART, ST. GEORGE, naturalist, a Roman Catholic professor at Louvain, distinguished for his opposition to Darwinianism; b. 1827.

MNEMOSYNE in the Greek mythology the daughter of Uranos, the goddess of memory, and the mother of the Muses by Zeus.

MOA, the name of several species of New Zealand and Australian birds, from 2 to 14 ft. high, and quite wingless; almost extinct since the 17th century; two living specimens were captured in 1876.

MOAB, a pastoral region extending along the E. of lower parts of the Jordan and the Dead Sea, and inhabited by the descendants of Lot, now extinct, or merged among the Arabs.

MOABITE STONE, a stone 4 ft. high and 2 ft. broad found by Dr. Klein in 1868 among the ruins of Dhiban, a town in Moab, now in the Louvre at Paris, describing a victory of the Moabites over the Israelites; it was broken by the Arabs, but the fragments have been collected and put into their proper places.

MOBILE (31), a city and port of Alabama, U.S., 30 m.  N. of the Gulf of Mexico; a thriving place; exports cotton, lumber, &c.

MOBILIER CREDIT, a banking and financial company founded in Paris in 1852; lends money on security of property other than real, and takes shares in public schemes, such as railways.