standpoint: it is rather a brilliant panorama, a series of stage pictures, and the characters neither live nor arouse our sympathy. In the great epic on the Rhone (Lou Pouèmo dóu Rouse, 1897) the poet depicts the former barge-life of that river, and intertwines his narrative with the legends clustering round its banks, and with a graceful love episode. For the first time he employs blank verse, and uses it with great mastery, but again the ancient lore is overdone. A splendid piece of work is Lou Tresor dóu Félibrige (1886). In these two volumes Mistral has deposited with loving care every word and phrase, every proverb, every scrap of legend, that he had gathered during his many years’ journeyings in the south of France. In 1904 he was awarded one of the Nobel prizes for literature.
An excellent literary appreciation of the poet is that by Gaston Paris, “Frédéric Mistral” (originally in the Revue de Paris (Oct. and Nov. 1894); then in Penseurs et Poètes (Paris, 1896)). More elaborate accounts are Welter, Frédéric Mistral (Marburg, 1899); and Downer, Frédéric Mistral (New York, 1901), with a full bibliography. (H. O.)
MISTRAL, a local wind similar to the bora (q.v.), met with on
the French Mediterranean coast. The warm Gulf of the Lion
(Golfe du Lion) has to the north the cold central plateau of
France, which during winter is commonly a centre of high
barometric pressure, and the resulting pressure gradient causes
persistent currents of cold dry air from the north-west in the
intermediate zone. The mistral occurs along the coast from the
mouth of the Ebro to the Gulf of Genoa, but attains greatest
strength and frequency in Provence and Languedoc, i.e. the
district of the Rhone delta, where it blows on an average one
day out of two; the record at Marseilles is 175 days in the year.
It is usually associated with cloudless skies and brilliant sunshine,
intense dryness and piercing cold. With the passage of a
cyclone over the gulf, or a rapid rise of pressure following a fall
of snow on the central plateau, the mistral develops into a stormy wind of great violence.
MISTRESS (adapted from O. Fr. maistresse, mod. maîtresse, the feminine of maistre, maître, master), a woman who has
authority, particularly over a household. As a form of address
or term of courtesy the word is used in the same sense as
“madam.” It was formerly used indifferently of married or
unmarried women, but now, written in the abbreviated form
“Mrs” (pronounced “missis”), it is practically confined to
married women and prefixed to the surname; it is frequently
retained, however, in the case of spinster cooks or housekeepers,
as a title of dignity; as the female equivalent of “master”
the word is used in other senses by analogy, e.g. of Rome as “the
mistress of the world,” Venice “the mistress of the Adriatic,”
&c. From the common use of “master” as a teacher, “mistress” is similarly used. The old usage of the word for a lady-love
or sweetheart has degenerated into that of paramour.
“Miss” a shortened form of “mistress,” is the term of address
for a girl or unmarried woman; it is prefixed to the surname
in the case of the eldest or only daughter of a family, and to the
Christian names in the case of the younger daughters.
MITAU (Russian, Mitava; Lettish, Yelgava), a town of Russia, capital of the government of Courland, 29 m. by rail S.W. of Riga, on the right bank of the river Aa, in a fertile plain which rises only 12 ft. above sea level, and has probably given its name
to the town (Mitte in der Aue). Pop. (1897), 35,011 inhabitants, mainly Germans, but including also Jews (6500), Letts (5000) and Russians. At high water the plain and sometimes also the town are inundated. Mitau is surrounded by a canal occupying the place of former fortifications. It has regular, broad streets,
bordered with the mansions of the German nobility, who reside
at the capital of Courland. Mitau is well provided with educational
institutions, and is also the seat of the Lettish Literary
Society. The old castle (1266) of the dukes of Courland,
situated on an island in the river, was destroyed by Duke Biren,
who erected in its place (1738–1772) a spacious palace, now
occupied by the governor and the courts. Manufactures are
few, those of wax-cloth, linen, soap, ink and beer being the
most important.
Mitau is supposed to have been founded in 1266 by Conrad Mandern, grand-master of the order of the Brethren of the Sword. In 1345, when it was plundered by the Lithuanians, it was already an important town. In 1561 it became the residence of the dukes of Courland. During the 17th century it was thrice taken by the Swedes. Russia annexed it with Courland in 1795. It was the residence (1798–1801 and 1804–1807) of the count of Provence (afterwards Louis XVIII.). In 1812 it was taken by Napoleon I.
MITCHAM, a suburb of London, in the Wimbledon parliamentary division of Surrey, England, 10 m. S. of London Bridge by the London, Brighton & South Coast railway. Pop. (1901), 14,903. Mitcham Common covers an area of 480 acres, and affords one of the best golf courses near London. The neighbourhood abounds in market gardens and plantations of aromatic herbs for the manufacture of scents and essences.
MITCHEL, ORMSBY MACKNIGHT (1809–1862), American
astronomer, was born at Morganfield, Kentucky, on the 28th of July, 1809. He began life as a clerk, but, obtaining an appointment
to a cadetship at West Point in 1825, he graduated there in
1829, and acted as assistant professor of mathematics 1829–1832.
He was then called to the bar, but in 1836 became professor of
mathematics and natural philosophy at Cincinnati College. In
1845 he was made director of an observatory established there
through his initiative, and also in 1859 superintendent of the
Dudley observatory at Albany. In 1861 he took part in the
war as brigadier-general of volunteers, and for his skill in seizing
certain important strategic points was on the 11th of April 1862
made major-general. He died of yellow fever at Beaufort, South
Carolina, on the 30th of October 1862. He founded the
Sidereal Messenger in 1846, was one of the first to adopt (in 1848) the
electrical method of recording observations, and published
besides other works, The Orbs of Heaven (1848, &c.), and
Popular Astronomy (1860), both reissued at London in 1892.
See Ormsby MacKnight Mitchel; a Biographical Narrative, by his son, F. A. Mitchel (1887); P. C. Headley, The Patriot Boy (1865); Amer. Journal of Science, xxiv. 451 (1862); Month. Notices Roy. Astr. Society, xxiii. 133, xxxvii. 121 (C. Abbe); Astr. Nach., No. 1401 (G. W. Hough).
MITCHELL, DONALD GRANT (1822–1908) American author,
was born in Norwich, Connecticut, on the 12th of April 1822. He graduated at Yale College in 1841; studied law, but soon took up literature. Throughout his life he showed a particular interest in agriculture and landscape-gardening, which he followed at first in pursuit of health. He produced books of travel, volumes
of essays on rural themes, of which My Farm of Edgewood (1863) is the best; sketchy studies of English monarchs and of English and American literature; and a character-novel entitled Doctor Johns (1866), &c.; but is best known as the author (under the pseudonym of “Ik Marvel”), of the sentimental essays contained
in the volumes Reveries of a Bachelor, or a Book of the Heart
(1850), and Dream Life, a Fable of the Seasons (1851).
MITCHELL, MARIA (1818–1889), American astronomer, was born of Quaker ancestry on the island of Nantucket on the 1st of August 1818. Her father, William Mitchell (1791–1869), was a school teacher and self-taught astronomer, who rated chronometers for Nantucket Whalers, was an overseer of Harvard University (1857–1865), and for a time was employed by the United States Coast Survey. As early as 1831 (during the annular eclipse of the sun) she had been her father’s assistant in
his observations. On the 1st of October 1847 she discovered a telescopic comet (seen by De Vico Oct. 3, by W. R. Dawes Oct. 7, by Madame Rümker Oct. 11), and for this discovery she received a gold medal from the King of Denmark, and was elected (1848) to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and (1850) to the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In 1861 she removed from Nantucket to Lynn, where she used a large equatorial telescope presented to her by the women of America; and there she lived until 1865, when she became professor of astronomy and director of the observatory
at Vassar College; in 1888 she became professor emeritus.
In 1874 she began making photographs of the sun, and for years she made a special study of Jupiter and Saturn. She died at
