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clear that his health was seriously impaired. In 1847 he visited England for the tenth and last time, to conduct four performances of Elijah at Exeter Hall, on the 16th, 23d, 28th, and 30th of April, one at Manchester on the 20th, and one at Birmingham on the 27th. Again the queen and prince consort received him with marked respect, one might almost venture to say, affection, and all seemed prosperous and happy. But the necessary exertion was far beyond his strength. He witnessed Jenny Lind s first appearance at Her Majesty s Theatre, on the 4th of May, and left England on the 9th, little anticipating the trial that awaited him in the tidings of the sudden death of his sister Fanny, which reached him only a few days after his arrival in Frankfort. The loss of his mother in 1842 had shaken him much, but the suddenness with which this last sad intelligence was communicated broke him down com pletely. He fell to the ground insensible, and never fully recovered. In June he was so far himself again that he was able to travel, with his family, by short stages, to Interlaken, where he stayed for some time, illustrating the journey by a series of water-colour drawings, but making no attempt at composition for many weeks. He returned to Leipsic in September, bringing with him fragments of Christus, Loreley, and some other unfinished works, taking no part in the concerts, and living in the strictest privacy. On the 9th of October he called on Madame Frege, and asked her to sing his latest set of songs. She left the room for lights, and on her return found him in violent pain, and almost insensible. It was the begin ning of the end. He lingered on, now better now worse, through four weary weeks, and on the 4th of November he passed away, in the presence of his wife, his brother, and his three dear friends, Moscheles, Schleinitz, and Ferdinand David. A cross now marks the site of his grave, in the Alte Dreifaltigkeits Kirchhof, at Berlin. Mendelssohn s title to a place among the greatest composers of the century is incontestable. His style, though differing but little s in technical arrangement from that of his classical predecessors, is characterized by a vein of melody peculiarly his own, and easily distinguishable by those who have studied his works, not only from the genuine effusions of contemporary writers, but from the most successful of the servile imitations with which, even during his lifetime, the music-shops were deluged. In less judicious hands the rigid symmetry of his phrasing might, perhaps, have palled upon the ear ; but under his skilful management it serves only to impart an additional charm to thoughts which derive their chief beauty from the evident spontaneity of their conception. In this, as in all other matters of a purely technical character, he regarded the accepted laws of art as the medium by which he might most certainly attain the ends dictated by the inspiration of his genius. Though caring nothing for rules, except as means for producing a good effect, he scarcely ever violated them, and was never weary of impressing their value upon the minds of his pupils. His method of counterpoint was modelled in close accordance with that practised by Sebastian Bach. This he used in combination with an elastic development of the sonata-form, similar to that engrafted by Beethoven upon the lines laid down by Haydn. The principles involved in this arrangement were strictly conservative; yet they enabled him, at the very outset of his career, to invent a new style no less original than that of Schubert or "Weber, and no less re markable as the embodiment of canons already consecrated by classical authority than as a special manifestation of individual genius. It is thus that Mendelssohn stands before us as at the same time a champion of conservatism and an apostle of progress ; and it is chiefly by virtue of these two apparently incongruous though really perfectly compatible phases of his artistic character that his influence and example have, for so many years, held in check the violence of reactionary opinion which a little injudicious en couragement might easily have fanned into revolutionary fury. Happily, this wholesome influence is still at work among us ; and in his oratorios, his symphonies, his overtures, his concertos, and his smaller pianoforte pieces Mendelssohn sets before us an ex ample the value of which is universally recognized, and not likely to be soon forgotten. Concerning Mendelssohn s private character there have never been two opinions. As a man of the world, he was more than ordi narily accomplished, brilliant in conversation, and in his lighter moments overflowing with sparkling humour and ready pleasantry, loyal and unselfish in the more serious business of life, and never weary of working for the general good. As a friend he was un varyingly kind, sympathetic, and as true as steel. His earnestness as a Christian needs no stronger testimony than that afforded by his own delineation of the character of St Paul ; but it is not too much to say that his heart and life were pure as those of a little child. A complete list of Mendelssohn s published compositions one hundred and nine teen in number, besides some five and twenty unnumbered works of considerable importance will be found in the thematic catalogue published by Messrs breit- kopf and Ilartel at Leipsic, and also in Grove s Dictionary of Music and Musicians, vol. ii. pp. 308, 309. Among his miscellaneous writings, we may men tion a translation of the Andria of Terence, in German verse, and an immense collection of letters, posthumously printed, and calculated to give the reader a far closer acquaintance with his life and character than any biographer can hope to convey. (W. S. R.) MENDELSSOHN, MOSES (1729-1786), philosopher and scholar, well known as Lessing s friend and the proto type of his "Nathan," was born on September 6, 1729, at Dessau on the Elbe, where his Jewish father made a scanty livelihood by teaching a small school and transcribing copies of the " law." The leading events of Mendelssohn s career have been indicated elsewhere (see JEWS, vol. xiii. p. 680). His numerous writings include Ueber Evidenz in metafthysischen Wissenschaften (1763), which gained the prize in a competition in which Immanuel Kant took part; Brief e uber die Empjindungen (1764) ; Phsedon, oder uber die Unsterblichkeit der Seele (1767), an argument for immortality, founded on the nature of the soul as exempt ing it from the ordinary laws of change, which has been severely criticized by Kant ; Jerusalem, oder die religiose Macht und Judenthum (1783), a specially important con tribution to the question of Jewish emancipation ; a number of contributions to his friend Nicolai s Literatur- briefen and Bibliothek der schonen Wissenschaften ; one or two tracts in Hebrew ; and some new German translations from the Old Testament. The controversy which led to the publication of his Morgenstunden (1785-86), a reply to Jacobi s Brief e iiber die Lehre Spinoza s, is said to have been more or less directly the cause of his death, which took place on January 4, 1786 (see JACOBI, vol. xiii. p. 537). Of Mendelssohn s three sons, the second, Abraham, settled as a banker in Hamburg and married a Jewess, Lea Salomon Bartholdy, who bore him four children ; these, by advice of their mother s brother, himself a conscientious convert from Judaism, were educated as Christians, and thenceforth joined their mother s second surname to their own. The second of them, Felix, is the subject of the preceding notice. In later life Abraham Mendelssohn was accustomed to say, "When I was young I was the son of my father ; now I am the father of my son." See The Mendelssohn Family, 1882. MENDOZA, a city of the Argentine Republic, the only town of the province of Mendoza, lies 700 miles west- north-west of Buenos Ayres, at the foot of the Cordilleras, 2510 feet above the sea-level, in 32 53 S. lat. and 68 45 W. long. It was formerly a frequent stopping-place on the route across the Andes by the Uspallata Pass, and used to rank as one of the best-built towns in the country, but in 1861 it was almost completely destroyed by an appalling earthquake, in which the people, for the most part collected in the churches, perished to the number of about 12,000. Bravard, a French geologist who had often predicted the catastrophe, was one of those who perished. Extensive ruins still mark the site of the old town ; the new town, which has been built at a little distance, has grown rapidly. Situated in a richly cultivated district, Mendoza depends mainly on agriculture and fruit-growing. The city was founded in 1559 by Garcia de Mendoza; and in 1776 it was made the administrative centre of the vice-royalty of La Plata. See Mulhall, Handbook of the La Plata States, 1875 ; and Mrs Mulhall, Bctivcen the Amazon and the Andes, 1882. MENDOZA, DIEGO HURTADO DE (c. 1503-1575), novelist, poet, diplomatist, and historian, was a younger son of the member of the illustrious Mendoza family to whom
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