M S M O S 855 Certosa near Pavia were by Borgognone, and are extremely beauti ful. The stalls in Siena cathedral and in S. Pietro de Casinensi at Perugia, the latter from Raphael s designs, are among the fines! works of this sort, which are very numerous in Italy. It has also been used on a smaller scale to ornament furniture, and especially the " Cassoni," or large trousseau coffers, on which the most costly and elaborate decorations were often lavished. Some traditional skill in this art still lingers in Italy, especially in the city of Siena. AUTHORITIES. Classical Mosaics. Pliny, //. N., xxxvi.; Vitruvius; Franks, Slade Collection, of Ancient Glass, and Excavations at Carthage, 1800; Artaud, Histoire de la peinture en mosai<i>ie, 1835; Mvnumentos Arquitectonicos de Espaiic <"Italica," "Cordoba," and "Elche"), 1859-83; Laborde, Mosaiifue d ltalica, 3>res de Seville, 1802; Ciampini, I etera Monumenta, Rome, 1747; Von Minntoli, Motaikfussboden, &c., 1835; Lysons, Mosaics of Horkstov, 1801, and Roman Antiquities of H oodchester, 1797; Mazois, Les ruine.s de Pompci, Paris, 1812-38; Meal Museo Borbonico, various dates; Roach Smith, Roman London, 1859: Ausgrabungen zu Olympia, 1877-82. Christian. Theophilus, Diversarum Artium Schedula, ii. 15; S. Kensington Museum Art Inventory, part i., 1870; Ronan, MissiondePhenicie, 1875; Garrucci, Arte Cristiana, 1872-82, vol. iv.; De Rossi, Musaici Cristiani di Kama, 1872-82; Parker, Archaeology of Rome, and Mosaic Pictures in Rome and Ravenna, 1806; Jouy, Les Mosaiques chretiennes de Rome, 1857; Gravina, Duomo di Monreale, 1 alermo, 1859 sq.; Serradifalco, Monreale ed altrc chiesc Siculo-Normanne, 1838; Salazaro, Man. dell Arte Merid. d ltalia, 1882; M. D. Wyatt, Geometrical Mosaics, of the Middle Ages, 1849; Salzenberg, Alt-Christliche Ba udcnkmtde von Constanti- nopel, 1854; Pulgher, Eglises Byzantines de Constantinople, 1883; Texier and Pullan, Byzantine Architecture, 1804; Quast, Alt-Christlichen Bauwerke von Ravenna, 1842; De Vogue, Eglises de la Terre Sainte, 1800; Milanesi, Del Arte del Vetro pel Musaico, 10th century (reprinted at Bologna in 1804); Rohault de Fleury, Monuments de Pise, 1806; Kreutz, Basilica di S. Marco, Venezia, 1843; Gaily Knight, Ecclesiastical Architecture of Italy, 1842-4; Fossati, Aya Sophia, 1852; Didron, "La peinture en Mosaique," Gaz. des B. Arts, vol. xi., p. 442; Gerspach, La Mosaique, 1883. Moslem. Hessemer, Arabische ttnd Alt-Italienische Bau-Verzierungen, 1853; Prisse d Avenues, L Art Arabe, 1874-1880; Prangey, Mosquee de Cordoue, 1830; Owen Jones, Alhambra, 1842; De Vogue, Temple de Jerusalem, 1804; Texier, Asie Mineure, 1802, and L A rmenie et la Perse, 1842-52; Bourgoin, Les A rts Arabes, 1808; Coste, Monuments moilernesde la Perse, 1807; Flandin and Coste, Voyage en Perse, 1843-54. Wood-Mosaic Tarsia. Ornati del Coro di S. Pietro Cassinense di Perugia, 1830; Caffi, various works on Rafaello da Brescia and other iutarsiatori, 1851, <&C.; Tarsie ed intagli di S. Lorenzo in Genova, 1878. (J. H. M.) MOSCHELES, IGNAZ (1794-1870), one of the most refined and accomplished pianists of the present century, was born at Prague, 30th May 1794, and first studied music at the Conservatorium in that city under the direc tion of Dionys Weber. At the age of fourteen he made his first appearance before the public in a pianoforte con certo of his own composition with marked success. Soon after this he removed to Vienna, where he studied coun terpoint under Albrechtsberger and composition under Salieri. In 1814 he prepared, with Beethoven s consent, the pianoforte arrangement of Fidelia, afterwards published by Messrs Artaria. In the following year he published his celebrated Variationen iiber den Alexandermarsch, a con cert piece of great difficulty, which he played with so great effect that he was at once recognized as the most brilliant performer of the day. He then started on a tour, during the course of which he visited most of the great capitals of Europe, making his first appearance in London in 1822, and there securing the friendship of Muzio Clementi and John Cramer, the fathers of the English school of piano forte playing. For a concert given by the latter he wrote his famous Hommage cb Handel, a duet for two pianofortes, which afterwards became a lasting favourite with the public. His reception in England was sufficiently encouraging to justify his return in 1823, when he again met with a hearty welcome. During a visit to Berlin in 1824 he first became acquainted with Mendelssohn, then a boy of fifteen; and a friendship sprang up between them which was severed only by Mendelssohn s early death. In 1826 Moscheles relinquished his wandering habits, and settled permanently in London, surrounding himself with a clientele fully capable of appreciating his talents as an artist and his social worth as a firm and loyal friend. His position was henceforth a more than ordinarily en viable one. He was recognized from end to end of Europe as a virtuoso of the highest rank; and his popularity both as a performer and as a teacher was based on grounds which effectually secured it from the caprice of changing fashion or ephemeral patronage. He was undoubtedly for some con siderable time the greatest executant of his age; but, using his brilliant touch as a means and not as an end, he con sistently devoted himself to the further development of the true classical school, interpreting the works of the great masters with conscientious fidelity, and in his extempore performances, which were of quite exceptional excellence, exhibiting a fertility of invention which never failed to please the most fastidious taste. In 1837 Moscheles conducted Beethoven s Ninth Sym phony at the Philharmonic Society s concerts with extra ordinary success; and on this and other occasions contri buted not a little, by his skilful use of the baton, to the prosperity of the time-honoured association. During the course of his long residence in London he laboured inces santly in the cause of art, playing at innumerable concerts, both public and private, and instructing a long line of pupils, who flocked to him, in unbroken succession, until the year 1848, when, at Mendelssohn s earnest solicitation, he removed to Leipsic, to carry on a similar work at the Conservatorium then recently founded in that city. In this new sphere he worked with unabated zeal for more than twenty years, dying 10th March 1870. Moscheles s most important compositions are his Pianoforte Con certos, Sonatas, and Studies; his Hommage a Handel; and his three celebrated Allcgri di Bravura. MOSCHUS, of Syracuse, is one of the Greek bucolic poets; he was a friend of the Alexandrian grammarian Aristarchus (about 200 B.C.). His chief work is the epi taph of Bion of Smyrna, another of the bucolic poets, who seems to have lived in Sicily. It is probable that the miscellaneous collection of poems which we possess by the three poets Theocritus, Bion, and Moschus was known to Artemidorus in 200 B.C. His poetry is the work of a well- educated man with a trained artistic eye; he models his works on those of Bion, writing epigrammatic, epic, and idyllic or elegiac verses, all except a few lines being in hexameter verse; but he treats all his subjects in a de scriptive, not in a narrative or an epigrammatic style. Besides the epitaph of Bion, he wrote two little epic poems, "Europa" and "Megara," and a pretty little epigram, " Love the Runaway; " and a few short pieces of his are also preserved. They are written with much elegance, but the style is perhaps too refined and carefully wrought, and he has few of the higher qualities of a poet. MOSCOW, a government of Central Russia, bounded by Tver on the N.W., Vladimir and Ryazan on the E., Tula and Kaluga on the S., and Smolensk on the W., and having an area of 12,858 square miles. The surface is undulating, with broad depressions occupied by the rivers, and varies in elevation from 500 to 850 feet. Moscow is situated in the centre of the so-called Moscow coal-basin, which extends into the neighbouring governments, and consists of limestones of the Upper and Lower Carboni ferous, the latter containing beds of inferior coal, while the former contains several good quarries of marble. The Carboniferous formation is covered with Jurassic clays, sandstones, and sands, which yield a good china-clay at Gjeli, copperas, a sandstone much employed for building, and a white sand used for the manufacture of glass. The whole is thickly covered with boulder-clay and alluvial sands. The government is watered by the Volga, which skirts it for a few miles on its northern boundary, by the navigable Sestra, which brings it in communication with the canals leading to St Peters burg, by the Oka, and by the Moskva. This last takes its origin in Smolensk, and, after a course of 280 miles right across Moscow, reaches the Oka at Kolomna; it is navigable from the town of Moscow. The Oka and Moskva from a remote period have been important channels of trade, and continue to be so notwithstanding the development of railways. The Oka brings the government into water communication with the Volga, whose tributaries cover nearly the whole of middle and eastern Russia, and are separated by short land distances from the Northern Dwina and the Don. Large quantities of grain, metals, glass ware, skins, and other com modities are shipped up and down the Moskva, whilst the Myach- vovo stone quarries situated on its banks supply the capital with
juilding stone. There are several marshes, mostly in the north,