MOSCOW (Russ. Moskwa), the ancient capital of Russia, and formerly the residence of the Czars, is situated in a highly-cultivated and fertile district on the Moskva, 400 miles south-east of St Petersburg, with which it is in direct communication by railway. Lat. 55° 40′ N., long. 37 33 E. Previously to its being burned in 1812, M. was perhaps the most irregularly built city in Europe, and that distinction to a great extent it still retains; for, as the main object in 1813 was to build speedily, the streets rose again on the old model, undulating and crooked, and consisting of alternating houses, the most varied in character and pretensions. The general view of the town, especially that obtained from an eminence on its southern side called the Sparrow Hills, is eminently original and picturesque. Its hundreds of churches and convents, surmounted by gilt or variously-coloured domes; its gardens and boulevards; and, above all, the high walls and crowded yet stately towers of the Kreml or citadel, produce a most striking effect. The Kreml, situated on the northern bank of the river, forms the centre of the town, and around it, with a radius of about a mile, is a line of boulevards, extending, however, only on the north side of the river. Outside of this line, and concentric with it, is another line of boulevards, with a radius of a mile and a half; while beyond all, and forming the girdle of the city, is the outer rampart, with a circumference of 26 English miles. The Kreml comprises the principal buildings, as the Cathedral of the Assumption of the Virgin, founded in 1326, a small but gorgeously-decorated edifice; the Cathedral of the Archangel Michael, containing the tombs of all the Czars down to the time of Peter the Great, who changed the royal burial-place to St Petersburg; the Church of the Annunciation, the floor of which is paved with jaspers, agates, and carnelians of various shapes; the tower of Ivan Veliki, 200 feet in height, and surmounted by a magnificent gilded dome, from which, as from all the domes of M., rises the honourable cross;' the Czar Kolokol (king of bells), the greatest bell in the world; several palaces, and collections of ancient arms and other antiquities; the arsenal, surrounded by the splendid trophy of 850 cannons, taken from the French; and the senate. The walls of the Kreml are surmounted by 18 towers, and pierced with 5 gates. In the town, the chief buildings are the cathedral of St Vassili, remarkable for its peculiar architecture; the Gostinoi Dvor, or Bazaar; and the Exchanges. The university of M., the first in Russia, founded in 1753, is attended by 1800 students, contains a library of 89,000 volumes, museums of natural history, and a botanical garden. As intermediate educational establishments between the parish schools and the university, there are provided 4 high schools or gymnasia; special establishments are the technological, the agricultural, the oriental, 2 commercial, and 3 military schools. There are several learned societies in M., which is also the seat of a metropolitan, one of the three highest dignitaries of the Russian Church.

M. communicates by railway with St Petersburg and Nijni-Novgorod, and the construction of a third line to Sebastopol has been recently ceded to an English company. It is the seat of an extensive manufacturing and commercial industry; it imports largely, and carries on a considerable export trade, especially with Asia. Its trade is chiefly in hides, leather, oils, wool, grease, isinglass, wax, honey, feathers and down, potass, soap, iron, and copper; cotton from Asia, silks from Georgia, Persia, and Bokhara; Caucasian madder, home and Turkish tobacco, furs, tea, chemicals, and all the products of Russian manufacture, of which M. is the actual

centre. The annual imports amount to the value of 6,000,000 rubles (£937,000). The chief manufactures are woollen and worsted goods, which give employment to 181 factories, worked by 30,897 hands, and produce 17,286,000 rubles a year; cotton goods employ 387 establishments, 27,446 hands, and produce 12,330,000 rubles; silks and brocades employ 151 establishments, 12,821 hands, and produce 7,151,300 rubles; dyeing and printing employ 146 establishments, 21,685 hands, and produce 12,163,900 rubles. The other principal branches of manufacture are tanning and skin-dressing, iron, copper, and silver works, and chandleries. The total number of manufacturing and industrial establishments amounted, in 1861, to 1344, employing 106,000 workmen, and producing 66,000,000 rubles in manufactured goods. Pop. (1859) 386,370.

M. is of ancient origin for a Russian town. Its site was bought by Yuri Dolgoruki, in the 12th c., and a fortress built. In the 14th c., not only had it become the capital of the Russian religious world, owing to the residence there of the metropolitan, but it had also become the actual capital of Muscovy. In 1368, 1370, and 1372, it suffered from the inroads of the Lithuanians; in 1381, it was sacked by the Tartars. From 1415 to 1501, it was, on four separate occasions, partially destroyed by fires; and it was burned to the ground by Devlet-Girey, Khan of the Crimean Tartars, in 1571. It was taken by the Poles in 1610, and remained in their possession till their expulsion by the Russians under Minin and Pojarsky in 1612. In 1682, 1689, and 1698, it was the theatre of the revolts of the Strelitz. In 1812, from the 14th September till the 24th October, it was in the hands of the French, and it was on this occasion that, in setting fire to this their Holy City,' the inhabitants made such a noble sacrifice to national feeling.

east of France, formed out of ancient Lorraine, MOSELLE, a frontier department in the northNetherlands. Area, 2329 square miles; pop. (1862), touches upon Bavaria, Rhenish Prussia, and the tributaries; is richly wooded, and yields abundance 446,457. It is watered by the Moselle and its of grain, fruits, and wine, though the last is of an condition; roads are numerous, and the riverinferior quality. Agriculture is in an advanced navigation important. Coal, iron, and building-stone linen, woollen, leather, glass, papier-mâché, and other manufactures. M. is divided into the arrondissements of Metz, Briey, Thionville, and Sarregnemines. Chief town, Metz.

are the most valuable minerals. There are also

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MOSELLE (Lat. Mosella), an affluent of the Rhine, rises in the Vosges Mountains, France, at an elevation of about 2260 feet above the level of the sea, not far from the sources of the Saône. course is north-westerly as far as Pont-à-Mousson, in the department of Meurthe, where it becomes navigable; then north to Thionville, near the French frontier; after which it proceeds, in a north-easterly direction (latterly, with many zigzag picturesque windings), through Luxemburg and Rhenish Prussia, joining the Rhine at Coblentz. On its way, it passes the towns of Remiremont, Epinal, Toul, Pont-àMousson, Metz, Thionville, and Treves. From Metz to Treves it flows through a broad valley, enclosed by rounded vine-bearing hills. Its entire length is upwards of 330 miles. Its principal tributaries are the Meurthe, the Seille, and the Sarre on the right: and the Orne, the Sure, and the Kyll on the left. The wines grown in the basin of the Moselle are noted for their lightness and their delicate aromatic flavour. The inferior kinds are liable to acidity.

MO'SES (Heb. Mosheh; LXX. and Vulg. Moyses; ↑ Egypt. Mes or Messou; Copt. Mo-ushe, i.e., drawn out of the water), prophet and legislator of the Israelites, born about 1600 B. C. in Egypt (? Heliopolis), during the period of their hard bondage. His father was Amram, his mother Jochebed, both of the tribe of Levi The tale of his birth and early education has, by tradition (Manetho, Philo, Josephus, Midrash, &c.), received a much more extraordinary legendary character than is found in Exodus; while the main features are, on the whole, the same in them all. And there is no reason to doubt the truthfulness of an account which shews us M., like many other supreme benefactors and suns' of mankind, struggling against an apparently adverse fate, nay for very life, from the instant of his birth. The well-known narrative, to which late traditions (contained in Philo, Josephus, the Fathers, &c.) have supplied questionable names and dates, is that M.'s mother, unable to hide the child-which was to have been drowned at its birth-longer than for the space of three months, put it into a basket of papyrus, and hid it among the Nile rushes, Miriam, his sister, watching it from afar. The king's daughter (Thermuthis, or Merris?), coming down to the river, observed the weeping child, and was so struck with its beauty, that she allowed Miriam to fetch a Hebrew nurse, Jochebed. Grown up, he was sent to the king's palace (Heliopolis) as the adopted son of the princess, and here seems to have enjoyed not only princely rank, but also a princely education. He is also said to have become a priest, under the name of Osarsiph or Tisithen, and to have been a mighty adept in all the sciences of Egypt, Assyria, and Chaldea;' to have led Egyptian armies against the Ethiopians, defeated them, and pursued them to their stronghold, Saba (Meroe); this place being delivered into his hands by Tharbis, the king's daughter, whom he subsequently married. The Bible contains nothing whatever about the time of his youth. He first reappears there as the avenger of a Hebrew slave, ill-treated by an Egyptian overseer. Threatened by the discovery of this bloody act, he escapes into Midian, where he is hospitably received by Jethro, the priest, and married his daughter, Zipporah. He stayed for many years in Midian, tending the flocks of his father-in-law. This most sudden transition from the brilliant and refined life of an Egyptian court, of which he had been brought up a prince, to the state of a poor, proscribed, exiled shepherd, together with the influences of the vast desert around him, must, in M.'s mind, have produced a singular revolution. The two names which he gave to his sons, strikingly express part of what filled his soul-a feeling of gratitude for his salvation from the avenging hand of justice, and the deep woe of his exile. The fate of his brethren went now to his heart with greater force than when he was a prince and near them. There rushed upon his memory the ancient traditions of his family, the promises of Jehovah to the mighty sheikhs, his forefathers; that they should become a great and a free nation, and possess the ancient heritage of Canaan; why should not he be the instrument to carry out this promise? The Ehye asher Ehye (I am that I am) appeared to him while his mind was occupied with such thoughts, and himself put the office upon his shoulders. A new king had succeeded in Egypt, his old enemies were either dead or had forgotten him, and M. returned to Egypt. Together with Aaron, his brother, the man of small energy but of fine tongue, he consulted about the first steps to be taken with the king as well as with their own people: -both of whom treated them at first with suspicion, nay, with contempt.

After ten distinct plagues (more or less akin to natural phenomena peculiar to Egypt), the last being the death of all the firstborn, Pharaoh consented to let his slaves go free, that they might serve their God.' M. very soon had occasion to prove that he was not only the God-inspired Liberator of his people, who, in the enthusiasm of the moment had braved the great king and his disciplined armies, but that he possessed all those rarer qualities which alone could enable a man to mould half-brutalised hordes of slaves into a great nation. Calmness, disinterestedness, patience, perseverance, meekness, coupled with keen energy, rapidity of action, unfailing courage-wisdom in council and boldness in war-constituted the immense power which he held over the hundreds of thousands who knew no law in their newly-acquired liberty, and who were apt to murmur and to rebel on any or no provocation. Nor were the hostile Bedouin tribes, whose territories the new emigrants approached, easily overcome with untrained warriors, such as formed the ranks of M.'s army. The jealousy of certain elders fostering seditions within, added to his unceasing vexations; and to fill the measure to overflowing indeed, his own brother Aaron, whom he had made his representative during his temporary absence on the Mount of Sinai, himself assisted in the fabrication of an idol. His sacred office as legislator he in reality first assumed in the third month after the Exodus, when, after many hard and trying marches and countermarches-from Goshen to Succoth (? Latopolis, the present Old Cairo); thence, by a detour, to Etham (?Ramlieh), Pi-hachiroth (?Bedea), through the Red Sea, to the Desert of Shur (? AlDjofar), Marah, Elim (Wadi Gharandel), Desert of Sin (Wadi Mocatteb, or Wadi Al-Sheikh), Dophka, Alus, Raphidim (near the Makkad Sidna Mousa)made more trying by want of food and of water, by encounters with Pharaoh and the Amalekites, having arrived near the Mount of Sinai, he made the people encamp all round, and ascended the summit of the mountain by himself. On the incidents connected with the Revelation' made to the whole people, we need not dwell any more than on any other part of this well-known narrative. Suffice it to point out briefly, that the tendency of the whole Law was to make the Hebrews a people 'consecrated to the Lord,' a holy people, and a kingdom of priests,' i. e., a people of equals both before God and the Law. Three distinct parts compose this Mosaic Constitution. The doctrine with respect to God and His attributes; the 'Symbolical' Law, as the outward token of His Doctrine; and the Moral and Social Law. The Decalogue forms a kind of summary of all the three: the existence of Jehovah as the Absolute Being, the liberation of the people and the prohibition of Polytheism, and the Representation of the Divinity by visible images (i.-iii.). While the institution of the Sabbath, the symbol of creation and the Creator, forms the basis of all religious observances (iv.), the remaining part of the laws relate to the intercourse among the members of the human commonwealth; the gratitude of children is inculcated; murder, adultery, theft, false witness, coveting of others' goods are prohibited. groundwork of these regulations had indeed been a special inheritance in the family of the Abrahamites from the earliest times; but the vicissitudes of fortune, the various migrations, and the enormous increase of this family, and its being mixed up for long years with the surrounding idolaters, had obliterated nearly all traces of the primeval purity of creed in the populace. The wisdom displayed even in the minor regulations of the Mosaic dispensation, with respect to their adaptation

The

to the peculiarity of the race, the climate, the political state of the country which they were to inhabit; in the hygienic regulations, and the rules which treat of the social and domestic relations; and, above all, the constantly-reiterated caution from mixing again with other nations, such as they found them in Canaan-and the neglect of which subsequently proved their ruin-is traced to a direct influence of Jehovah, generally indicated by the words, And God spake to Moses, speak unto the children of Israel.' An ample Ritual, in connection with the Tabernacle, or constantlyvisible symbol of a Divine Dwelling; the allegory of an ever-new covenant represented by Sacrifices, Prayers, Purifications, kept the supreme task of being priests and a holy people unceasingly before the eyes of the nation. The tribe of Levi (q. v.), to a certain degree acted in this respect as permanent representatives; and not to Moses's sons, but to his brother Aaron and his descendants, was intrusted the office of High-priest.

When on the eve of entering into the promised land, the people broke out in open rebellion, and threatened, by a spontaneous return to the land of slavery, to undo the entire work of M.'s life. Convinced that they were not as yet fit to form a commonwealth of their own, the Liberator and Lawgiver had to postpone, for the long space of 40 years, the crowning act of his work; and, in fact, did not himself live to see them taking possession of the hallowed territory. How these years of nomadic journeying through the Desert (El-Tyh or Al-Tyh Beni-Israel) were spent, save in rearing up a new generation of a more manly and brave, as well as more civilised' stamp, we can only conjecture. All those who had left Egypt as men were doomed to die in the desert, either by a natural death, or by being suddenly cut off,' in consequence of their openly defying M., and through M., Jehovah. The apparent lack of incidents during this period has indeed furnished grounds for various speculations on this subject, and critics have tried to reduce it to a much shorter space, without, however, being able to prove their point. Even Goethe, with more ingenuity than knowledge of the subject, has endeavoured to prove the 'forty' to be a mythical round number, the real time being two years. The testimonies of the Hebrew prophets and historians, however, are perfectly unanimous on the subject (cf. Jos. v. 6; xiv. 10; Amos, ii. 10; v. 26; Ps. xcv. 10, &c.), and modern criticism has mostly endorsed the number as in keeping with the circumstances. On the first month of the fortieth year after the Exodus, we find M. at the head of an entirely new generation of Hebrews at Kadesh, in the Desert of Phoran or Zin. Here his sister Miriam died. Here also, for the first time, M., seeing the new generation as stubborn and hard-necked' as their fathers, is recorded to have despaired of the Divine Providence; and his disobedience to the letter of the command given to him, 'to speak to the rock,' is alleged as the reason that his bones too had to fall in the desert.' His brother Aaron died at Hor (near Petra, according to Josephus and St Jerome), whither the Israelites had gone next. Not long afterwards, M. once more had occasion to punish with relentless severity the idolatrous tendencies of the people (Baal Peor), thus shewing that age had had no power of making him relax his strong rule over the still half-savage and sensuous multitude. Having finally fixed the limits of the land to be conquered, and given the most explicit orders to Joshua, to Eliezer, and the chiefs of the ten tribes, respecting its division, he prepared the people for his own impending death. He recalled to their minds in the most impressive language, their mira

culous liberation, and no less miraculous preservation in the desert. Their happiness-their lifewas bound up, he told them, in the Divine Law, communicated through him by Jehovah. A recapitulation of its principal ordinances, with their several modifications and additions, and reiterated exhortations to piety and virtue, form the contents of his last speeches, which close with one of the grandest poetical hymns. The law was then handed over to the priests that they might instruct the people in it henceforth; Joshua was installed as successor (while his own sons sunk into the obscurity of ordinary Levites), and he blessed the whole people. He then ascended the Mount of Nebo, from whence he cast a first and last look upon the land towards which he had pined all his life, and on which his feet were never to tread. He died upon this mountain, 120 years old, in the full vigour of manhood, according to the Scriptures, and no man knew his burial-place up to this day'-so that neither his remains nor his tomb were desecrated by Divine honours' being superstitiously paid to them.

This is a summary of M.'s life as derived from biblical as well as non-biblical sources. The latter except, perhaps the very doubtful traditions of Manetho-belong, whatever may be the date of the respective documents of the Pentateuch, to a much later age, and bear the air of tradition and legend, grown out of those very documents, so plainly on their face, that they are of about the same importance for historical purposes as the cycle of Midrashsagas that have gathered around M., and which are reproduced variously in Moslem Legendaries. On his office as a 'prophet:'-what was the special nature of his revelations, how far the doctrines promulgated by him were traditional among the Abrahamites, and how much of his laws is due to Egyptian influences; whether part of them was first inaugurated by later generations and ascribed to him, or whether others were never carried out at all: on these and similar questions which have been abundantly raised, more especially in recent times, we must refer for fuller information to the special works on the subject. Some notices of the more important points will be found under GENESIS, JEWS, PENTATEUCH, DECALOGUE, &c. There seems, however, but one conclusion. The brief span of human history of which we have any knowledge, shews few, if any, men of M.'s towering grandeur-even with all the deductions that the most daring criticism has yet proposed.

MOSHEIM, JOHANN LORENZ VON, a distinguished church historian of Germany, was born at Lübeck on 9th October 1694, and studied at Kiel. In 1723, he became ordinary professor of theology at Helmstedt, from which he was removed in 1747 to a similar office in Göttingen. He died Chancellor of the University of Göttingen, 9th September 1755. His theological works are numerous, amongst which are a work on Bible morality, Sittenlehre der Heiligen Schrift (new ed., continued by J. P. Miller, 9 vols. Helmst. 1770-1778); and Discourses, Heiligen Reden (3 vols. Hamb. 1732, et seq.). But his most important contributions to theological literature are in the department of ecclesiastical history, in which his Institutiones Historia Ecclesiastica (Helmst. 1755) is familiar to every student as a work of great learning, fulness, and accuracy. It has been translated from the original very elegant Latin into English and other languages. The best English translation is that by Dr James Murdock (3 vols. New York, 1832), of which there are many reprints. Besides this, M. is the author of Institutiones Historia Christiane Majores (Helmst. 1763); De Rebus Christianorum ante Constantinum