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Solomon Caesar Malan

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SOLOMON CAESAR MALAN (1812-1894), British divine and orientalist, was by birth a Swiss descended from an exiled French family, and was born at Geneva on the 22nd of April 1812, where his father, Dr Henry Abraham Caesar Malan (1787-1864) enjoyed a great reputation as a Protestant divine. From his earliest youth he manifested a remarkable faculty for the study of languages, and when he came to Scotland as tutor in the marquis of Tweeddale's family at the age of 18 he had already made progress in Sanskrit, Arabic and Hebrew. In 1833 he matriculated at St Edmund Hall, Oxford; and English being almost an unknown tongue to him, he petitioned the examiners to allow him to do his paper work of the examination in French, German, Spanish, Italian, Latin or Greek, rather than in English. But his request was not granted. After gaining the Boden and the Pusey and Ellerton scholarships, he graduated 2nd class in Lit. hum. in 1837. He then proceeded to India as classical lecturer at Bishop's College, Calcutta, to which post he added the duties of secretary to the Bengal branch of the Royal Asiatic Society; and although compelled by illness to return in 1840, laid the foundation of a knowledge of Tibetan and Chinese. After serving various curacies, he was presented in 1845 to the. living of Broadwindsor, Dorset, which he held until 1886. During this entire period he continued to augment his linguistic knowledge, which he carried so far as to be able to preach in that most difficult language, Georgian, on a visit which he paid to Nineveh in 1872. His translations from the Armenian, Georgian and Coptic were numerous. He applied his Chinese learning to the determination of important points connected with Chinese religion, and published a vast number of parallel passages illustrative of the Book of Proverbs. In 1880 the university of Edinburgh conferred upon him the honorary degree of D.D. No modern scholar, perhaps, has so nearly approached the linguistic omniscience of Mezzofanti; but, like Mezzofanti, Dr Malan was more of a linguist than a critic. He made himself conspicuous by the vehemence of his opposition to Westcott and Hort's text of the New Testament, and to the transliteration of Oriental languages, on neither of which points did he in general obtain the suffrages of scholars. His extensive and valuable library, some special collections excepted, was presented by him in his lifetime to the Indian Institute at Oxford. He died at Bournemouth on the 25th of November 1894. His life has been written by his son.

Molar, a lake of Sweden, extending 73 m. westward from Stockholm, which lies at its junction with the Saltsjii, an arm of the Baltic Sea. The height of the lake is normally only from i 1 in. to 2 ft. above sea-level, and its outflow is sometimes reversed. The area is 449 sq. m. The bottom consists of a series of basins separate by ridges from which rise numerous islands. The deepest sounding is 210 ft. The outline is very irregular, the mean breadth being about 15 m., but an arm extends northward for 30 m. nearly to the city of Upsala with many ramifications. The area of the drainage basin is 8789 sq. m., of which 1124 are occupied by lakes. The navigable connexions with the lake are - (1) with lake Hjelmar to the south-west by the Arboga river and the Hjelmar canal; and by the Eskilstuna river and the Thorshalla canal; (2) with the Baltic southward through the Sddertelge canal, the route followed by the Gdta canal steamers; (3) with the Baltic by two channels at Stockholm. The more important towns, besides Stockholm, are Vesteras on the north, Sddertelge and Eskilstuna near the south shore. The lake offers a field for recreation fully appreciated by the inhabitants of the capital, and many of those whose business lies at Stockholm have their residences on the shores of Molar. On Drottningholm (Queen's Island, named from Catherine, wife of John III.) is a palace with a fine park and formal gardens. John III. built a palace at the close of the 16th century, but the existing building, by Nicodemus Tessin and his son Nicodemus, dates from the second half of the 17th century. At Marief red on the south shore there is the castle of Gripsholm (1537), built by Gustavus Vasa, a picturesque erection with four towers, richly adorned within, and containing a large collection of portraits. Strengnas, on the same shore, became an episcopal see in 1291, when the fine cathedral, much altered since, was consecrated. In the episcopal palace, a building of the 15th century now used as a school, Gustavus Vasa was elected to the throne of Sweden in 152 3. On the northward arm of the lake is the palace of Rosenberg, used as a school of gunnery, in a wellwooded park. On a branch of the same arm is Sigtuna, a village whose ruined churches are a memorial of its rank among the principal towns of Sweden after its foundation in the 11th century. Remains prove that on Bjdrkd, an island in the eastern part of the lake, there was a large settlement of earlier importance than Sigtuna. Here a cross commemorates the preaching of Christianity by St Ansgar in 82 9. Finally, on the northern arm about ro m. south of Upsala, there is the château of Skokloster, occupying the site of a monastery, and presented by Gustavus Adolphus to Marshal Herman Wrangel, whose son Charles Gustavus Wrangel stored it with a remarkable collection of trophies from Germany, taken during the Thirty Years' War; including a library, an armoury, and a great accumulation of curios.