Mallow (Malva sylvestris), 1⁄3 nat. size.

1. Flower in section.

2. Stamens showing the union of the filaments into a common tube (monadelphous).

3. Fruit with persistent calyx. 1, 2 and 5 enlarged.

4. Same seen from the back showing the 3-leaved epicalyx.

5. Seed.

The marsh mallow (Althaea officinalis), the guimauve of the French, belongs to another genus having an involucre of numerous bracts. It is a native of marshy ground near the sea or in the neighbourhood of saline springs. It is an erect perennial herb, with somewhat woody stems, velvety, ovate, acute, unequally serrate leaves, and delicate pink showy flowers blooming from July to September. The flowers are said to yield a good deal of honey to bees. The marsh mallow is remarkable for containing asparagin, C4H8N2O3, H2O, which, if the root be long kept in a damp place, disappears, butyric acid being developed. The root also contains about 25% of starch and the same quantity of mucilage, which differs from that of gum arabic in containing one molecule less of water and in being precipitated by neutral acetate of lead. It is used in pâte de guimauve lozenges. Althaea rosea is the hollyhock (q.v.).

The mallow of Scripture, Job xxx. 4, has been sometimes identified with Jew’s mallow (Corchorus olitorius), a member of the closely allied order Tiliaceae, but more plausibly (the word מלוח implying a saline plant) with Atriplex Halimus, or sea orache. In Syria the Halimus was still known by the name Mallūh in the time of Ibn Beitar. See Bochart, Hieroz. iii. 16.

MALMEDY, a town of Germany, in the Prussian Rhine Province, lying in a wild and deep basin, on the Warche, 20 m. S. of Aix-la-Chapelle by rail via Eupen. It contains two Roman Catholic churches, a modern town-hall and a classical school. Its industries include tanning, dyeing and paper-making. Pop. (1900), 4680. Malmedy was famous for its Benedictine abbey, founded about 675, which was united with that of Stablo, the abbot of the joint house being a prince of the empire. In 1802 the lands of the abbey passed to France, and in 1815 they were divided between Prussia and Netherlands.

See Kellen, Malmedy und die preussische Wallonie (Essen, 1897).

MALMESBURY, JAMES HARRIS, 1st Earl of (1746-1820), English diplomatist, was born at Salisbury on the 21st of April 1746, being the son of James Harris (q.v.), the author of Hermes. Educated at Winchester, Oxford and Leiden, young Harris became secretary in 1768 to the British embassy at Madrid, and was left as chargé d’affaires at that court on the departure of Sir James Grey until the arrival of George Pitt, afterwards Lord Rivers. This interval gave him his opportunity; he discovered the intention of Spain to attack the Falkland Islands, and was instrumental in thwarting it by putting on a bold countenance. As a reward he was appointed minister ad interim at Madrid, and in January 1772 minister plenipotentiary to the court of Prussia. His success was marked, and in 1777 he was transferred to the court of Russia. At St Petersburg he made his reputation, for he managed to get on with Catherine in spite of her predilections for France, and steered adroitly through the accumulated difficulties of the first Armed Neutrality. He was made a knight of the Bath at the end of 1778, but in 1782 he returned home owing to ill-health, and was appointed by his friend Fox to be minister at the Hague, an appointment confirmed after some delay by Pitt (1784). He did very great service in furthering Pitt’s policy of maintaining England’s influence on the Continent by the arms of her allies, and held the threads of the diplomacy which ended in the king of Prussia’s overthrowing the republican party in Holland, which was inclined to France, and re-establishing the prince of Orange. In recognition of his services he was created Baron Malmesbury of Malmesbury (Sept. 1788), and permitted by the king of Prussia to bear the Prussian eagle on his arms, and by the prince of Orange to use his motto “Je maintiendrai.” He returned to England, and took an anxious interest in politics, which ended in his seceding from the Whig party with the duke of Portland in 1793; and in that year he was sent by Pitt, but in vain, to try to keep Prussia true to the first coalition against France. In 1794 he was sent to Brunswick to solicit the hand of the unfortunate Princess Caroline for the prince of Wales, to marry her as proxy, and conduct her to her husband in England. In 1796 and 1797 he was at Paris and Lille vainly negotiating with the French Directory. After 1797 he became partially deaf, and quitted diplomacy altogether; but for his long and eminent services he was in 1800 created earl of Malmesbury, and Viscount Fitzharris, of Heron Court in the county of Hants. He now became a sort of political Nestor, consulted on foreign policy by successive foreign ministers, trusted by men of the most different ideas in political crises, and above all the confidant, and for a short time after Pitt’s death almost the political director, of Canning. Younger men were also wont to go to him for advice, and Lord Palmerston particularly, who was his ward, was tenderly attached to him, and owed many of his ideas on foreign policy directly to his teaching. His later years were free from politics, and till his death on the 21st of November 1820 he lived very quietly and almost forgotten. As a statesman, Malmesbury had an influence among his contemporaries which is scarcely to be understood from his writings, but which must have owed much to personal charm of manner and persuasiveness of tongue; as a diplomatist, he seems to have deserved his reputation, and shares with Macartney, Auckland and Whitworth the credit of raising diplomacy from a profession in which only great nobles won the prizes to a career opening the path of honour to ability. He was succeeded as 2nd earl by his son James Edward (1778-1841), under-secretary for foreign affairs under Canning; from whom the title passed to James Howard, 3rd earl of Malmesbury (q.v.).

Malmesbury did not publish anything himself, except an account of the Dutch revolution, and an edition of his father’s works, but his important Diaries (1844) and Letters (1870) were edited by his grandson.