or MURAT, a rich trading, and con- fiderable town of Switzerland, capital of a bailiwick of the same name, belonging to the cantons of Bern and Friberg, with a castle, where the bailiff resides. It is seated on the lake Morat, on the road from Avenche to Bern, 10 miles west of Bern and 10 miles north-east of Friburg. The lake is about six miles long and two broad, the country about it being pleasant and well cultivated. The lakes of Morat and Neufchatel are parallel to each other, but the latter is more elevated, discharging itself by means of the river Broye into the lake of Neufchatel. According to M. de Luc, the former is 15 French feet above the level of Neufchatel lake; and both these lakes, as well as that of Biene, seem formerly to have extended considerably beyond their present limits, and from the position of the country appear to have been once united. Formerly the large fish named *silurus glanis*, or the salath, frequented these lakes, but has not been caught in them for a long time past. The environs of this town and lake were carefully examined by Mr Coxe during his residence in Switzerland, who made several excursions across the lake to a ridge of hills situated betwixt it and Neufchatel. Here are many delightful prospects; particularly one from the top of mount Vuilly, which, he says, is perhaps the only central spot from which the eye can at once comprehend the vast amphitheatre formed on one side by the Jura stretching from the environs of Geneva as far as Baile, and, on the other, by that stupendous chain of snowy Alps which extend from the frontiers of Italy to the confines of Germany, and is lost at each extremity in the horizon. Morat is celebrated for the obstinate defence it made against Charles the Bold, duke of Burgundy, and for the battle which afterwards followed on the 22nd of June 1476, where the duke was defeated, and his army almost entirely destroyed*. Not far from the town, and adjoining to the high-road, there still remains a monument of this victory. It is a square building, filled with the bones of Burgundian soldiers, who were slain at the siege and in the battle; the number of which appears to have been very considerable. There are several inscriptions in the Latin and German languages commemorating the victory.

*MORATA* (Olympia Fulvia), an Italian lady, distinguished for her learning, was born at Ferrara, in 1526. Her father, after teaching the belles lettres in several cities of Italy, was made preceptor to the two young princes of Ferrara, the sons of Alphonso I. The uncommon abilities he discovered in his daughter determined him to give her a very extraordinary education. Meanwhile the princess of Ferrara studying polite literature, it was judged expedient that she should have a companion in the same pursuit; and Morata being called, she was heard by the astonished courtiers to declaim in Latin, to speak Greek, and to explain the paradoxes of Cicero. Her father dying, she was obliged to return home to take upon her the management of family-affairs, and the education of her brother and three sisters; both which she executed with the greatest diligence and success. In the meantime Andrew Gruntthler, a young German, who had studied physic, and taken his doctor's degree at Ferrara, fell in love with her, and married her. She now went with her husband to Germany, taking her little brother with her, whom she instructed in the Latin and Greek tongues; and after staying a short time at Augsburg, went to Schweinfurt in Franconia, where her husband was born: but they had not been there long before that town was unhappily besieged and burnt; however, escaping the flames, they fled in the utmost distress to Hammelburg. This place they were also obliged to quit, and were reduced to the last extremities, when the elector palatine invited Gruntthler to be professor of physic at Heidelberg, and he entered on his new office in 1543; but they no sooner began to taste the sweets of repose, than a disease, occasioned by the distresses and hardships they had suffered, seized upon Morata, who died in 1555, in the 29th year of her age; and her husband and brother did not long survive her. She composed several works, great part of which were burnt with the town of Schweinfurt; the remainder, which consist of orations, dialogues, letters, and translations, were collected and published under the title of *Olympia Fulviae Moratae, faminae dotiflume, et plane divina, opera omnia qua hactenus inventi non potuerint; quibus Calii secundi curiosi epistolae ac orationes accerrent*; which has had several editions in octavo.

*MORAVIA*, a river of Turkey in Europe, which rises in Bulgaria, runs north through Servia by Nissa, and falls into the Danube at Semendria, to the eastward of Belgrade.

*Moravia*, a marquisate of Germany, derives the name of *Mahren*, as it is called by the Germans, and of *Morawa*, as it is called by the natives, from the river of that name which rises in the mountains of the county of Glatz, and passes through the middle of it. It is bounded to the south by Austria, to the north by Glatz and Silesia, to the west by Bohemia, and to the east by Silesia and Hungary; being about 120 miles in length and 100 in breadth.

A great part of this country is over-run with woods and mountains, where the air is very cold, but much wholesome than in the low grounds, which are full of bogs and lakes. The mountains, in general, are barren; but the more champaign parts tolerably fertile, yielding corn, with plenty of hemp and flax, good saffron, and pasture. Nor is it altogether destitute of wine, red and white, fruits, and garden-stuff. Moravia also abounds in horses, black cattle, sheep, and goats. In the woods and about the lakes there is plenty of wild fowl, game, venison, bees, honey, hares, foxes, wolves, beavers, &c. In this country are likewise quarries of marble, bastard diamonds, amethysts, alum, iron, sulphur, salt-petre, and vitriol, with wholesome mineral-waters, and warm springs; but salt is imported. Its rivers, of which the March, Morawa, or Morau, are the chief, abound with trout, crayfish, barbel, eels, perch, and many other sorts of fish.

The language of the inhabitants is a dialect of the Slavonic, differing little from the Bohemian; but the nobility and citizens speak German and French.