The millstones which we find preserved from ancient times are all small, and very different from those which are now in use. Thoresby mentions two or three such found in England, amongst other Roman antiquities, which were but twenty inches broad; and there is reason to believe that the Romans, as well as the Egyptians and Jews, did not employ horses, or wind, or water, as we do, to turn their mills, but made their slaves and captives of war do this laborious work. Sampson, when a prisoner to the Philistines, was treated no better, but condemned to turn the millstone in his prison. The runner or loose millstone, in this sort of grinding, was usually heavy for its size, being as thick as it was broad. This is the millstone which is expressly prohibited in Scripture to take in pledge, because, lying loose, it was more easily removed. The Talmudists relate, that the Chaldeans made the young men of the captivity carry millstones with them to Babylon; and hence, probably, their paraphrase renders the text "have borne the mills or millstones," which might thus be true in a literal sense. They have also a proverbial expression of a man with a millstone about his neck; which they use to express a man under the severest weight of affliction. This also plainly refers to the same small kind of stones.

MILLENIANS, or CHILIANS, a name given to these in the primitive ages, who believed that the saints will reign with Christ on earth for a thousand years. See MILLENIUM.

MILLENER, or MILLINER, one who sells ribands and dresses, particularly head-dresses for women, and who makes up those dresses. Of this word different etymologies have been given. It is not derived from the French, who cannot express the notion of milliner otherwise than by the circumlocution marchande or marchande des modes. Neither is it derived from the low Dutch, the great but neglected magazine of the Anglo-Saxon. For Sewel, in his English and Dutch Dictionary, published in 1708, describes millener as a "pedlar who sells ribands and other trimmings or ornaments, a French pedlar." Littleton, in his English and Latin Dictionary, published 1677, defines millener, "a jack of all trades," millenarius, or mille mercurium venditor; that is, "one who sells a thousand different sorts of things." From this etymology, which seems fanciful, we must hold, that it then implied what is now termed "a haberdasher of small wares." Before Littleton's time, however, a somewhat nicer characteristic than seems compatible with this notion, appears to have belonged to them; for Shakspeare, in his Henry IV., makes Hotspur, when complaining of the daintiness of a courtier, say, "he was perfumed like a milliner." The fact seems to be, that there were milleners of several kinds; as, horse milleners, who make ornaments of coloured worsted for horses; haberdashers of small wares; the milleners of Littleton; and milleners such as those now peculiarly known by that name, whether male or female, to whom Shakspeare's allusion seems most appropriate. Lastly, Dr Johnson, in his dictionary, derives the word from milane, an inhabitant of Milan, whence first came people of this profession, as a Lombard is a banker.