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Title: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 16, Slice 4 - "Lefebvre, Tanneguy" to "Letronne, Jean Antoine"
Author: Various
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 16, Slice 4 - "Lefebvre, Tanneguy" to "Letronne, Jean Antoine"" ***
Transcriber's notes:
(1) Numbers following letters (without space) like C2 were originally
printed in subscript. Letter subscripts are preceded by an
underscore, like C_n.
(2) Characters following a carat (^) were printed in superscript.
(3) Side-notes were relocated to function as titles of their respective
paragraphs.
(4) Macrons and breves above letters and dots below letters were not
inserted.
(5) [root] stands for the root symbol; [alpha], [beta], etc. for greek
letters.
(6) The following typographical errors have been corrected:
ARTICLE LEGGE, HENRY: "Twelve months later he returned to his post
at the exchequer in the administration of Pitt and the 4th duke of
Devonshire, retaining office until April 1757 when he shared both
the dismissal and the ensuing popularity of Pitt." 'Twelve' amended
from 'Twleve'.
ARTICLE LEGUMINOSAE: "... Wisteria sinensis, a native of China, is
a well-known climbing shrub; ..." 'Wisteria' amended from
'Wistaria'.
ARTICLE LEIBNITZ, GOTTFRIED WILHELM: "... R. Zimmermann, Leibnitz
und Herbart: eine Vergleichung ihrer Monadologien (Vienna, 1849);
..." 'Monadologien' amended from 'Monadologieen'.
ARTICLE LENS: "The question now arises as to how far this
assumption is justified for spherical lenses." 'as' amended from
'so'.
ARTICLE LEO: "Leo at another synod held in Rome in 810 admitted the
dogmatic correctness of the filioque, but deprecated its
introduction into the creed." 'filioque' amended from 'filoque'.
ARTICLE LEONIDAS: "Our knowledge of the circumstances is too slight
to enable us to judge of Leonidas's strategy, but his heroism and
devotion secured him an almost unique place in the imagination not
only of his own but also of succeeding times." 'is' amended from
'it'.
ARTICLE LESSING, GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM: "The two men were mutually
attracted, and a warm affection sprang up between them." 'between'
amended from 'betweem'.
ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA
A DICTIONARY OF ARTS, SCIENCES, LITERATURE
AND GENERAL INFORMATION
ELEVENTH EDITION
VOLUME XVI, SLICE IV
Lefebvre, Tanneguy to Letronne, Jean Antoine
ARTICLES IN THIS SLICE:
LEFEBVRE, TANNEGUY LENS (town of France)
LEFEBVRE-DESNOËTTES, CHARLES LENS (in optics)
LE FÈVRE, JEAN LENT
LEG LENTHALL, WILLIAM
LEGACY LENTIL
LE GALLIENNE, RICHARD LENTULUS
LEGARÉ, HUGH SWINTON LENZ, JAKOB MICHAEL REINHOLD
LEGAS LEO (popes)
LEGATE, BARTHOLOMEW LEO (emperors of the East)
LEGATE LEO (disciple of St Francis)
LEGATION LEO, HEINRICH
LEGEND LEO, JOHANNES
LEGENDRE, ADRIEN MARIE LEO, LEONARDO
LEGENDRE, LOUIS LEO (sign of the zodiac)
LEGERDEMAIN LEOBEN
LEGGE, HENRY LEOBSCHÜTZ
LEGGE, JAMES LEOCHARES
LEGHORN LEOFRIC
LEGION LEOMINSTER (Herefordshire, England)
LEGITIM LEOMINSTER (Massachusetts, U.S.A.)
LEGITIMACY, and LEGITIMATION LEÓN, LUIS PONCE DE
LEGITIMISTS LEON, MOSES DE
LEGNAGO (town of Venetia) LEON OF MODENA
LEGNANO (town of Lombardy) LEÓN (Mexico)
LEGOUVÉ, GABRIEL ERNEST WILFRID LEON (Nicaragua)
LEGROS, ALPHONSE LEON (Spanish province)
LEGUMINOSAE LEON (Spanish city)
LÈGYA LEONARDO DA VINCI
LEH LEONARDO OF PISA
LEHMANN, JOHANN GOTTLOB LEONCAVALLO, RUGGIERO
LEHMANN, PETER MARTIN ORLA LEONIDAS
LEHNIN LEONTIASIS OSSEA
LEHRS, KARL LEONTINI
LEIBNITZ, GOTTFRIED WILHELM LEONTIUS
LEICESTER, EARLS OF LEOPARD
LEICESTER, ROBERT DUDLEY LEOPARDI, GIACOMO
LEICESTER, ROBERT SIDNEY LEOPARDO, ALESSANDRO
LEICESTER, THOMAS WILLIAM COKE LEOPOLD
LEICESTER LEOPOLD I. (Roman emperor)
LEICESTERSHIRE LEOPOLD II. (Roman emperor)
LEIDEN LEOPOLD I. (king of the Belgians)
LEIDY, JOSEPH LEOPOLD II. (king of the Belgians)
LEIF ERICSSON LEOPOLD II. (of Habsburg-Lorraine)
LEIGH, EDWARD LEOPOLD II. (lake)
LEIGH LEOTYCHIDES
LEIGHTON, FREDERICK LEIGHTON LEOVIGILD
LEIGHTON, ROBERT LEPANTO, BATTLE OF
LEIGHTON BUZZARD LE PAUTRE, JEAN
LEININGEN LEPCHA
LEINSTER LE PELETIER, LOUIS MICHE
LEIPZIG LEPIDOLITE
LEIRIA LEPIDOPTERA
LEISLER, JACOB LEPIDUS
LEISNIG LE PLAY, PIERRE GUILLAUME FRÉDÉRIC
LEITH LEPROSY
LEITMERITZ LEPSIUS, KARL RICHARD
LEITNER, GOTTLIEB WILHELM LEPTINES
LEITRIM LEPTIS
LEIXÕES LE PUY
LEJEUNE, LOUIS FRANÇOIS LERDO DE TEJADA, SEBASTIAN
LEKAIN LERICI
LELAND, CHARLES GODFREY LÉRIDA (province of Spain)
LELAND, JOHN (English antiquary) LÉRIDA (city of Spain)
LELAND, JOHN (English divine) LERMA, FRANCISCO DE SANDOVAL Y ROJAS
LELAND STANFORD JR. UNIVERSITY LERMONTOV, MIKHAIL YUREVICH
LELEGES LEROUX, PIERRE
LELEWEL, JOACHIM LEROY-BEAULIEU, BAPTISTE ANATOLE
LELONG, JACQUES LEROY-BEAULIEU, PIERRE PAUL
LELY, SIR PETER LERWICK
LE MAÇON, ROBERT LE SAGE, ALAIN RENÉ
LE MAIRE DE BELGES, JEAN LES ANDELYS
LEMAÎTRE, FRANÇOIS ÉLIE JULES LES BAUX
LE MANS LESBONAX
LE MARCHANT, JOHN GASPARD LESBOS
LEMBERG LESCHES
LEMERCIER, LOUIS JEAN NÉPOMUCÉNE LESCURE, LOUIS MARIE JOSEPH
LEMERY, NICOLAS LESDIGUIÈRES, FRANÇOIS DE BONNE
LEMERY LESGHIANS
LEMGO LESINA
LEMIERRE, ANTOINE MARIN LESION
LEMIRE, JULES AUGUSTE LESKOVATS
LEMMING LESLEY, JOHN
LEMNISCATE LESLEY, J. PETER
LEMNOS LESLIE, CHARLES
LEMOINNE, JOHN ÉMILE LESLIE, CHARLES ROBERT
LEMON, MARK LESLIE, FRED
LEMON LESLIE, SIR JOHN
LEMONNIER, ANTOINE LOUIS CAMILLE LESLIE, THOMAS EDWARD CLIFFE
LEMONNIER, PIERRE CHARLES LESLIE (Scotland)
LEMOYNE, JEAN BAPTISTE LESPINASSE, JEANNE JULIE ÉLÉONORE DE
LEMPRIÈRE, JOHN LES SABLES D'OLONNE
LEMUR LES SAINTES-MARIES
LENA LESSE
LE NAIN LESSEPS, FERDINAND DE
LENAU, NIKOLAUS LESSING, GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM
LENBACH, FRANZ VON LESSON
LENCLOS, NINON DE LESTE
LENFANT, JACQUES L'ESTRANGE, SIR ROGER
LENKORAN LESUEUR, DANIEL
LENNEP, JACOB VAN LE SUEUR, EUSTACHE
LENNEP LESUEUR, JEAN FRANÇOIS
LENNOX LE TELLIER, MICHEL
LENNOX, CHARLOTTE LETHAL
LENNOX, MARGARET LETHARGY
LENO, DAN LETHE
LENORMANT, FRANÇOIS LE TRÉPORT
LENOX LETRONNE, JEAN ANTOINE
LEFEBVRE, TANNEGUY (TANAQUILLUS FABER) (1615-1672), French classical
scholar, was born at Caen. After completing his studies in Paris, he was
appointed by Cardinal Richelieu inspector of the printing-press at the
Louvre. After Richelieu's death he left Paris, joined the Reformed
Church, and in 1651 obtained a professorship at the academy of Saumur,
which he filled with great success for nearly twenty years. His
increasing ill-health and a certain moral laxity (as shown in his
judgment on Sappho) led to a quarrel with the consistory, as a result of
which he resigned his professorship. Several universities were eager to
obtain his services, and he had accepted a post offered him by the
elector palatine at Heidelberg, when he died suddenly on the 12th of
September, 1672. One of his children was the famous Madame Dacier.
Lefebvre, who was by no means a typical student in dress or manners, was
a highly cultivated man and a thorough classical scholar. He brought out
editions of various Greek and Latin authors--Longinus, Anacreon and
Sappho, Virgil, Horace, Lucretius and many others. His most important
original works are: _Les Vies des poètes Grecs_ (1665); _Méthode pour
commencer les humanités Grecques et Latines_ (2nd ed., 1731), of which
several English adaptations have appeared; _Epistolae Criticae_ (1659).
In addition to the _Mémoires pour ... la vie de Tanneguy Lefebvre_, by
F. Graverol (1686), see the article in the _Nouvelle biographie
générale_, based partly on the MS. registers of the Saumur Académie.
LEFEBVRE-DESNOËTTES, CHARLES, COMTE (1773-1822), French cavalry general,
joined the army in 1792 and served with the armies of the North, of the
Sambre-and-Meuse and Rhine-and-Moselle in the various campaigns of the
Revolution. Six years later he had become captain and aide-de-camp to
General Bonaparte. At Marengo he won further promotion, and at
Austerlitz became colonel, serving also in the Prussian campaigns of
1806-1807. In 1808 he was made general of brigade and created a count of
the Empire. Sent with the army into Spain, he conducted the first and
unsuccessful siege of Saragossa. The battlefield of Tudela showed his
talents to better advantage, but towards the end of 1808 he was taken
prisoner in the action of Benavente by the British cavalry under Paget
(later Lord Uxbridge, and subsequently Marquis of Anglesey). For over
two years he remained a prisoner in England, living on parole at
Cheltenham. In 1811 he escaped, and in the invasion of Russia in 1812
was again at the head of his cavalry. In 1813 and 1814 his men
distinguished themselves in most of the great battles, especially La
Rothière and Montmirail. He joined Napoleon in the Hundred Days and was
wounded at Waterloo. For his part in these events he was condemned to
death, but he escaped to the United States, and spent the next few years
farming in Louisiana. His frequent appeals to Louis XVIII. eventually
obtained his permission to return, but the "Albion," the vessel on which
he was returning to France, went down off the coast of Ireland with all
on board on the 22nd of May 1822.
LE FÈVRE, JEAN (c. 1395-1468), Burgundian chronicler and seigneur of
Saint Remy, is also known as Toison d'or from his long connexion with
the order of the Golden Fleece. Of noble birth, he adopted the
profession of arms and with other Burgundians fought in the English
ranks at Agincourt. In 1430, on the foundation of the order of the
Golden Fleece by Philip III. the Good, duke of Burgundy, Le Fèvre was
appointed its king of arms and he soon became a very influential person
at the Burgundian court. He frequently assisted Philip in conducting
negotiations with foreign powers, and he was an arbiter in tournaments
and on all questions of chivalry, where his wide knowledge of heraldry
was highly useful. He died at Bruges on the 16th of June 1468.
Le Fèvre wrote a _Chronique_, or _Histoire de Charles VI., roy de
France_. The greater part of this chronicle is merely a copy of the
work of Enguerrand de Monstrelet, but Le Fèvre is an original
authority for the years between 1428 and 1436 and makes some valuable
additions to our knowledge, especially about the chivalry of the
Burgundian court. He is more concise than Monstrelet, but is equally
partial to the dukes of Burgundy. The _Chronique_ has been edited by
F. Morand for the Société de l'histoire de France (Paris, 1876). Le
Fèvre is usually regarded as the author of the _Livre des faites de
Jacques de Lalaing_.
LEG (a word of Scandinavian origin, from the Old Norwegian _leggr_, cf.
Swed. _lägg_, Dan. _laég_; the O. Eng. word was _sceanca_, shank), the
general name for those limbs in animals which support and move the body,
and in man for the lower limbs of the body (see ANATOMY, _Superficial
and Artistic_; Skeleton, _Appendicular_; MUSCULAR SYSTEM). The word is
in common use for many objects which resemble the leg in shape or
function. As a slang term, "leg," a shortened form of "blackleg," has
been in use since the end of the 18th century for a swindler, especially
in connexion with racing or gambling. The term "blackleg" is now also
applied by trade-unionists to a workman who, during a strike or lockout,
continues working or is brought to take the place of the withdrawn
workers.
LEGACY (Lat. _legatum_), in English law, some particular thing or things
given or left by a testator in his will, to be paid or performed by his
executor or administrator. The word is primarily applicable to gifts of
personalty or gifts charged upon real estate; but if there is nothing
else to which it can refer it may refer to realty; the proper word,
however, for gifts of realty is _devise_.
Legacies may be either specific, general or demonstrative. A _specific
legacy_ is "something which a testator, identifying it by a sufficient
description and manifesting an intention that it should be enjoyed in
the state and condition indicated by that description, separates in
favour of a particular legatee from the general mass of his personal
estate," e.g. a gift of "my portrait by X," naming the artist. A
_general legacy_ is a gift not so distinguished from the general mass of
the personal estate, e.g. a gift of £100 or of a gold ring. A
_demonstrative legacy_ partakes of the nature of both the preceding
kinds of legacies, e.g. a gift of £100 payable out of a named fund is a
specific legacy so far as the fund named is available to pay the legacy;
after the fund is exhausted the balance of the legacy is a general
legacy and recourse must be had to the general estate to satisfy such
balance. Sometimes a testator bequeaths two or more legacies to the same
person; in such a case it is a question whether the later legacies are
in substitution for, or in addition to, the earlier ones. In the latter
case they are known as _cumulative_. In each case the intention of the
testator is the rule of construction; this can often be gathered from
the terms of the will or codicil, but in the absence of such evidence
the following rules are followed by the courts. Where the same specific
thing is bequeathed twice to the same legatee or where two legacies of
equal amount are bequeathed by the same instrument the second bequest is
mere repetition; but where legacies of equal amounts are bequeathed by
different instruments or of unequal amounts by the same instruments they
are considered to be cumulative.
If the estate of the testator is insufficient to satisfy all the
legacies these must abate, i.e. be reduced rateably; as to this it
should be noticed that specific and demonstrative legacies have a prior
claim to be paid in full out of the specific fund before general
legacies, and that general legacies abate rateably _inter se_ in the
absence of any provision to the contrary by the testator. Specific
legacies are liable to ademption where the specific thing perishes or
ceases to belong to the testator, e.g. in the instance given above if
the testator sells the portrait the legatee will get nothing by virtue
of the legacy. As a general rule, legacies given to persons who
predecease the testator do not take effect; they are said to lapse. This
is so even if the gift be to A and his executors, administrators and
assigns, but this is not so if the testator has shown a contrary
intention, thus, a gift to A _or_ his personal representative will be
effective even though A predecease the testator; further, by the Wills
Act 1837, devises of estates tail and gifts to a child or other issue of
the testator will not lapse if any issue of the legatee survive the
testator. Lapsed legacies fall into and form part of the residuary
estate. In the absence of any indication to the contrary a legacy
becomes due on the day of the death of the testator, though for the
convenience of the executor it is not payable till a year after that
date; this delay does not prevent the legacy vesting on the testator's
death. It frequently happens, however, that a legacy is given payable at
a future date; in such a case, if the legatee dies after the testator
but prior to the date when the legacy is payable it is necessary to
discover whether the legacy was vested or contingent, as in the former
case it becomes payable to the legatee's representative; in the latter,
it lapses. In this, as in other cases, the test is the intention of the
testator as expressed in the will; generally it may be said that a gift
"payable" or "to be paid" at a certain fixed time confers a vested
interest on the legatee, while a gift to A "at" a fixed time, e.g.
twenty-one years of age, only confers on A an interest contingent on his
attaining the age of twenty-one.
_Legacy Duty_ is a duty charged by the state upon personal property
devolving upon the legatees or next of kin of a dead person, either by
virtue of his will or upon his intestacy. The duty was first imposed in
England in 1780, but the principal act dealing with the subject is the
Legacy Duty Act 1796. The principal points as to the duty are these. The
duty is charged on personalty only. It is payable only where the person
on whose death the property passes was domiciled in the United Kingdom.
The rate of duty varies from 1 to 10% according to the relationship
between the testator and legatee. As between husband and wife no duty is
payable. The duty is payable by the executors and deducted from the
legacy unless the testator directs otherwise. Special provisions as to
valuation are in force where the gift is of an annuity or is settled on
various persons in succession, or the legacy is given in joint tenancy
and other cases. In some cases the duty is payable by instalments which
carry interest at 3%. In various cases legacies are exempt from
duty--the more important are gifts to a member of the royal family,
specific legacies under £20 (pecuniary legacies under £20 pay duty),
legacies of books, prints, &c., given to a body corporate for
preservation, not for sale, and legacies given out of an estate the
principal value of which is less than £100. Further, by the Finance Act
1894, payment of the estate duty thereby created absorbs the 1% duty
paid by lineal ancestors or descendants of the deceased[1] and the duty
on a settled legacy, and, lastly, in the event of estate duty being paid
on an estate the total value of which is under £1000, no legacy duty is
payable. The legacy duty payable in Ireland is now for all practical
purposes assimilated to that in Great Britain. The principal statute in
that country is an act of 1814.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] The Finance Bill 1909-1910 re-imposed this duty, and extended it
to husbands and wives as well as descendants and ancestors.
LE GALLIENNE, RICHARD (1866- ), English poet and critic, was born in
Liverpool on the 20th of January 1866. He started life in a business
office in Liverpool, but abandoned this to turn author. _My Lady's
Sonnets_ appeared at Liverpool in 1887, and in 1889 he became for a
short time literary secretary to Wilson Barrett. In the same year he
published _Volumes in Folio_, _The Book Bills_ of Narcissus and _George
Meredith: some Characteristics_ (new ed., 1900). He joined the staff of
the _Star_ in 1891, and wrote for various papers over the signature of
"Logroller." _English Poems_ (1892), _R. L. Stevenson and other Poems_
(1895), a paraphrase (1897) of the _Rubáiyát_ of Omar Khayyám, and _Odes
from the Divan of Hafiz_ (1903), contained some light, graceful verse,
but he is best known by the fantastic prose essays and sketches of
_Prose Fancies_ (2 series, 1894-1896), _Sleeping Beauty and other Prose
Fancies_ (1900), _The Religion of a Literary Man_ (1893), _The Quest of
the Golden Girl_ (1897), _The Life Romantic_ (1901), &c. His first wife,
Mildred Lee, died in 1894, and in 1897 he married Julie Norregard,
subsequently taking up his residence in the United States. In 1906 he
translated, from the Danish, Peter Nansen's _Love's Trilogy_.
LEGARÉ, HUGH SWINTON (1797-1843), American lawyer and statesman, was
born in Charleston, South Carolina, on the 2nd of January 1797, of
Huguenot and Scotch stock. Partly on account of his inability to share
in the amusements of his fellows by reason of a deformity due to vaccine
poisoning before he was five (the poison permanently arresting the
growth and development of his legs), he was an eager student, and in
1814 he graduated at the College of South Carolina with the highest rank
in his class and with a reputation throughout the state for scholarship
and eloquence. He studied law for three years in South Carolina, and
then spent two years abroad, studying French and Italian in Paris and
jurisprudence at Edinburgh. In 1820-1822 and in 1824-1830 he was a
member of the South Carolina legislature. In 1827, with Stephen Elliott
(1771-1830), the naturalist, he founded the _Southern Review_, of which
he was the sole editor after Elliott's death until 1834, when it was
discontinued, and to which he contributed articles on law, travel, and
modern and classical literature. In 1830-1832 he was attorney-general of
South Carolina, and, although a State's Rights man, he strongly opposed
nullification. During his term of office he appeared in a case before
the United States Supreme Court, where his knowledge of civil law so
strongly impressed Edward Livingston, the secretary of state, who was
himself an admirer of Roman Law, that he urged Legaré to devote himself
to the study of this subject with the hope that he might influence
American law toward the spirit and philosophy and even the forms and
processes of Roman jurisprudence. Through Livingston, Legaré was
appointed American _chargé d'affaires_ at Brussels, where from 1833 to
1836 he perfected himself in civil law and in the German commentaries on
civil law. In 1837-1839, as a Union Democrat, he was a member of the
national House of Representatives, and there ably opposed Van Buren's
financial policy in spite of the enthusiasm in South Carolina for the
sub-treasury project. He supported Harrison in the presidential campaign
of 1840, and when the cabinet was reconstructed by Tyler in 1841, Legaré
was appointed attorney-general of the United States. On the 9th of May
1843 he was appointed secretary of state _ad interim_, after the
resignation of Daniel Webster. On the 20th of June 1843 he died suddenly
at Boston. His great work, the forcing into common law of the principles
of civil law, was unaccomplished; but Story says "he seemed about to
accomplish [it]; for his arguments before the Supreme Court were crowded
with the principles of the Roman Law, wrought into the texture of the
Common Law with great success." As attorney-general he argued the famous
cases, the _United States_ v. _Miranda_, _Wood_ v. _the United States_,
and _Jewell_ v. _Jewell_.
See _The Writings of Hugh Swinton Legaré_ (2 vols., Charleston, S.C.,
1846), edited by his sister, Mrs Mary Bullen, who contributed a
biographical sketch; and two articles by B. J. Ramage in _The Sewanee
Review_, vol. x. (New York, 1902).
LEGAS, one of the Shangalla group of tribes, regarded as among the
purest types of the Galla race. They occupy the upper Yabus valley, S.W.
Abyssinia, near the Sudan frontier. The Legas are physically distinct
from the Negro Shangalla. They are of very light complexion, tall and
thin, with narrow hollow-cheeked faces, small heads and high foreheads.
The chiefs' families are of more mixed blood, with perceptible Negro
strain. The Legas are estimated to number upwards of a hundred thousand,
of whom some 20,000 are warriors. They are, however, a peaceful race,
kind to their women and slaves, and energetic agriculturists. Formerly
independent, they came about 1900 under the sway of Abyssinia. The Legas
are pagans, but Mahommedanism has gained many converts among them.
LEGATE, BARTHOLOMEW (c. 1575-1612), English fanatic, was born in Essex
and became a dealer in cloth. About the beginning of the 17th century he
became a preacher among a sect called the "Seekers," and appears to have
held unorthodox opinions about the divinity of Jesus Christ. Together
with his brother Thomas he was put in prison for heresy in 1611. Thomas
died in Newgate gaol, London, but Bartholomew's imprisonment was not a
rigorous one. James I. argued with him, and on several occasions he was
brought before the Consistory Court of London, but without any definite
result. Eventually, after having threatened to bring an action for
wrongful imprisonment, Legate was tried before a full Consistory Court
in February 1612, was found guilty of heresy, and was delivered to the
secular authorities for punishment. Refusing to retract his opinions he
was burned to death at Smithfield on the 18th of March 1612. Legate was
the last person burned in London for his religious opinions, and Edward
Wightman, who was burned at Lichfield in April 1612, was the last to
suffer in this way in England.
See T. Fuller, _Church History of Britain_ (1655); and S. R. Gardiner,
_History of England_, vol. ii. (London, 1904).
LEGATE (Lat. _legatus_, past part. of _legare_, to send as deputy), a
title now generally confined to the highest class of diplomatic
representatives of the pope, though still occasionally used, in its
original Latin sense, of any ambassador or diplomatic agent. According
to the _Nova Compilatio Decretalium_ of Gregory IX., under the title "De
officio legati" the canon law recognizes two sorts of legate, the
_legatus natus_ and the _legatus datus_ or _missus_. The _legatus datus_
(_missus_) may be either (1) _delegatus_, or (2) _nuncius apostolicus_,
or (3) _legatus a latere_ (_lateralis, collateralis_). The rights of the
_legatus natus_, which included concurrent jurisdiction with that of all
the bishops within his province, have been much curtailed since the 16th
century; they were altogether suspended in presence of the higher claims
of a _legatus a latere_, and the title is now almost quite honorary. It
was attached to the see of Canterbury till the Reformation and it still
attaches to the sees of Seville, Toledo, Aries, Reims, Lyons, Gran,
Prague, Gnesen-Posen, Cologne, Salzburg, among others. The commission of
the _legatus delegatus_ (generally a member of the local clergy) is of a
limited nature, and relates only to some definite piece of work. The
_nuncius apostolicus_ (who has the privilege of red apparel, a white
horse and golden spurs) possesses ordinary jurisdiction within the
province to which he has been sent, but his powers otherwise are
restricted by the terms of his mandate. The _legatus a latere_ (almost
invariably a cardinal, though the power can be conferred on other
prelates) is in the fullest sense the plenipotentiary representative of
the pope, and possesses the high prerogative implied in the words of
Gregory VII., "nostra vice quae corrigenda sunt corrigat, quae statuend
constituat." He has the power of suspending all the bishops in his
province, and no judicial cases are reserved from his judgment. Without
special mandate, however, he cannot depose bishops or unite or separate
bishoprics. At present _legati a latere_ are not sent by the holy see,
but diplomatic relations, where they exist, are maintained by means of
nuncios, internuncios and other agents.
The history of the office of papal legate is closely involved with that
of the papacy itself. If it were proved that papal legates exercised the
prerogatives of the primacy in the early councils, it would be one of
the strongest points for the Roman Catholic view of the papal history.
Thus it is claimed that Hosius of Cordova presided over the council of
Nicaea (325) in the name of the pope. But the claim rests on slender
evidence, since the first source in which Hosius is referred to as
representative of the pope is Gelasius of Cyzicus in the Propontis, who
wrote toward the end of the 5th century. It is even open to dispute
whether Hosius was president at Nicaea, and though he certainly presided
over the council of Sardica in 343, it was probably as representative of
the emperors Constans and Constantius, who had summoned the council.
Pope Julius I. was represented at Sardica by two presbyters. Yet the
fifth canon, which provides for appeal by a bishop to Rome, sanctions
the use of embassies _a latere_. If the appellant wishes the pope to
send priests from his own household, the pope shall be free to do so,
and to furnish them with full authority from himself ("ut de latere suo
presbyteros mittat ... habentes ejus auctoritatem a quo destinati
sunt"). The decrees of Sardica, an obscure council, were later confused
with those of Nicaea and thus gained weight. In the synod of Ephesus in
431, Pope Celestine I. instructed his representatives to conduct
themselves not as disputants but as judges, and Cyril of Alexandria
presided not only in his own name but in that of the pope (and of the
bishop of Jerusalem). Instances of delegation of the papal authority in
various degrees become numerous in the 5th century, especially during
the pontificate of Leo I. Thus Leo writes in 444 (_Ep._ 6) to Anastasius
of Thessalonica, appointing him his vicar for the province of Illyria;
the same arrangement, he informs us, had been made by Pope Siricius in
favour of Anysius, the predecessor of Anastasius. Similar vicarial or
legatine powers had been conferred in 418 by Zosimus upon Patroclus,
bishop of Arles. In 449 Leo was represented at the "Robber Synod," from
which his legates hardly escaped with life; at Chalcedon, in 451, they
were treated with singular honour, though the imperial commissioners
presided. Again, in 453 the same pope writes to the empress Pulcheria,
naming Julianus of Cos as his representative in the defence of the
interests of orthodoxy and ecclesiastical discipline at Constantinople
(_Ep._ 112); the instructions to Julianus are given in _Ep._ 113 ("hanc
specialem curam vice mea functus assumas"). The designation of
Anastasius as vicar apostolic over Illyria may be said to mark the
beginning of the custom of conferring, _ex officio_, the title of
_legatus_ upon the holders of important sees, who ultimately came to be
known as _legati nati_, with the rank of primate; the appointment of
Julianus at Constantinople gradually developed into the long permanent
office of _apocrisiarius_ or _responsalis_. Another sort of delegation
is exemplified in Leo's letter to the African bishops (_Ep._ 12), in
which he sends Potentius, with instructions to inquire in his name, and
to report ("vicem curae nostrae fratri et consacerdoti nostro Potentio
delegantes qui de episcopis, quorum culpabilis ferebatur electio, quid
veritas haberet inquireret, nobisque omnia fideliter indicaret").
Passing on to the time of Gregory the Great, we find him sending two
representatives to Gaul in 599, to suppress simony, and one to Spain in
603. Augustine of Canterbury is sometimes spoken of as legate, but it
does not appear that in his case this title was used in any strictly
technical sense, although the archbishop of Canterbury afterwards
attained the permanent dignity of a _legatus natus_. Boniface, the
apostle of Germany, was in like manner constituted, according to Hincmar
(_Ep._ 30), a legate of the apostolic see by Popes Gregory II. and
Gregory III. According to Hefele (_Conc._ iv. 239), Rodoald of Porto and
Zecharias of Anagni, who were sent by Pope Nicolas to Constantinople in
860, were the first actually called _legati a latere_. The policy of
Gregory VII. naturally led to a great development of the legatine as
distinguished from the ordinary episcopal function. From the creation of
the medieval papal monarchy until the close of the middle ages, the
papal legate played a most important rôle in national as well as church
history. The further definition of his powers proceeded throughout the
12th and 13th centuries. From the 16th century legates a latere give way
almost entirely to nuncios (q.v.).
See P. Hinschius, _Kirchenrecht_, i. 498 ff.; G. Phillips,
_Kirchenrecht_, vol. vi. 680 ff.
LEGATION (Lat. _legatio_, a sending or mission), a diplomatic mission of
the second rank. The term is also applied to the building in which the
minister resides and to the area round it covered by his diplomatic
immunities. See DIPLOMACY.
LEGEND (through the French from the med. Lat. _legenda_, things to be
read, from _legere_, to read), in its primary meaning the history or
life-story of a saint, and so applied to portions of Scripture and
selections from the lives of the saints as read at divine service. The
statute of 3 and 4 Edward VI. dealing with the abolition of certain
books and images (1549), cap. 10, sect. 1, says that "all bookes ...
called processionalles, manuelles, _legends_ ... shall be ...
abolished." The "Golden Legend," or _Aurea Legenda_, was the name given
to a book containing lives of the saints and descriptions of festivals,
written by Jacobus de Voragine, archbishop of Genoa, in the 13th
century. From the original application of the word to stories of the
saints containing wonders and miracles, the word came to be applied to a
story handed down without any foundation in history, but popularly
believed to be true. "Legend" is also used of a writing, inscription, or
motto on coins or medals, and in connexion with coats of arms, shields,
monuments, &c.
LEGENDRE, ADRIEN MARIE (1752-1833), French mathematician, was born at
Paris (or, according to some accounts, at Toulouse) in 1752. He was
brought up at Paris, where he completed his studies at the _Collège
Mazarin_. His first published writings consist of articles forming part
of the _Traité de mécanique_ (1774) of the Abbé Marie, who was his
professor; Legendre's name, however, is not mentioned. Soon afterwards
he was appointed professor of mathematics in the _École Militaire_ at
Paris, and he was afterwards professor in the _École Normale_. In 1782
he received the prize from the Berlin Academy for his "Dissertation sur
la question de balistique," a memoir relating to the paths of
projectiles in resisting media. He also, about this time, wrote his
"Recherches sur la figure des planètes," published in the _Mémoires_ of
the French Academy, of which he was elected a member in succession to J.
le Rond d'Alembert in 1783. He was also appointed a commissioner for
connecting geodetically Paris and Greenwich, his colleagues being P. F.
A. Méchain and C. F. Cassini de Thury; General William Roy conducted the
operations on behalf of England. The French observations were published
in 1792 (_Exposé des opérations faites en France in 1787 pour la
jonction des observatoires de Paris et de Greenwich_). During the
Revolution, he was one of the three members of the council established
to introduce the decimal system, and he was also a member of the
commission appointed to determine the length of the metre, for which
purpose the calculations, &c., connected with the arc of the meridian
from Barcelona to Dunkirk were revised. He was also associated with G.
C. F. M. Prony (1755-1839) in the formation of the great French tables
of logarithms of numbers, sines, and tangents, and natural sines, called
the _Tables du Cadastre_, in which the quadrant was divided
centesimally; these tables have never been published (see LOGARITHMS).
He was examiner in the _École Polytechnique_, but held few important
state offices. He died at Paris on the 10th of January 1833, and the
discourse at his grave was pronounced by S. D. Poisson. The last of the
three supplements to his _Traité des fonctions elliptiques_ was
published in 1832, and Poisson in his funeral oration remarked: "M.
Legendre a eu cela de commun avec la plupart des géomètres qui l'ont
précédé, que ses travaux n'ont fini qu'avec sa vie. Le dernier volume de
nos mémoires renferme encore un mémoire de lui, sur une question
difficile de la théorie des nombres; et peu de temps avant la maladie
qui l'a conduit au tombeau, il se procura les observations les plus
récentes des comètes à courtes périodes, dont il allait se servir pour
appliquer et perfectionner ses méthodes."
It will be convenient, in giving an account of his writings, to
consider them under the different subjects which are especially
associated with his name.
_Elliptic Functions._--This is the subject with which Legendre's name
will always be most closely connected, and his researches upon it
extend over a period of more than forty years. His first published
writings upon the subject consist of two papers in the _Mémoires de
l'Académie Française_ for 1786 upon elliptic arcs. In 1792 he
presented to the Academy a memoir on elliptic transcendents. The
contents of these memoirs are included in the first volume of his
_Exercices de calcul intégral_ (1811). The third volume (1816)
contains the very elaborate and now well-known tables of the elliptic
integrals which were calculated by Legendre himself, with an account
of the mode of their construction. In 1827 appeared the _Traité des
fonctions elliptiques_ (2 vols., the first dated 1825, the second
1826), a great part of the first volume agrees very closely with the
contents of the _Exercices_; the tables, &c., are given in the second
volume. Three supplements, relating to the researches of N. H. Abel
and C. G. J. Jacobi, were published in 1828-1832, and form a third
volume. Legendre had pursued the subject which would now be called
elliptic integrals alone from 1786 to 1827, the results of his labours
having been almost entirely neglected by his contemporaries, but his
work had scarcely appeared in 1827 when the discoveries which were
independently made by the two young and as yet unknown mathematicians
Abel and Jacobi placed the subject on a new basis, and revolutionized
it completely. The readiness with which Legendre, who was then
seventy-six years of age, welcomed these important researches, that
quite overshadowed his own, and included them in successive
supplements to his work, does the highest honour to him (see
FUNCTION).
_Eulerian Integrals and Integral Calculus._--The _Exercices de calcul
intégral_ consist of three volumes, a great portion of the first and
the whole of the third being devoted to elliptic functions. The
remainder of the first volume relates to the Eulerian integrals and to
quadratures. The second volume (1817) relates to the Eulerian
integrals, and to various integrals and series, developments,
mechanical problems, &c., connected with the integral calculus; this
volume contains also a numerical table of the values of the gamma
function. The latter portion of the second volume of the _Traité des
fonctions elliptiques_ (1826) is also devoted to the Eulerian
integrals, the table being reproduced. Legendre's researches connected
with the "gamma function" are of importance, and are well known; the
subject was also treated by K. F. Gauss in his memoir _Disquisitiones
generales circa series infinitas_ (1816), but in a very different
manner. The results given in the second volume of the _Exercices_ are
of too miscellaneous a character to admit of being briefly described.
In 1788 Legendre published a memoir on double integrals, and in 1809
one on definite integrals.
_Theory of Numbers._--Legendre's _Théorie des nombres_ and Gauss's
_Disquisitiones arithmeticae_ (1801) are still standard works upon
this subject. The first edition of the former appeared in 1798 under
the title _Essai sur la théorie des nombres_; there was a second
edition in 1808; a first supplement was published in 1816, and a
second in 1825. The third edition, under the title _Théorie des
nombres_, appeared in 1830 in two volumes. The fourth edition appeared
in 1900. To Legendre is due the theorem known as the law of quadratic
reciprocity, the most important general result in the science of
numbers which has been discovered since the time of P. de Fermat, and
which was called by Gauss the "gem of arithmetic." It was first given
by Legendre in the _Mémoires_ of the Academy for 1785, but the
demonstration that accompanied it was incomplete. The symbol (a/p)
which is known as Legendre's symbol, and denotes the positive or
negative unit which is the remainder when a^[½p(-1)] is divided by a
prime number p, does not appear in this memoir, but was first used in
the _Essai sur la théorie des nombres_. Legendre's formula x: (log x -
1.08366) for the approximate number of forms inferior to a given
number x was first given by him also in this work (2nd ed., p. 394)
(see NUMBER).
_Attractions of Ellipsoids._--Legendre was the author of four
important memoirs on this subject. In the first of these, entitled
"Recherches sur l'attraction des sphéroides homogènes," published in
the _Mémoires_ of the Academy for 1785, but communicated to it at an
earlier period, Legendre introduces the celebrated expressions which,
though frequently called Laplace's coefficients, are more correctly
named after Legendre. The definition of the coefficients is that if (1
- 2h cos [phi] + h²)^(-½) be expanded in ascending powers of h, and if
the general term be denoted by P_n h^n, then P_n is of the Legendrian
coefficient of the nth order. In this memoir also the function which
is now called the potential was, at the suggestion of Laplace, first
introduced. Legendre shows that Maclaurin's theorem with respect to
confocal ellipsoids is true for any position of the external point
when the ellipsoids are solids of revolution. Of this memoir Isaac
Todhunter writes: "We may affirm that no single memoir in the history
of our subject can rival this in interest and importance. During forty
years the resources of analysis, even in the hands of d'Alembert,
Lagrange and Laplace, had not carried the theory of the attraction of
ellipsoids beyond the point which the geometry of Maclaurin had
reached. The introduction of the coefficients now called Laplace's,
and their application, commence a new era in mathematical physics."
Legendre's second memoir was communicated to the _Académie_ in 1784,
and relates to the conditions of equilibrium of a mass of rotating
fluid in the form of a figure of revolution which does not deviate
much from a sphere. The third memoir relates to Laplace's theorem
respecting confocal ellipsoids. Of the fourth memoir Todhunter writes:
"It occupies an important position in the history of our subject. The
most striking addition which is here made to previous researches
consists in the treatment of a planet supposed entirely fluid; the
general equation for the form of a stratum is given for the first time
and discussed. For the first time we have a correct and convenient
expression for Laplace's nth coefficient." (See Todhunter's _History
of the Mathematical Theories of Attraction and the Figure of the
Earth_ (1873), the twentieth, twenty-second, twenty-fourth, and
twenty-fifth chapters of which contain a full and complete account of
Legendre's four memoirs. See also SPHERICAL HARMONICS.)
_Geodesy._--Besides the work upon the geodetical operations connecting
Paris and Greenwich, of which Legendre was one of the authors, he
published in the _Mémoires de l'Académie_ for 1787 two papers on
trigonometrical operations depending upon the figure of the earth,
containing many theorems relating to this subject. The best known of
these, which is called Legendre's theorem, is usually given in
treatises on spherical trigonometry; by means of it a small spherical
triangle may be treated as a plane triangle, certain corrections being
applied to the angles. Legendre was also the author of a memoir upon
triangles drawn upon a spheroid. Legendre's theorem is a fundamental
one in geodesy, and his contributions to the subject are of the
greatest importance.
_Method of Least Squares._--In 1806 appeared Legendre's _Nouvelles
Méthodes pour la détermination des orbites des comètes_, which is
memorable as containing the first published suggestion of the method
of least squares (see PROBABILITY). In the preface Legendre remarks:
"La méthode qui me paroît la plus simple et la plus générale consiste
à rendre minimum la somme des quarrés des erreurs, ... et que
j'appelle méthode des moindres quarrés"; and in an appendix in which
the application of the method is explained his words are: "De tous les
principes qu'on peut proposer pour cet objet, je pense qu'il n'en est
pas de plus général, de plus exact, ni d'une application plus facile
que celui dont nous avons fait usage dans les recherches précédentes,
et qui consiste à rendre minimum la somme des quarrés des erreurs."
The method was proposed by Legendre only as a convenient process for
treating observations, without reference to the theory of probability.
It had, however, been applied by Gauss as early as 1795, and the
method was fully explained, and the law of facility for the first time
given by him in 1809. Laplace also justified the method by means of
the principles of the theory of probability; and this led Legendre to
republish the part of his _Nouvelles Méthodes_ which related to it in
the _Mémoires de l'Académie_ for 1810. Thus, although the method of
least squares was first formally proposed by Legendre, the theory and
algorithm and mathematical foundation of the process are due to Gauss
and Laplace. Legendre published two supplements to his _Nouvelles
Méthodes_ in 1806 and 1820.
_The Elements of Geometry._--Legendre's name is most widely known on
account of his _Eléments de géométrie_, the most successful of the
numerous attempts that have been made to supersede Euclid as a
text-book on geometry. It first appeared in 1794, and went through
very many editions, and has been translated into almost all languages.
An English translation, by Sir David Brewster, from the eleventh
French edition, was published in 1823, and is well known in England.
The earlier editions did not contain the trigonometry. In one of the
notes Legendre gives a proof of the irrationality of [pi]. This had
been first proved by J. H. Lambert in the Berlin _Memoirs_ for 1768.
Legendre's proof is similar in principle to Lambert's, but much
simpler. On account of the objections urged against the treatment of
parallels in this work, Legendre was induced to publish in 1803 his
_Nouvelle Théorie des parallèles_. His _Géométrie_ gave rise in
England also to a lengthened discussion on the difficult question of
the treatment of the theory of parallels.
It will thus be seen that Legendre's works have placed him in the very
foremost rank in the widely distinct subjects of elliptic functions,
theory of numbers, attractions, and geodesy, and have given him a
conspicuous position in connexion with the integral calculus and other
branches of mathematics. He published a memoir on the integration of
partial differential equations and a few others which have not been
noticed above, but they relate to subjects with which his name is not
especially associated. A good account of the principal works of
Legendre is given in the _Bibliothèque universelle de Genève_ for
1833, pp. 45-82.
See Élie de Beaumont, "Memoir de Legendre," translated by C. A.
Alexander, _Smithsonian Report_ (1874). (J. W. L. G.)
LEGENDRE, LOUIS (1752-1797), French revolutionist, was born at
Versailles on the 22nd of May 1752. When the Revolution broke out, he
kept a butcher's shop in Paris, in the rue des Boucheries St Germain. He
was an ardent supporter of the ideas of the Revolution, a member of the
Jacobin Club, and one of the founders of the club of the Cordeliers. In
spite of the incorrectness of his diction, he was gifted with a genuine
eloquence, and well knew how to carry the populace with him. He was a
prominent actor in the taking of the Bastille (14th of July 1789), in
the massacre of the Champ de Mars (July 1791), and in the attack on the
Tuileries (10th of August 1792). Deputy from Paris to the Convention, he
voted for the death of Louis XVI., and was sent on mission to Lyons
(27th of February 1793) before the revolt of that town, and was on
mission from August to October 1793 in Seine-Inférieure. He was a member
of the _Comité de Sûreté Générale_, and contributed to the downfall of
the Girondists. When Danton was arrested, Legendre at first defended
him, but was soon cowed and withdrew his defence. After the fall of
Robespierre, Legendre took part in the reactionary movement, undertook
the closing of the Jacobin Club, was elected president of the
Convention, and helped to bring about the impeachment of J. B. Carrier,
the perpetrator of the _noyades_ of Nantes. He was subsequently elected
a member of the Council of Ancients, and died on the 13th of December
1797.
See F. A. Aulard, _Les Orateurs de la Législative et de la Convention_
(2nd ed., Paris, 1906, 2 vols.); "Correspondance de Legendre" in the
_Révolution française_ (vol. xl., 1901).
LEGERDEMAIN (Fr. _léger-de-main_, i.e. light or sleight of hand), the
name given specifically to that form of conjuring in which the performer
relies on dexterity of manipulation rather than on mechanical apparatus.
See CONJURING.
LEGGE, afterwards BILSON-LEGGE, HENRY (1708-1764), English statesman,
fourth son of William Legge, 1st earl of Dartmouth (1672-1750), was born
on the 29th of May 1708. Educated at Christ Church, Oxford, he became
private secretary to Sir Robert Walpole, and in 1739 was appointed
secretary of Ireland by the lord-lieutenant, the 3rd duke of Devonshire;
being chosen member of parliament for the borough of East Looe in 1740,
and for Orford, Suffolk, at the general election in the succeeding year.
Legge only shared temporarily in the downfall of Walpole, and became in
quick succession surveyor-general of woods and forests, a lord of the
admiralty, and a lord of the treasury. In 1748 he was sent as envoy
extraordinary to Frederick the Great, and although his conduct in Berlin
was sharply censured by George II., he became treasurer of the navy soon
after his return to England. In April 1754 he joined the ministry of the
duke of Newcastle as chancellor of the exchequer, the king consenting to
this appointment although refusing to hold any intercourse with the
minister; but Legge shared the elder Pitt's dislike of the policy of
paying subsidies to the landgrave of Hesse, and was dismissed from
office in November 1755. Twelve months later he returned to his post at
the exchequer in the administration of Pitt and the 4th duke of
Devonshire, retaining office until April 1757 when he shared both the
dismissal and the ensuing popularity of Pitt. When in conjunction with
the duke of Newcastle Pitt returned to power in the following July,
Legge became chancellor of the exchequer for the third time. He imposed
new taxes upon houses and windows, and he appears to have lost to some
extent the friendship of Pitt, while the king refused to make him a
peer. In 1759 he obtained the sinecure position of surveyor of the petty
customs and subsidies in the port of London, and having in consequence
to resign his seat in parliament he was chosen one of the members for
Hampshire, a proceeding which greatly incensed the earl of Bute, who
desired this seat for one of his friends. Having thus incurred Bute's
displeasure Legge was again dismissed from the exchequer in March 1761,
but he continued to take part in parliamentary debates until his death
at Tunbridge Wells on the 23rd of August 1764. Legge appears to have
been a capable financier, but the position of chancellor of the
exchequer was not at that time a cabinet office. He took the additional
name of Bilson on succeeding to the estates of a relative, Thomas
Bettersworth Bilson, in 1754. Pitt called Legge, "the child, and
deservedly the favourite child, of the Whigs." Horace Walpole said he
was "of a creeping, underhand nature, and aspired to the lion's place by
the manoeuvre of the mole," but afterwards he spoke in high terms of his
talents. Legge married Mary, daughter and heiress of Edward, 4th and
last Baron Stawel (d. 1755). This lady, who in 1760 was created Baroness
Stawel of Somerton, bore him an only child, Henry Stawel Bilson-Legge
(1757-1820), who became Baron Stawel on his mother's death in 1780. When
Stawel died without sons his title became extinct. His only daughter,
Mary (d. 1864), married John Dutton, 2nd Baron Sherborne.
See John Butier, bishop of Hereford, _Some Account of the Character of
the late Rt. Hon. H. Bilson-Legge_ (1765); Horace Walpole, _Memoirs of
the Reign of George II._ (London, 1847); and _Memoirs of the Reign of
George III._, edited by G. F. R. Barker (London, 1894); W. E. H.
Lecky, _History of England_, vol. ii. (London, 1892); and the memoirs
and collections of correspondence of the time.
LEGGE, JAMES (1815-1897), British Chinese scholar, was born at Huntly,
Aberdeenshire, in 1815, and educated at King's College, Aberdeen. After
studying at the Highbury Theological College, London, he went in 1839 as
a missionary to the Chinese, but, as China was not yet open to
Europeans, he remained at Malacca three years, in charge of the
Anglo-Chinese College there. The College was subsequently moved to
Hong-Kong, where Legge lived for thirty years. Impressed with the
necessity of missionaries being able to comprehend the ideas and culture
of the Chinese, he began in 1841 a translation in many volumes of the
Chinese classics, a monumental task admirably executed and completed a
few years before his death. In 1870 he was made an LL.D. of Aberdeen and
in 1884 of Edinburgh University. In 1875 several gentlemen connected
with the China trade suggested to the university of Oxford a Chair of
Chinese Language and Literature to be occupied by Dr Legge. The
university responded liberally, Corpus Christi College contributed the
emoluments of a fellowship, and the chair was constituted in 1876. In
addition to his other work Legge wrote _The Life and Teaching of
Confucius_ (1867); _The Life and Teaching of Mencius_ (1875); _The
Religions of China_ (1880); and other books on Chinese literature and
religion. He died at Oxford on the 29th of November 1897.
LEGHORN (Ital. _Livorno_, Fr. _Livourne_), a city of Tuscany, Italy,
chief town of the province of the same name, which consists of the
commune of Leghorn and the islands of Elba and Gorgona. The town is the
seat of a bishopric and of a large naval academy--the only one in
Italy--and the third largest commercial port in the kingdom, situated on
the west coast, 12 m. S.W. of Pisa by rail, 10 ft. above sea-level. Pop.
(1901) 78,308 (town), 96,528 (commune). It is built along the seashore
upon a healthy and fertile tract of land, which forms, as it were, an
oasis in a zone of Maremma. Behind is a range of hills, the most
conspicuous of which, the Monte Nero, is crowned by a frequented
pilgrimage church and also by villas and hotels, to which a funicular
railway runs. The town itself is almost entirely modern. The
16th-century Fortezza Vecchia, guarding the harbour, is picturesque, and
there is a good bronze statue of the grand duke Ferdinand I. by Pietro
Tacca (1577-1640), a pupil of Giovanni da Bologna. The lofty Torre del
Marzocco, erected in 1423 by the Florentines, is fine. The façade of the
cathedral was designed by Inigo Jones. The old Protestant cemetery
contains the tombs of Tobias Smollett (d. 1771) and Francis Horner (d.
1817). There is also a large synagogue founded in 1581. The exchange,
the chamber of commerce and the clearing-house (one of the oldest in the
world, dating from 1764) are united under one roof in the Palazzo del
Commercio, opened in 1907. Several improvements have been carried out in
the city and port, and the place is developing rapidly as an industrial
centre. The naval academy, formerly established partly at Naples and
partly at Genoa, has been transferred to Leghorn. Some of the navigable
canals which connected the harbour with the interior of the city have
been either modified or filled up. Several streets have been widened,
and a road along the shore has been transformed into a fine and shady
promenade. Leghorn is the principal sea-bathing resort in this part of
Italy, the season lasting from the end of June to the end of August. A
spa for the use of the Acque della Salute has been constructed. Leghorn
is on the main line from Pisa to Rome; another line runs to Colle
Salvetti. A considerable number of important steamship lines call here.
The new rectilinear mole, sanctioned in 1881, has been built out into
the sea for a distance of 600 yds. from the old Vegliaia lighthouse, and
the docking basin has been lengthened to 490 ft. Inside the breakwater
the depth varies from 10 to 26 ft. The total trade of the port increased
from £3,853,593 in 1897 to £5,675,285 in 1905 and £7,009,758 in 1906
(the large increase being mainly due to a rise of over £1,000,000 in
imports--mainly of coal, building materials and machinery), the average
ratio of imports to exports being as three to two. The imports consist
principally of machinery, coal, grain, dried fish, tobacco and hides,
and the exports of hemp, hides, olive oil, soap, coral, candied fruit,
wine, straw hats, boracic acid, mercury, and marble and alabaster. In
1885 the total number of vessels that entered the port was 4281 of
1,434,000 tons; of these, 1251 of 750,000 tons were foreign; 688,000
tons of merchandise were loaded and unloaded. In 1906, after
considerable fluctuations during the interval, the total number that
entered was 4623 vessels of 2,372,551 tons; of these, 935 of 1,002,119
tons were foreign; British ships representing about half this tonnage.
In 1906 the total imports and exports amounted to 1,470,000 tons
including coasting trade. A great obstacle to the development of the
port is the absence of modern mechanical appliances for loading and
unloading vessels, and of quay space and dock accommodation. The older
shipyards have been considerably extended, and shipbuilding is actively
carried on, especially by the Orlando yard which builds large ships for
the Italian navy, while new industries--namely, glass-making and copper
and brass-founding, electric power works, a cement factory, porcelain
factories, flour-mills, oil-mills, a cotton yarn spinning factory,
electric plant works, a ship-breaking yard, a motor-boat yard, &c.--have
been established. Other important firms, Tuscan wine-growers,
oil-growers, timber traders, colour manufacturers, &c., have their head
offices and stores at Leghorn, with a view to export. The former British
"factory" here was of great importance for the trade with the Levant,
but was closed in 1825. The two villages of Ardenza and Antignano, which
form part of the commune, have acquired considerable importance, the
former in part for sea-bathing.
The earliest mention of Leghorn occurs in a document of 891, relating to
the first church here; in 1017 it is called a castle. In the 13th
century the Pisans tried to attract a population to the spot, but it was
not till the 14th that Leghorn became a rival of Porto Pisano at the
mouth of the Arno, which it was destined ultimately to supplant. It was
at Leghorn that Urban V. and Gregory XI. landed on their return from
Avignon. When in 1405 the king of France sold Pisa to the Florentines he
kept possession of Leghorn; but he afterwards (1407) sold it for 26,000
ducats to the Genoese, and from the Genoese the Florentines purchased it
in 1421. In 1496 the city showed its devotion to its new masters by a
successful defence against Maximilian and his allies, but it was still a
small place; in 1551 there were only 749 inhabitants. With the rise of
the Medici came a rapid increase of prosperity; Cosmo, Francis and
Ferdinand erected fortifications and harbour works, warehouses and
churches, with equal liberality, and the last especially gave a stimulus
to trade by inviting "men of the East and the West, Spanish and
Portuguese, Greeks, Germans, Italians, Hebrews, Turks, Moors, Armenians,
Persians and others," to settle and traffic in the city, as it became in
1606. Declared free and neutral in 1691, Leghorn was permanently
invested with these privileges by the Quadruple Alliance in 1718; but in
1796 Napoleon seized all the hostile vessels in its port. It ceased to
be a free city by the law of 1867. (T. As.)
LEGION (Lat. _legio_), in early Rome, the levy of citizens marching out
_en masse_ to war, like the citizen-army of any other primitive state.
As Rome came to need more than one army at once and warfare grew more
complex, _legio_ came to denote a unit of 4000-6000 heavy infantry
(including, however, at first some light infantry and at various times a
handful of cavalry) who were by political status Roman citizens and were
distinct from the "allies," _auxilia_, and other troops of the second
class. The legionaries were regarded as the best and most characteristic
Roman soldiers, the most trustworthy and truly Roman; they enjoyed
better pay and conditions of service than the "auxiliaries." In A.D. 14
(death of Augustus) there were 25 such legions: later, the number was
slightly increased; finally about A.D. 290 Diocletian reduced the size
and greatly increased the number of the legions. Throughout, the
dominant features of the legions were heavy infantry and Roman
citizenship. They lost their importance when the Barbarian invasions
altered the character of ancient warfare and made cavalry a more
important arm than infantry, in the late 3rd and 4th centuries A.D. In
the middle ages the word "legion" seems not to have been used as a
technical term. In modern times it has been employed for organizations
of an unusual or exceptional character, such as a corps of foreign
volunteers or mercenaries. See further ROMAN ARMY. (F. J. H.)
The term legion has been used to designate regiments or corps of all
arms in modern times, perhaps the earliest example of this being the
Provincial Legions formed in France by Francis I. (see INFANTRY).
Napoleon, in accordance with this precedent, employed the word to
designate the second-line formations which he maintained in France and
which supplied the Grande Armée with drafts. The term "Foreign Legion"
is often used for irregular volunteer corps of foreign sympathizers
raised by states at war, often by smaller states fighting for
independence. Unlike most foreign legions the "British Legion" which,
raised in Great Britain and commanded by Sir de Lacy Evans (q.v.),
fought in the Carlist wars, was a regularly enlisted and paid force.
The term "foreign legion" is colloquially but incorrectly applied
to-day to the _Régiments étrangers_ in the French service, which are
composed of adventurous spirits of all nationalities and have been
employed in many arduous colonial campaigns.
The most famous of the corps that have borne the name of legion in
modern times was the King's German Legion (see Beamish's history of
the corps). The electorate of Hanover being in 1805 threatened by the
French, and no effective resistance being considered possible, the
British government wished to take the greater part of the Hanoverian
army into its service. But the acceptance by the Hanoverian government
of this offer was delayed until too late, and it was only after the
French had entered the country and the army as a unit had been
disbanded that the formation of the "King's German Regiment," as it
was at first called, was begun in England. This enlisted not only
ex-Hanoverian soldiers, but other Germans as well, as individuals.
Lieut.-Colonel von der Decken and Major Colin Halkett were the
officers entrusted with the formation of the new corps, which in
January 1805 had become a corps of all arms with the title of King's
German Legion. It then consisted of a dragoon and a hussar regiment,
five batteries, two light and four line battalions and an engineer
section, all these being afterwards increased. Its services included
the abortive German expedition of November 1805, the expedition to
Copenhagen in 1807, the minor sieges and combats in Sicily 1808-14,
the Walcheren expedition of 1809, the expedition to Sweden under Sir
John Moore in 1808, and the campaign of 1813 in north Germany. But its
title to fame is its part in the Peninsular War, in which from first
to last it was an acknowledged _corps d'élite_--its cavalry
especially, whose services both on reconnaissance and in battle were
of the highest value. The exploit of the two dragoon regiments of the
Legion at Garcia Hernandez after the battle of Salamanca, where they
charged and broke up two French infantry squares and captured some
1400 prisoners, is one of the most notable incidents in the history of
the cavalry arm (see Sir E. Wood's _Achievements of Cavalry)_. A
general officer of the Legion, Charles Alten (q.v.), commanded the
British Light Division in the latter part of the war. It should be
said that the Legion was rarely engaged as a unit. It was considered
rather as a small army of the British type, most of which served
abroad by regiments and battalions while a small portion and depot
units were at home, the total numbers under arms being about 25,000.
In 1815 the period of service of the corps had almost expired when
Napoleon returned from Elba, but its members voluntarily offered to
prolong their service. It lost heavily at Waterloo, in which Baring's
battalion of the light infantry distinguished itself by its gallant
defence of La Haye Sainte. The strength of the Legion at the time of
its disbandment was 1100 officers and 23,500 men. A short-lived
"King's German Legion" was raised by the British government for
service in the Crimean War. Certain Hanoverian regiments of the German
army to-day represent the units of the Legion and carry Peninsular
battle-honours on their standards and colours.
LEGITIM, or BAIRN'S PART, in Scots law, the legal share of the movable
property of a father due on his death to his children. If a father dies
leaving a widow and children, the movable property is divided into three
equal parts; one-third part is divided equally among all the children
who survive, although they may be of different marriages (the issue of
predeceased children do not share); another third goes to the widow as
her _jus relictae_, and the remaining third, called "dead's part," may
be disposed of by the father by will as he pleases. If the father die
intestate the dead's part goes to the children as next of kin. Should
the father leave no widow, one-half of the movable estate is legitim and
one-half dead's part. In claiming legitim, however, credit must be given
for any advance made by the father out of his movable estate during his
lifetime.
LEGITIMACY, and LEGITIMATION, the status derived by individuals in
consequence of being born in legal wedlock, and the means by which the
same status is given to persons not so born. Under the Roman or civil
law a child born before the marriage of the parents was made legitimate
by their subsequent marriage. This method of legitimation was accepted
by the canon law, by the legal systems of the continent of Europe, of
Scotland and of some of the states of the United States. The early
Germanic codes, however, did not recognize such legitimation, nor among
the Anglo-Saxons had the natural-born child any rights of inheritance,
or possibly any right other than that of protection, even when
acknowledged by its father. The principle of the civil and canon law was
at one time advocated by the clergy of England, but was summarily
rejected by the barons at the parliament of Merton in 1236, when they
replied _Nolumus leges Angliae mutare_.
English law takes account solely of the fact that marriage precedes the
birth of the child; at whatever period the birth happens after the
marriage, the offspring is prima facie legitimate. The presumption of
law is always in favour of the legitimacy of the child of a married
woman, and at one time it was so strong that Sir Edward Coke held that
"if the husband be within the four seas, i.e. within the jurisdiction of
the king of England, and the wife hath issue, no proof shall be admitted
to prove the child a bastard unless the husband hath an apparent
impossibility of procreation." It is now settled, however, that the
presumption of legitimacy may be rebutted by evidence showing non-access
on the part of the husband, or any other circumstance showing that the
husband could not in the course of nature have been the father of his
wife's child. If the husband had access, or the access be not clearly
negatived, even though others at the same time were carrying on an
illicit intercourse with the wife, a child born under such circumstances
is legitimate. If the husband had access intercourse must be presumed,
unless there is irresistible evidence to the contrary. Neither husband
or wife will be permitted to prove the non-access directly or
indirectly. Children born after a divorce _a mensa et thoro_ will,
however, be presumed to be bastards unless access be proved. A child
born so long after the death of a husband that he could not in the
ordinary course of nature have been the father is illegitimate. The
period of gestation is presumed to be _about_ nine calendar months; and
if there were any circumstances from which an unusually long or short
period of gestation could be inferred, special medical testimony would
be required.
A marriage between persons within the prohibited degrees of affinity was
before 1835 not void, but only voidable, and the ecclesiastical courts
were restrained from bastardizing the issue after the death of either of
the parents. Lord Lyndhurst's act (1835) declared all such existing
marriages valid, but all subsequent marriages between persons within the
prohibited degrees of consanguinity or affinity were made null and void
and the issue illegitimate (see MARRIAGE). By the Legitimacy Declaration
Act 1858, application may be made to the Probate, Divorce and Admiralty
Court (in Scotland, to the Court of Session by action of declarator) for
a declaration of legitimacy and of the validity of a marriage. The
status of legitimacy in any country depending upon the fact of the child
having been born in wedlock, it may be concluded that any question as to
the legitimacy of a child turns either on the validity of the marriage
or on whether the child has been born in wedlock.
_Legitimation_ effected by the subsequent marriage of the parents of the
illegitimate child is technically known as legitimation _per subsequens
matrimonium_. This adoption of the Roman law principle is followed by
most of the states of the continent of Europe (with distinctions, of
course, as to _certain_ illegitimate children, or as to the forms of
acknowledgment by the parent or parents), in the Isle of Man, Guernsey,
Jersey, Lower Canada, St Lucia, Trinidad, Demerara, Berbice, Cape
Colony, Ceylon, Mauritius; it has been adopted in New Zealand
(Legitimation Act 1894), South Australia (Legitimation Act 1898, amended
1902), Queensland (Legitimation Act 1899), New South Wales (Legitimation
Act 1902), and Victoria (Registration of Births, Deaths and Marriages
Act 1903). It is to be noted, however, that in these states the mere
fact of the parents marrying does not legitimate the child; indeed, the
parents may marry, yet the child remain illegitimate. In order to
legitimate the child it is necessary for the father to make application
for its registration; in South Australia, the application must be made
by both parents; so also in Victoria, if the mother is living, if not,
application by the father will suffice. In New Zealand, Queensland and
New South Wales, registration may be made at any time after the
marriage; in Victoria, within six months from the date of the marriage;
in South Australia, by the act of 1898, registration was permissible
only within thirty days before or after the marriage, but by the
amending act of 1902 it is allowed at any time more than thirty days
after the marriage, provided the applicants prove before a magistrate
that they are the parents of the child. In all cases the legitimation is
retrospective, taking effect from the birth of the child. Legitimation
by subsequent marriage exists also in the following states of the
American Union: Maine, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Michigan, Iowa,
Minnesota, California, Oregon, Nevada, Washington, N. and S. Dakota,
Idaho, Montana and New Mexico. In Massachusetts, Vermont, Illinois,
Indiana, Wisconsin, Nebraska, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia,
Kentucky, Missouri, Arkansas, Texas, Colorado, Idaho, Wyoming, Georgia,
Alabama, Mississippi and Arizona, in addition to the marriage the father
must recognize or acknowledge the illegitimate child as his. In New
Hampshire, Connecticut and Louisiana both parents must acknowledge the
child, either by an authentic act before marriage or by the contract of
marriage. In some states (California, Nevada, N. and S. Dakota and
Idaho) if the father of an illegitimate child receives it into his house
(with the consent of his wife, if married), and treats it as if it were
legitimate, it becomes legitimate for all purposes. In other states (N.
Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia and New Mexico) the putative father can
legitimize the child by process in court. Those states of the United
States which have not been mentioned follow the English common law,
which also prevails in Ireland, some of the West Indies and part of
Canada. In Scotland, on the other hand, the principle of the civil law
is followed. In Scotland, bastards could be legitimized in two ways:
either by the subsequent intermarriage of the mother of the child with
the father, or by letters of legitimation from the sovereign. With
respect to the last, however, it is to be observed that letters of
legitimation, be their clauses ever so strong, could not enable the
bastard to succeed to his natural father; for the sovereign could not,
by any prerogative, cut off the private right of third parties. But by a
special clause in the letters of legitimation, the sovereign could
renounce his right to the bastard's succession, failing legitimate
descendants, in favour of him who would have been the bastard's heir had
he been born in lawful wedlock, such renunciation encroaching upon no
right competent to any third person.
The question remains, how far, if at all, English law recognizes the
legitimacy of a person born out of wedlock. Strictly speaking, English
law does not recognize any such person as legitimate (though the supreme
power of an act of parliament can, of course, confer the rights of
legitimacy), but under certain circumstances it will recognize, for
purposes of succession to property, a legitimated person as legitimate.
The general maxim of law is that the status of legitimacy must be tried
by the law of the country where it originates, and where the law of the
father's domicile at the time of the child's birth, and of the father's
domicile at the time of the subsequent marriage, taken together,
legitimize the child, English law will recognize the legitimacy. For
purposes of succession to real property, however, legitimacy must be
determined by the _lex loci rei sitae_; so that, for example, a
legitimized Scotsman would be recognized as legitimate in England, but
not legitimate so far as to take lands as heir (_Birtwhistle_ v.
_Vardill_, 1840). The conflict of laws on the subject yields some
curious results. Thus, a domiciled Scotsman had a son born in Scotland
and then married the mother in Scotland. The son died possessed of land
in England, and it was held that the father could not inherit from the
son. On the other hand, where an unmarried woman, domiciled in England
died intestate there, it was held that her brother's daughter, born
before marriage, but whilst the father was domiciled in Holland, and
legitimized by the parents' marriage while they were still domiciled in
Holland, was entitled to succeed to the personal property of her aunt
(_In re Goodman's Trusts_, 1880). _In re Grey's Trusts_ (1892) decided
that, where _real estate_ was bequeathed to the children of a person
domiciled in a foreign country and these children were legitimized by
the subsequent marriage in that country of their father with their
mother, that they were entitled to share as legitimate children in a
devise of English realty. It is to be noted that this decision does not
clash with that of _Birtwhistle_ v. _Vardill_.
See J. A. Foote, _Private International Law_; A. V. Dicey, _Conflict
of Laws_; L. von Bar, _Private International Law_; Story, _Conflict of
Laws_; J. Westlake, _International Law_.
LEGITIMISTS (Fr. _légitimistes_, from _légitime_, lawful, legitimate),
the name of the party in France which after the revolution of 1830
continued to support the claims of the elder line of the house of
Bourbon as the legitimate sovereigns "by divine right." The death of the
comte de Chambord in 1883 dissolved the _parti légitimiste_, only an
insignificant remnant, known as the _Blancs d'Espagne_, repudiating the
act of renunciation of Philip V. of Spain and upholding the rights of
the Bourbons of the line of Anjou. The word _légitimiste_ was not
admitted by the French Academy until 1878; but meanwhile it had spread
beyond France, and the English word legitimist is now applied to any
supporter of monarchy by hereditary right as against a parliamentary or
other title.
LEGNAGO, a fortified town of Venetia, Italy, in the province of Verona,
on the Adige, 29 m. by rail E. of Mantua, 52 ft. above sea-level. Pop.
(1906) 2731 (town), 17,000 (commune). Legnago is one of the famous
Quadrilateral fortresses. The present fortifications were planned and
made in 1815, the older defences having been destroyed by Napoleon I. in
1801. The situation is low and unhealthy, but the territory is fertile,
rice, cereals and sugar being grown. Legnago is the birthplace of G. B.
Cavalcaselle, the art historian (1827-1897). A branch line runs hence to
Rovigo.
LEGNANO, a town of Lombardy, Italy, in the province of Milan, 17 m. N.W.
of that city by rail, 682 ft. above sea-level. Pop. (1881) 7153, (1901)
18,285. The church of S. Magno, built in the style of Bramante by G.
Lampugnano (1504-1529), contains an altar-piece considered one of
Luini's best works. There are also remains of a castle of the Visconti.
Legnano is the seat of important cotton and silk industries, with
machine-shops, boiler-works, and dyeing and printing of woven goods, and
thread. Close by, the Lombard League defeated Frederick Barbarossa in
1176; a monument in commemoration of the battle was erected on the field
in 1876, while there is another by Butti erected in 1900 in the Piazza
Federico Barbarossa.
LEGOUVÉ, GABRIEL JEAN BAPTISTE ERNEST WILFRID (1807-1903), French
dramatist, son of the poet Gabriel Legouvé (1764-1812), who wrote a
pastoral _La Mort d'Abel_ (1793) and a tragedy of _Epicharis et Néron_,
was born in Paris on the 5th of February 1807. His mother died in 1810,
and almost immediately afterwards his father was removed to a lunatic
asylum. The child, however, inherited a considerable fortune, and was
carefully educated. Jean Nicolas Bouilly (1763-1842) was his tutor, and
early instilled into the young Legouvé a passion for literature, to
which the example of his father and of his grandfather, J. B. Legouvé
(1729-1783), predisposed him. As early as 1829 he carried away a prize
of the French Academy for a poem on the discovery of printing; and in
1832 he published a curious little volume of verses, entitled _Les Morts
Bizarres_. In those early days Legouvé brought out a succession of
novels, of which _Edith de Falsen_ enjoyed a considerable success. In
1847 he began the work by which he is best remembered, his contributions
to the development and education of the female mind, by lecturing at the
College of France on the moral history of women: these discourses were
collected into a volume in 1848, and enjoyed a great success. Legouvé
wrote considerably for the stage, and in 1849 he collaborated with A. E.
Scribe in _Adrienne Lecouvreur_. In 1855 he brought out his tragedy of
_Médée_, the success of which had much to do with his election to the
French Academy. He succeeded to the fauteuil of J. A. Ancelot, and was
received by Flourens, who dwelt on the plays of Legouvé as his principal
claim to consideration. As time passed on, however, he became less
prominent as a playwright, and more so as a lecturer and propagandist on
woman's rights and the advanced education of children, in both of which
directions he was a pioneer in French society. His _La Femme en France
au XIX^me siècle_ (1864), reissued, much enlarged, in 1878; his
_Messieurs les enfants_ (1868), his _Conférences Parisiennes_ (1872),
his _Nos filles et nos fils_ (1877), and his _Une Éducation de jeune
fille_ (1884) were works of wide-reaching influence in the moral order.
In 1886-1887 he published, in two volumes, his _Soixante ans de
souvenirs_, an excellent specimen of autobiography. He was raised in
1887 to the highest grade of the Legion of Honour, and held for many
years the post of inspector-general of female education in the national
schools. Legouvé was always an advocate of physical training. He was
long accounted one of the best shots in France, and although, from a
conscientious objection, he never fought a duel, he made the art of
fencing his life-long hobby. After the death of Désiré Nisard in 1888,
Legouvé became the "father" of the French Academy. He died on the 14th
of March 1903.
LEGROS, ALPHONSE (1837- ), painter and etcher, was born at Dijon on the
8th of May 1837. His father was an accountant, and came from the
neighbouring village of Veronnes. Young Legros frequently visited the
farms of his relatives, and the peasants and landscapes of that part of
France are the subjects of many of his pictures and etchings. He was
sent to the art school at Dijon with a view to qualifying for a trade,
and was apprenticed to Maître Nicolardo, house decorator and painter of
images. In 1851 Legros left for Paris to take another situation; but
passing through Lyons he worked for six months as journeyman
wall-painter under the decorator Beuchot, who was painting the chapel of
Cardinal Bonald in the cathedral. In Paris he studied with Cambon,
scene-painter and decorator of theatres, an experience which developed a
breadth of touch such as Stanfield and Cox picked up in similar
circumstances. At this time he attended the drawing-school of Lecoq de
Boisbaudran. In 1855 Legros attended the evening classes of the École
des Beaux Arts, and perhaps gained there his love of drawing from the
antique, some of the results of which may be seen in the Print Room of
the British Museum. He sent two portraits to the Salon of 1857: one was
rejected, and formed part of the exhibition of protest organized by
Bonvin in his studio; the other, which was accepted, was a profile
portrait of his father. This work was presented to the museum at Tours
by the artist when his friend Cazin was curator. Champfleury saw the
work in the Salon, and sought out the artist to enlist him in the small
army of so-called "Realists," comprising (round the noisy glory of
Courbet) all those who raised protest against the academical trifles of
the degenerate Romantics. In 1859 Legros's "Angelus" was exhibited, the
first of those quiet church interiors, with kneeling figures of patient
women, by which he is best known as a painter. "Ex Voto," a work of
great power and insight, painted in 1861, now in the museum at Dijon,
was received by his friends with enthusiasm, but it only obtained a
mention at the Salon. Legros came to England in 1863, and in 1864
married Miss Frances Rosetta Hodgson. At first he lived by his etching
and teaching. He then became teacher of etching at the South Kensington
School of Art, and in 1876 Slade Professor at University College,
London. He was naturalized as an Englishman in 1881, and remained at
University College seventeen years. His influence there was exerted to
encourage a certain distinction, severity and truth of character in the
work of his pupils, with a simple technique and a respect for the
traditions of the old masters, until then somewhat foreign to English
art. He would draw or paint a torso or a head before the students in an
hour or even less, so that the attention of the pupils might not be
dulled. As students had been known to take weeks and even months over a
single drawing, Legros ordered the positions of the casts in the Antique
School to be changed once every week. In the painting school he insisted
upon a good outline, preserved by a thin rub in of umber, and then the
work was to be finished in a single painting, "_premier coup_."
Experiments in all varieties of art work were practised; whenever the
professor saw a fine example in the museum, or when a process interested
him in a workshop, he never rested until he had mastered the technique
and his students were trying their 'prentice hands at it. As he had
casually picked up the art of etching by watching a comrade in Paris
working at a commercial engraving, so he began the making of medals
after a walk in the British Museum, studying the masterpieces of
Pisanello, and a visit to the Cabinet des Médailles in Paris. Legros
considered the traditional journey to Italy a very important part of
artistic training, and in order that his students should have the
benefit of such study he devoted a part of his salary to augment the
income available for a travelling studentship. His later works, after he
resigned his professorship in 1892, were more in the free and ardent
manner of his early days--imaginative landscapes, castles in Spain, and
farms in Burgundy, etchings like the series of "The Triumph of Death,"
and the sculptured fountains for the gardens of the duke of Portland at
Welbeck.
Pictures and drawings by Legros, besides those already mentioned, may
be seen in the following galleries and museums: "Amende Honorable,"
"Dead Christ," bronzes, medals and twenty-two drawings, in the
Luxembourg, Paris; "Landscape," "Study of a Head," and portraits of
Browning, Burne-Jones, Cassel, Huxley and Marshall, at the Victoria
and Albert Museum, Kensington; "Femmes en prière," National Gallery of
British Art; "The Tinker," and six other works from the Ionides
Collection, bequeathed to South Kensington; "Christening,"
"Barricade," "The Poor at Meat," two portraits and several drawings
and etchings, collection of Lord Carlisle; "Two Priests at the Organ,"
"Landscape" and etchings, collection of Rev. Stopford Brooke; "Head of
a Priest," collection of Mr Vereker Hamilton; "The Weed-burner," some
sculpture and a large collection of etchings and drawings, Mr Guy
Knowles; "Psyche," collection of Mr L. W. Hodson; "Snow Scene,"
collection of Mr G. F. Watts, R.A.; thirty-five drawings and etchings,
the Print Room, British Museum; "Jacob's Dream" and twelve drawings of
the antique, Cambridge; "Saint Jerome," two studies of heads and some
drawings, Manchester; "The Pilgrimage" and "Study made before the
Class," Liverpool Walker Art Gallery; "Study of Heads," Peel Park
Museum, Salford.
See Dr Hans W. Singer, "Alphonse Legros," _Die graphischen Künste_
(1898); Léonce Bénédite, "Alphonse Legros," _Revue de l'art_ (Paris,
1900); Cosmo Monkhouse, "Professor Legros," _Magazine of Art_ (1882).
(C. H.*)
LEGUMINOSAE, the second largest family of seed-plants, containing about
430 genera with 7000 species. It belongs to the series Rosales of the
Dicotyledons, and contains three well-marked suborders, Papilionatae,
Mimosoideae and Caesalpinioideae. The plants are trees, shrubs or herbs
of very various habit. The British representatives, all of which belong
to the suborder Papilionatae, include a few shrubs, such as _Ulex_
(gorse, furze), _Cytisus_ (broom) and _Genista_, but the majority, and
this applies to the suborder as a whole, are herbs, such as the clovers,
_Medicago_, _Melilotus_, &c., sometimes climbing by aid of tendrils
which are modified leaf-structures, as in _Lathyrus_ and the vetches
(_Vicia_). Scarlet runner (_Phaseolus multiflorus_) has a herbaceous
twining stem. Woody climbers (lianes) are represented by species of
_Bauhinia_ (Caesalpinioideae), which with their curiously flattened
twisted stems are characteristic features of tropical forests, and
_Entada scandens_ (Mimosoideae) also common in the tropics; these two
suborders, which are confined to the warmer parts of the earth, consist
chiefly of trees and shrubs such as _Acacia_ and _Mimosa_ belonging to
the Mimosoideae, and the Judas tree of southern Europe (_Cercis_) and
tamarind belonging to the Caesalpinioideae. The so-called acacia of
European gardens (_Robinia Pseudacacia_) and laburnum are examples of
the tree habit in the Papilionatae. Water plants are rare, but are
represented by _Aeschynomene_ and _Neptunia_, tropical genera. The roots
of many species bear nodular swellings (tubercles), the cells of which
contain bacterium-like bodies which have the power of fixing the
nitrogen of the atmosphere in such a form as to make it available for
plant food. Hence the value of these plants as a crop on poor soil or as
a member of a series of rotation of crops, since they enrich the soil by
the nitrogen liberated by the decay of their roots or of the whole plant
if ploughed in as green manure.
[Illustration: FIG. 1.--Leaf of an Acacia (_A. heterophylla_) showing
flattened leaf-like petiole (phyllode), p, and bipinnate blade.]
The leaves are alternate in arrangement and generally compound and
stipulate. A common form is illustrated by the trefoil or clovers, which
have three leaflets springing from a common point (digitately
trifoliate); pinnate leaves are also frequent as in laburnum and
_Robinia_. In Mimosoideae the leaves are generally bipinnate (figs. 1,
2, 3). Rarely are the leaves simple as in _Bauhinia_. Various departures
from the usual leaf-type occur in association with adaptations to
different functions or environments. In leaf-climbers, such as pea or
vetch, the end of the rachis and one or more pairs of leaflets are
changed into tendrils. In gorse the leaf is reduced to a slender
spine-like structure, though the leaves of the seedling have one to
three leaflets. In many Australian acacias the leaf surface in the adult
plant is much reduced, the petiole being at the same time flattened and
enlarged (fig. 1), frequently the leaf is reduced to a petiole flattened
in the vertical plane; by this means a minimum surface is exposed to the
intense sunlight. In the garden pea the stipules are large and
foliaceous, replacing the leaflets, which are tendrils; in _Robinia_ the
stipules are spiny and persist after leaf-fall. In some acacias (q.v.)
the thorns are hollow, and inhabited by ants as in _A. sphaerocephala_,
a central American plant (fig. 2) and others. In some species of
_Astragalus_, _Onobrychis_ and others, the leaf-stalk persists after the
fall of the leaf and becomes hard and spiny.
[Illustration: From Strasburger's _Lehrbuch der Botanik_, by permission
of Gustav Fischer.
FIG. 2.--_Acacia sphaerocephala._
I, Leaf and part of stem; D, hollow thorns in which the ants live; F,
food bodies at the apices of the lower pinnules; N, nectary on the
petiole. (Reduced.)
II, Single pinnule with food-body, F. (Somewhat enlarged.)]
Leaf-movements occur in many of the genera. Such are the
sleep-movement in the clovers, runner bean (_Phaseolus_), _Robinia_
and acacia, where the leaflets assume a vertical position at
nightfall. Spontaneous movements are exemplified in the
telegraph-plant (_Desmodium gyrans_), native of tropical Asia, where
the small lateral leaflets move up and down every few minutes. The
sensitive plant (_Mimosa pudica_) is an example of movement in
response to contact, the leaves assuming a sleep-position if touched.
The seat of the movement is the swollen base of the leaf-stalk, the
so-called pulvinus (fig. 3).
[Illustration: FIG. 3.--Branch with two leaves of the Sensitive Plant
(_Mimosa pudica_), showing the petiole in its erect state, a, and in
its depressed state, b; also the leaflets closed, c, and the leaflets
expanded, d; p, pulvinus, the seat of the movement of the petiole.]
The stem of the lianes shows some remarkable deviations from the
normal in form and structure. In Papilionatae anomalous secondary
thickening arises from the production of new cambium zones outside the
original ring (_Mucuna_, _Wistaria_) forming concentric rings or
transverse or broader strands; where, as in _Rhyncosia_ the successive
cambiums are active only at two opposite points, a flat ribbon-like
stem is produced. The climbing _Bauhinias_ (Caesalpinioideae) have a
flattened stem with basin-like undulations; in some growth in
thickness is normal, in others new cambium-zones are found
concentrically, while in others new and distinct growth-centres, each
with its cambium-zone, arise outside the primary zone. The climbing
Mimosoideae show no anomalous growth in thickness, but in some cases
the stem becomes strongly winged. Gum passages in the pith and
medullary rays occur, especially in species of acacia and
_Astragalus_; gum-arabic is an exudation from the branches of _Acacia
Senegal_, gum-tragacanth from _Astragalus gummifer_ and other species.
Logwood is the coloured heartwood of _Haematoxylon campechianum_; red
sandalwood of _Pterocarpus santalinus_.
The flowers are arranged in racemose inflorescences, such as the simple
raceme (_Laburnum_, _Robinia_), which is condensed to a head in
_Trifolium_; in _Acacia_ and _Mimosa_ the flowers are densely crowded
(fig. 4). The flower is characterized by a hypogynous or slightly
perigynous arrangement of parts, the anterior position of the odd sepal,
the free petals, and the single median carpel with a terminal style,
simple stigma and two alternating rows of ovules on the ventral suture
of the ovary which faces the back of the flower.
[Illustration: FIG. 4.--_Acacia obscura_, flowering branch about 1/3
natural size.
1, Part of stem with leaf and its subtended inflorescence, about
natural size.
2, Flower, much enlarged.
3, Floral diagram of _Acacia latifolia_. (After Eichler.)]
The arrangement of the petals and the number and cohesion of the
stamens vary in the three suborders. In Mimosoideae, the smallest of
the three, the flower is regular (fig. 4 [3]), and the sepals and
petals have a valvate aestivation, and are generally pentamerous, but
3-6-merous flowers also occur. The sepals are more or less united into
a cup (fig. 4 [2]), and the petals sometimes cohere at the base. The
stamens vary widely in number and cohesion; in _Acacia_ (fig. 4) they
are indefinite and free, in the tribe _Ingeae_, indefinite and
monadelphous, in other tribes as many or twice as many as the petals.
Frequently, as in _Mimosa_, the long yellow stamens are the most
conspicuous feature of the flower. In Caesalpinioideae (fig. 5) the
flowers are zygomorphic in a median plane and generally pentamerous.
The sepals are free, or the two upper ones united as in tamarind, and
imbricate in aestivation, rarely as in the Judas-tree (fig. 5 [2]),
valvate. The corolla shows great variety in form; it is imbricate in
aestivation, the posterior petal being innermost. In _Cercis_ (fig. 5)
it clearly resembles the papilionaceous type; the odd petal stands
erect, the median pair are reflexed and wing-like, and the lower pair
enclose the essential organs. In _Cassia_ all five petals are subequal
and spreading; in _Amherstia_ the anterior pair are small or absent
while the three upper ones are large; in _Krameria_, the anterior pair
are represented by glandular scales, and in _Tamarindus_ are
suppressed. Apetalous flowers occur in _Copaifera_ and _Ceratonia_.
The stamens, generally ten in number, are free, as in _Cercis_ (fig.
5) or more or less united as in _Amherstia_, where the posterior one
is free and the rest are united. In tamarind only three stamens are
fertile. The largest suborder, Papilionatae, has a flower zygomorphic
in the median plane (figs. 6, 7). The five sepals are generally united
(figs. 7, 9), and have an ascending imbricate arrangement (fig. 6);
the calyx is often two-lipped (fig. 9 [1]). The corolla has five
unequal petals with a descending imbricate arrangement; the upper and
largest, the standard (_vexillum_), stands erect, the lateral pair,
the wings or _alae_, are long-clawed, while the anterior pair cohere
to form the keel or _carina_, in which are enclosed the stamens and
pistil. The ten stamens are monadelphous as in gorse or broom (fig.
9), or diadelphous as in sweet pea (fig. 8) (the posterior one being
free), or almost or quite free; these differences are associated with
differences in the methods of pollination. The ten stamens here, as in
the last suborder, though arranged in a single whorl, arise in two
series, the five opposite the sepals arising first.
The carpel is sometimes stalked and often surrounded at the base by a
honey-secreting disk; the style is terminal and in the zygomorphic
flowers is often curved and somewhat flattened with a definite back
and front. Sometimes as in species of _Trifolium_ and _Medicago_ the
ovules are reduced to one. The pod or legume splits along both sutures
(fig. 10) into a pair of membranous, leathery or sometimes fleshy
valves, bearing the seeds on the ventral suture. Dehiscence is often
explosive, the valves separating elastically and twisting spirally,
thus shooting out the seeds, as in gorse, broom and others. In
_Desmodium_, _Entada_ and others the pod is constricted between each
seed, and breaks up into indehiscent one-seeded parts; it is then
called a lomentum (fig. 11); in _Astragalus_ it is divided by a
longitudinal septum.
[Illustration: FIG. 5.--Flowering branch of Judas-tree (_Cercis
siliquastrum_) reduced. 1, Flower, natural size. 2, Floral diagram.]
[Illustration: FIG. 6.--Diagram of Flower of Sweet Pea (_Lathyrus_),
showing five sepals, s, two are superior, one inferior, and two
lateral; five petals, p, one superior, two inferior, and two lateral;
ten stamens in two rows, a, and one carpel, c.]
[Illustration: FIG. 7.--Flower of Pea (_Pisum sativum_), showing a
papilionaceous corolla, with one petal superior, st, the standard
(vexillum), two inferior, _car_, the keel (carina), and two lateral,
a, wings (alae). The calyx is marked c.]
The pods show a very great variety in form and size. Thus in the
clovers they are a small fraction of an inch, while in the common
tropical climber _Entada scandens_ they are woody structures more than
a yard long and several inches wide. They are generally more or less
flattened, but sometimes round and rod-like, as in species of
_Cassia_, or are spirally coiled as in _Medicago_. Indehiscent
one-seeded pods occur in species of clover and in _Medicago_, also in
_Dalbergia_ and allied genera, where they are winged. In _Colutea_,
the bladder-senna of gardens, the pod forms an inflated bladder which
bursts under pressure; it often becomes detached and is blown some
distance before bursting. An arillar outgrowth is often developed on
the funicle, and is sometimes brightly coloured, rendering the seed
conspicuous and favouring dissemination by birds; in such cases the
seed-coat is hard. In other cases the hard seed-coat itself is
bright-coloured as in the scarlet seeds of _Abrus precatorius_, the
so-called weather-plant. Animals also act as the agents of
distribution in the case of fleshy edible pods containing seeds with a
hard smooth testa, which will pass uninjured through the body, as in
tamarind and the fruit of the carob-tree (_Ceratonia_). In the
ground-nut (_Arachis hypogaea_), _Trifolium subterraneum_ and others,
the flower-stalks grow downwards after fertilization of the ovules and
bury the fruit in the earth. In the suborders Mimosoideae and
Papilionatae the embryo fills the seed or a small quantity of
endosperm occurs, chiefly round the radicle. In Caesalpinioideae
endosperm is absent, or present forming a thin layer round the embryo
as in the tribe _Bauhinieae_, or copious and cartilaginous as in the
_Cassieae_. The embryo has generally flat leaf-like or fleshy
cotyledons with a short radicle.
Insects play an important part in the pollination of the flowers. In the
two smaller suborders the stamens and stigma are freely exposed and the
conspicuous coloured stamens serve as well as the petals to attract
insects; in _Mimosa_ and _Acacia_ the flowers are crowded in conspicuous
heads or spikes. The relation of insects to the flower has been
carefully studied in the Papilionatae, chiefly in European species.
Where honey is present it is secreted on the inside of the base of the
stamens and accumulated in the base of the tube formed by the united
filaments round the ovary. It is accessible only to insects with long
probosces, such as bees. In these cases the posterior stamen is free,
allowing access to the honey. The flowers stand more or less
horizontally; the large erect white or coloured standard renders them
conspicuous, the wings form a platform on which the insect rests and the
keel encloses the stamens and pistil, protecting them from rain and the
attacks of unbidden pollen-eating insects. In his book on the
fertilization of flowers, Hermann Müller distinguishes four types of
papilionaceous flowers according to the way in which the pollen is
applied to the bee:
[Illustration: FIG. 8.--Stamens and Pistil of Sweet Pea (_Lathyrus_).
The stamens are diadelphous, nine of them being united by their
filaments f, while the uppermost one (e) is free; st, stigma, c, calyx.]
[Illustration: FIG. 9.--Broom (_Cytisus scoparius_). (2-7 slightly
reduced.)
1, Calyx.
2, Standard.
3, Wing.
4, Keel.
5, Monadelphous stamens and style.
6, Pistil.
7, Pod.]
(1) Those in which the stamens and stigma return within the carina and
thus admit of repeated visits, such are the clovers, _Melilotus_ and
laburnum. (2) Explosive flowers where stamens and style are confined
within the keel under tension and the pressure of the insect causes
their sudden release and the scattering of the pollen, as in broom and
_Genista_; these contain no honey but are visited for the sake of the
pollen. (3) The piston-mechanism as in bird's-foot trefoil (_Lotus
corniculatus_), _Anthyllis_, _Ononis_ and _Lupinus_, where the
pressure of the bee upon the carina while probing for honey squeezes a
narrow ribbon of pollen through the opening at the tip. The pollen has
been shed into the cone-like tip of the carina, and the heads of the
five outer stamens form a piston beneath it, pushing it out at the tip
when pressure is exerted on the keel; a further pressure causes the
protrusion of the stigma, which is thus brought in contact with the
insect's belly. (4) The style bears a brush of hairs which sweeps
small quantities of pollen out of the tip of the carina, as in
_Lathyrus_, _Pisum_, _Vicia_ and _Phaseolus_.
[Illustration: From Vines's _Students' Text-Book of Botany_, by
permission of Swan, Sonnenschein & Co.
FIG. 10.--Dry dehiscent Fruit. The pod (legume) of the Pea. r, The
dorsal suture; b, the ventral; c, calyx; s, seeds.]
[Illustration: FIG. 11.--Lomentum or lomentaceous legume of a species of
_Desmodium_. Each seed is contained in a separate cavity by the folding
inwards of the walls of the legume at equal intervals; the legume, when
ripe, separates transversely into single-seeded portions or mericarps.]
Leguminosae is a cosmopolitan order, and often affords a characteristic
feature of the vegetation. Mimosoideae and Caesalpinioideae are richly
developed in the tropical rain forests, where Papilionatae are less
conspicuous and mostly herbaceous; in subtropical forests arborescent
forms of all three suborders occur. In the temperate regions, tree-forms
are rare--thus Mimosoideae are unrepresented in Europe; Caesalpinioideae
are represented by species of _Cercis_, _Gymnocladus_ and _Gleditschia_;
Papilionatae by _Robinia_; but herbaceous Papilionatae abound and
penetrate to the limit of growth of seed-plants in arctic and high
alpine regions. Shrubs and undershrubs, such as _Ulex_, _Genista_,
_Cytisus_ are a characteristic feature in Europe and the Mediterranean
area. Acacias are an important component of the evergreen
bush-vegetation of Australia, together with genera of the tribe
_Podalyrieae_ of Papilionatae (_Chorizema_, _Oxylobium_, &c.).
_Astragalus_, _Oxytropis_, _Hedysarum_, _Onobrychis_, and others are
characteristic of the steppe-formations of eastern Europe and western
Asia.
The order is a most important one economically. The seeds, which are
rich in starch and proteids, form valuable foods, as in pea, the
various beans, vetch, lentil, ground-nut (_Arachis_) and others; seeds
of _Arachis_ and others yield oils; those of _Physostigma venenosum_,
the Calabar ordeal bean, contain a strong poison. Many are useful
fodder-plants, as the clovers (_Trifolium_) (q.v.), Medicago (e.g. _M.
sativa_, lucerne (q.v.), or alfalfa); _Melilotus_, _Vicia_,
_Onobrychis_ (_O. sativa_ is sainfoin, q.v.); species of _Trifolium_,
lupine and others are used as green manure. Many of the tropical trees
afford useful timber; _Crotalaria_, _Sesbania_, _Aeschynomene_ and
others yield fibre; species of _Acacia_ and _Astragalus_ yield gum;
_Copaifera_, _Hymenaea_ and others balsams and resins; dyes are
obtained from _Genista_ (yellow), _Indigofera_ (blue) and others;
_Haematoxylon campechianum_ is logwood; of medicinal value are species
of _Cassia_ (senna leaves) and _Astragalus_; _Tamarindus indica_ is
tamarind, _Glycyrrhiza glabra_ yields liquorice root. Well-known
ornamental trees and shrubs are _Cercis_ (_C. siliquastrum_ is the
Judas-tree), _Gleditschia_, _Genista_, _Cytisus_ (broom), _Colutea_
(_C. arborescens_ is bladder-senna), _Robinia_ and _Acacia_; _Wisteria
sinensis_, a native of China, is a well-known climbing shrub;
_Phaseolus multiflorus_ is the scarlet runner; _Lathyrus_ (sweet and
everlasting peas), _Lupinus_, _Galega_ (goat's-rue) and others are
herbaceous garden plants. _Ceratonia Siliqua_ is the carob-tree of the
Mediterranean, the pods of which (algaroba or St John's bread) contain
a sweet juicy pulp and are largely used for feeding stock.
The order is well represented in Britain. Thus _Genista tinctoria_ is
dyers' greenweed, yielding a yellow dye; _G. anglica_ is needle furze;
other shrubs are _Ulex_ (_U. europaeus_, gorse, furze or whin, _U.
nanus_, a dwarf species) and _Cytisus scoparius_, broom. Herbaceous
plants are _Ononis spinosa_ (rest-harrow), _Medicago_ (medick),
_Melilotus_ (melilot), _Trifolium_ (the clovers), _Anthyllis
Vulneraria_ (kidney-vetch), _Lotus corniculatus_ (bird's-foot
trefoil), _Astragalus_ (milk-vetch), _Vicia_ (vetch, tare) and
_Lathyrus_.
LÈGYA, called by the Shans LAI-HKA, a state in the central division of
the southern Shan States of Burma, lying approximately between 20° 15´
and 21° 30´ N. and 97° 50´ and 98° 30´ E., with an area of 1433 sq. m.
The population was estimated at 30,000 in 1881. On the downfall of King
Thibaw civil war broke out, and reduced the population to a few
hundreds. In 1901 it had risen again to 25,811. About seven-ninths of
the land under cultivation consists of wet rice cultivation. A certain
amount of upland rice is also cultivated, and cotton, sugar-cane and
garden produce make up the rest; recently large orange groves have been
planted in the west of the state. Laihka, the capital, is noted for its
iron-work, both the iron and the implements made being produced at Pang
Long in the west of the state. This and lacquer-ware are the chief
exports, as also a considerable amount of pottery. The imports are
chiefly cotton piece-goods and salt. The general character of the state
is that of an undulating plateau, with a broad plain near the capital
and along the Nam Teng, which is the chief river, with a general
altitude of a little under 3000 ft.
LEH, the capital of Ladakh, India, situated 4 m. from the right bank of
the upper Indus 11,500 ft. above the sea, 243 m. from Srinagar and 482
m. from Yarkand. It is the great emporium of the trade which passes
between India, Chinese Turkestan and Tibet. Here meet the routes leading
from the central Asian khanates, Kashgar, Yarkand, Khotan and Lhasa. The
two chief roads from Leh to India pass via Srinagar and through the Kulu
valley respectively. Under a commercial treaty with the maharaja of
Kashmir, a British officer is deputed to Leh to regulate and control the
traders and the traffic, conjointly with the governor appointed by the
Kashmir state. Lying upon the western border of Tibet, Leh has formed
the starting-point of many an adventurous journey into that country, the
best-known route being that called the Janglam, the great trade route to
Lhasa and China, passing by the Manasarowar lakes and the Mariam La pass
into the valley of the Tsanpo. Pop. (1901) 2079. A Moravian mission has
long been established here, with an efficient little hospital. There is
also a meteorological observatory, the most elevated in Asia, where the
average mean temperature ranges from 19.3° in January to 64.4° in July.
The annual rainfall is only 3 in.
LEHMANN, JOHANN GOTTLOB (?-1767), German mineralogist and geologist, was
educated at Berlin where he took his degree of doctor of medicine. He
became a teacher of mineralogy and mining in that city, and was
afterwards (1761) appointed professor of chemistry and director of the
imperial museum at St Petersburg. While distinguished for his chemical
and mineralogical researches, he may also be regarded as one of the
pioneers in geological investigation. Although he accepted the view of a
universal deluge, he gave in 1756 careful descriptions of the rocks and
stratified formations in Prussia, and introduced the now familiar terms
Zechstein and Rothes Todtliegendes (Rothliegende) for subdivisions of
the strata since grouped as Permian. His chief observations were
published in _Versuch einer Geschichte von Flötz-Geburgen, betreffend
deren Entstehung, Lage, darinne befindliche Metallen, Mineralien und
Fossilien_ (1756). He died at St Petersburg on the 22nd of January 1767.
LEHMANN, PETER MARTIN ORLA (1810-1870), Danish statesman, was born at
Copenhagen on the 15th of May 1810. Although of German extraction his
sympathies were with the Danish national party and he contributed to the
liberal journal the _Kjöbenhavnsposten_ while he was a student of law at
the university of Copenhagen, and from 1839 to 1842 edited, with
Christian N. David, the _Fädrelandet_. In 1842 he was condemned to three
months' imprisonment for a radical speech. He took a considerable part
in the demonstrations of 1848, and was regarded as the leader of the
"Eiderdänen," that is, of the party which regarded the Eider as the
boundary of Denmark, and the duchy of Schleswig as an integral part of
the kingdom. He entered the cabinet of Count A. W. Moltke in March 1848,
and was employed on diplomatic missions to London and Berlin in
connexion with the Schleswig-Holstein question. He was for some months
in 1849 a prisoner of the Schleswig-Holsteiners at Gottorp. A member of
the Folkething from 1851 to 1853, of the Landsthing from 1854 to 1870,
and from 1856 to 1866 of the Reichsrat, he became minister of the
interior in 1861 in the cabinet of K. C. Hall, retiring with him in
1863. He died at Copenhagen on the 13th of September 1870. His book _On
the Causes of the Misfortunes of Denmark_ (1864) went through many
editions, and his posthumous works were published in 4 vols., 1872-1874.
See Reinhardt, _Orla Lehmann og hans samtid_ (Copenhagen, 1871); J.
Clausen, _Af O. Lehmanns Papirer_ (Copenhagen, 1903).
LEHNIN, a village and health resort of Germany, in the Prussian province
of Brandenburg, situated between two lakes, which are connected by the
navigable Emster with the Havel, 12 m. S.W. from Potsdam, and with a
station on the main line Berlin-Magdeburg, and a branch line to
Grosskreuz. Pop. (1900) 2379. It contains the ruins of a Cistercian
monastery called Himmelpfort am See, founded in 1180 and dissolved in
1542; a handsome parish church, formerly the monasterial chapel,
restored in 1872-1877; and a fine statue of the emperor Frederick III.
Boat-building and saw-milling are the chief industries.
See Heffter, _Geschichte des Klosters Lehnin_ (Brandenburg, 1851); and
Sello, _Lehnin, Beiträge zur Geschichte von Kloster und Amt_ (Berlin,
1881).
The LEHNIN PROPHECY (_Lehninsche Weissagung, Vaticinium Lehninense_), a
poem in 100 Leonine verses, reputed to be from the pen of a monk,
Hermann of Lehnin, who lived about the year 1300, made its appearance
about 1690 and caused much controversy. This so-called prophecy bewails
the extinction of the Ascanian rulers of Brandenburg and the rise of the
Hohenzollern dynasty to power; each successive ruler of the latter house
down to the eleventh generation is described, the date of the extinction
of the race fixed, and the restoration of the Roman Catholic Church
foretold. But as the narrative is only exact in details down to the
death of Frederick William, the great elector, in 1688, and as all
prophecies of the period subsequent to that time were falsified by
events, the poem came to be regarded as a compilation and the date of
its authorship placed about the year 1684. Andreas Fromm (d. 1685),
rector of St Peter's church in Berlin, an ardent Lutheran, is commonly
believed to have been the forger. This cleric, resisting certain
measures taken by the great elector against the Lutheran pastors, fled
the country in 1668 to avoid prosecution, and having been received at
Prague into the Roman Catholic Church was appointed canon of Leitmeritz
in Bohemia, where he died. During the earlier part of the 19th century
the poem was eagerly scanned by the enemies of the Hohenzollerns, some
of whom believed that the race would end with King Frederick William
III., the representative of the eleventh generation of the family.
The "Vaticinium" was first published in Lilienthal's _Gelehrtes
Preussen_ (Königsberg, 1723), and has been many times reprinted. See
Boost, _Die Weissagungen des Mönchs Hermann zu Lehnin_ (Augsburg,
1848); Hilgenfeld, _Die Lehninische Weissagung_ (Leipzig, 1875);
Sabell, _Literatur der sogenannten Lehninschen Weissagung_ (Heilbronn,
1879) and Kampers, _Die Lehninsche Weissagung über das Haus
Hohenzollern_ (Münster, 1897).
LEHRS, KARL (1802-1878), German classical scholar, was born at
Königsberg on the 2nd of June 1802. He was of Jewish extraction, but in
1822 he embraced Christianity. In 1845 he was appointed professor of
ancient Greek philology in Königsberg University, which post he held
till his death on the 9th of June 1878. His most important works are:
_De Aristarchi Studiis Homericis_ (1833, 2nd ed. by A. Ludwich, 1882),
which laid a new foundation for Homeric exegesis (on the Aristarchean
lines of explaining Homer from the text itself) and textual criticism;
_Quaestiones Epicae_ (1837); _De Asclepiade Myrleano_ (1845); _Herodiani
Scripta Tria emendatiora_ (1848); _Populäre Aufsätze aus dem Altertum_
(1856, 2nd much enlarged ed., 1875), his best-known work; _Horatius
Flaccus_ (1869), in which, on aesthetic grounds, he rejected many of the
odes as spurious; _Die Pindarscholien_ (1873). Lehrs was a man of very
decided opinions, "one of the most masculine of German scholars"; his
enthusiasm for everything Greek led him to adhere firmly to the
undivided authorship of the _Iliad_; comparative mythology and the
symbolical interpretation of myths he regarded as a species of
sacrilege.
See the exhaustive article by L. Friedländer in _Allgemeine Deutsche
Biographie_, xviii.; E. Kammer in C. Bursian's _Jahresbericht_ (1879);
A. Jung, _Zur Erinnerung an Karl Lehrs_ (progr. Meseritz, 1880); A.
Ludwich edited Lehrs' select correspondence (1894) and his _Kleine
Schriften_ (1902).
LEIBNITZ (LEIBNIZ), GOTTFRIED WILHELM (1646-1716), German philosopher,
mathematician and man of affairs, was born on the 1st of July 1646 at
Leipzig, where his father was professor of moral philosophy. Though the
name Leibniz, Leibnitz or Lubeniecz was originally Slavonic, his
ancestors were German, and for three generations had been in the
employment of the Saxon government. Young Leibnitz was sent to the
Nicolai school at Leipzig, but, from 1652 when his father died, seems to
have been for the most part his own teacher. From his father he had
acquired a love of historical study. The German books at his command
were soon read through, and with the help of two Latin books--the
_Thesaurus Chronologicus_ of Calvisius and an illustrated edition of
Livy--he learned Latin at the age of eight. His father's library was now
thrown open to him, to his great joy, with the permission, "Tolle,
lege." Before he was twelve he could read Latin easily and had begun
Greek; he had also remarkable facility in writing Latin verse. He next
turned to the study of logic, attempting already to reform its
doctrines, and zealously reading the scholastics and some of the
Protestant theologians.
At the age of fifteen, he entered the university of Leipzig as a law
student. His first two years were devoted to philosophy under Jakob
Thomasius, a Neo-Aristotelian, who is looked upon as having founded the
scientific study of the history of philosophy in Germany. It was at this
time probably that he first made acquaintance with the modern thinkers
who had already revolutionized science and philosophy, Francis Bacon,
Cardan and Campanella, Kepler, Galileo and Descartes; and he began to
consider the difference between the old and new ways of regarding
nature. He resolved to study mathematics. It was not, however, till the
summer of 1663, which he spent at Jena under E. Weigel, that he obtained
the instructions of a mathematician of repute; nor was the deeper study
of mathematics entered upon till his visit to Paris and acquaintance
with Huygens many years later.
The next three years he devoted to legal studies, and in 1666 applied
for the degree of doctor of law, with a view to obtaining the post of
assessor. Being refused on the ground of his youth he left his native
town for ever. The doctor's degree refused him there was at once
(November 5, 1666) conferred on him at Altdorf--the university town of
the free city of Nuremberg--where his brilliant dissertation procured
him the immediate offer of a professor's chair. This, however, he
declined, having, as he said, "very different things in view."
Leibnitz, not yet twenty-one years of age, was already the author of
several remarkable essays. In his bachelor's dissertation _De principio
individui_ (1663), he defended the nominalistic doctrine that
individuality is constituted by the whole entity or essence of a thing;
his arithmetical tract _De complexionibus_, published in an extended
form under the title _De arte combinatoria_ (1666), is an essay towards
his life-long project of a re-formed symbolism and method of thought;
and besides these there are our juridical essays, including the _Nova
methodus docendi discendique juris_, written in the intervals of his
journey from Leipzig to Altdorf. This last essay is remarkable, not only
for the reconstruction it attempted of the _Corpus Juris_, but as
containing the first clear recognition of the importance of the
historical method in law. Nuremberg was a centre of the Rosicrucians,
and Leibnitz, busying himself with writings of the alchemists, soon
gained such a knowledge of their tenets that he was supposed to be one
of the secret brotherhood, and was even elected their secretary. A more
important result of his visit to Nuremberg was his acquaintance with
Johann Christian von Boyneburg (1622-1672), formerly first minister to
the elector of Mainz, and one of the most distinguished German statesmen
of the day. By his advice Leibnitz printed his _Nova methodus_ in 1667,
dedicated it to the elector, and, going to Mainz, presented it to him in
person. It was thus that Leibnitz entered the service of the elector of
Mainz, at first as an assistant in the revision of the statute-book,
afterwards on more important work.
The policy of the elector, which the pen of Leibnitz was now called upon
to promote, was to maintain the security of the German empire,
threatened on the west by the aggressive power of France, on the east by
Turkey and Russia. Thus when in 1669 the crown of Poland became vacant,
it fell to Leibnitz to support the claims of the German candidate, which
he did in his first political writing, _Specimen demonstrationum
politicarum pro rege Polonorum eligendo_, attempting, under the guise of
a Catholic Polish nobleman, to show by mathematical demonstration that
it was necessary in the interest of Poland that it should have the count
palatine of Neuburg as its king. But neither the diplomatic skill of
Boyneburg, who had been sent as plenipotentiary to the election at
Warsaw, nor the arguments of Leibnitz were successful, and a Polish
prince was elected to fill the vacant throne.
A greater danger threatened Germany in the aggressions of Louis XIV.
(see FRANCE: _History_). Though Holland was in most immediate danger,
the seizure of Lorraine in 1670 showed that Germany too was threatened.
It was in this year that Leibnitz wrote his _Thoughts on Public
Safety_,[1] in which he urged the formation of a new "Rheinbund" for the
protection of Germany, and contended that the states of Europe should
employ their power, not against one another, but in the conquest of the
non-Christian world, in which Egypt, "one of the best situated lands in
the world," would fall to France. The plan thus proposed of averting the
threatened attack on Germany by a French expedition to Egypt was
discussed with Boyneburg, and obtained the approval of the elector.
French relations with Turkey were at the time so strained as to make a
breach imminent, and at the close of 1671, about the time when the war
with Holland broke out, Louis himself was approached by a letter from
Boyneburg and a short memorial from the pen of Leibnitz, who attempted
to show that Holland itself, as a mercantile power trading with the
East, might be best attacked through Egypt, while nothing would be
easier for France or would more largely increase her power than the
conquest of Egypt. On February 12, 1672, a request came from the French
secretary of state, Simon Arnauld de Pomponne (1618-1699), that Leibnitz
should go to Paris. Louis seems still to have kept the matter in view,
but never granted Leibnitz the personal interview he desired, while
Pomponne wrote, "I have nothing against the plan of a holy war, but such
plans, you know, since the days of St Louis, have ceased to be the
fashion." Not yet discouraged, Leibnitz wrote a full account of his
project for the king,[2] and a summary of the same[3] evidently intended
for Boyneburg. But Boyneburg died in December 1672, before the latter
could be sent to him. Nor did the former ever reach its destination. The
French quarrel with the Porte was made up, and the plan of a French
expedition to Egypt disappeared from practical politics till the time of
Napoleon. The history of this scheme, and the reason of Leibnitz's
journey to Paris, long remained hidden in the archives of the Hanoverian
library. It was on his taking possession of Hanover in 1803 that
Napoleon learned, through the _Consilium Aegyptiacum_, that the idea of
a French conquest of Egypt had been first put forward by a German
philosopher. In the same year there was published in London an account
of the _Justa dissertatio_[4] of which the British Government had
procured a copy in 1799. But it was only with the appearance of the
edition of Leibnitz's works begun by Onno Klopp in 1864 that the full
history of the scheme was made known.
Leibnitz had other than political ends in view in his visit to France.
It was as the centre of literature and science that Paris chiefly
attracted him. Political duties never made him lose sight of his
philosophical and scientific interests. At Mainz he was still busied
with the question of the relation between the old and new methods in
philosophy. In a letter to Jakob Thomasius (1669) he contends that the
mechanical explanation of nature by magnitude, figure and motion alone
is not inconsistent with the doctrines of Aristotle's _Physics_, in
which he finds more truth than in the _Meditations_ of Descartes. Yet
these qualities of bodies, he argues in 1668 (in an essay published
without his knowledge under the title _Confessio naturae contra
atheistas_), require an incorporeal principle, or God, for their
ultimate explanation. He also wrote at this time a defence of the
doctrine of the Trinity against Wissowatius (1669), and an essay on
philosophic style, introductory to an edition of the _Anti-barbarus_ of
Nizolius (1670). Clearness and distinctness alone, he says, are what
makes a philosophic style, and no language is better suited for this
popular exposition than the German. In 1671 he issued a _Hypothesis
physica nova_, in which, agreeing with Descartes that corporeal
phenomena should be explained from motion, he carried out the mechanical
explanation of nature by contending that the original of this motion is
a fine aether, similar to light, or rather constituting it, which,
penetrating all bodies in the direction of the earth's axis, produces
the phenomena of gravity, elasticity, &c. The first part of the essay,
on concrete motion, was dedicated to the Royal Society of London, the
second, on abstract motion, to the French Academy.
At Paris Leibnitz met with Arnauld, Malebranche and, more important
still, with Christian Huygens. This was pre-eminently the period of his
mathematical and physical activity. Before leaving Mainz he was able to
announce[5] an imposing list of discoveries, and plans for discoveries,
arrived at by means of his new logical art, in natural philosophy,
mathematics, mechanics, optics, hydrostatics, pneumatics and nautical
science, not to speak of new ideas in law, theology and politics. Chief
among these discoveries was that of a calculating machine for performing
more complicated operations than that of Pascal--multiplying, dividing
and extracting roots, as well as adding and subtracting. This machine
was exhibited to the Academy of Paris and to the Royal Society of
London, and Leibnitz was elected a fellow of the latter society in April
1673.[6] In January of this year he had gone to London as an attaché on
a political mission from the elector of Mainz, returning in March to
Paris, and while in London had become personally acquainted with
Oldenburg, the secretary of the Royal Society, with whom he had already
corresponded, with Boyle the chemist and Pell the mathematician. It is
from this period that we must date the impulse that directed him anew to
mathematics. By Pell he had been referred to Mercator's
_Logarithmotechnica_ as already containing some numerical observations
which Leibnitz had thought original on his own part; and, on his return
to Paris, he devoted himself to the study of higher geometry under
Huygens, entering almost at once upon the series of investigations which
culminated in his discovery of the differential and integral calculus
(see INFINITESIMAL CALCULUS).
Shortly after his return to Paris in 1673, Leibnitz ceased to be in the
Mainz service any more than in name, but in the same year entered the
employment of Duke John Frederick of Brunswick-Lüneburg, with whom he
had corresponded for some time. In 1676 he removed at the duke's request
to Hanover, travelling thither by way of London and Amsterdam. At
Amsterdam he saw and conversed with Spinoza, and carried away with him
extracts from the latter's unpublished _Ethica_.
For the next forty years, and under three successive princes, Leibnitz
was in the service of the Brunswick family, and his headquarters were at
Hanover, where he had charge of the ducal library. Leibnitz thus passed
into a political atmosphere formed by the dynastic aims of the typical
German state (see HANOVER; BRUNSWICK). He supported the claim of Hanover
to appoint an ambassador at the congress of Nimeguen (1676)[7] to defend
the establishment of primogeniture in the Lüneburg branch of the
Brunswick family; and, when the proposal was made to raise the duke of
Hanover to the electorate, he had to show that this did not interfere
with the rights of the duke of Württemberg. In 1692 the duke of Hanover
was made elector. Before, and with a view to this, Leibnitz had been
employed by him to write the history of the Brunswick-Lüneburg family,
and, to collect material for his history, had undertaken a journey
through Germany and Italy in 1687-1690, visiting and examining the
records in Marburg, Frankfort-on-the-Main, Munich, Vienna (where he
remained nine months), Venice, Modena and Rome. At Rome he was offered
the custodianship of the Vatican library on condition of his joining the
Catholic Church.
About this time, too, his thoughts and energies were partly taken up
with the scheme for the reunion of the Catholic and Protestant Churches.
At Mainz he had joined in an attempt made by the elector and Boyneburg
to bring about a reconciliation, and now, chiefly through the energy and
skill of the Catholic Royas de Spinola, and from the spirit of
moderation which prevailed among the theologians he met with at Hanover
in 1683, it almost seemed as if some agreement might be arrived at. In
1686 Leibnitz wrote his _Systema theologicum_,[8] in which he strove to
find common ground for Protestants and Catholics in the details of their
creeds. But the English revolution of 1688 interfered with the scheme in
Hanover, and it was soon found that the religious difficulties were
greater than had at one time appeared. In the letters to Leibnitz from
Bossuet, the landgrave of Hessen-Rheinfels, and Madame de Brinon, the
aim is obviously to make converts to Catholicism, not to arrive at a
compromise with Protestantism, and when it was found that Leibnitz
refused to be converted the correspondence ceased. A further scheme of
church union in which Leibnitz was engaged, that between the Reformed
and Lutheran Churches, met with no better success.
Returning from Italy in 1690, Leibnitz was appointed librarian at
Wolfenbüttel by Duke Anton of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel. Some years
afterwards began his connexion with Berlin through his friendship with
the electress Sophie Charlotte of Brandenburg and her mother the
princess Sophie of Hanover. He was invited to Berlin in 1700, and on the
11th July of that year the academy (Akademie der Wissenschaften) he had
planned was founded, with himself as its president for life. In the same
year he was made a privy councillor of justice by the elector of
Brandenburg. Four years before he had received a like honour from the
elector of Hanover, and twelve years afterwards the same distinction was
conferred upon him by Peter the Great, to whom he gave a plan for an
academy at St Petersburg, carried out after the czar's death. After the
death of his royal pupil in 1705 his visits to Berlin became less
frequent and less welcome, and in 1711 he was there for the last time.
In the following year he undertook his fifth and last journey to Vienna,
where he stayed till 1714. An attempt to found an academy of science
there was defeated by the opposition of the Jesuits, but he now attained
the honour he had coveted of an imperial privy councillorship (1712),
and, either at this time or on a previous occasion (1709), was made a
baron of the empire (_Reichsfreiherr_). Leibnitz returned to Hanover in
September 1714, but found the elector George Louis had already gone to
assume the crown of England. Leibnitz would gladly have followed him to
London, but was bidden to remain at Hanover and finish his history of
Brunswick.
During the last thirty years Leibnitz had been busy with many matters.
Mathematics, natural science,[9] philosophy, theology, history
jurisprudence, politics (particularly the French wars with Germany, and
the question of the Spanish succession), economics and philology, all
gained a share of his attention; almost all of them he enriched with
original observations.
His genealogical researches in Italy--through which he established the
common origin of the families of Brunswick and Este--were not only
preceded by an immense collection of historical sources, but enabled him
to publish materials for a code of international law.[10] The history of
Brunswick itself was the last work of his life, and had covered the
period from 768 to 1005 when death ended his labours. But the
government, in whose service and at whose order the work had been
carried out, left it in the archives of the Hanover library till it was
published by Pertz in 1843.
It was in the years between 1690 and 1716 that Leibnitz's chief
philosophical works were composed, and during the first ten of these
years the accounts of his system were, for the most part, preliminary
sketches. Indeed, he never gave a full and systematic account of his
doctrines. His views have to be gathered from letters to friends, from
occasional articles in the _Acta Eruditorum_, the _Journal des Savants_,
and other journals, and from one or two more extensive works. It is
evident, however, that philosophy had not been entirely neglected in the
years in which his pen was almost solely occupied with other matters. A
letter to the duke of Brunswick, and another to Arnauld, in 1671, show
that he had already reached his new notion of substance; but it is in
the correspondence with Antoine Arnauld, between 1686 and 1690, that his
fundamental ideas and the reasons for them are for the first time made
clear. The appearance of Locke's _Essay_ in 1690 induced him (1696) to
note down his objections to it, and his own ideas on the same subjects.
In 1703-1704 these were worked out in detail and ready for publication,
when the death of the author whom they criticized prevented their
appearance (first published by Raspe, 1765). In 1710 appeared the only
complete and systematic philosophical work of his lifetime, _Essais de
Théodicée sur la bonté de Dieu, la liberté de l'homme, et l'origine du
mal_, originally undertaken at the request of the late queen of Prussia,
who had wished a reply to Bayle's opposition of faith and reason. In
1714 he wrote, for Prince Eugene of Savoy, a sketch of his system under
the title of _La Monadologie_, and in the same year appeared his
_Principes de la nature et de la grâce_. The last few years of his life
were perhaps more occupied with correspondence than any others, and, in
a philosophical regard, were chiefly notable for the letters, which,
through the desire of the new queen of England, he interchanged with
Clarke, _sur Dieu, l'âme, l'espace, la durée_.
Leibnitz died on the 14th of November 1716, his closing years enfeebled
by disease, harassed by controversy, embittered by neglect; but to the
last he preserved the indomitable energy and power of work to which is
largely due the position he holds as, more perhaps than any one in
modern times, a man of almost universal attainments and almost universal
genius. Neither at Berlin, in the academy which he had founded, nor in
London, whither his sovereign had gone to rule, was any notice taken of
his death. At Hanover, Eckhart, his secretary, was his only mourner; "he
was buried," says an eyewitness, "more like a robber than what he really
was, the ornament of his country."[11] Only in the French Academy was
the loss recognized, and a worthy eulogium devoted to his memory
(November 13, 1717). The 200th anniversary of his birth was celebrated
in 1846, and in the same year were opened the Königlichsächsische
Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften and the Kaiserliche Akademie der
Wissenschaften in Leipzig and Vienna respectively. In 1883, a statue was
erected to him at Leipzig.
Leibnitz possessed a wonderful power of rapid and continuous work. Even
in travelling his time was employed in solving mathematical problems. He
is described as moderate in his habits, quick of temper but easily
appeased, charitable in his judgments of others, and tolerant of
differences of opinion, though impatient of contradiction on small
matters. He is also said to have been fond of money to the point of
covetousness; he was certainly desirous of honour, and felt keenly the
neglect in which his last years were passed.
_Philosophy._--The central point in the philosophy of Leibnitz was
only arrived at after many advances and corrections in his opinions.
This point is his new doctrine of substance (p. 702),[12] and it is
through it that unity is given to the succession of occasional
writings, scattered over fifty years, in which he explained his views.
More inclined to agree than to differ with what he read (p. 425), and
borrowing from almost every philosophical system, his own standpoint
is yet most closely related to that of Descartes, partly as
consequence, partly by way of opposition. Cartesianism, Leibnitz often
asserted, is the ante-room of truth, but the ante-room only.
Descartes's separation of things into two heterogeneous substances
only connected by the omnipotence of God, and the more logical
absorption of both by Spinoza into the one divine substance, followed
from an erroneous conception of what the true nature of substance is.
Substance, the ultimate reality, can only be conceived as force. Hence
Leibnitz's metaphysical view of the monads as simple, percipient,
self-active beings, the constituent elements of all things, his
physical doctrines of the reality and constancy of force at the same
time that space, matter and motion are merely phenomenal, and his
psychological conception of the continuity and development of
consciousness. In the closest connexion with the same stand his
logical principles of consistency and sufficient reason, and the
method he developed from them, his ethical end of perfection, and his
crowning theological conception of the universe as the best possible
world, and of God both as its efficient cause and its final harmony.
The ultimate elements of the universe are, according to Leibnitz,
individual centres of force or monads. Why they should be individual,
and not manifestations of one world-force, he never clearly
proves.[13] His doctrine of individuality seems to have been arrived
at, not by strict deduction from the nature of force, but rather from
the empirical observation that it is by the manifestation of its
activity that the separate existence of the individual becomes
evident; for his system individuality is as fundamental as activity.
"The monads," he says, "are the very atoms of nature--in a word, the
elements of things," but, as centres of force, they have neither
parts, extension nor figure (p. 705). Hence their distinction from the
atoms of Democritus and the materialists. They are metaphysical points
or rather spiritual beings whose very nature it is to act. As the bent
bow springs back of itself, so the monads naturally pass and are
always passing into action without any aid but the absence of
opposition (p. 122). Nor do they, like the atoms, act upon one another
(p. 680); the action of each excludes that of every other. The
activity of each is the result of its own past state, the determinator
of its own future (pp. 706, 722). "The monads have no windows by which
anything may go in or out" (p. 705).
Further, since all substances are of the nature of force, it follows
that--"in imitation of the notion which we have of souls"--they must
contain something analogous to feeling and appetite. It is the nature
of the monad to represent the many in one, and this is perception, by
which external events are mirrored internally (p. 438). Through their
own activity the monads mirror the universe (p. 725), but each in its
own way and from its own point of view, that is, with a more or less
perfect perception (p. 127); for the Cartesians were wrong in ignoring
the infinite grades of perception, and identifying it with the reflex
cognizance of it which may be called apperception. Every monad is thus
a microcosm, the universe in little,[14] and according to the degree
of its activity is the distinctness of its representation of the
universe (p. 709). Thus Leibnitz, borrowing the Aristotelian term,
calls the monads _entelechies_, because they have a certain perfection
([Greek: to enteles]) and sufficiency ([Greek: autarkeia]) which make
them sources of their internal actions and, so to speak, incorporeal
automata (p. 706). That the monads are not pure entelechies is shown
by the differences amongst them. Excluding all external limitation,
they are yet limited by their own nature. All created monads contain a
passive element or _materia prima_ (pp. 440, 687, 725), in virtue of
which their perceptions are more or less confused. As the activity of
the monad consists in perception, this is inhibited by the passive
principle, so that there arises in the monad an appetite or tendency
to overcome the inhibition and become more perceptive, whence follows
the change from one perception to another (pp. 706, 714). By the
proportion of activity to passivity in it one monad is differentiated
from another. The greater the amount of activity or of distinct
perceptions the more perfect is the monad; the stronger the element of
passivity, the more confused its perceptions, the less perfect is it
(p. 709). The soul would be a divinity had it nothing but distinct
perceptions (p. 520).
The monad is never without a perception; but, when it has a number of
little perceptions with no means of distinction, a state similar to
that of being stunned ensues, the _monade nue_ being perpetually in
this state (p. 707). Between this and the most distinct perception
there is room for an infinite diversity of nature among the monads
themselves. Thus no one monad is exactly the same as another; for,
were it possible that there should be two identical, there would be no
sufficient reason why God, who brings them into actual existence,
should put one of them at one definite time and place, the other at a
different time and place. This is Leibnitz's principle of the
_identity of indiscernibles_ (pp. 277, 755); by it his early problem
as to the principle of individuation is solved by the distinction
between genus and individual being abolished, and every individual
made _sui generis_. The principle thus established is formulated in
Leibnitz's law of continuity, founded, he says, on the doctrine of the
mathematical infinite, essential to geometry, and of importance in
physics (pp. 104, 105), in accordance with which there is neither
vacuum nor break in nature, but "everything takes place by degrees"
(p. 392), the different species of creatures rising by insensible
steps from the lowest to the most perfect form (p. 312).
As in every monad each succeeding state is the consequence of the
preceding, and as it is of the nature of every monad to mirror or
represent the universe, it follows (p. 774) that the perceptive
content of each monad is in "accord" or correspondence with that of
every other (cf. p. 127), though this content is represented with
infinitely varying degrees of perfection. This is Leibnitz's famous
doctrine of pre-established harmony, in virtue of which the infinitely
numerous independent substances of which the world is composed are
related to each other and form one universe. It is essential to notice
that it proceeds from the very nature of the monads as percipient,
self-acting beings, and not from an arbitrary determination of the
Deity.
From this harmony of self-determining percipient units Leibnitz has to
explain the world of nature and mind. As everything that really exists
is of the nature of spiritual or metaphysical points (p. 126), it
follows that space and matter in the ordinary sense can only have a
phenomenal existence (p. 745), being dependent not on the nature of
the monads themselves but on the way in which they are perceived.
Considering that several things exist at the same time and in a
certain order of co-existence, and mistaking this constant relation
for something that exists outside of them, the mind forms the confused
perception of space (p. 768). But space and time are merely relative,
the former an order of coexistences, the latter of successions (pp.
682, 752). Hence not only the secondary qualities of Descartes and
Locke, but their so-called primary qualities as well, are merely
phenomenal (p. 445). The monads are really without position or
distance from each other; but, as we perceive several simple
substances, there is for us an aggregate or extended mass. Body is
thus active extension (pp. 110, 111). The unity of the aggregate
depends entirely on our perceiving the monads composing it together.
There is no such thing as an absolute vacuum or empty space, any more
than there are indivisible material units or atoms from which all
things are built up (pp. 126, 186, 277). Body, corporeal mass, or, as
Leibnitz calls it, to distinguish it from the _materia prima_ of which
every monad partakes (p. 440), _materia secunda_, is thus only a
"phenomenon bene fundatum" (p. 436). It is not a _substantia_ but
_substantiae_ or _substantiatum_ (p. 745). While this, however, is the
only view consistent with Leibnitz's fundamental principles, and is
often clearly stated by himself, he also speaks at other times of the
_materia secunda_ as itself a composite substance, and of a real
metaphysical bond between soul and body. But these expressions occur
chiefly in the letters to des Bosses, in which Leibnitz is trying to
reconcile his views with the doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church,
especially with that of the real presence in the Eucharist, and are
usually referred to by him as doctrines of faith or as hypothetical
(see especially p. 680). The true vinculum _substantiale_ is not the
_materia secunda_, which a consistent development of Leibnitz's
principles can only regard as phenomenal, but the _materia prima_,
through which the monads are individualized and distinguished and
their connexion rendered possible. And Leibnitz seems to recognize
that the opposite assumption is inconsistent with his cardinal
metaphysical view of the monads as the only realities.
From Leibnitz's doctrine of force as the ultimate reality it follows
that his view of nature must be throughout dynamical. And though his
project of a _dynamic_, or theory of natural philosophy, was never
carried out, the outlines of his own theory and his criticism of the
mechanical physics of Descartes are known to us. The whole distinction
between the two lies in the difference between the mechanical and the
dynamical views of nature. Descartes started from the reality of
extension as constituting the nature of material substance, and found
in magnitude, figure and motion the explanation of the material
universe. Leibnitz, too, admitted the mechanical view of nature as
giving the laws of corporeal phenomena (p. 438), applying also to
everything that takes place in animal organisms,[15] even the human
body (p. 777). But, as phenomenal, these laws must find their
explanation in metaphysics, and thus in final causes (p. 155). All
things, he says (in his _Specimen Dynamicum_), can be explained either
by efficient or by final causes. But the latter method is not
appropriate to individual occurrences,[16] though it must be applied
when the laws of mechanism themselves need explanation (p. 678). For
Descartes's doctrine of the constancy of the quantity of motion (i.e.
momentum) in the world Leibnitz substitutes the principle of the
conservation of _vis viva_, and contends that the Cartesian position
that motion is measured by velocity should be superseded by the law
that moving force (_vis motrix_) is measured by the square of the
velocity (pp. 192, 193). The long controversy raised by this criticism
was really caused by the ambiguity of the terms employed. The
principles held by Descartes and Leibnitz were both correct, though
different, and their conflict only apparent. Descartes's principle is
now enunciated as the conservation of momentum, that of Leibnitz as
the conservation of energy. Leibnitz further criticizes the Cartesian
view that the mind can alter the direction of motion though it cannot
initiate it, and contends that the quantity of "_vis directiva_,"
estimated between the same parts, is constant (p. 108)--a position
developed in his statical theorem for determining geometrically the
resultant of any number of forces acting at a point.
Like the monad, body, which is its analogue, has a passive and an
active element. The former is the capacity of resistance, and includes
impenetrability and inertia; the latter is active force (pp. 250,
687). Bodies, too, like the monads, are self-contained activities,
receiving no impulse from without--it is only by an accommodation to
ordinary language that we speak of them as doing so--but moving
themselves in harmony with each other (p. 250).
The psychology of Leibnitz is chiefly developed in the _Nouveaux
essais sur l'entendement humain_, written in answer to Locke's famous
_Essay_, and criticizing it chapter by chapter. In these essays he
worked out a theory of the origin and development of knowledge in
harmony with his metaphysical views, and thus without Locke's implied
assumption of the mutual influence of soul and body. When one monad in
an aggregate perceives the others so clearly that they are in
comparison with it bare monads (_monades nues_), it is said to be the
ruling monad of the aggregate, not because it actually does exert an
influence over the rest, but because, being in close correspondence
with them, and yet having so much clearer perception, it seems to do
so (p. 683). This monad is called the entelechy or soul of the
aggregate or body, and as such mirrors the aggregate in the first
place and the universe through it (p. 710). Each soul or entelechy is
surrounded by an infinite number of monads forming its body (p. 714);
soul and body together make a living being, and, as their laws are in
perfect harmony--a harmony established between the whole realm of
final causes and that of efficient causes (p. 714)--we have the same
result as if one influenced the other. This is further explained by
Leibnitz in his well-known illustration of the different ways in which
two clocks may keep exactly the same time. The machinery of the one
may actually move that of the other, or whenever one moves the
mechanician may make a similar alteration in the other, or they may
have been so perfectly constructed at first as to continue to
correspond at every instant without any further influence (pp. 133,
134). The first way represents the common (Locke's) theory of mutual
influence, the second the method of the occasionalists, the third that
of pre-established harmony. Thus the body does not act on the soul in
the production of cognition, nor the soul on the body in the
production of motion. The body acts just as if it had no soul, the
soul as if it had no body (p. 711). Instead, therefore, of all
knowledge coming to us directly or indirectly through the bodily
senses, it is all developed by the soul's own activity, and sensuous
perception is itself but a confused kind of cognition. Not a certain
select class of our ideas only (as Descartes held), but all our ideas,
are innate, though only worked up into actual cognition in the
development of knowledge (p. 212). To the aphorism made use of by
Locke, "Nihil est in intellectu quod non prius fuerit in sensu," must
be added the clause, "nisi intellectus ipse" (p. 223). The soul at
birth is not comparable to a _tabula rasa_, but rather to an unworked
block of marble, the hidden veins of which already determine the form
it is to assume in the hands of the sculptor (p. 196). Nor, again, can
the soul ever be without perception; for it has no other nature than
that of a percipient active being (p. 246). Apparently dreamless sleep
is to be accounted for by unconscious perception (p. 223); and it is
by such insensible perceptions that Leibnitz explains his doctrine of
pre-established harmony (p. 197).
In the human soul perception is developed into thought, and there is
thus an infinite though gradual difference between it and the mere
monad (p. 464). As all knowledge is implicit in the soul, it follows
that its perfection depends on the efficiency of the instrument by
which it is developed. Hence the importance, in Leibnitz's system, of
the logical principles and method, the consideration of which occupied
him at intervals throughout his whole career.
There are two kinds of truths--(1) truths of reasoning, and (2) truths
of fact (pp. 83, 99, 707). The former rest on the principle of
identity (or contradiction) or of possibility, in virtue of which that
is false which contains a contradiction, and that true which is
contradictory to the false. The latter rest on the principle of
sufficient reason or of reality (_compossibilité_), according to which
no fact is true unless there be a sufficient reason why it should be
so and not otherwise (agreeing thus with the _principium melioris_ or
final cause). God alone, the purely active monad, has an _a priori_
knowledge of the latter class of truths; they have their source in the
human mind only in so far as it mirrors the outer world, i.e. in its
passivity, whereas the truths of reason have their source in our mind
in itself or in its activity.
Both kinds of truths fall into two classes, primitive and derivative.
The primitive truths of fact are, as Descartes held, those of internal
experience, and the derivative truths are inferred from them in
accordance with the principle of sufficient reason, by their agreement
with our perception of the world as a whole. They are thus reached by
probable arguments--a department of logic which Leibnitz was the first
to bring into prominence (pp. 84, 164, 168, 169, 343). The primitive
truths of reasoning are identical (in later terminology, analytical)
propositions, the derivative truths being deduced from them by the
principle of contradiction. The part of his logic on which Leibnitz
laid the greatest stress was the separation of these rational
cognitions into their simplest elements--for he held that the
root-notions (_cogitationes primae_) would be found to be few in
number (pp. 92, 93)--and the designation of them by universal
characters or symbols,[17] composite notions being denoted by the
formulae formed by the union of several definite characters, and
judgments by the relation of aequipollence among these formulae, so as
to reduce the syllogism to a calculus. This is the main idea of
Leibnitz's "universal characteristic," never fully worked out by him,
which he regarded as one of the greatest discoveries of the age. An
incidental result of its adoption would be the introduction of a
universal symbolism of thought comparable to the symbolism of
mathematics and intelligible in all languages (cf. p. 356). But the
great revolution it would effect would chiefly consist in this, that
truth and falsehood would be no longer matters of opinion but of
correctness or error in calculation,[18] (pp. 83, 84, 89, 93). The old
Aristotelian analytic is not to be superseded; but it is to be
supplemented by this new method, for of itself it is but the ABC of
logic.
But the logic of Leibnitz is an art of discovery (p. 85) as well as of
proof, and, as such, applies both to the sphere of reasoning and to
that of fact. In the former it has by attention to render explicit
what is otherwise only implicit, and by the intellect to introduce
order into the _a priori_ truths of reason, so that one may follow
from another and they may constitute together a _monde intellectuel_.
To this art of orderly combination Leibnitz attached the greatest
importance, and to it one of his earliest writings was devoted.
Similarly, in the sphere of experience, it is the business of the art
of discovery to find out and classify the primitive facts or data,
referring every other fact to them as its sufficient reason, so that
new truths of experience may be brought to light.
As the perception of the monad when clarified becomes thought, so the
appetite of which all monads partake is raised to will, their
spontaneity to freedom, in man (p. 669). The will is an effort or
tendency to that which one finds good (p. 251), and is free only in
the sense of being exempt from external control[19] (pp. 262, 513,
521), for it must always have a sufficient reason for its action
determined by what seems good to it. The end determining the will is
pleasure (p. 269), and pleasure is the sense of an increase of
perfection (p. 670). A will guided by reason will sacrifice transitory
and pursue constant pleasures or happiness, and in this weighing of
pleasures consists true wisdom. Leibnitz, like Spinoza, says that
freedom consists in following reason, servitude in following the
passions (p. 669), and that the passions proceed from confused
perceptions (pp. 188, 269). In love one finds joy in the happiness of
another; and from love follow justice and law. "Our reason," says
Leibnitz,[20] "illumined by the spirit of God, reveals the law of
nature," and with it positive law must not conflict. Natural law rises
from the strict command to avoid offence, through the maxim of equity
which gives to each his due, to that of probity or piety (_honeste
vivere_),--the highest ethical perfection,--which presupposes a belief
in God, providence and a future life.[21] Moral immortality--not
merely the simple continuity which belongs to every monad--comes from
God having provided that the changes of matter will not make man lose
his individuality (pp. 126, 466).
Leibnitz thus makes the existence of God a postulate of morality as
well as necessary for the realization of the monads. It is in the
_Théodicée_ that his theology is worked out and his view of the
universe as the best possible world defended. In it he contends that
faith and reason are essentially harmonious (pp. 402, 479), and that
nothing can be received as an article of faith which contradicts an
eternal truth, though the ordinary physical order may be superseded by
a higher.[22]
The ordinary arguments for the being of God are retained by Leibnitz
in a modified form (p. 375). Descartes's ontological proof is
supplemented by the clause that God as the _ens a se_ must either
exist or be impossible (pp. 80, 177, 708); in the cosmological proof
he passes from the infinite series of finite causes to their
sufficient reason which contains all changes in the series necessarily
in itself (pp. 147, 708); and he argues teleologically from the
existence of harmony among the monads without any mutual influence to
God as the author of this harmony (p. 430).
In these proofs Leibnitz seems to have in view an extramundane power
to whom the monads owe their reality, though such a conception
evidently breaks the continuity and harmony of his system, and can
only be externally connected with it. But he also speaks in one place
at any rate[23] of God as the "universal harmony"; and the historians
Erdmann and Zeller are of opinion that this is the only sense in which
his system can be consistently theistic. Yet it would seem that to
assume a purely active and therefore perfect monad as the source of
all things is in accordance with the principle of continuity and with
Leibnitz's conception of the gradation of existences. In this sense he
sometimes speaks of God as the first or highest of the monads (p.
678), and of created substances proceeding from Him continually by
"fulgurations" (p. 708) or by "a sort of emanation as we produce our
thoughts."[24]
The positive properties or perfections of the monads, Leibnitz holds,
exist _eminenter_, i.e. without the limitation that attaches to
created monads (p. 716), in God--their perception as His wisdom or
intellect, and their appetite as His absolute will or goodness (p.
654); while the absence of all limitation is the divine independence
or power, which again consists in this, that the possibility of things
depends on His intellect, their reality on His will (p. 506). The
universe in its harmonious order is thus the realization of the divine
end, and as such must be the best possible (p. 506). The teleology of
Leibnitz becomes necessarily a _Théodicée_. God created a world to
manifest and communicate His perfection (p. 524), and, in choosing
this world out of the infinite number that exist in the region of
ideas (p. 515), was guided by the _principium melioris_ (p. 506). With
this thorough-going optimism Leibnitz has to reconcile the existence
of evil in the best of all possible worlds.[25] With this end in view
he distinguishes (p. 655) between (1) metaphysical evil or
imperfection, which is unconditionally willed by God as essential to
created beings; (2) physical evil, such as pain, which is
conditionally willed by God as punishment or as a means to greater
good (cf. p. 510); and (3) moral evil, in which the great difficulty
lies, and which Leibnitz makes various attempts to explain. He says
that it was merely permitted not willed by God (p. 655), and, that
being obviously no explanation, adds that it was permitted because it
was foreseen that the world with evil would nevertheless be better
than any other possible world (p. 350). He also speaks of the evil as
a mere set-off to the good in the world, which it increases by
contrast (p. 149), and at other times reduces moral to metaphysical
evil by giving it a merely negative existence, or says that their evil
actions are to be referred to men alone, while it is only the power of
action that comes from God, and the power of action is good (p. 658).
The great problem of Leibnitz's _Théodicée_ thus remains unsolved. The
suggestion that evil consists in a mere imperfection, like his idea of
the monads proceeding from God by a continual emanation, was too bold
and too inconsistent with his immediate apologetic aim to be carried
out by him. Had he done so his theory would have transcended the
independence of the monads with which it started, and found a deeper
unity in the world than that resulting from the somewhat arbitrary
assertion that the monads reflect the universe.
The philosophy of Leibnitz, in the more systematic and abstract form
it received at the hands of Wolf, ruled the schools of Germany for
nearly a century, and largely determined the character of the critical
philosophy by which it was superseded. On it Baumgarten laid the
foundations of a science of aesthetic. Its treatment of theological
questions heralded the German _Aufklärung_. And on many special
points--in its physical doctrine of the conservation of force, its
psychological hypothesis of unconscious perception, its attempt at a
logical symbolism--it has suggested ideas fruitful for the progress of
science.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.--(1) Editions: Up to 1900 no attempt had been made to
publish the complete works. Several editions existed, but a vast mass
of MSS. (letters, &c.) remained only roughly classified in the Hanover
library. The chief editions were: (1) L. Dutens (Geneva, 1768), called
_Opera Omnia_, but far from complete; (2) G. H. Pertz, _Leibnizens
gesammelte Werke_ (Berlin, 1843-1863) (1st ser. History, 4 vols.; 2nd
ser. Philosophy, vol. i. correspondence with Arnauld, &c., ed. C. L.
Grotefend; 3rd ser. Mathematics, 7 vols., ed. C. J. Gerhardt); (3)
Foucher de Careil (planned in 20 vols., 7 published, Paris,
1859-1875), the same editor having previously published _Lettres et
opuscules inédits de Leibniz_ (Paris, 1854-1857); (4) Onno Klopp, _Die
Werke von Leibniz gemäss seinem Handschriftlichen Nachlasse in der
Königlichen Bibliothek zu Hannover_ (1st series, Historico-Political
and Political, 10 vols., 1864-1877). The _Oeuvres de Leibnitz_, by A.
Jacques (2 vols., Paris, 1846) also deserves mention. The
philosophical writings had been published by Raspe (Amsterdam and
Leipzig, 1765), by J. E. Erdmann, _Leibnitii opera philos. quae extant
Latina, Gallica, Germanica, omnia_ (Berlin, 1840), by P. Janet (2
vols., Paris, 1866, 2nd ed. 1900), and the fullest by C. J. Gerhardt,
_Die Philosophischen Schriften von G. W. Leibniz_ (7 vols.,
1875-1890); cf. also _Die kleineren philos. wichtigeren Schriften_
(trans. with commentary, J. H. von Kirchmann, 1879). The German works
had also been partly published separately; G. E. Guhrauer (Berlin,
1838-1840). Of the letters various collections had been published up
to 1900, e.g.: C. J. Gerhardt (Halle, 1860) and _Der Briefwechsel von
G. W. Leibnitz mit Mathematikern_ (1899); _Corrispondenza tra L. A.
Muratori e G. Leibnitz_ (1899); and cf. _Neue Beiträge zum
Briefwechsel zwischen D. E. Jablonsky und G. W. Leibnitz_ (1899).
In 1900 it was decided by scholars in Berlin and Paris that a really
complete edition should be published, and with this object four German
and four French critics were entrusted with the preliminary task of
correlating the MSS. in the royal library at Hanover. This process
resulted in the preparation of the _Kritischer Katalog der
Leibnitz-Handschriften zur Vorbereitung der interakademischen
Leibnitz-Ausgabe unternommen_ (1908), and also in certain other
preliminary publications, e.g. L. Couturat, _Opuscules et fragments
inédits_ (1903); E. Gerland, _Leibnizens nachgelassene Schriften
physikalischen, mechanischen und technischen Inhalts_ (1906); Jean
Baruzi, _Leibniz_ (1909), containing unedited MSS. and a
sketch-biography; cf. the same author's _Leibniz et l'organisation
religieuse de la terre_ (1907).
_Translations._--Of the _Systema Theologicum_ (1850, C. W. Russell),
of the correspondence with Clarke (1717); _Works_, by G. M. Duncan
(New Haven, 1890); of the _Nouveaux Essais_, by A. G. Langley (London,
1894); the _Monadology and other Writings_, by R. Latta (Oxford,
1898).
_Biographical._--The materials for the life of Leibnitz, in addition
to his own works, are the notes of Eckhart (not published till 1779),
the _Éloge_ by Fontenelle (read to the French Academy in 1717), the
"Eulogium," by Wolf, in the _Acta Eruditorium_ for July 1717, and the
"Supplementum" to the same by Feller, published in his _Otium
Hannoveranum_ (Leipzig, 1718). The best biography is that of G. E.
Guhrauer, _G. W. Freiherr von Leibnitz_ (2 vols., Breslau, 1842;
_Nachträge_, Breslau, 1846). A shorter _Life of G. W. von Leibnitz, on
the Basis of the German Work of Guhrauer_, has been published by J. M.
Mackie (Boston, 1845). More recent works are those of L. Grote,
_Leibniz und seine Zeit_ (Hanover, 1869); E. Pfleiderer, _Leibniz als
Patriot, Staatsmann, und Bildungsträger_ (Leipzig, 1870); the slighter
volume of F. Kirchner, _G. W. Leibniz: sein Leben und Denken_ (Köthen,
1876); Kuno Fischer, vol. iii. in _Gesch. der neuern Philosophie_ (4th
ed., 1902).
_Critical._--The monographs and essays on Leibnitz are too numerous to
mention, but reference may be made to Feuerbach, _Darstellung,
Entwicklung, und Kritik der Leibnitz'schen Phil._ (2nd ed., Leipzig,
1844); Nourrisson, _La Philosophie de Leibniz_ (Paris, 1860); R.
Zimmermann, _Leibnitz und Herbart: eine Vergleichung ihrer
Monadologien_ (Vienna, 1849); O. Caspari, _Leibniz' Philosophie
beleuchtet vom Gesichtspunkt der physikalischen Grundbegriffe von
Kraft und Stoff_ (Leipzig, 1870); G. Hartenstein, "Locke's Lehre von
der menschl. Erk. in Vergl. mit Leibniz's Kritik derselben
dargestellt," in the _Abhandl. d. philol.-hist. Cl. d. K. Sächs.
Gesells. d. Wiss._, vol. iv. (Leipzig, 1865); G. Class, _Die metaph.
Voraussetzungen des Leibnitzischen Determinismus_ (Tübingen, 1874); F.
B. Kvet, _Leibnitzens Logik_ (Prague, 1857); the essays on Leibnitz in
Trendelenburg's _Beiträge_, vols. ii. and iii. (Berlin, 1855, 1867);
L. Neff, _Leibniz als Sprachforscher_ (Heidelberg, 1870-1871); J.
Schmidt, _Leibniz und Baumgarten_ (Halle, 1875); D. Nolen, _La
Critique de Kant et la Métaphysique de Leibniz_ (Paris, 1875); and the
exhaustive work of A. Pichler, _Die Theologie des Leibniz_ (Munich,
1869-1870). Among the more recent works are: C. Braig, _Leibniz: sein
Leben und die Bedeutung seiner Lehre_ (1907); E. Cassirer, _Leibniz'
System in seinem wissenschaftlichen Grundlagen_ (1902); L. Couturat,
_La Logique de Leibniz d'après des documents inédits_ (1901); L.
Davillé, _Leibniz historien_ (1909); Kuno Fischer, _G. W. Leibniz_
(1889); R. B. Frenzel, _Der Associationsbegriff bei Leibniz_ (1898);
R. Herbertz, _Die Lehre vom Unbewussten im System des Leibniz_ (1905);
H. Hoffmann, _Die Leibniz'sche Religions-philosophie in ihrer
geschichtlichen Stellung_ (1903); W. Kabitz, _Die Philosophie des
jungen Leibniz_ (1909), a study of the development of the Leibnitzian
system; H. L. Koch, _Materie und Organismus bei Leibniz_ (1908); G.
Niel, _L'Optimisme de Leibniz_ (1888); Bertrand A. W. Russell, _A
Critical Exposition of the Philosophy of Leibniz_ (1900); F. Schmöger,
_Leibniz in seiner Stellung zur tellurischen Physik_ (1901); A.
Silberstein, _Leibnizens Apriorismus in Verhältnis zu seiner
Metaphysik_ (1904); Stein, _Leibniz und Spinoza_ (1890); F. Thilly,
_Leibnizens Streit gegen Locke in Ansehung der angeborenen Ideen_
(1891); R. Urbach, _Leibnizens Rechtfertigung des Uebels in der besten
Welt_ (1901); W. Werckmeister, _Der Leibnizsche Substanzbegriff_
(1899); F. G. F. Wernicke, _Leibniz' Lehre von der Freiheit des
menschlichen Willens_ (1890). (W. R. So.)
FOOTNOTES:
[1] _Bedenken, welchergestalt securitas publica interna et externa
und status praesens jetzigen Umständen nach im Reich auf festen Fuss
zu stellen._
[2] _De expeditione Aegyptiaca regi Franciae proponenda justa
dissertatio._
[3] _Consilium Aegyptiacum._
[4] _A Summary Account of Leibnitz's Memoir addressed to Lewis the
Fourteenth_, &c. [edited by Granville Penn], (London, 1803).
[5] In a letter to the duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg (autumn 1671),
_Werke_, ed. Klopp, iii. 253 sq.
[6] He was made a foreign member of the French Academy in 1700.
[7] _Caesarini Furstenerii tractatus de jure suprematus ac legationis
principum Germaniae_ (Amsterdam, 1677); _Entretiens de Philarète et
d'Eugène sur le droit d'ambassade_ (Duisb., 1677).
[8] Not published till 1819. It is on this work that the assertion
has been founded that Leibnitz was at heart a Catholic--a supposition
clearly disproved by his correspondence.
[9] In his _Protogaea_ (1691) he developed the notion of the
historical genesis of the present condition of the earth's surface.
Cf. O. Peschel, _Gesch. d. Erdkunde_ (Munich, 1865), pp. 615 sq.
[10] _Codex juris gentium diplomaticus_ (1693); _Mantissa codicis
juri gentium diplomatici_ (1700).
[11] _Memoirs of John Ker of Kersland_, by himself (1726), i. 118.
[12] When not otherwise stated, the references are to Erdmann's
edition of the _Opera philosophica_.
[13] See _Considérations sur la doctrine d'un esprit universel_
(1702).
[14] Cf. _Opera_, ed. Dutens, II. ii. 20.
[15] The difference between an organic and an inorganic body
consists, he says, in this, that the former is a machine even in its
smallest parts.
[16] _Opera_, ed. Dutens, iii. 321.
[17] Different symbolic systems were proposed by Leibnitz at
different periods; cf. Kvet, _Leibnitzens Logik_ (1857), p. 37.
[18] The places at which Leibnitz anticipated the modern theory of
logic mainly due to Boole are pointed out in Mr Venn's _Symbolic
Logic_ (1881).
[19] Hence the difference of his determinism from that of Spinoza,
though Leibnitz too says in one place that "it is difficult enough to
distinguish the actions of God from those of the creatures" (_Werke_,
ed. Pertz, 2nd ser. vol. i. p. 160).
[20] _Opera omnia_, ed. Dutens, IV. iii. 282.
[21] Ibid. IV. iii. 295. Cf. Bluntschli, _Gesch. d. allg.
Staatsrechts u. Politik_ (1864), pp. 143 sqq.
[22] P. 480; cf. _Werke_, ed. Pertz, 2nd ser. vol. i. pp. 158, 159.
[23] Werke, ed. Klopp, iii. 259; cf. Op. phil., p. 716.
[24] Werke, ed. Pertz, 2nd ser. vol. i. p. 167.
[25] "Si c'est ici le meilleur des mondes possibles, que sont donc
les autres?"--Voltaire, _Candide_, ch. vi.
LEICESTER, EARLS OF. The first holder of this English earldom belonged
to the family of Beaumont, although a certain Saxon named Edgar has been
described as the 1st earl of Leicester. Robert de Beaumont (d. 1118) is
frequently but erroneously considered to have received the earldom from
Henry I., about 1107; he had, however, some authority in the county of
Leicester and his son Robert was undoubtedly earl of Leicester in 1131.
The 3rd Beaumont earl, another Robert, was also steward of England, a
dignity which was attached to the earldom of Leicester from this time
until 1399. The earldom reverted to the crown when Robert de Beaumont,
the 4th earl, died in January 1204.
In 1207 Simon IV., count of Montfort (q.v.), nephew and heir of Earl
Robert, was confirmed in the possession of the earldom by King John, but
it was forfeited when his son, the famous Simon de Montfort, was
attainted and was killed at Evesham in August 1265. Henry III.'s son
Edmund, earl of Lancaster, was also earl of Leicester and steward of
England, obtaining these offices a few months after Earl Simon's death.
Edmund's sons, Thomas and Henry, both earls of Lancaster, and his
grandson Henry, duke of Lancaster, in turn held the earldom, which then
passed to a son-in-law of Duke Henry, William V., count of Holland (c.
1327-1389), and then to another and more celebrated son-in-law, John of
Gaunt, duke of Lancaster. When in 1399 Gaunt's son became king as Henry
IV. the earldom was merged in the crown.
In 1564 Queen Elizabeth created her favourite, Lord Robert Dudley, earl
of Leicester. The new earl was a son of John Dudley, duke of
Northumberland; he left no children, or rather none of undoubted
legitimacy, and when he died in September 1588 the title became extinct.
In 1618 the earldom of Leicester was revived in favour of Robert Sidney,
Viscount Lisle, a nephew of the late earl and a brother of Sir Philip
Sidney; it remained in this family until the death of Jocelyn
(1682-1743), the 7th earl of this line, in July 1743. Jocelyn left no
legitimate children, but a certain John Sidney claimed to be his son and
consequently to be 8th earl of Leicester.
In 1744, the year after Jocelyn's death, Thomas Coke, Baron Lovel (c.
1695-1759), was made earl of Leicester, but the title became extinct on
his death in April 1759. The next family to hold the earldom was that of
Townshend, George Townshend (1755-1811) being created earl of Leicester
in 1784. In 1807 George succeeded his father as 2nd marquess Townshend,
and when his son George Ferrars Townshend, the 3rd marquess (1778-1855),
died in December 1855 the earldom again became extinct. Before this
date, however, another earldom of Leicester was in existence. This was
created in 1837 in favour of Thomas William Coke, who had inherited the
estates of his relative Thomas Coke, earl of Leicester. To distinguish
his earldom from that held by the Townshends Coke was ennobled as earl
of Leicester of Holkham; his son Thomas William Coke (1822-1909) became
2nd earl of Leicester in 1842, and the latter's son Thomas William (b.
1848) became 3rd earl.
See G. E. C(okayne), _Complete Peerage_, vol. v. (1893).
LEICESTER, ROBERT DUDLEY, EARL OF (c. 1531-1588). This favourite of
Queen Elizabeth came of an ambitious family. They were not, indeed, such
mere upstarts as their enemies loved to represent them; for Leicester's
grandfather--the notorious Edmund Dudley who was one of the chief
instruments of Henry VII.'s extortions--was descended from a younger
branch of the barons of Dudley. But the love of power was a passion
which seems to have increased in them with each succeeding generation,
and though the grandfather was beheaded by Henry VIII. for his too
devoted services in the preceding reign, the father grew powerful enough
in the days of Edward VI. to trouble the succession to the crown. This
was that John Dudley, duke of Northumberland, who contrived the marriage
of Lady Jane Grey with his own son Guildford Dudley, and involved both
her and her husband in a common ruin with himself. Robert Dudley, the
subject of this article, was an elder brother of Guildford, and shared
at that time in the misfortunes of the whole family. Having taken up
arms with them against Queen Mary, he was sent to the Tower, and was
sentenced to death; but the queen not only pardoned and restored him to
liberty, but appointed him master of the ordnance. On the accession of
Elizabeth he was also made master of the horse. He was then, perhaps,
about seven-and-twenty, and was evidently rising rapidly in the queen's
favour. At an early age he had been married to Amy, daughter of Sir John
Robsart. The match had been arranged by his father, who was very
studious to provide in this way for the future fortunes of his children,
and the wedding was graced by the presence of King Edward. But if it was
not a love match, there seems to have been no positive estrangement
between the couple. Amy visited her husband in the Tower during his
imprisonment; but afterwards when, under the new queen, he was much at
court, she lived a good deal apart from him. He visited her, however, at
times, in different parts of the country, and his expenses show that he
treated her liberally. In September 1560 she was staying at Cumnor Hall
in Berkshire, the house of one Anthony Forster, when she met her death
under circumstances which certainly aroused suspicions of foul play. It
is quite clear that her death had been surmised some time before as a
thing that would remove an obstacle to Dudley's marriage with the queen,
with whom he stood in so high favour. We may take it, perhaps, from
Venetian sources, that she was then in delicate health, while Spanish
state papers show further that there were scandalous rumours of a design
to poison her; which were all the more propagated by malice after the
event. The occurrence, however, was explained as owing to a fall down
stairs in which she broke her neck; and the explanation seems perfectly
adequate to account for all we know about it. Certain it is that Dudley
continued to rise in the queen's favour. She made him a Knight of the
Garter, and bestowed on him the castle of Kenilworth, the lordship of
Denbigh and other lands of very great value in Warwickshire and in
Wales. In September 1564 she created him baron of Denbigh, and
immediately afterwards earl of Leicester. In the preceding month, when
she visited Cambridge, she at his request addressed the university in
Latin. The honours shown him excited jealousy, especially as it was well
known that he entertained still more ambitious hopes, which the queen
apparently did not altogether discourage. The earl of Sussex, in
opposition to him, strongly favoured a match with the archduke Charles
of Austria. The court was divided, and, while arguments were set forth
on the one side against the queen's marrying a subject, the other party
insisted strongly on the disadvantages of a foreign alliance. The queen,
however, was so far from being foolishly in love with him that in 1564
she recommended him as a husband for Mary Queen of Scots. But this, it
was believed, was only a blind, and it may be doubted how far the
proposal was serious. After his creation as earl of Leicester great
attention was paid to him both at home and abroad. The university of
Oxford made him their chancellor, and Charles IX. of France sent him the
order of St Michael. A few years later he formed an ambiguous connexion
with the baroness dowager of Sheffield, which was maintained by the
lady, if not with truth at least with great plausibility, to have been a
valid marriage, though it was concealed from the queen. Her own
subsequent conduct, however, went far to discredit her statements; for
she married again during Leicester's life, when he, too, had found a new
conjugal partner. Long afterwards, in the days of James I., her son, Sir
Robert Dudley, a man of extraordinary talents, sought to establish his
legitimacy; but his suit was suddenly brought to a stop, the witnesses
discredited and the documents connected with it sealed up by an order of
the Star Chamber.
In 1575 Queen Elizabeth visited the earl at Kenilworth, where she was
entertained for some days with great magnificence. The picturesque
account of the event given by Sir Walter Scott has made every one
familiar with the general character of the scene. Next year Walter, earl
of Essex, died in Ireland, and Leicester's subsequent marriage with his
widow again gave rise to very serious imputations against him. For
report said that he had had two children by her during her husband's
absence in Ireland, and, as the feud between the two earls was
notorious, Leicester's many enemies easily suggested that he had
poisoned his rival. This marriage, at all events, tended to Leicester's
discredit and was kept secret at first; but it was revealed to the queen
in 1579 by Simier, an emissary of the duke of Alençon, to whose
projected match with Elizabeth the earl seemed to be the principal
obstacle. The queen showed great displeasure at the news, and had some
thought, it is said, of committing Leicester to the Tower, but was
dissuaded from doing so by his rival the earl of Sussex. He had not,
indeed, favoured the Alençon marriage, but otherwise he had sought to
promote a league with France against Spain. He and Burleigh had listened
to proposals from France for the conquest and division of Flanders, and
they were in the secret about the capture of Brill. When Alençon
actually arrived, indeed, in August 1579, Dudley being in disgrace,
showed himself for a time anti-French; but he soon returned to his
former policy. He encouraged Drake's piratical expeditions against the
Spaniards and had a share in the booty brought home. In February 1582
he, with a number of other noblemen and gentlemen, escorted the duke of
Alençon on his return to Antwerp to be invested with the government of
the Low Countries. In 1584 he inaugurated an association for the
protection of Queen Elizabeth against conspirators. About this time
there issued from the press the famous pamphlet, supposed to have been
the work of Parsons the Jesuit, entitled _Leicester's Commonwealth_,
which was intended to suggest that the English constitution was
subverted and the government handed over to one who was at heart an
atheist and a traitor, besides being a man of infamous life and morals.
The book was ordered to be suppressed by letters from the privy council,
in which it was declared that the charges against the earl were to the
queen's certain knowledge untrue; nevertheless they produced a very
strong impression, and were believed in by some who had no sympathy with
Jesuits long after Leicester's death. In 1585 he was appointed commander
of an expedition to the Low Countries in aid of the revolted provinces,
and sailed with a fleet of fifty ships to Flushing, where he was
received with great enthusiasm. In January following he was invested
with the government of the provinces, but immediately received a strong
reprimand from the queen for taking upon himself a function which she
had not authorized. Both he and the states general were obliged to
apologize; but the latter protested that they had no intention of giving
him absolute control of their affairs, and that it would be extremely
dangerous to them to revoke the appointment. Leicester accordingly was
allowed to retain his dignity; but the incident was inauspicious, nor
did affairs prosper greatly under his management. The most brilliant
achievement of the war was the action at Zutphen, in which his nephew
Sir Philip Sidney was slain. But complaints were made by the states
general of the conduct of the whole campaign. He returned to England for
a time, and went back in 1587, when he made an abortive effort to raise
the siege of Sluys. Disagreements increasing between him and the states,
he was recalled by the queen, from whom he met with a very good
reception; and he continued in such favour that in the following summer
(the year being that of the Armada, 1588) he was appointed
lieutenant-general of the army mustered at Tilbury to resist Spanish
invasion. After the crisis was past he was returning homewards from the
court to Kenilworth, when he was attacked by a sudden illness and died
at his house at Cornbury in Oxfordshire, on the 4th September.
Such are the main facts of Leicester's life. Of his character it is more
difficult to speak with confidence, but some features of it are
indisputable. Being in person tall and remarkably handsome, he improved
these advantages by a very ingratiating manner. A man of no small
ability and still more ambition, he was nevertheless vain, and presumed
at times upon his influence with the queen to a degree that brought upon
him a sharp rebuff. Yet Elizabeth stood by him. That she was ever really
in love with him, as modern writers have supposed, is extremely
questionable; but she saw in him some valuable qualities which marked
him as the fitting recipient of high favours. He was a man of princely
tastes, especially in architecture. At court he became latterly the
leader of the Puritan party. and his letters were pervaded by
expressions of religious feeling which it is hard to believe were
insincere. Of the darker suspicions against him it is enough to say that
much was certainly reported beyond the truth; but there remain some
facts sufficiently disagreeable, and others, perhaps, sufficiently
mysterious, to make a just estimate of the man a rather perplexing
problem.
No special biography of Leicester has yet been written except in
biographical dictionaries and encyclopaedias. A general account of him
will be found in the Memoirs of the Sidneys prefixed to Collins's
_Letters and Memorials of State_; but the fullest yet published is Mr
Sidney Lee's article in the _Dictionary of National Biography_
(London, 1888) where the sources are given. Leicester's career has to
be made out from documents and state papers, especially from the
Hatfield MSS. and Major Hume's _Calendar_ of documents from the
Spanish archives bearing on the history of Queen Elizabeth. This last
is the most recent source. Of others the principal are Digges's
_Compleat Ambassador_ (1655), John Nichols's _Progresses of Queen
Elizabeth_ and the _Leycester Correspondence_ edited by J. Bruce for
the Camden Society. The death of Dudley's first wife has been a
fruitful source of literary controversy. The most recent addition to
the evidences, which considerably alters their complexion, will be
found in the _English Historical Review_, xiii. 83, giving the full
text (in English) of De Quadra's letter of Sept. 11, 1560, on which so
much has been built. (J. Ga.)
LEICESTER, ROBERT SIDNEY, EARL OF (1563-1626), second son of Sir Henry
Sidney (q.v.), was born on the 19th of November 1563, and was educated
at Christ Church, Oxford, afterwards travelling on the Continent for
some years between 1578 and 1583. In 1585 he was elected member of
parliament for Glamorganshire; and in the same year he went with his
elder brother Sir Philip Sidney (q.v.) to the Netherlands, where he
served in the war against Spain under his uncle Robert Dudley, earl of
Leicester. He was present at the engagement where Sir Philip Sidney was
mortally wounded, and remained with his brother till the latter's death
in October 1586. After visiting Scotland on a diplomatic mission in
1588, and France on a similar errand in 1593, he returned to the
Netherlands in 1596, where he rendered distinguished service in the war
for the next two years. He had been appointed governor of Flushing in
1588, and he spent much time there till 1603, when, on the accession of
James I., he returned to England. James raised him at once to the
peerage as Baron Sidney of Penshurst, and he was appointed chamberlain
to the queen consort. In 1605 he was created Viscount Lisle, and in 1618
earl of Leicester, the latter title having become extinct in 1588 on the
death of his uncle, whose property he had inherited (see LEICESTER,
EARLS OF). Leicester was a man of taste and a patron of literature,
whose cultured mode of life at his country seat, Penshurst, was
celebrated in verse by Ben Jonson. The earl died at Penshurst on the
13th of July 1626. He was twice married; first to Barbara, daughter of
John Gamage, a Glamorganshire gentleman; and secondly to Sarah, daughter
of William Blount, and widow of Sir Thomas Smythe. By his first wife he
had a large family. His eldest son having died unmarried in 1613,
Robert, the second son (see below), succeeded to the earldom; one of his
daughters married Sir John Hobart, ancestor of the earls of
Buckinghamshire.
ROBERT SIDNEY, 2nd earl of Leicester of the 1618 creation (1595-1677),
was born on the 1st of December 1595, and was educated at Christ Church,
Oxford; he was called to the bar in in 1618, having already served in
the army in the Netherlands during his father's governorship of
Flushing, and having entered parliament as member for Wilton in 1614. In
1616 he was given command of an English regiment in the Dutch service;
and having succeeded his father as earl of Leicester in 1626, he was
employed on diplomatic business in Denmark in 1632, and in France from
1636 to 1641. He was then appointed lord-lieutenant of Ireland in place
of the earl of Strafford, but he waited in vain for instructions from
the king, and in 1643 he was compelled to resign the office without
having set foot in Ireland. He shared the literary and cultivated tastes
of his family, without possessing the statesmanship of his uncle Sir
Philip Sidney; his character was lacking in decision, and, as commonly
befalls men of moderate views in times of acute party strife, he failed
to win the confidence of either of the opposing parties. His sincere
protestantism offended Laud, without being sufficiently extreme to
please the puritans of the parliamentary faction; his fidelity to the
king restrained him from any act tainted with rebellion, while his
dislike for arbitrary government prevented him giving whole-hearted
support to Charles I. When, therefore, the king summoned him to Oxford
in November 1642, Leicester's conduct bore the appearance of
vacillation, and his loyalty of uncertainty. Accordingly, after his
resignation of the lord-lieutenancy of Ireland at the end of 1643, he
retired into private life. In 1649 the younger children of the king were
for a time committed to his care at Penshurst. He took no part in public
affairs during the Commonwealth; and although at the Restoration he took
his seat in the House of Lords and was sworn of the privy council, he
continued to live for the most part in retirement at Penshurst, where he
died on the 2nd of November 1677. Leicester married, in 1616, Dorothy,
daughter of Henry Percy, 9th earl of Northumberland, by whom he had
fifteen children. Of his nine daughters, the eldest, Dorothy, the
"Sacharissa" of the poet Waller, married Robert Spencer, 2nd earl of
Sunderland; and Lucy married John Pelham, by whom she was the ancestress
of the 18th-century statesmen, Henry Pelham, and Thomas Pelham, duke of
Newcastle. Algernon Sidney (q.v.), and Henry Sidney, earl of Romney
(q.v.), were younger sons of the earl.
Leicester's eldest son, Philip, 3rd earl (1619-1698), known for most of
his life as Lord Lisle, took a somewhat prominent part during the civil
war. Being sent to Ireland in 1642 in command of a regiment of horse, he
became lieutenant-general under Ormonde; he strongly favoured the
parliamentary cause, and in 1647 he was appointed lord-lieutenant of
Ireland by the parliament. Named one of Charles I.'s judges, he refused
to take part in the trial; but he afterwards served in Cromwell's
Council of State, and sat in the Protector's House of Lords. Lisle stood
high in Cromwell's favour, but nevertheless obtained a pardon at the
Restoration. He carried on the Sidney family tradition by his patronage
of men of letters; and, having succeeded to the earldom on his father's
death in 1677, he died in 1698, and was succeeded in the peerage by his
son Robert, 4th earl of Leicester (1649-1702), whose mother was
Catherine, daughter of William Cecil, 2nd earl of Salisbury.
See _Sydney Papers_, edited by A. Collins (2 vols., London, 1746);
_Sydney Papers_, edited by R. W. Blencowe (London, 1825) containing
the 2nd earl of Leicester's journal; Lord Clarendon _History of the
Rebellion and Civil Wars in England_ (8 vols, Oxford, 1826); S. R.
Gardiner, _History of the Great Civil War_ (3 vols., London,
1886-1891). (R. J. M.)
LEICESTER, THOMAS WILLIAM COKE, EARL OF (1754-1842), English
agriculturist, known as Coke of Norfolk, was the eldest son of Wenman
Roberts, who assumed the name of Coke in 1750. In 1759 Wenman Coke's
maternal uncle Thomas Coke, earl of Leicester, died leaving him his
estates, subject, however, to the life-interest of his widow, Margaret,
Baroness de Clifford in her own right. This lady's death in 1775 was
followed by that of Wenman Coke in 1776, when the latter's son, Thomas
William, born on the 6th of May 1754, succeeded to his father's estates
at Holkham and elsewhere. From 1776 to 1784, from 1790 to 1806, and
again from 1807 to 1832 Coke was member of parliament for Norfolk; he
was a friend and supporter of Charles James Fox and a sturdy and
aggressive Whig, acting upon the maxim taught him by his father "never
to trust a Tory." Coke's chief interests, however, were in the country,
and his fame is that of an agriculturist. His land around Holkham in
Norfolk was poor and neglected, but he introduced many improvements,
obtained the best expert advice, and in a few years wheat was grown upon
his farms, and the breed of cattle, sheep and pigs greatly improved. It
has been said that "his practice is really the basis of every treatise
on modern agriculture." Under his direction the rental of the Holkham
estate is said to have increased from £2200 to over £20,000 a year. In
1837 Coke was created earl of Leicester of Holkham. Leicester, who was a
strong and handsome man and a fine sportsman, died at Longford Hall in
Derbyshire on the 30th of June 1842. He was twice married, and Thomas
William, his son by his second marriage, succeeded to his earldom.
See A. M. W. Stirling, _Coke of Norfolk and his Friends_ (1907).
LEICESTER, a municipal county and parliamentary borough, and the county
town of Leicestershire, England; on the river Soar, a southern tributary
of the Trent. Pop. (1891) 174,624, (1901) 211,579. It is 99 m. N.N.W.
from London by the Midland railway, and is served by the Great Central
and branches of the Great Northern and London and North-Western
railways, and by the Leicester canal.
This was the Roman _Ratae_ (_Ratae Coritanorum_), and Roman remains of
high interest are preserved. They include a portion of Roman masonry
known as the Jewry Wall; several pavements have been unearthed; and in
the museum, among other remains, is a milestone from the Fosse Way,
marking a distance of 2 m. from Ratae. St Nicholas church is a good
example of early Norman work, in the building of which Roman bricks are
used. St Mary de Castro church, with Norman remains, including sedilia,
shows rich Early English work in the tower and elsewhere, and has a
Decorated spire and later additions. All Saints church has Norman
remains. St Martin's is mainly Early English, a fine cruciform
structure. St Margaret's, with Early English nave, has extensive
additions of beautiful Perpendicular workmanship. North of the town are
slight remains of an abbey of Black Canons founded in 1143. There are a
number of modern churches. Of the Castle there are parts of the Norman
hall, modernized, two gateways and other remains, together with the
artificial Mount on which the keep stood. The following public buildings
and institutions may be mentioned--municipal buildings (1876), old town
hall, formerly the gild-hall of Corpus Christi; market house, free
library, opera house and other theatres and museum. The free library has
several branches; there are also a valuable old library founded in the
17th century, a permanent library and a literary and philosophical
society. Among several hospitals are Trinity hospital, founded in 1331
by Henry Plantagenet, earl of Lancaster and of Leicester, and
Wyggeston's hospital (1513). The Wyggeston schools and Queen Elizabeth's
grammar school are amalgamated, and include high schools for boys and
girls; there are also Newton's greencoat school for boys, and municipal
technical and art schools. A memorial clock tower was erected in 1868 to
Simon de Montfort and other historical figures connected with the town.
The Abbey Park is a beautiful pleasure ground; there are also Victoria
Park, St Margaret's Pasture and other grounds. The staple trade is
hosiery, an old-established industry; there are also manufactures of
elastic webbing, cotton and lace, iron-works, makings and brick-works.
Leicester became a county borough in 1888, and the bounds were extended
and constituted one civil parish in 1892. It is a suffragan bishopric in
the diocese of Peterborough. The parliamentary borough returns two
members. Area, 8586 acres.
The Romano-British town of _Ratae Coritanorum_, on the Fosse Way, was a
municipality in A.D. 120-121. Its importance, both commercial and
military, was considerable, as is attested by the many remains found
here. Leicester (_Ledecestre_, _Legecestria_, _Leyrcestria_) was called
a "burh" in 918, and a city in Domesday. Until 874 it was the seat of a
bishopric. In 1086 both the king and Hugh de Grantmesnil had much land
in Leicester; by 1101 the latter's share had passed to Robert of Meulan,
to whom the rest of the town belonged before his death. Leicester thus
became the largest mesne borough. Between 1103 and 1118 Robert granted
his first charter to the burgesses, confirming their merchant gild. The
portmanmote was confirmed by his son. In the 13th century the town
developed its own form of government by a mayor and 24 jurats. In 1464
Edward IV. made the mayor and 4 of the council justices of the peace. In
1489 Henry VII. added 48 burgesses to the council for certain purposes,
and made it a close body; he granted another charter in 1505. In 1589
Elizabeth incorporated the town, and gave another charter in 1599. James
I. granted charters in 1605 and 1610; and Charles I. in 1630. In 1684
the charters were surrendered; a new one granted by James II. was
rescinded by proclamation in 1688.
Leicester has been represented in parliament by two members since 1295.
It has had a prescriptive market since the 13th century, now held on
Wednesday and Saturday. Before 1228-1229 the burgesses had a fair from
July 31 to August 14; changes were made in its date, which was fixed in
1360 at September 26 to October 2. It is now held on the second Thursday
in October and three following days. In 1473 another fair was granted on
April 27 to May 4. It is now held on the second Thursday in May and the
three following days. Henry VIII. granted two three-day fairs beginning
on December 8 and June 26; the first is now held on the second Friday in
December; the second was held in 1888 on the last Tuesday in June. In
1307 Edward III. granted a fair for seventeen days after the feast of
the Holy Trinity. This would fall in May or June, and may have merged in
other fairs. In 1794 the corporation sanctioned fairs on January 4, June
1, August 1, September 13 and November 2. Other fairs are now held on
the second Fridays in March and July and the Saturdays next before
Easter and in Easter week. Leicester has been a centre for brewing and
the manufacture of woollen goods since the 13th century. Knitting frames
for hosiery were introduced about 1680. Boot manufacture became
important in the 19th century.
See _Victoria County History_, Leicester; M. Bateson, _Records of
Borough of Leicester_ (Cambridge, 1899).
LEICESTERSHIRE, a midland county of England, bounded N. by
Nottinghamshire, E. by Lincolnshire and Rutland, S.E. by
Northamptonshire, S.W. by Warwickshire, and N.W. by Derbyshire, also
touching Staffordshire on the W. The area is 823.6 sq. m. The surface of
the county is an undulating tableland, the highest eminences being the
rugged hills of Charnwood Forest (q.v.) in the north-west, one of which,
Bardon Hill, has an elevation of 912 ft. The county belongs chiefly to
the basin of the Trent, which forms for a short distance its boundary
with Derbyshire. The principal tributary of the Trent in Leicestershire
is the Soar, from whose old designation the _Leire_ the county is said
to derive its name, and which rises near Hinckley in the S.E., and forms
the boundary with Nottinghamshire for some distance above its junction
with the Trent. The Wreak, which, under the name of the Eye, rises on
the borders of Rutland, flows S.W. to the Soar. Besides the Soar the
other tributaries of the Trent are the Anker, touching the boundary with
Warwickshire, the Devon and the Mease. A portion of the county in the S.
drains to the Avon, which forms part of the boundary with
Northamptonshire, and receives the Swift. The Welland forms for some
distance the boundary with Northamptonshire.
_Geology._--The oldest rocks in the county belong to the Charnian
System, a Pre-Cambrian series of volcanic ashes, grits and slates,
into which porphyroid and syenite were afterwards intruded. These
rocks emerge from the plain formed by the Keuper Marls of the Triassic
System as a group of isolated hills and peaks (known as Charnwood
Forest); these are the tops of an old mountain-range, the lower slopes
of which are still buried under the surrounding Keuper Marls. West of
this district lies the Leicestershire coalfield, where the poor state
of development of the Carboniferous Limestone shows that the Charnian
rocks formed shoals or islands in the Carboniferous Limestone sea. The
Millstone Grit just enters the county to the north of the same region,
while the Coal Measures occupy a considerable area round
Ashby-de-la-Zouch and contain valuable coal-seams. The rest of the
county is almost equally divided between the red Keuper Marls of the
Trias on the west and the grey limestones and shales of the Lias on
the east. The former were deposited in lagoons into which the land was
gradually lowered after a prolonged period of desert conditions. The
Rhaetic beds which follow the Keuper mark the incoming of the sea and
introduce the fossiliferous Liassic deposits. On the eastern margin of
the county a few small outliers of the Inferior Oolite sands and
limestones are present. The Glacial Period has left boulder-clay,
gravel and erratic blocks scattered over the surface, while later
gravels, with remains of mammoth, reindeer, &c., border some of the
present streams.
Slates, honestones, setts and roadstone from the Charnian rocks,
limestone and cement from the Carboniferous and Lias, and coal from
the Coal Measures are the chief mineral products.
_Agriculture._--The climate is mild, and, on account of the inland
position of the county, and the absence of any very high elevations,
the rainfall is very moderate. The soil is of a loamy character, the
richest district being that east of the Soar, which is occupied by
pasture, while the corn crops are grown chiefly on a lighter soil
resting above the Red Sandstone formation. About nine-tenths of the
total area is under cultivation. The proportion of pasture land is
large and increasing. It is especially rich along the river-banks.
Dairy-farming is extensively carried on, the famous Stilton cheese
being produced near Melton Mowbray. Cattle are reared in large
numbers, while of sheep the New Leicester breed is well known. It was
introduced by Robert Bakewell the agriculturist, who was born near
Loughborough in 1725. He also improved the breed of horses by the
importation of mares from Flanders.
The county is especially famed for fox-hunting, Leicester and Melton
Mowbray being favourite centres, while the kennels of the Quorn hunt
are located at Quorndon near Mount Sorrel. For this reason
Leicestershire is rich in good riding horses.
_Other Industries._--Coal is worked in the districts about Moira,
Coleorton and Coalville. Limestone is worked in various parts,
freestone is plentiful, gypsum is found, and a kind of granite,
extensively used for paving, is obtained in the Charnwood district, as
at Bardon and Mount Sorrel, and at Sapcote and Stoney Stanton in the
south-west. Apart from the mining industries, the staple manufacture
of Leicestershire is hosiery, for which the wool is obtained
principally from home-bred sheep. Its principal seats are Leicester,
Loughborough, Hinckley and Castle Donington. Cotton hose are likewise
made, and other industries include the manufacture of boots and shoes,
as at Market Harborough, elastic webbing, and bricks, also iron
founding. Melton Mowbray gives name to a well-known manufacture of
pork pies.
_Communications._--The main line of the Midland railway serves Market
Harborough, Leicester, and Loughborough, having an important junction
at Trent (on that river) for Derby and Nottingham. Branches radiate
from Leicester to Melton Mowbray, to Coalville, Ashby-de-la-Zouch,
Moira and Burton-upon-Trent, with others through the mining district
of the N.W., which is also served by the branch of the London &
North-Western railway from Nuneaton to Market Bosworth, Coalville and
Loughborough. This company serves Market Harborough from Rugby, and
branches of the Great Northern serve Market Harborough, Leicester and
Melton Mowbray. The main line of the Great Central railway passes
through Lutterworth, Leicester and Loughborough. The principal canals
are the Union and Grand Union, with which various branches are
connected with the Grand Junction, and the Ashby-de-la-Zouch canal,
which joins the Coventry canal at Nuneaton. The Loughborough canal
serves that town, connecting with the river Soar.
_Population and Administration._--The area of the ancient county is
527,123 acres; pop. (1891) 373,584, (1901) 434,019. The area of the
administrative county is 532,788 acres. The county contains six
hundreds. The municipal boroughs are: Leicester, the county town and a
county borough (pop. 211,579), Loughborough (21,508). The urban
districts are: Ashby-de-la-Zouch (4726), Ashby Woulds (2799),
Coalville (15,281), Hinckley (11,304), Market Harborough (7735),
Melton Mowbray (7454), Quorndon (2173), Shepshed (5293). Thurmaston
(1732), Wigston Magna (8404). The county is in the Midland circuit,
has one court of quarter sessions, and is divided into 9 petty
sessional divisions. The county borough of Leicester has a separate
court of quarter sessions and a separate commission of the peace.
There are 327 civil parishes. The county is divided into four
parliamentary divisions (Eastern or Melton, Mid or Loughborough,
Western or Bosworth, Southern or Harborough), each returning one
member; and the parliamentary borough of Leicester returns 2 members.
The county is in the diocese of Peterborough, with the exception of
small parts in those of Southwell and Worcester; and contains 255
ecclesiastical parishes or districts, wholly or in part.
_History._--The district which is now Leicestershire was reached in the
6th century by Anglian invaders who, making their way across the Trent,
penetrated Charnwood Forest as far as Leicester, the fall of which may
be dated at about 556. In 679 the district formed the kingdom of the
Middle Angles within the kingdom of Mercia, and on the subdivision of
the Mercian see in that year was formed into a separate bishopric having
its see at Leicester. In the 9th century the district was subjugated by
the Danes, and Leicester became one of the five Danish boroughs. It was
recovered by Æthelflaed in 918, but the Northmen regained their
supremacy shortly after, and the prevalence of Scandinavian place-names
in the county bears evidence of the extent of their settlement.
Leicestershire probably originated as a shire in the 10th century, and
at the time of the Domesday Survey was divided into the four wapentakes
of Guthlaxton, Framland, Goscote and Gartree. The Leicestershire Survey
of the 12th century shows an additional grouping of the vills into small
local hundreds, manorial rather than administrative divisions, which
have completely disappeared. In the reign of Edward I. the divisions
appear as hundreds, and in the reign of Edward III. the additional
hundred of Sparkenhoe was formed out of Guthlaxton. Before the 17th
century Goscote was divided into East and West Goscote, and since then
the hundreds have undergone little change. Until 1566 Leicestershire and
Warwickshire had a common sheriff, the shire-court for the former being
held at Leicester.
Leicestershire constituted an archdeaconry within the diocese of Lincoln
from 1092 until its transference to Peterborough in 1837. In 1291 it
comprised the deaneries of Akeley, Leicester (now Christianity),
Framland, Gartree, Goscote, Guthlaxton and Sparkenhoe. The deaneries
remained unaltered until 1865. Since 1894 they have been as follows:
East, South and West Akeley, Christianity, Framland (3 portions),
Sparkenhoe (2 portions), Gartree (3 portions), Goscote (2 portions),
Guthlaxton (3 portions).
Among the earliest historical events connected with the county were the
siege and capture of Leicester by Henry II. in 1173 on the rebellion of
the earl of Leicester; the surrender of Leicester to Prince Edward in
1264; and the parliament held at Leicester in 1414. During the Wars of
the Roses Leicester was a great Lancastrian stronghold. In 1485 the
battle of Bosworth was fought in the county. In the Civil War of the
17th century the greater part of the county favoured the parliament,
though the mayor and some members of the corporation of Leicester sided
with the king, and in 1642 the citizens of Leicester on a summons from
Prince Rupert lent Charles £500. In 1645 Leicester was twice captured by
the Royalist forces.
Before the Conquest large estates in Leicestershire were held by Earls
Ralf, Morcar, Waltheof and Harold, but the Domesday Survey of 1086
reveals an almost total displacement of English by Norman landholders,
only a few estates being retained by Englishmen as under-tenants. The
first lay-tenant mentioned in the survey is Robert, count of Meulan,
ancestor of the Beaumont family and afterwards earl of Leicester, to
whose fief was afterwards annexed the vast holding of Hugh de
Grantmesnil, lord high steward of England. Robert de Toeni, another
Domesday tenant, founded Belvoir Castle and Priory. The fief of Robert
de Buci was bestowed on Richard Basset, founder of Laund Abbey, in the
reign of Henry I. Loughborough was an ancient seat of the Despenser
family, and Brookesby was the seat of the Villiers and the birthplace of
George Villiers, the famous duke of Buckingham. Melton Mowbray was named
from its former lords, the Mowbrays, descendants of Nigel de Albini, the
founder of Axholme Priory. Lady Jane Grey was born at Bradgate near
Leicester, and Bishop Latimer was born at Thurcaston.
The woollen industry flourished in Leicestershire in Norman times, and
in 1343 Leicestershire wool was rated at a higher value than that of
most other counties. Coal was worked at Coleorton in the early 15th
century and at Measham in the 17th century. The famous blue slate of
Swithland has been quarried from time immemorial, and the limestone
quarry at Barrow-on-Soar is also of very ancient repute, the monks of
the abbey of St Mary de Pré formerly enjoying the tithe of its produce.
The staple manufacture of the county, that of hosiery, originated in the
17th century, the chief centres being Leicester, Hinckley and
Loughborough, and before the development of steam-driven frames in the
19th century hand framework knitting of hose and gloves was carried on
in about a hundred villages. Wool-carding was also an extensive industry
before 1840.
In 1290 Leicestershire returned two members to parliament, and in 1295
Leicester was also represented by two members. Under the Reform Act of
1832 the county returned four members in two divisions until the
Redistribution of Seats Act of 1885, under which it returned four
members in four divisions.
_Antiquities._--Remains of monastic foundations are slight, though
there were a considerable number of these. There are traces of
Leicester Abbey and of Gracedieu near Coalville, while at Ulverscroft
in Charnwood, where there was an Augustinian priory of the 12th
century, there are fine Decorated remains, including a tower. The most
noteworthy churches are found in the towns, as at Ashby-de-la-Zouch,
Hinckley, Leicester, Loughborough, Lutterworth, Market Bosworth,
Market Harborough, and Melton Mowbray (qq.v.). The principal old
castle is that of Ashby-de-la-Zouch, while at Kirby Muxloe there is a
picturesque fortified mansion of Tudor date. There are several good
Elizabethan mansions, as that at Laund in the E. of the county. Among
modern mansions that of the dukes of Rutland, Belvoir Castle in the
extreme N.E., is a massive mansion of the early 19th century, finely
placed on the summit of a hill.
See _Victoria County History, Leicestershire_; W. Burton, _Description
of Leicestershire_ (London, 1622; 2nd ed., Lynn, 1777); John Nicholls,
_History and Antiquities of The County of Leicester_ (4 vols., London,
1795-1815); John Curtis, _A Topographical History of the County of
Leicester_ (Ashby-de-la-Zouch, 1831).
LEIDEN or LEYDEN, a city in the province of South Holland, the kingdom
of the Netherlands, on the Old Rhine, and a junction station 18 m. by
rail S.S.W. of Haarlem. It is connected by steam tramway with Haarlem
and The Hague respectively, and with the seaside resorts of Katwyk and
Noordwyk. There is also regular steamboat connexion with Katwyk,
Noordwyk, Amsterdam and Gouda. The population of Leiden which, it is
estimated, reached 100,000 in 1640, had sunk to 30,000 between 1796 and
1811, and in 1904 was 56,044. The two branches of the Rhine which enter
Leiden on the east unite in the centre of the town, which is further
intersected by numerous small and sombre canals, with tree-bordered
quays and old houses. On the south side of the town pleasant gardens
extend along the old Singel, or outer canal, and there is a large open
space, the Van der Werf Park, named after the burgomaster, Pieter
Andriaanszoon van der Werf, who defended the town against the Spaniards
in 1574. This open space was formed by the accidental explosion of a
powdership in 1807, hundreds of houses being demolished, including that
of the Elzevir family of printers. At the junction of the two arms of
the Rhine stands the old castle (De Burcht), a circular tower built on
an earthen mound. Its origin is unknown, but some connect it with Roman
days and others with the Saxon Hengist. Of Leiden's old gateways only
two--both dating from the end of the 17th century--are standing. Of the
numerous churches the chief are the Hooglandsche Kerk, or the church of
St Pancras, built in the 15th century and restored in 1885-1902,
containing the monument of Pieter Andriaanszoon van der Werf, and the
Pieterskerk (1315) with monuments to Scaliger, Boerhaave and other
famous scholars. The most interesting buildings are the town hall
(Stadhuis), a fine example of 16th-century Dutch building; the
Gemeenlandshuis van Rynland (1596, restored 1878); the weight-house
built by Pieter Post (1658); the former court-house, now a military
storehouse; and the ancient gymnasium (1599) and the so-called city
timber-house (Stads Timmerhuis) (1612), both built by Lieven de Key (c.
1560-1627).
In spite of a certain industrial activity and the periodical bustle of
its cattle and dairy markets, Leiden remains essentially an academic
city. The university is a flourishing institution. It was founded by
William of Orange in 1575 as a reward for the heroic defence of the
previous year, the tradition being that the citizens were offered the
choice between a university and a certain exemption from taxes.
Originally located in the convent of St Barbara, the university was
removed in 1581 to the convent of the White Nuns, the site of which it
still occupies, though that building was destroyed in 1616. The presence
within half a century of the date of its foundation of such scholars as
Justus Lipsius, Joseph Scaliger, Francis Gomarus, Hugo Grotius, Jacobus
Arminius, Daniel Heinsius and Guardas Johannes Vossius at once raised
Leiden university to the highest European fame, a position which the
learning and reputation of Jacobus Gronovius, Hermann Boerhaave,
Tiberius Hemsterhuis and David Ruhnken, among others, enabled it to
maintain down to the end of the 18th century. The portraits of many
famous professors since the earliest days hang in the university _aula_,
one of the most memorable places, as Niebuhr called it, in the history
of science. The university library contains upwards of 190,000 volumes
and 6000 MSS. and pamphlet portfolios, and is very rich in Oriental and
Greek MSS. and old Dutch travels. Among the institutions connected with
the university are the national institution for East Indian languages,
ethnology and geography; the fine botanical gardens, founded in 1587;
the observatory (1860); the natural history museum, with a very complete
anatomical cabinet; the museum of antiquities (Museum van Oudheden),
with specially valuable Egyptian and Indian departments; a museum of
Dutch antiquities from the earliest times; and three ethnographical
museums, of which the nucleus was P. F. von Siebold's Japanese
collections. The anatomical and pathological laboratories of the
university are modern, and the museums of geology and mineralogy have
been restored. The university has now five faculties, of which those of
law and medicine are the most celebrated, and is attended by about 1200
students.
The municipal museum, founded in 1869 and located in the old cloth-hall
(Laeckenhalle) (1640), contains a varied collection of antiquities
connected with Leiden, as well as some paintings including works by the
elder van Swanenburgh, Cornelius Engelbrechtszoon, Lucas van Leiden and
Jan Steen, who were all natives of Leiden. Jan van Goyen, Gabriel Metsu,
Gerard Dou and Rembrandt were also natives of this town. There is also a
small collection of paintings in the Meermansburg. The Thysian library
occupies an old Renaissance building of the year 1655, and is especially
rich in legal works and native chronicles. Noteworthy also are the
collection of the Society of Dutch Literature (1766); the collections of
casts and of engravings; the seamen's training school; the Remonstrant
seminary, transferred hither from Amsterdam in 1873; the two hospitals
(one of which is private); the house of correction; and the court-house.
Leiden is an ancient town, although it is not the _Lugdunum Batavorum_
of the Romans. Its early name was Leithen, and it was governed until
1420 by burgraves, the representatives of the courts of Holland. The
most celebrated event in its history is its siege by the Spaniards in
1574. Besieged from May until October, it was at length relieved by
the cutting of the dikes, thus enabling ships to carry provisions to
the inhabitants of the flooded town. The weaving establishments
(mainly broadcloth) of Leiden at the close of the 15th century were
very important, and after the expulsion of the Spaniards Leiden cloth,
Leiden baize and Leiden camlet were familiar terms. These industries
afterwards declined, and in the beginning of the 19th century the
baize manufacture was altogether given up. Linen and woollen
manufactures are now the most important industries, while there is a
considerable transit trade in butter and cheese.
Katwyk, or Katwijk, 6 m. N.W. of Leiden, is a popular seaside resort
and fishing village. Close by are the great locks constructed in 1807
by the engineer, F. W. Conrad (d. 1808), through which the Rhine (here
called the Katwyk canal) is admitted into the sea at low tide. The
shore and the entrance to the canal are strengthened by huge dikes. In
1520 an ancient Roman camp known as the Brittenburg was discovered
here. It was square in shape, each side measuring 82 yds., and the
remains stood about 10 ft. high. By the middle of the 18th century it
had been destroyed and covered by the sea.
See P. J. Blok, _Eine hollandsche stad in de middeleeuwen_ (The Hague,
1883); and for the siege see J. L. Motley, _The Rise of the Dutch
Republic_ (1896).
LEIDY, JOSEPH (1823-1891), American naturalist and palaeontologist, was
born in Philadelphia on the 9th of September 1823. He studied mineralogy
and botany without an instructor, and graduated in medicine at the
university of Pennsylvania in 1844. Continuing his work in anatomy and
physiology, he visited Europe in 1848, but both before and after this
period of foreign study lectured and taught in American medical
colleges. In 1853 he was appointed professor of anatomy in the
university of Pennsylvania, paying special attention to comparative
anatomy. In 1884 he promoted the establishment in the same institution
of the department of biology, of which he became director, and meanwhile
taught natural history in Swarthmore College, near Philadelphia. His
papers on biology and palaeontology were very numerous, covering both
fauna and flora, and ranging from microscopic forms of animal life to
the higher vertebrates. He wrote also occasional papers on minerals. He
was an active member of the Boston Society of Natural History and of the
American Philosophical Society; and was the recipient of various
American and foreign degrees and honours. His _Cretaceous Reptiles of
the United States_ (1865) and _Contributions to the Extinct Vertebrate
Fauna of the Western Territories_ (1873) were the most important of his
larger works; the best known and most widely circulated was an
_Elementary Treatise on Human Anatomy_ (1860, afterwards revised in
new editions). He died in Philadelphia on the 30th of April 1891.
See Memoir and portrait in _Amer. Geologist_, vol. ix. (Jan. 1892) and
Bibliography in vol. viii. (Nov. 1891) and Memoir by H. C. Chapman in
_Proc. Acad. Nat. Sc._ (Philadelphia, 1891), p. 342.
LEIF ERICSSON [LEIFR EIRIKSSON] (fl. 999-1000), Scandinavian explorer,
of Icelandic family, the first known European discoverer of "Vinland,"
"Vineland" or "Wineland, the Good," in North America. He was a son of
Eric the Red (Eirikr hinn raudi Thorvaldsson), the founder of the
earliest Scandinavian settlements--from Iceland--in Greenland (985). In
999 he went from Greenland to the court of King Olaf Tryggvason in
Norway, stopping in the Hebrides on the way. On his departure from
Norway in 1000, the king commissioned him to proclaim Christianity in
Greenland. As on his outward voyage, Leif was again driven far out of
his course by contrary weather--this time to lands (in America) "of
which he had previously had no knowledge," where "self-sown" wheat grew,
and vines, and "mösur" (maple?) wood. Leif took specimens of all these,
and sailing away came home safely to his father's home in Brattahlid on
Ericsfiord in Greenland. On his voyage from this Vineland to Greenland,
Leif rescued some shipwrecked men, and from this, and his discoveries,
gained his name of "The Lucky" (_hinn heppni_). On the subsequent
expedition of Thorfinn Karlsefni for the further exploration and
settlement of the Far Western vine-country, it is recorded that certain
Gaels, incredibly fleet of foot, who had been given to Leif by Olaf
Tryggvason, and whom Leif had offered to Thorfinn, were put on shore to
scout.
Such is the account of the _Saga of Eric the Red_, supported by a number
of briefer references in early Icelandic and other literature. The less
trustworthy history of the _Flatey Book_ makes Biarni Heriulfsson in 985
discover Helluland (Labrador?) as well as other western lands which he
does not explore, not even permitting his men to land; while Leif
Ericsson follows up Biarni's discoveries, begins the exploration of
Helluland, Markland and Vinland, and realizes some of the charms of the
last named, where he winters. But this secondary authority (the _Flatey
Book_ narrative), which till lately formed the basis of all general
knowledge as to Vinland, abounds in contradictions and difficulties from
which _Eric the Red Saga_ is comparatively free. Thus (in _Flatey_) the
grapes of Vinland are found in winter and gathered in spring; the man
who first finds them, Leif's foster-father Tyrker the German, gets drunk
from eating the fruit; and the vines themselves are spoken of as big
trees affording timber. Looking at the record in _Eric the Red Saga_, it
would seem probable that Leif's Vinland answers to some part of southern
Nova Scotia. See VINLAND. (As to Helluland and Markland see THORFINN
KARLSEFNI.)
The MSS. of _Eric the Red's Saga_ are Nos. 544 and 557 of the
Arne-Magnaean collection in Copenhagen; the MS. of the _Flatey Book_,
so called because it was long the property of a family living on Flat
Island in Broad Firth (Flatey in Breiðafjord [B-eidafj-d]), on the
north-west coast of Iceland, was presented in 1662 to the Royal
Library of Denmark, of which it is still one of the chief treasures.
These leading narratives are supplemented by Adam of Bremen, _Gesta
Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum_, chap. 38 (247 Lappenberg) of
book iv. (often separately entitled _Descriptio Insularum Aquilonis_;
Adam's is the earliest extant reference to Vinland, c. 1070): we have
also notices of Vinland in the _Libellus Islandorum_ of Ari Frodi (c.
1120), the oldest Icelandic historian; in the _Kristni Saga_ (repeated
in Snorri Sturlason's _Heimskringla_); in _Eyrbyggia Saga_ (c. 1250);
in _Gretti Saga_ (c. 1290); and in an Icelandic chorography of the
14th century, or earlier, partly derived from the famous traveller
Abbot Nicolas of Thing-eyrar ([+]1159).
See Gustav Storm, "Studies on the Vineland Voyages," in the _Mémoires
de la Société royale des Antiquaires du Nord_ (Copenhagen, 1888); and
_Eiriks Saga Raudha_ (Copenhagen, 1891); A. M. Reeves, _Finding of
Wineland the Good: the History of the Icelandic Discovery of America_
(London, 1890); in this work the original authorities are given in
full, with photographic facsimiles, English translations and adequate
commentary; Rafn's _Antiquitates Americanae_ (Copenhagen, 1837)
contains all the sources, but the editor's personal views have in many
cases failed to satisfy criticism; the _Flatey_ text is printed also
by Vigfusson and Unger in _Flateyjar-bok_, vol. i. (Christiania,
1860). There are also translations of _Flatey_ and _Red Eric Saga_ in
Beamish, _Discovery of North America, by the Northmen_ (Lond., 1841);
E. F. Slafter, _Voyages of the Northmen_ (Boston, 1877); B. F. de
Costa, _Pre-Columbian Discovery of America by the Northmen_ (Albany,
1901); and _Original Narratives of Early American History; The
Northmen, Columbus and Cabot_, pp. 1-66 (New York, 1906). See also C.
Raymond Beazley, _Dawn of Modern Geography_ ii. 48-83 (London, 1901);
Josef Fischer, _Die Entdeckungen der Normannen in Amerika_ (Freiburg
i. B., 1902); John Fiske, _Discovery of America_, vol. i.; Juul
Dieserud, "Norse Discoveries in America," in the _Bulletin of the
American Geographical Society_ (February, 1901); G. Vigfusson,
_Origines Islandicae_ (1905), which strangely expresses a preference
for the _Flatey Book_ "account of the first sighting of the American
continent" by the Norsemen. (C. R. B.)
LEIGH, EDWARD (1602-1671), English Puritan and theologian, was born at
Shawell, Leicestershire. He was educated at Magdalen Hall, Oxford, from
1616, and subsequently became a member of the Middle Temple. In 1636 he
entered parliament as member for Stafford, and during the Civil War held
a colonelcy in the parliamentary army. He has sometimes been confounded
with John Ley (1583-1662), and so represented as having sat in the
Westminster Assembly. The public career of Leigh terminated with his
expulsion from parliament with the rest of the Presbyterian party in
1648. From an early age he had studied theology and produced numerous
compilations, the most important being the _Critica Sacra, containing
Observations on all the Radices of the Hebrew Words of the Old and the
Greek of the New Testament_ (1639-1644; new ed., with supplement, 1662),
for which the author received the thanks of the Westminster Assembly, to
whom it was dedicated. His other works include _Select and Choice
Observations concerning the First Twelve Caesars_ (1635); _A Treatise of
Divinity_ (1646-1651); _Annotations upon the New Testament_ (1650), of
which a Latin translation by Arnold was published at Leipzig in 1732; _A
Body of Divinity_ (1654); _A Treatise of Religion and Learning_ (1656);
_Annotations of the Five Poetical Books of the Old Testament_ (1657).
Leigh died in Staffordshire in June 1671.
LEIGH, a market town and municipal borough in the Leigh parliamentary
division of Lancashire, England, 11 m. W. by N. from Manchester by the
London & North-Western railway. Pop. (1891) 30,882, (1901) 40,001. The
ancient parish church of St Mary the Virgin was, with the exception of
the tower, rebuilt in 1873 in the Perpendicular style. The grammar
school, the date of whose foundation is unknown, received its principal
endowments in 1655, 1662 and 1681. The staple manufactures are silk and
cotton; there are also glass works, foundries, breweries, and flour
mills, with extensive collieries. Though the neighbourhood is
principally an industrial district, several fine old houses are left
near Leigh. The town was incorporated in 1899, and the corporation
consists of a mayor, 8 aldermen and 24 councillors. Area, 6358 acres.
LEIGHTON, FREDERICK LEIGHTON, BARON (1830-1896), English painter and
sculptor, the son of a physician, was born at Scarborough on the 3rd of
December 1830. His grandfather, Sir James Leighton, also a physician, was
long resident at the court of St Petersburg. Frederick Leighton was taken
abroad at a very early age. In 1840 he learnt drawing at Rome under
Signor Meli. The family moved to Dresden and Berlin, where he attended
classes at the Academy. In 1843 he was sent to school at Frankfort, and
in the winter of 1844 accompanied his family to Florence, where his
future career as an artist was decided. There he studied under Bezzuoli
and Segnolini at the Accademia delle Belle Arti, and attended anatomy
classes under Zanetti; but he soon returned to complete his general
education at Frankfort, receiving no further direct instruction in art
for five years. He went to Brussels in 1848, where he met Wiertz and
Gallait, and painted some pictures, including "Cimabue finding Giotto,"
and a portrait of himself. In 1849 he studied for a few months in Paris,
where he copied Titian and Correggio in the Louvre, and then returned to
Frankfort, where he settled down to serious art work under Edward
Steinle, whose pupil he declared he was "in the fullest sense of the
term." Though his artistic training was mainly German, and his master
belonged to the same school as Cornelius and Overbeck, he loved Italian
art and Italy and the first picture by which he became known to the
British public was "Cimabue's Madonna carried in Procession through the
Streets of Florence," which appeared at the Royal Academy in 1855. At
this time the works of the Pre-Raphaelites almost absorbed public
interest in art--it was the year of Holman Hunt's "Light of the World,"
and the "Rescue," by Millais. Yet Leighton's picture, painted in quite a
different style, created a sensation, and was purchased by Queen
Victoria. Although, since his infancy, he had only visited England once
(in 1851, when he came to see the Great Exhibition), he was not quite
unknown in the cultured and artistic world of London, as he had made many
friends during a residence in Rome of some two years or more after he
left Frankfort in 1852. Amongst these were Giovanni Costa, Robert
Browning, James Knowles, George Mason and Sir Edward Poynter, then a
youth, whom he allowed to work in his studio. He also met Thackeray, who
wrote from Rome to the young Millais: "Here is a versatile young dog, who
will run you close for the presidentship one of these days." During these
years he painted several Florentine subjects--"Tybalt and Romeo," "The
Death of Brunelleschi," a cartoon of "The Pest in Florence according to
Boccaccio," and "The Reconciliation of the Montagues and the Capulets."
He now turned his attention to themes of classic legend, which at first
he treated in a "Romantic spirit." His next picture, exhibited in 1856,
was "The Triumph of Music: Orpheus by the Power of his Art redeems his
Wife from Hades." It was not a success, and he did not again exhibit till
1858, when he sent a little picture of "The Fisherman and the Syren" to
the Royal Academy, and "Samson and Delilah" to the Society of British
Artists in Suffolk Street. In 1858 he visited London and made the
acquaintance of the leading Pre-Raphaelites--Rossetti, Holman Hunt and
Millais. In the spring of 1859 he was at Capri, always a favourite resort
of his, and made many studies from nature, including a very famous
drawing of a lemon tree. It was not till 1860 that he settled in London,
when he took up his quarters at 2 Orme Square, Bayswater, where he stayed
till, in 1860, he moved to his celebrated house in Holland Park Road,
with its Arab hall decorated with Damascus tiles. There he lived till his
death. He now began to fulfil the promise of his "Cimabue," and by such
pictures as "Paolo e Francesca," "The Star of Bethlehem," "Jezebel and
Ahab taking Possession of Naboth's Vineyard," "Michael Angelo musing over
his Dying Servant," "A Girl feeding Peacocks," and "The Odalisque," all
exhibited in 1861-1863, rose rapidly to the head of his profession. The
two latter pictures were marked by the rhythm of line and luxury of
colour which are among the most constant attributes of his art, and may
be regarded as his first dreams of Oriental beauty, with which he
afterwards showed so great a sympathy. In 1864 he exhibited "Dante in
Exile" (the greatest of his Italian pictures), "Orpheus and Eurydice" and
"Golden Hours." In the winter of the same year he was elected an
Associate of the Royal Academy. After this the main effort of his life
was to realize visions of beauty suggested by classic myth and history.
If we add to pictures of this class a few Scriptural subjects, a few
Oriental dreams, one or two of tender sentiment like "Wedded" (one of the
most popular of his pictures, and well known by not only an engraving,
but a statuette modelled by an Italian sculptor), a number of studies of
very various types of female beauty, "Teresina," "Biondina," "Bianca,"
"Moretta," &c., and an occasional portrait, we shall nearly exhaust the
two classes into which Lord Leighton's work (as a painter) can be
divided.
Amongst the finest of his classical pictures were--"Syracusan Bride
leading Wild Beasts in Procession to the Temple of Diana" (1866), "Venus
disrobing for the Bath" (1867), "Electra at the Tomb of Agamemnon," and
"Helios and Rhodos" (1869), "Hercules wrestling with Death for the Body
of Alcestis" (1871), "Clytemnestra" (1874), "The Daphnephoria" (1876),
"Nausicaa" (1878), "An Idyll" (1881), two lovers under a spreading oak
listening to the piping of a shepherd and gazing on the rich plain
below; "Phryne" (1882), a nude figure standing in the sun; "Cymon and
Iphigenia" (1884), "Captive Andromache" (1888), now in the Manchester
Art Gallery; with the "Last Watch of Hero" (1887), "The Bath of Psyche"
(1890), now in the Chantrey Bequest collection; "The Garden of the
Hesperides" (1892), "Perseus and Andromeda" and "The Return of
Persephone," now in the Leeds Gallery (1891); and "Clytie," his last
work (1896). All these pictures are characterized by nobility of
conception, by almost perfect draughtsmanship, by colour which, if not
of the highest quality, is always original, choice and effective. They
often reach distinction and dignity of attitude and gesture, and
occasionally, as in the "Hercules and Death," the "Electra" and the
"Clytemnestra," a noble intensity of feeling. Perhaps, amidst the great
variety of qualities which they possess, none is more universal and more
characteristic than a rich elegance, combined with an almost fastidious
selection of beautiful forms. It is the super-eminence of these
qualities, associated with great decorative skill, that make the
splendid pageant of the "Daphnephoria" the most perfect expression of
his individual genius. Here we have his composition, his colour, his
sense of the joy and movement of life, his love of art and nature at
their purest and most spontaneous, and the result is a work without a
rival of its kind in the British School.
Leighton was one of the most thorough draughtsmen of his day. His
sketches and studies for his pictures are numerous and very highly
esteemed. They contain the essence of his conceptions, and much of their
spiritual beauty and subtlety of expression was often lost in the
elaboration of the finished picture. He seldom succeeded in retaining
the freshness of his first idea more completely than in his last
picture--"Clytie"--which was left unfinished on his easel. He rarely
painted sacred subjects. The most beautiful of his few pictures of this
kind was the "David musing on the Housetop" (1865). Others were "Elijah
in the Wilderness" (1879), "Elisha raising the Son of the Shunammite"
(1881) and a design intended for the decoration of the dome of St Paul's
Cathedral, "And the Sea gave up the Dead which were in it" (1892), now
in the Tate Gallery, and the terrible "Rizpah" of 1893. His diploma
picture was "St Jerome," exhibited in 1869. Besides these pictures of
sacred subjects, he made some designs for Dalziel's Bible, which for
force of imagination excel the paintings. The finest of these are "Cain
and Abel," and "Samson with the Gates of Gaza."
Not so easily to be classed, but among the most individual and beautiful
of his pictures, are a few of which the motive was purely aesthetic.
Amongst these may specially be noted "The Summer Moon," two Greek girls
sleeping on a marble bench, and "The Music Lesson," in which a lovely
little girl is seated on her lovely young mother's lap learning to play
the lute. With these, as a work produced without any literary
suggestion, though very different in feeling, may be associated the
"Eastern Slinger scaring Birds in the Harvest-time: Moon-rise" (1875), a
nude figure standing on a raised platform in a field of wheat.
Leighton also painted a few portraits, including those of Signor Costa,
the Italian landscape painter, Mr F. P. Cockerell, Mrs Sutherland Orr
(his sister), Amy, Lady Coleridge, Mrs Stephen Ralli and (the finest of
all) Sir Richard Burton, the traveller and Eastern scholar, which was
exhibited in 1876 and is now in the National Portrait Gallery.
Like other painters of the day, notably G. F. Watts, Lord Leighton
executed a few pieces of sculpture. His "Athlete struggling with a
Python" was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1877, and was purchased
for the Chantrey Bequest collection. Another statue, "The Sluggard," of
equal merit, was exhibited in 1886; and a charming statuette of a nude
figure of a girl looking over her shoulder at a frog, called "Needless
Alarms," was completed in the same year, and presented by the artist to
Sir John Millais in acknowledgment of the gift by the latter of his
picture, "Shelling Peas." He made the beautiful design for the reverse
of the Jubilee Medal of 1887. It was also his habit to make sketch
models in wax for the figures in his pictures, many of which are in the
possession of the Royal Academy. As an illustrator in black and white he
also deserves to be remembered, especially for the cuts to Dalziel's
Bible, already mentioned, and his illustrations to George Eliot's
_Romola_, which appeared in the _Cornhill Magazine_. The latter are full
of the spirit of Florence and the Florentines, and show a keen sense of
humour, elsewhere excluded from his work. Of his decorative paintings,
the best known are the elegant compositions (in spirit fresco) on the
walls of the Victoria and Albert Museum, representing "The Industrial
Arts of War and Peace." There, also, is the refined and spirited figure
of "Cimabue" in mosaic. In Lyndhurst church are mural decorations to the
memory of Mr Pepys Cockerell, illustrating "The Parable of the Wise and
Foolish Virgins."
Leighton's life was throughout marked by distinction, artistic and
social. Though not tall, he had a fine presence and manners, at once
genial and courtly. He was welcomed in all societies, from the palace to
the studio. He spoke German, Italian and French, as well as English. He
had much taste and love for music, and considerable gifts as an orator
of a florid type. His Presidential Discourses (published, London, 1896)
were full of elegance and culture. For seven years (1876-1883) he
commanded the 20th Middlesex (Artists) Rifle Volunteers, retiring with
the rank of honorary colonel, and subsequently receiving the Volunteer
Decoration. Yet no social attractions or successes diverted him from his
devotion to his profession, the welfare of his brethren in art or of the
Royal Academy. As president he was punctilious in the discharge of his
duties, ready to give help and encouragement to artists young and old,
and his tenure of the office was marked by some wise and liberal
reforms. He frequently went abroad, generally to Italy, where he was
well known and appreciated. He visited Spain in 1866, Egypt in 1868,
when he went up the Nile with Ferdinand de Lesseps in a steamer lent by
the Khedive. He was at Damascus for a short time in 1873. It was his
custom on all these trips to make little lively sketches of landscape
and buildings. These fresh little flowers of his leisure used to
decorate the walls of his studio, and at the sale of its contents after
his death realized considerable prices. It was when he was in the full
tide of his popularity and success, and apparently in the full tide of
his personal vigour also, that he was struck with _angina pectoris_. For
a long time he struggled bravely with this cruel disease, never omitting
except from absolute necessity any of his official duties except during
a brief period of rest abroad, which failed to produce the desired
effect. His death occurred on the 25th of January 1896.
Leighton was elected an Academician in 1868, and succeeded Sir Francis
Grant as President in 1878, when he was knighted. He was created a
baronet in 1886, and was raised to the peerage in 1896, a few days
before his death. He held honorary degrees at the universities of
Oxford, Cambridge, Dublin, Edinburgh and Durham, was an Associate of the
Institute of France; a Commander of the Legion of Honour, and of the
Order of Leopold. He was a Knight of the Coburg Order, "Dem Verdienste,"
and of the Prussian Order, "Pour le Mérite," and a member of at least
ten foreign Academies. In 1859 he won a medal of the second class at the
Paris Salon, and at the Exposition Universelle of 1889 a gold medal. As
a sculptor he was awarded a medal of the first class in 1878 and the
Grand Prix in 1889.
See _Art Annual_ (Mrs A. Lang), 1884; Royal Academy Catalogue, Winter
Exhibition, 1897; National Gallery of British Art Catalogue; C.
Monkhouse, _British Contemporary Artists_ (London, 1899); Ernest Rhys,
_Frederick, Lord Leighton_ (London, 1898, 1900). (C. Mo.)
LEIGHTON, ROBERT (1611-1684), archbishop of Glasgow, was born, probably
in London (others say at Ulishaven, Forfarshire), in 1611, the eldest
son of Dr Alexander Leighton, the author of _Zion's Plea against the
Prelacie_, whose terrible sufferings for having dared to question the
divine right of Episcopacy, under the persecution of Laud, form one of
the most disgraceful incidents of the reign of Charles I. Dr Leighton is
said to have been of the old family of Ulishaven in Forfarshire. From
his earliest childhood, according to Burnet, Robert Leighton was
distinguished for his saintly disposition. In his sixteenth year (1627)
he was sent to the university of Edinburgh, where, after studying with
distinguished success for four years, he took the degree of M.A. in
1631. His father then sent him to travel abroad, and he is understood to
have spent several years in France, where he acquired a complete mastery
of the French language. While there he passed a good deal of time with
relatives at Douai who had become Roman Catholics, and with whom he kept
up a correspondence for many years afterwards. Either at this time or on
some subsequent visit he had also a good deal of intercourse with
members of the Jansenist party. This intercourse contributed to the
charity towards those who differed from him in religious opinion, which
ever afterwards formed a feature in his character. The exact period of
his return to Scotland has not been ascertained; but in 1641 he was
ordained Presbyterian minister of Newbattle in Midlothian. In 1652 he
resigned his charge and went to reside in Edinburgh. What led him to
take this step does not distinctly appear. The account given is that he
had little sympathy with the fiery zeal of his brother clergymen on
certain political questions, and that this led to severe censures on
their part.
Early in 1653 he was appointed principal of the university of Edinburgh,
and primarius professor of divinity. In this post he continued for seven
or eight years. A considerable number of his Latin prelections and other
addresses (published after his death) are remarkable for the purity and
elegance of their Latinity, and their subdued and meditative eloquence.
They are valuable instructions in the art of living a holy life rather
than a body of scientific divinity. Throughout, however, they bear the
marks of a deeply learned and accomplished mind, saturated with both
classical and patristic reading, and like all his works they breathe the
spirit of one who lived very much above the world. His mental temper was
too unlike the temper of his time to secure success as a teacher.
In 1661, when Charles II. had resolved to force Episcopacy once more
upon Scotland, he fixed upon Leighton for one of his bishops (see
SCOTLAND, CHURCH OF). Leighton, living very much out of the world, and
being somewhat deficient in what may be called the political sense, was
too open to the persuasions used to induce him to enter a sphere for
which he instinctively felt he was ill qualified. The Episcopacy which
he contemplated was that modified form which had been suggested by
Archbishop Ussher, and to which Baxter and many of the best of the
English Nonconformists would have readily given their adherence. It is
significant that he always refused to be addressed as "my lord," and it
is stated that when dining with his clergy on one occasion he wished to
seat himself at the foot of the table.
Leighton soon began to discover the sort of men with whom he was to be
associated in the episcopate. He travelled with them in the same coach
from London towards Scotland, but having become, as he told Burnet, very
weary of their company (as he doubted not they were of his), and having
found that they intended to make a kind of triumphal entrance into
Edinburgh, he left them at Morpeth and retired to the earl of Lothian's
at Newbattle. He very soon lost all hope of being able to build up the
church by the means which the government had set on foot, and his work,
as he confessed to Burnet, "seemed to him a fighting against God." He
did, however, what he could, governing his diocese (that of Dunblane)
with the utmost mildness, as far as he could, preventing the persecuting
measures in active operation elsewhere, and endeavouring to persuade the
Presbyterian clergy to come to an accommodation with their Episcopal
brethren. After a hopeless struggle of three or four years to induce the
government to put a stop to their fierce persecution of the Covenanters,
he determined to resign his bishopric, and went up to London in 1665 for
this purpose. He so far worked upon the mind of Charles that he promised
to enforce the adoption of milder measures, but it does not appear that
any material improvement took place. In 1669 Leighton again went to
London and made fresh representations on the subject, but little result
followed. The slight disposition, however, shown by the government to
accommodate matters appears to have inspired Leighton with so much hope
that in the following year he agreed, though with a good deal of
hesitation, to accept the archbishopric of Glasgow. In this higher
sphere he redoubled his efforts with the Presbyterians to bring about
some degree of conciliation with Episcopacy, but the only result was to
embroil himself with the hot-headed Episcopal party as well as with the
Presbyterians. In utter despair, therefore, of being able to be of any
further service to the cause of religion, he resigned the archbishopric
in 1674 and retired to the house of his widowed sister, Mrs Lightmaker,
at Broadhurst in Sussex. Here he spent the remaining ten years, probably
the happiest of his life, and died suddenly on a visit to London in
1684.
It is difficult to form a just or at least a full estimate of
Leighton's character. He stands almost alone in his age. In some
respects he was immeasurably superior both in intellect and in piety
to most of the Scottish ecclesiastics of his time; and yet he seems to
have had almost no influence in moulding the characters or conduct of
his contemporaries. So intense was his absorption in the love of God
that little room seems to have been left in his heart for human
sympathy or affection. Can it be that there was after all something to
repel in his outward manner? Burnet tells us that he had never seen
him laugh, and very seldom even smile. In other respects, too, he
gives the impression of standing aloof from human interests and ties.
It may go for little that he never married, but it was surely a
curious idiosyncrasy that he habitually cherished the wish (which was
granted him) that he might die in an inn. In fact, holy meditation
seems to have been the one absorbing interest of his life. At Dunblane
tradition preserved the memory of "the good bishop," silent and
companionless, pacing up and down the sloping walk by the river's bank
under the beautiful west window of his cathedral. And from a letter of
the earl of Lothian to his countess it appears that, whatever other
reasons Leighton might have had for resigning his charge at Newbattle,
the main object which he had in view was to be left to his own
thoughts. It is therefore not very wonderful that he was completely
misjudged and even disliked both by the Presbyterian and by the
Episcopal party.
It was characteristic of him that he could never be made to understand
that anything which he wrote possessed the smallest value. None of his
works were published by himself, and it is stated that he left orders
that all his MSS. should be destroyed after his death. But fortunately
for the world this charge was disregarded. Like all the best writing,
it seems to flow without effort; it is the easy unaffected outcome of
his saintly nature. Throughout, however, it is the language of a
scholar and a man of perfect literary taste; and with all its
spirituality of thought there are no mystical raptures, such as are
often found mingled with the Scottish practical theology of the 17th
century. It was a common reproach against Leighton that he had
leanings towards Roman Catholicism, and perhaps this is so far true
that he had formed himself in some degree upon the model of some of
the saintly persons of that faith, such as Pascal and Thomas à Kempis.
The best account of Leighton's character is that of Bishop Burnet in
_Hist. of his Own Times_ (1723-1734). No perfectly satisfactory
edition of Leighton's works exists. After his death his _Commentary on
Peter_ and several of his other works were published under the
editorship of his friend Dr Fall, and those early editions may be said
to be, with some drawbacks, by far the best. His later editors have
been possessed by the mania of reducing his good archaic and nervous
language to the bald feebleness of modern phraseology. It is
unfortunately impossible to exempt from this criticism even the
edition, in other respects very valuable and meritorious, published
under the superintendence of the Rev. W. West (7 vols., London,
1869-1875); see also volume of selections (with biography) by Dr Blair
of Dunblane (1883), who also contributed "Bibliography of Archbishop
Leighton" to the _British and Foreign Evangelical Review_ (July 1883);
Andrew Lang, _History of Scotland_ (1902). (J. T. Br.; D. Mn.)
LEIGHTON BUZZARD, a market town in the southern parliamentary division
of Bedfordshire, England, 40 m. N.W. of London by the London &
North-Western railway. Pop. of urban district (1901) 6331. It lies in
the flat valley of the Ouzel, a tributary of the Ouse, sheltered to east
and west by low hills. The river here forms the county boundary with
Buckinghamshire. The Grand Junction canal follows its course, and gives
the town extensive water-communications. The church of All Saints is
cruciform, with central tower and spire. It is mainly Early English, and
a fine example of the style; but some of the windows including the nave
clerestory, and the beautiful carved wooden roof, are Perpendicular. The
west door has good early iron-work; and on one of the tower-arch pillars
are some remarkable early carvings of jocular character, one of which
represents a man assaulted by a woman with a ladle. The market cross is
of the 14th century, much restored, having an open arcade supporting a
pinnacle, with flying buttresses. The statues in its niches are modern,
but the originals are placed on the exterior of the town hall. Leighton
has a considerable agricultural trade, and some industry in
straw-plaiting. Across the Ouzel in Buckinghamshire, where Leighton
railway station is situated, is the urban district of Linslade (pop.
2157).
LEININGEN, the name of an old German family, whose lands lay principally
in Alsace and Lorraine. The first count of Leiningen about whom anything
certain is known was a certain Emicho (d. 1117), whose family became
extinct in the male line when Count Frederick, a Minnesinger, died about
1220. Frederick's sister, Liutgarde, married Simon, count of
Saarbrücken, and Frederick, one of their sons, inheriting the lands of
the counts of Leiningen, took their arms and their name. Having
increased its possessions the Leiningen family was divided about 1317
into two branches; the elder of these, whose head was a landgrave, died
out in 1467. On this event its lands fell to a female, the last
landgrave's sister Margaret, wife of Reinhard, lord of Westerburg, and
their descendants were known as the family of Leiningen-Westerburg.
Later this family was divided into two branches, those of
Alt-Leiningen-Westerburg and Neu-Leiningen-Westerburg, both of which are
represented to-day.
Meanwhile the younger branch of the Leiningens, known as the family of
Leiningen-Dagsburg, was flourishing, and in 1560 this was divided into
the lines of Leiningen-Dagsburg-Hartenburg, founded by Count John Philip
(d. 1562), and Leiningen-Dagsburg-Heidesheim or Falkenburg, founded by
Count Emicho (d. 1593). In 1779 the head of the former line was raised
to the rank of a prince of the Empire. In 1801 this family was deprived
of its lands on the left bank of the Rhine by France, but in 1803 it
received ample compensation for these losses. A few years later its
possessions were mediatized, and they are now included mainly in Baden,
but partly in Bavaria and in Hesse. A former head of this family, Prince
Emich Charles, married Maria Louisa Victoria, princess of Saxe-Coburg;
after his death in 1814 the princess married George III.'s son, the duke
of Kent, by whom she became the mother of Queen Victoria. In 1910 the
head of the family was Prince Emich (b. 1866).
The family of Leiningen-Dagsburg-Heidesheim was divided into three
branches, the two senior of which became extinct during the 18th century.
At present it is represented by the counts of Leiningen-Guntersblum and
Leiningen-Heidesheim, called also Leiningen-Billigheim and
Leiningen-Neidenau.
See Brinckmeier, _Genealogische Geschichte des Hauses Leiningen_
(Brunswick, 1890-1891).
LEINSTER, a province of Ireland, occupying the middle and south-eastern
portion of the island, and extending to the left bank of the Shannon. It
includes counties Longford, Westmeath, Meath, Louth, King's County,
Kildare, Dublin, Queen's County, Carlow, Wicklow, Kilkenny and Wexford
(q.v. for topography, &c.). Leinster (_Laighen_) was one of the early
Milesian provinces of Ireland. Meath, the modern county of which is
included in Leinster, was the name of a separate province created in the
2nd century A.D. The kings of Leinster retained their position until
1171, and their descendants maintained independence within a
circumscribed territory as late as the 16th century. In 1170 Richard
Strongbow married Aoife, daughter of the last king Diarmid, and thus
acquired the nominal right to the kingdom of Leinster. Henry II.
confirmed him in powers of jurisdiction equivalent to those of a
palatinate. His daughter Isabel married William Marshal, earl of
Pembroke. Their five daughters shared the territory of Leinster, which
was now divided into five liberties carrying the same extensive
privileges as the undivided territory, namely, Carlow, Kilkenny,
Wexford, Kildare and Leix. The history of Leinster thereafter passes to
the several divisions which were gradually organized into the present
counties.
LEIPZIG, a city of Germany, the second town of the kingdom of Saxony in
size and the first in commercial importance, 70 m. N.W. of Dresden and
111 m. S.W. of Berlin by rail, and 6 m. from the Prussian frontier. It
lies 350 ft. above the sea-level, In a broad and fertile plain, just
above the junction of three small rivers, the Pleisse, the Parthe and
the Elster, which flow in various branches through or round the town and
afterwards under the name of the Elster, discharge themselves into the
Saale. The climate, though not generally unhealthy, may be inclement in
winter and hot in summer.
Leipzig is one of the most enterprising and prosperous of German towns,
and in point of trade and industries ranks among German cities
immediately after Berlin and Hamburg. It possesses the third largest
German university, is the seat of the supreme tribunal of the German
empire and the headquarters of the XIX. (Saxon) army corps, and forms
one of the most prominent literary and musical centres in Europe. Its
general aspect is imposing, owing to the number of new public buildings
erected during the last 20 years of the 19th century. It consists of the
old, or inner city, surrounded by a wide and pleasant promenade laid out
on the site of the old fortifications, and of the very much more
extensive inner and outer suburbs. Many thriving suburban villages, such
as Reudnitz, Volkmarsdorf, Gohlis, Eutritzsch, Plagwitz and Lindenau,
have been incorporated with the city, and with these accretions the
population in 1905 amounted to 502,570. On the north-west the town is
bordered by the fine public park and woods of the Rosenthal, and on the
west by the Johanna Park and by pleasant groves leading along the banks
of the Pleisse.
The old town, with its narrow streets and numerous houses of the 16th
and 17th centuries, with their high-pitched roofs, preserves much of its
quaint medieval aspect. The market square, lying almost in its centre,
is of great interest. Upon it the four main business streets, the
Grimmaische-, the Peters-, the Hain- and the Katharinen-strassen,
converge, and its north side is occupied by the beautiful old Rathaus, a
Gothic edifice built by the burgomaster Hieronymus Lotter in 1556, and
containing life-size portraits of the Saxon rulers. Superseded by the
new Rathaus, it has been restored and accommodates a municipal museum.
Behind the market square and the main street lie a labyrinth of narrow
streets interconnected by covered courtyards and alleys, with extensive
warehouses and cellars. The whole, in the time of the great fairs, when
every available place is packed with merchandise and thronged with a
motley crowd, presents the semblance of an oriental bazaar. Close to the
old Rathaus is Auerbach's _Hof_, built about 1530 and interesting as
being immortalized in Goethe's _Faust_. It has a curious old wine vault
(Keller) which contains a series of mural paintings of the 16th century,
representing the legend on which the play is based. Near by is the
picturesque Königshaus, for several centuries the palace of the Saxon
monarchs in Leipzig and in which King Frederick Augustus I. was made
prisoner by the Allies after the battle of Leipzig in October 1813. At
the end of the Petersstrasse, in the south-west corner of the inner town
and on the promenade, lay the Pleissenburg, or citadel, modelled,
according to tradition, on that of Milan, and built early in the 13th
century. Here Luther in 1519 held his momentous disputation. The round
tower was long used as an observatory and the building as a barrack.
With the exception of the tower, which has been encased and raised to
double its former height--to 300 ft.--the citadel has been removed and
its site is occupied by the majestic pile of the new Rathaus in
Renaissance style, with the tower as its central feature. The business
of Leipzig is chiefly concentrated in the inner city, but the
headquarters of the book trade lie in the eastern suburb. Between the
inner town and the latter lies the magnificent Augustusplatz, one of the
most spacious squares in Europe. Upon it, on the side of the inner town
and included within it, is the Augusteum, or main building of the
university, a handsome edifice containing a splendid hall (1900),
lecture rooms and archaeological collections; adjoining it is the
Paulinerkirche, the university church. The other sides of the square are
occupied by the new theatre, an imposing Renaissance structure, designed
by C. F. Langhans, the post office and the museum of sculpture and
painting, the latter faced by the Mende fountain. The churches of
Leipzig are comparatively uninteresting. The oldest, in its present
form, is the Paulinerkirche, built in 1229-1240, and restored in 1900,
with a curiously grooved cloister; the largest in the inner town is the
Thomaskirche, with a high-pitched roof dating from 1496, and memorable
for its association with J. Sebastian Bach, who was organist here. Among
others may be mentioned the new Gothic Petrikirche, with a lofty spire,
in the south suburb. On the east is the Johanniskirche, round which
raged the last conflict in the battle of 1813, when it suffered severely
from cannon shot. In it is the tomb of Bach, and outside that of the
poet Gellert. Opposite its main entrance is the Reformation monument,
with bronze statues of Luther and Melanchthon, by Johann Schilling,
unveiled in 1883. In the Johanna Park is the Lutherkirche (1886), and
close at hand the Roman Catholic and English churches. To the south-west
of the new Rathaus, lying beyond the Pleisse and between it and the
Johanna Park, is the new academic quarter. Along the fine thoroughfares,
noticeable among which is the Karl Tauchnitz Strasse, are closely
grouped many striking buildings. Here is the new Gewandhaus, or
Konzerthaus, built in 1880-1884, in which the famous concerts called
after its name are given, the old Gewandhaus, or Drapers' Hall, in the
inner town having again been devoted to commercial use as a market hall
during the fairs. Immediately opposite to it is the new university
library, built in 1891, removed hither from the old monasterial
buildings behind the Augusteum, and containing some 500,000 volumes and
5000 MSS. Behind that again is the academy of art, one wing of which
accommodates the industrial art school; and close beside it are the
school of technical arts and the conservatoire of music. Between the
university library and the new Gewandhaus stands a monument of
Mendelssohn (1892). Immediately to the east of the school of arts rises
the grand pile of the supreme tribunal of the German empire, the
Reichsgericht, which compares with the Reichstag building in Berlin. It
was built in 1888-1895 from plans by Ludwig Hoffmann, and is
distinguished for the symmetry and harmony of its proportions. It bears
an imposing dome, 225 ft. high, crowned by a bronze figure of Truth by
O. Lessing, 18 ft. high. Opposite, on the outer side of the Pleisse, are
the district law-courts, large and substantial, though not specially
imposing edifices. In the same quarter stands the Grassi Museum
(1893-1896) for industrial art and ethnology, and a short distance away
are the palatial buildings of the Reichs and Deutsche Banks. Farther
east and lying in the centre of the book-trade quarter stand close
together the Buchhändlerhaus (booksellers' exchange), the great hall
decorated with allegorical pictures by Sascha Schneider, and the
Buchgewerbehaus, a museum of the book trade, both handsome red brick
edifices in the German Renaissance style, erected in 1886-1890.
South-west of these buildings, on the other side of the Johannisthal
Park, are clustered the medical institutes and hospitals of the
university--the infirmary, clinical and other hospitals, the
physico-chemical institute, pathological institute, physiological
institute, ophthalmic hospital, pharmacological institute, the schools
of anatomy, the chemical laboratory, the zoological institute, the
physico-mineralogical institute, the botanical garden and also the
veterinary schools, deaf and dumb asylum, agricultural college and
astronomical observatory. Among other noteworthy buildings in this
quarter must be noted the Johannisstift, an asylum for the relief of the
aged poor, with a handsome front and slender spire. On the north side of
the inner town and on the promenade are the handsome exchange with
library, and the reformed church, a pleasing edifice in late Gothic.
Leipzig has some interesting monuments; the Siegesdenkmal, commemorative
of the wars of 1866 and 1870, on the market square, statues of Goethe,
Leibnitz, Gellert, J. Sebastian Bach, Robert Schumann, Hahnemann, the
homeopathist, and Bismarck. There are also many memorials of the battle
of Leipzig, including an obelisk on the Randstädter-Steinweg, on the
site of the bridge which was prematurely blown up, when Prince
Poniatowski was drowned; a monument of cannon balls collected after the
battle; a "relief" to Major Friccius, who stormed the outer Grimma gate;
while on the battle plain itself and close to "Napoleonstein," which
commemorates Napoleon's position on the last day of the battle, a
gigantic obelisk surrounded by a garden has been planned for dedication
on the hundredth anniversary of the battle (October 19, 1913).
_The University and Education._--The university of Leipzig, founded in
1409 by a secession of four hundred German students from Prague, is one
of the most influential universities in the world. It was a few years
since the most numerously attended of any university in Germany, but it
has since been outstripped by those of Berlin and of Munich. Its large
revenues, derived to a great extent from house property in Leipzig and
estates in Saxony, enable it, in conjunction with a handsome state
subvention, to provide rich endowments for the professorial chairs. To
the several faculties also belong various collegiate buildings, notably,
to the legal, that of the _Collegium beatae Virginis_ in the
Petersstrasse, and to the philosophical the _Rothe Haus_ on the
promenade facing the theatre. The other educational institutions of
Leipzig include the Nicolai and Thomas gymnasia, several "Realschulen,"
a commercial academy (_Handelsschule_), high schools for girls, and a
large number of public and private schools of all grades.
_Art and Literature._--The city has a large number of literary,
scientific and artistic institutions. One of the most important is the
museum, which contains about four hundred modern paintings, a large
number of casts, a few pieces of original sculpture and a well-arranged
collection of drawings and engravings. The collection of the historical
society and the ethnographical and art-industrial collections in the
Grassi Museum are also of considerable interest. The museum was erected
with part of the munificent bequest made to the city by Dominic Grassi
in 1881. As a musical centre Leipzig is known all over the world for its
excellent conservatorium, founded in 1843 by Mendelssohn. The series of
concerts given annually in the Gewandhaus is also of world-wide
reputation, and the operatic stage of Leipzig is deservedly ranked among
the finest in Germany. There are numerous vocal and orchestral
societies, some of which have brought their art to a very high pitch of
perfection. The prominence of the publishing interest has attracted to
Leipzig a large number of gifted authors, and made it a literary centre
of considerable importance. Over five hundred newspapers and periodicals
are published here, including several of the most widely circulated in
Germany. Intellectual interests of a high order have always
characterized Leipzig, and what Karl von Holtei once said of it is true
to-day: "There is only one city in Germany that represents Germany; only
a single city where one can forget that he is a Hessian, a Bavarian, a
Swabian, a Prussian or a Saxon; only one city where, amid the opulence
of the commercial world with which science is so gloriously allied, even
the man who possesses nothing but his personality is honoured and
esteemed; only one city, in which, despite a few narrownesses, all the
advantages of a great, I may say a world-metropolis, are conspicuous!
This city is, in my opinion, and in my experience, Leipzig."
_Commerce, Fairs._--The outstanding importance of Leipzig as a
commercial town is mainly derived from its three great fairs, which
annually attract an enormous concourse of merchants from all parts of
Europe, and from Persia, Armenia and other Asiatic countries. The most
important fairs are held at Easter and Michaelmas, and are said to have
been founded as markets about 1170. The smaller New Year's fair was
established in 1458. Under the fostering care of the margraves of
Meissen, and then of the electors of Saxony they attained great
popularity. In 1268 the margrave of Meissen granted a safe-conduct to
all frequenters of the fairs, and in 1497 and 1507 the emperor
Maximilian I. greatly increased their importance by prohibiting the
holding of annual markets at any town within a wide radius of Leipzig.
During the Thirty Years' War, the Seven Years' War and the troubles
consequent upon the French Revolution, the trade of the Leipzig fairs
considerably decreased, but it recovered after the accession of Saxony
to the German Customs Union (_Zollverein_) in 1834, and for the next
twenty years rapidly and steadily increased. Since then, owing to the
greater facilities of communication, the transactions at the fairs have
diminished in relative, though they have increased in actual, value.
Wares that can be safely purchased by sample appear at the fairs in
steadily diminishing quantities, while others, such as hides, furs and
leather, which require to be actually examined, show as marked an
increase. The value of the sales considerably exceeds £10,000,000
sterling per annum. The principal commodity is furs (chiefly American
and Russian), of which about one and a quarter million pounds worth are
sold annually; other articles disposed of are leather, hides, wool,
cloth, linen and glass. The Leipzig wool-market, held for two days in
June, is also important.
In the trades of bookselling and publishing Leipzig occupies a unique
position, not only taking the first place in Germany, but even surpassing
London and Paris in the number and total value of its sales. There are
upwards of nine hundred publishers and booksellers in the town, and about
eleven thousand firms in other parts of Europe are represented here.
Several hundred booksellers assemble in Leipzig every year, and settle
their accounts at their own exchange (_Buchhändler-Börse_). Leipzig also
contains about two hundred printing-works, some of great extent, and a
corresponding number of type-foundries, binding-shops and other kindred
industries.
The book trades give employment to over 15,000 persons, and since 1878
Leipzig has grown into an industrial town of the first rank. The iron
and machinery trades employ 4500 persons; the textile industries, cotton
and yarn spinning and hosiery, 6000; and the making of scientific and
musical instruments, including pianos, 2650. Other industries include
the manufacture of artificial flowers, wax-cloth, chemicals, ethereal
oils and essences, beer, mineral waters, tobacco and cigars, lace,
india-rubber wares, rush-work and paper, the preparation of furs and
numerous other branches. These industries are mostly carried on in the
suburbs of Plagwitz, Reudnitz, Lindenau, Gohlis, Eutritzsch, Konnewitz
and the neighbouring town of Markranstädt.
_Communications._--Leipzig lies at the centre of a network of railways
giving it direct communication with all the more important cities of
Germany. There are six main line railway stations, of which the Dresden
and the Magdeburg lie side by side in the north-east corner of the
promenade, the Thuringian and Berlin stations further away in the
northern suburb; in the eastern is the Eilenburg station (for Breslau
and the east) and in the south the Bavarian station. The whole traffic
of these stations is to be directed into a vast central station (the
largest in the world), lying on the sites of the Dresden, Magdeburg and
Thuringian stations. The estimated cost, borne by Prussia, Saxony and
the city of Leipzig, is estimated at 6 million pounds sterling. The city
has an extensive electric tramway system, bringing all the outlying
suburbs into close connexion with the business quarters of the town.
_Population._--The population of Leipzig was quintupled within the 19th
century, rising from 31,887 in 1801 to 153,988 in 1881, to 455,089 in
1900 and to 502,570 in 1905.
_History._--Leipzig owes its origin to a Slav settlement between the
Elster and the Pleisse, which was in existence before the year 1000,
and its name to the Slav word _lipa_, a lime tree. There was also a
German settlement near this spot, probably round a castle erected
early in the 10th century by the German king, Henry the Fowler. The
district was part of the mark of Merseburg, and the bishops of
Merseburg were the lords of extensive areas around the settlements. In
the 11th century Leipzig is mentioned as a fortified place and in the
12th it came into the possession of the margrave of Meissen, being
granted some municipal privileges by the margrave, Otto the Rich,
before 1190. Its favourable situation in the midst of a plain
intersected by the principal highways of central Europe, together with
the fostering care of its rulers, now began the work of raising
Leipzig to the position of a very important commercial town. Its
earliest trade was in the salt produced at Halle, and its enterprising
inhabitants constructed roads and bridges to lighten the journey of
the traders and travellers whose way led to the town. Soon Leipzig was
largely used as a depot by the merchants of Nuremberg, who carried on
a considerable trade with Poland. Powers of self-government were
acquired by the council (_Rat_) of the town, the importance of which
was enhanced during the 15th century by several grants of privileges
from the emperors. When Saxony was divided in 1485 Leipzig fell to the
Albertine, or ducal branch of the family, whose head Duke George gave
new rights to the burghers. This duke, however, at whose instigation
the famous discussion between Luther and Johann von Eck took place in
the Pleissenburg of Leipzig, inflicted some injury upon the town's
trade and also upon its university by the harsh treatment which he
meted out to the adherents of the new doctrines; but under the rule of
his successor, Henry, Leipzig accepted the teaching of the reformers.
In 1547 during the war of the league of Schmalkalden the town was
besieged by the elector of Saxony, John Frederick I. It was not
captured, although its suburbs were destroyed. These and the
Pleissenburg were rebuilt by the elector Maurice, who also
strengthened the fortifications. Under the elector Augustus I.
emigrants from the Netherlands were encouraged to settle in Leipzig
and its trade with Hamburg and with England was greatly extended.
During the Thirty Years' War Leipzig suffered six sieges and on four
occasions was occupied by hostile troops, being retained by the Swedes
as security for the payment of an indemnity from 1648 to 1650. After
1650 its fortifications were strengthened; its finances were put on a
better footing; and its trade, especially with England, began again to
prosper; important steps being taken with regard to its organization.
Towards the end of the 17th century the publishing trade began to
increase very rapidly, partly because the severity of the censorship
at Frankfort-on-the-Main caused many booksellers to remove to Leipzig.
During the Seven Years' War Frederick the Great exacted a heavy
contribution from Leipzig, but this did not seriously interfere with
its prosperity. In 1784 the fortifications were pulled down. The wars
in the first decade of the 19th century were not on the whole
unfavourable to the commerce of Leipzig, but in 1813 and 1814, owing
to the presence of enormous armies in the neighbourhood, it suffered
greatly. Another revival, however, set in after the peace of 1815, and
this was aided by the accession of Saxony to the German Zollverein in
1834, and by the opening of the first railway a little later. In 1831
the town was provided with a new constitution, and in 1837 a scheme
for the reform of the university was completed. A riot in 1845, the
revolutionary movement of 1848 and the Prussian occupation of 1866
were merely passing shadows. In 1879 Leipzig acquired a new importance
by becoming the seat of the supreme court of the German empire.
The immediate neighbourhood of Leipzig has been the scene of several
battles, two of which are of more than ordinary importance. These are
the battles of Breitenfeld, fought on the 17th of September 1631,
between the Swedes under Gustavus Adolphus and the imperialists, and
the great battle of Leipzig, known in Germany as the Völkerschlacht,
fought in October 1813 between Napoleon and the allied forces of
Russia, Prussia and Austria.
Towards the middle of the 18th century Leipzig was the seat of the
most influential body of literary men in Germany, over whom Johann
Christoph Gottsched, like his contemporary, Samuel Johnson, in
England, exercised a kind of literary dictatorship. Then, if ever,
Leipzig deserved the epithet of a "Paris in miniature" (_Klein Paris_)
assigned to it by Goethe in his _Faust_. The young Lessing produced
his first play in the Leipzig theatre, and the university counts
Goethe, Klopstock, Jean Paul Richter, Fichte and Schelling among its
alumni. Schiller and Gellert also resided for a time in Leipzig, and
Sebastian Bach and Mendelssohn filled musical posts here. Among the
celebrated natives of the town are the philosopher Leibnitz and the
composer Wagner.
AUTHORITIES.--For the history of Leipzig see E. Hasse, _Die Stadt
Leipzig und ihre Umgebung, geographisch und statistisch beschrieben_
(Leipzig, 1878); K. Grosse, _Geschichte der Stadt Leipzig_ (Leipzig,
1897-1898); Rachel, _Verwaltungsorganisation und Ämterwesen der Stadt
Leipzig bis 1627_ (Leipzig, 1902); G. Wustmann, _Aus Leipzigs
Vergangenheit_ (Leipzig, 1898); _Bilderbuch aus der Geschichte der
Stadt Leipzig_ (Leipzig, 1897); _Leipzig durch drei Jahrhunderte,
Atlas zur Geschichte des Leipziger Stadtbildes_ (Leipzig, 1891);
_Quellen zur Geschichte Leipzigs_ (Leipzig, 1889-1895); and
_Geschichte der Stadt Leipzig_ (Leipzig, 1905); F. Seifert, _Die
Reformation in Leipzig_ (Leipzig, 1883); G. Buchwald,
_Reformationsgeschichte der Stadt Leipzig_ (Leipzig, 1900); Geffcken
and Tykocinski, _Stiftungsbuch der Stadt Leipzig_ (Leipzig, 1905); the
_Urkundenbuch der Stadt Leipzig_, edited by C. F. Posern-Klett and
Förstemann (Leipzig, 1870-1895); and the _Schriften des Vereins für
die Geschichte Leipzigs_ (Leipzig, 1872-1904). For other aspects of
the town's life see Hirschfeld, _Leipzigs Grossindustrie und
Grosshandel_ (Leipzig, 1887); Hassert, _Die geographische Lage und
Entwickelung Leipzigs_ (Leipzig, 1899); Helm, _Heimatkunde von
Leipzig_ (Leipzig, 1903); E. Friedberg, _Die Universität Leipzig in
Vergangenheit und Gegenwart_ (Leipzig, 1897); F. Zarncke, _Die
Statutenbücher der Universität Leipzig_ (Leipzig, 1861); E. Hasse,
_Geschichte der Leipziger Messen_ (Leipzig, 1885); Tille, _Die Anfänge
der hohen Landstrasse_ (Gotha, 1906); Biedermann, _Geschichte der
Leipziger Kramerinnung_ (Leipzig, 1881); and Moltke, _Die Leipziger
Kramerinnung im 15 und 16 Jahrhundert_ (Leipzig, 1901).
LEIRIA, an episcopal city and the capital of the district of Leiria,
formerly included in Estremadura, Portugal; on the river Liz and on the
Lisbon-Figueria da Foz railway. Pop. (1900) 4459. The principal
buildings of Leiria are the ruined citadel, which dates from 1135, and
the cathedral, a small Renaissance building erected in 1571 but
modernized in the 18th century. The main square of the city is named
after the poet Francisco Rodrigues Lobo, who was born here about 1500.
Between Leiria and the Atlantic there are extensive pine woods known as
the Pinhal de Leiria, which were planted by King Diniz (1279-1325) with
trees imported from the Landes in France, in order to give firmness to
the sandy soil. In the neighbourhood there are glass and iron foundries,
oil wells and mineral springs. Leiria, the Roman Calippo, was taken from
the Moors in 1135 by Alphonso I. (Affonso Henriques). King Diniz made it
his capital. In 1466 the first Portuguese printing-press was established
here; in 1545 the city was made an episcopal see. The administrative
district of Leiria coincides with the north and north-west of the
ancient province of Estremadura (q.v.); pop. (1900) 238,755; area 1317
sq. m.
LEISLER, JACOB (c. 1635-1691), American political agitator, was born
probably at Frankfort-on-Main, Germany, about 1635. He went to New
Netherland (New York) in 1660, married a wealthy widow, engaged in
trade, and soon accumulated a fortune. The English Revolution of 1688
divided the people of New York into two well-defined factions. In
general the small shop-keepers, small farmers, sailors, poor traders and
artisans were arrayed against the patroons, rich fur-traders, merchants,
lawyers and crown officers. The former were led by Leisler, the latter
by Peter Schuyler (1657-1724), Nicholas Bayard (c. 1644-1707), Stephen
van Cortlandt (1643-1700), William Nicolls (1657-1723) and other
representatives of the aristocratic Hudson Valley families. The
"Leislerians" pretended greater loyalty to the Protestant succession.
When news of the imprisonment of Gov. Andros in Massachusetts was
received, they took possession on the 31st of May 1689 of Fort James (at
the southern end of Manhattan Island), renamed it Fort William and
announced their determination to hold it until the arrival of a governor
commissioned by the new sovereigns. The aristocrats also favoured the
Revolution, but preferred to continue the government under authority
from James II. rather than risk the danger of an interregnum.
Lieutenant-Governor Francis Nicholson sailed for England on the 24th of
June, a committee of safety was organized by the popular party, and
Leisler was appointed commander-in-chief. Under authority of a letter
from the home government addressed to Nicholson, "or in his absence, to
such as for the time being takes care for preserving the peace and
administering the laws in His Majesty's province of New York," he
assumed the title of lieutenant-governor in December 1689, appointed a
council and took charge of the government of the entire province. He
summoned the first Intercolonial Congress in America, which met in New
York on the 1st of May 1690 to plan concerted action against the French
and Indians. Colonel Henry Sloughter was commissioned governor of the
province on the 2nd of September 1689 but did not reach New York until
the 19th of March 1691. In the meantime Major Richard Ingoldsby and two
companies of soldiers had landed (January 28, 1691) and demanded
possession of the fort. Leisler refused to surrender it, and after some
controversy an attack was made on the 17th of March in which two
soldiers were killed and several wounded. When Sloughter arrived two
days later Leisler hastened to give over to him the fort and other
evidences of authority. He and his son-in-law, Jacob Milborne, were
charged with treason for refusing to submit to Ingoldsby, were
convicted, and on the 16th of May 1691 were executed. There has been
much controversy among historians with regard both to the facts and to
the significance of Leisler's brief career as ruler in New York.
See J. R. Brodhead, _History of the State of New York_ (vol. 2, New
York, 1871). For the documents connected with the controversy see E.
B. O'Callaghan, _Documentary History of the State of New York_ (vol.
2, Albany, 1850).
LEISNIG, a town in the kingdom of Saxony, prettily situated on the
Freiberger Mulde, 7 m. S. of Grimma by the railway from Leipzig to
Dresden via Döbeln. Pop. (1905) 8147. On a high rock above the town lies
the old castle of Mildenstein, now utilized as administrative offices.
The industries include the manufacture of cloth, furniture, boots,
buttons, cigars, beer, machinery and chemicals. Leisnig is a place of
considerable antiquity. About 1080 it passed into the possession of the
counts of Groitzsch, but was purchased in 1157 by the emperor Frederick
I., who committed it to the charge of counts. It fell to Meissen in
1365, and later to Saxony.
LEITH, a municipal and police burgh, and seaport, county of Midlothian,
Scotland. Pop. (1901) 77,439. It is situated on the south shore of the
Firth of Forth, 1½ m. N.N.E. of Edinburgh, of which it is the port and
with which it is connected by Leith Walk, practically a continuous
street. It has stations on the North British and Caledonian railways,
and a branch line (N.B.R.) to Portobello. Lying at the mouth of the
Water of Leith, which is crossed by several bridges and divides it into
the parishes of North and South Leith, it stretches for 3¼ m. along the
shore of the Firth from Seafield in the east to near Granton in the
west. There is tramway communication with Edinburgh and Newhaven.
The town is a thriving centre of trade and commerce. St Mary's in
Kirkgate, the parish church of South Leith, was founded in 1483, and was
originally cruciform but, as restored in 1852, consists of an aisled
nave and north-western tower. Here David Lindsay (1531-1613), its
minister, James VI.'s chaplain and afterwards bishop of Ross, preached
before the king the thanksgiving sermon on the Gowrie conspiracy (1600).
John Logan, the hymn-writer and reputed author of "The Ode to the
Cuckoo," was minister for thirteen years; and in its graveyard lies the
Rev. John Home, author of _Douglas_, a native of Leith. Near it in
Constitution Street is St James's Episcopal church (1862-1869), in the
Early English style by Sir Gilbert Scott, with an apsidal chancel and a
spire 160 ft. high. The parish church of North Leith, in Madeira Street,
with a spire 158 ft. high, is one of the best livings in the Established
Church of Scotland. St Thomas's, at the head of Shirra Brae, in the
Gothic style, was built in 1843 by Sir John Gladstone of Fasque,
who--prior to his removal to Liverpool, where his son, W. E. Gladstone,
was born--had been a merchant in Leith. The public buildings are wholly
modern, the principal being of classic design. They include the custom
house (1812) in the Grecian style; Trinity House (1817), also Grecian,
containing Sir Henry Raeburn's portrait of Admiral Lord Duncan, David
Scott's "Vasco da Gama Rounding the Cape" and other paintings; the
markets (1818); the town hall (1828), with an Ionic façade on
Constitution Street and a Doric porch on Charlotte Street; the corn
exchange (1862) in the Roman style; the assembly rooms; exchange
buildings; the public institute (1867) and Victoria public baths (1899).
Trinity House was founded in 1555 as a home for old and disabled
sailors, but on the decline of its revenues it became the licensing
authority for pilots, its humane office being partly fulfilled by the
sailors' home, established about 1840 in a building adjoining the Signal
Tower, and rehoused in a handsome structure in the Scottish Baronial
style in 1883-1884. Other charitable institutions include the hospital,
John Watt's hospital and the smallpox hospital. The high school, built
in 1806, for many years a familiar object on the west margin of the
Links, gave way to the academy, a handsome and commodious structure, to
which are drafted senior pupils from the numerous board schools for free
education in the higher branches. Here also is accommodated the
technical college. Secondary instruction is given also in Craighall Road
school. A bronze statue of Robert Burns was unveiled in 1898. Leith
Links, one of the homes of golf in Scotland, is a popular resort, on
Lochend Road are situated Hawkhill recreation grounds, and Lochend Loch
is used for skating and curling. There are small links at Newhaven, and
in Trinity are Starbank Park and Cargilfield playing ground. The east
pier (1177 yds. long) and the west pier (1041 yds.) are favourite
promenades. The waterway between them is the entrance to the harbour.
Leith cemetery is situated at Seafield and the Eastern cemetery in
Easter Road.
The oldest industry is shipbuilding, which dates from 1313. Here in 1511
James IV. built the "St Michael," "ane verrie monstruous great ship,
whilk tuik sae meikle timber that schee waisted all the woodis in Fyfe,
except Falkland wood, besides the timber that cam out of Norroway."
Other important industries are engineering, sugar-refining (established
1757), meat-preserving, flour-milling, sailcloth-making, soap-boiling,
rope and twine-making, tanning, chemical manures-making, wood-sawing,
hosiery, biscuit-baking, brewing, distilling and lime-juice making. Of
the old trade of glass-making, which began in 1682, scarcely a trace
survives. As a distributing centre, Leith occupies a prominent place. It
is the headquarters of the whisky business in Great Britain, and stores
also large quantities of wine from Spain, Portugal and France. This
pre-eminence is due to its excellent dock and harbour accommodation and
capacious warehouses. The two old docks (1801-1807) cover 10½ acres;
Victoria Dock (1852) 5 acres; Albert Dock (1863-1869) 10¾ acres;
Edinburgh Dock (1874-1881) 16(2/3) acres; and the New Dock (1892-1901)
60 acres. There are several dry docks, of which the Prince of Wales
Graving Dock (1858), the largest, measures 370 ft. by 60 ft. Space can
always be had for more dock room by reclaiming the east sands, where in
the 17th and 18th centuries Leith Races were held, the theme of a
humorous descriptive poem by Robert Fergusson. Apart from coasting trade
there are constant sailings to the leading European ports, the United
States and the British colonies. In 1908 the tonnage of ships entering
the harbour was (including coastwise trade) 1,975,457; that of ships
clearing the harbour 1,993,227. The number of vessels registered at the
port was 213 (net tonnage 146,799). The value of imports was
£12,883,890, of exports £5,377,188. In summer there are frequent
excursions to the Bass Rock and the Isle of May, North Berwick, Elie,
Aberdour, Alloa and Stirling. Leith Fort, built in North Leith in 1779
for the defence of the harbour, is now the headquarters of the Royal
Artillery in Scotland. Leith is the head of a fishery district. The
town, which is governed by a provost, bailies and council, unites with
Musselburgh and Portobello to send one member to parliament.
Leith figures as Inverleith in the foundation charter of Holyrood
Abbey (1128). In 1329 Robert I. granted the harbour to the magistrates
of Edinburgh, who did not always use their power wisely. They forbade,
for example, the building of streets wide enough to admit a cart, a
regulation that accounted for the number of narrow wynds and alleys in
the town. Had the overlords been more considerate incorporation with
Edinburgh would not have been so bitterly resisted. Several of the
quaint bits of ancient Leith yet remain, and the appearance of the
shore as it was in the 17th and 18th centuries, and even at a later
date, was picturesque in the extreme. During the centuries of strife
between Scotland and England its situation exposed the port to attack
both by sea and land. At least twice (in 1313 and 1410) its shipping
was burned by the English, who also sacked the town in 1544--when the
1st earl of Hertford destroyed the first wooden pier--and 1547. In the
troublous times that followed the death of James V., Leith became the
stronghold of the Roman Catholic and French party from 1548 to 1560,
Mary of Guise, queen regent, not deeming herself secure in Edinburgh.
In 1549 the town was walled and fortified by Montalembert, sicur
d'Essé, the commander of the French troops, and endured an ineffectual
siege in 1560 by the Scots and their English allies. A house in
Coalhill is thought to be the "handsome and spacious edifice" erected
for her privy council by Mary of Guise. D'Essé's wall, pierced by six
gates, was partly dismantled on the death of the queen regent, but
although rebuilt in 1571, not a trace of it exists. The old tolbooth,
in which William Maitland of Lethington, Queen Mary's secretary,
poisoned himself in 1573, to avoid execution for adhering to Mary's
cause, was demolished in 1819. Charles I. is said to have received the
first tidings of the Irish rebellion while playing golf on the links
in 1641. Cromwell in his Scottish campaign built the Citadel in 1650
and the mounds on the links, known as "Giant's Brae" and "Lady Fife's
Brae," were thrown up by the Protector as batteries. In 1698 the
sailing of the first Darien expedition created great excitement. In
1715 William Mackintosh of Borlum (1662-1743) and his force of
Jacobite Highlanders captured the Citadel, of which only the name of
Citadel Street and the archway in Couper Street have preserved the
memory.
A mile S.E. of the links lies the ancient village of RESTALRIG, the
home of the Logans, from whom the superiority of Leith was purchased
in 1553 by the queen regent. Sir Robert Logan (d. 1606) was alleged to
have been one of the Gowrie conspirators and to have arranged to
imprison the king in Fast Castle. This charge, however, was not made
until three years after his death, when his bones were exhumed for
trial. He was then found guilty of high treason and sentence of
forfeiture pronounced; but there is reason to suspect that the whole
case was trumped up. The old church escaped demolition at the
Reformation and even the fine east window was saved. In the vaults
repose Sir Robert and other Logans, besides several of the lords
Balmerino, and Lord Brougham's father lies in the kirkyard. The well
of St Triduana, which was reputed to possess wonderful curative
powers, vanished when the North British railway was constructed.
LEITMERITZ (Czech, _Litomerice_), a town and episcopal see of Bohemia,
45 m. N. of Prague by rail. Pop. (1900) 13,075, mostly German. It lies
on the right bank of the Elbe, which becomes here navigable for steamers
and is spanned by an iron bridge 1700 ft. in length. The fine cathedral,
founded in 1057, was built in 1671 and contains some valuable paintings.
The library of the episcopal palace, built between 1694 and 1701,
possesses the oldest maps of Bohemia made in 1518 by Nicolaus Claudianus
of Jung-Bunzlau. Of the other churches that of All Saints dates from the
13th century. The town-hall, with its remarkable bell tower, dates from
the 15th century. Leitmeritz is situated in the midst of a very fertile
country, called the "Bohemian Paradise," which produces great quantities
of corn, fruit, hops and wines. The beer brewed here enjoys a high
reputation. On the opposite bank of the river, where the Eger discharges
itself into the Elbe, lies Theresienstadt (pop. 7046), an important
garrison town. It was formerly an important fortress, erected in 1780 by
the emperor Joseph II. and named after his mother Maria Theresa, but the
fortress was dismantled in 1882.
Leitmeritz was originally the castle of a royal count and is first
mentioned, in 993, in the foundation charter of the convent of St
Margaret near Prague. In 1248 it received a town charter, and was
governed by the laws of Magdeburg until the time of Ferdinand I.,
having a special court of jurisdiction over all the royal towns where
this law obtained. The town reached its highest degree of prosperity
under Charles IV., who bestowed upon it large tracts of forest,
agricultural land and vineyards. In the Hussite wars, after its
capture by the utraquist, Leitmeritz remained true to "the Chalice,"
shared also in the revolt against Ferdinand I., and suffered in
consequence. It was still more unfortunate during the Thirty Years'
War, in the course of which most of the Protestant inhabitants left
it; the property of the Bohemian refugees being given to German
immigrants. The present bishopric was established in 1655.
LEITNER, GOTTLIEB WILHELM (1840-1899), Anglo-Hungarian orientalist, was
born at Budapest in 1840. He was the son of a physician, and was
educated at Malta Protestant college. At the age of fifteen he acted as
an interpreter in the Crimean War. He entered King's College, London, in
1858, and in 1861 was appointed professor of Arabic and Mahommedan law.
He became principal of the government college at Lahore in 1864, and
there originated the term "Dardistan" for a portion of the mountains on
the north-west frontier, which was subsequently recognized to be a
purely artificial distinction. He collected much valuable information on
Graeco-Buddhist art and the origins of Indian art. He spoke, read and
wrote twenty-five languages. He founded an oriental institute at Woking,
and for some years edited the _Asiatic Quarterly Review_. He died at
Bonn in 1899.
See J. H. Stocqueler, _Life and Labours of Dr Leitner_ (1875).
LEITRIM, a county of Ireland in the province of Connaught, bounded N.W.
by Donegal Bay, N.E. by Fermanagh, E. by Cavan, S.E. by Longford, S.W.
by Roscommon and W. by Sligo. The area is 392,381 acres, or about 613
sq. m. The northern portion of the county consists of an elevated
tableland, of which the highest summits belong to the Truskmore Hills,
reaching 1712 ft.; with Benbo, 1365 ft. and Lackagh, 1446 ft. In the
southern part the country is comparatively level, and is generally
richly wooded. The county touches the south coast of Donegal Bay, but
the coast-line is only about 3 m. The principal river is the Shannon,
which, issuing from Lough Allen, forms the south-western boundary of the
county with Roscommon. The Bonnet rises in the north-west and flows to
Lough Gill, and the streams of Drones and Duff separate Leitrim from
Donegal and Sligo. Besides Lough Allen, which has an area of 8900 acres,
the other principal lakes in the county are Lough Macnean, Lough Scur,
Lough Garadice and Lough Melvin. The scenery of the north is wild and
attractive, while in the neighbourhood of the Shannon it is of great
beauty. Lough Melvin and the coast rivers afford rod fishing, the lough
being noted for its gillaroo trout.
This varied county has in general a floor of Carboniferous Limestone,
which forms finely scarped hills as it reaches the sea in Donegal Bay.
The underlying sandstone appears at Lough Melvin, and again on the
margin of a Silurian area in the extreme south. The Upper Carboniferous
series, dipping gently southward, form mountainous country round Lough
Allen, where the name of Slieve Anierin records the abundance of
clay-ironstone beneath the coal seams. The sandstones and shales of this
series scarp boldly towards the valley of the Bonnet, across which
rises, in picturesque contrast, the heather-clad ridge of ancient gneiss
which forms, in Benbo, the north-east end of the Ox Mountains. The
ironstone was smelted in the upland at Creevelea down to 1859, and the
coal is worked in a few thin seams.
The climate is moist and unsuitable for grain crops. On the higher
districts the soil is stiff and cold, and, though abounding in stones,
retentive of moisture, but in the valleys there are some fertile
districts. Lime, marl and similar manures are abundant, and on the coast
seaweed is plentiful. The proportion of tillage to pasture is roughly as
1 to 3. Potatoes are grown, but oats, the principal grain crop, are
scanty. The live stock consists chiefly of cattle, pigs and poultry.
Coarse linens for domestic purposes are manufactured and coarse pottery
is also made. The Sligo, Leitrim and Northern Counties railway,
connecting Sligo with Enniskillen, crosses the northern part of the
county, by way of Manor Hamilton; the Mullingar and Sligo line of the
Midland Great Western touches the south-western boundary of the county,
with a station at Carrick-on-Shannon; while connecting with this line at
Dromod is the Cavan and Leitrim railway to Ballinamore and Arigna, and
to Belturbet in county Cavan.
The population (78,618 in 1891; 69,343 in 1901) decreases owing to
emigration, the decrease being one of the most serious shown by any
Irish county. It includes nearly 90% of Roman Catholics. The only towns
are Carrick-on-Shannon (pop. 1118) and Manor Hamilton (993). The county
is divided into five baronies. It is within the Connaught circuit, and
assizes are held at Carrick-on-Shannon, and quarter sessions at
Ballinamore, Carrick-on-Shannon and Manor Hamilton. It is in the
Protestant diocese of Kilmore, and the Roman Catholic dioceses of Ardagh
and Kilmore. In the Irish House of Commons two members were returned for
the county and two for the boroughs of Carrick-on-Shannon and Jamestown,
but at the Union the boroughs were disfranchised. The county divisions
are termed the North and South, each returning one member.
With the territory which afterwards became the county Cavan, Leitrim
formed part of Brenny or Breffny, which was divided into two
principalities, of which Leitrim, under the name of Hy Bruin-Brenny,
formed the western. Being for a long time in the possession of the
O'Rourkes, descendants of Roderick, king of Ireland, it was also called
Brenny O'Rourke. This family long maintained its independence; even in
1579, when the other existing counties of Connaught were created, the
creation of Leitrim was deferred, and did not take place until 1583.
Large confiscations were made in the reigns of Elizabeth and James I.,
in the Cromwellian period, and after the Revolution of 1688.
There are "druidical" remains near Fenagh and at Letterfyan, and
important monastic ruins at Creevelea near the Bonnet, with several
antique monuments, and in the parish of Fenagh. There was a flourishing
Franciscan friary at Jamestown. The abbeys of Mohill, Annaduff and
Drumlease are converted into parish churches. Among the more notable old
castles are Manor Hamilton Castle, originally very extensive, but now in
ruins, and Castle John on an island in Lough Scur. There is a small
village named Leitrim about 4 m. N. of Carrick-on-Shannon, which was
once of enough importance to give its name to a barony and to the
county, and is said to have been the seat of an early bishopric.
LEIXÕES, a seaport and harbour of refuge of northern Portugal; in 41° 9´
10´´ N., 8° 40´ 35´´ W., 3 m. N. of the mouth of the Douro. Leixões is
included in the parish of Matozinhos (pop. 1900, 7690) and constitutes
the main port of the city of Oporto (q.v.), with which it is connected
by an electric tramway. The harbour, of artificial construction, has an
area of over 220 acres, and admits vessels of any size, the depth at the
entrance being nearly 50 ft. The transference of cargo to and from ships
lying in the Leixões basin is effected entirely by means of lighters
from Oporto. In addition to wine, &c., from Oporto, large numbers of
emigrants to South America are taken on board here. The trade of the
port is mainly in British hands, and large numbers of British ships call
at Leixões on the voyage between Lisbon and Liverpool, London or
Southampton.
LEJEUNE, LOUIS FRANÇOIS, BARON (1776-1848), French general, painter, and
lithographer, was born at Versailles. As aide-de-camp to General
Berthier he took an active part in many of the Napoleonic campaigns,
which he made the subjects of an important series of battle-pictures.
The vogue he enjoyed is due to the truth and vigour of his work, which
was generally executed from sketches and studies made on the
battlefield. When his battle-pictures were shown at the Egyptian Hall in
London, a rail had to be put up to protect them from the eager crowds of
sightseers. Among his chief works are "The Entry of Charles X. into
Paris, 6 June 1825" at Versailles; "Episode of the Prussian War, October
1807" at Douai Museum; "Marengo" (1801); "Lodi," "Thabor," "Aboukir"
(1804); "The Pyramids" (1806); "Passage of the Rhine in 1795" (1824),
and "Moskawa" (1812). The German campaign of 1806 brought him to Munich,
where he visited the workshop of Senefelder, the inventor of
lithography. Lejeune was so fascinated by the possibilities of the new
method that he then and there made the drawing on stone of his famous
"Cossack" (printed by C. and T. Senefelder, 1806). Whilst he was taking
his dinner, and with his horses harnessed and waiting to take him back
to Paris, one hundred proofs were printed, one of which he subsequently
submitted to Napoleon. The introduction of lithography into France was
greatly due to the efforts of Lejeune. Many of his battle-pictures were
engraved by Coiny and Bovinet.
See Fournier-Sarlovèze, _Le Général Lejeune_ (Paris, _Libraire de
l'art_).
LEKAIN, the stage name of Henri Louis Cain (1728-1778), French actor,
who was born in Paris on the 14th of April 1728, the son of a
silversmith. He was educated at the Collège Mazarin, and joined an
amateur company of players against which the Comédie Française obtained
an injunction. Voltaire supported him for a time and enabled him to act
in his private theatre and also before the duchess of Maine. Owing to
the hostility of the actors it was only after a struggle of seventeen
months that, by the command of Louis XV., he was received at the Comédie
Française. His success was immediate. Among his best parts were Herod in
_Mariamne_, Nero in _Britannicus_ and similar tragic rôles, in spite of
the fact that he was short and stout, with irregular and rather common
features. His name is connected with a number of important scenic
reforms. It was he who had the benches removed on which privileged
spectators formerly sat encumbering the stage, Count Lauragais paying
for him an excessive indemnity demanded. Lekain also protested against
the method of sing-song declamation prevalent, and endeavoured to
correct the costuming of the plays, although unable to obtain the
historic accuracy at which Talma aimed. He died in Paris on the 8th of
February 1778.
His eldest son published his _Mémoires_ (1801) with his correspondence
with Voltaire, Garrick and others. They were reprinted with a preface
by Talma in _Mémoires sur l'art dramatique_ (1825).
LELAND, CHARLES GODFREY (1824-1903), American author, son of a merchant,
was born at Philadelphia on the 15th of August 1824, and graduated at
Princeton in 1845. He afterwards studied at Heidelberg, Munich and
Paris. He was in Paris during the revolution of 1848, and took an active
part in it. He then returned to Philadelphia, and after being admitted
to the bar in 1851, devoted himself to contributing to periodicals,
editing various magazines and writing books. At the opening of the Civil
War he started at Boston the _Continental Magazine_, which advocated
emancipation. In 1868 he became known as the humorous author of _Hans
Breitmann's Party and Ballads_, which was followed by other volumes of
the same kind, collected in 1871 with the title of _Hans Breitmann's
Ballads_. These dialect poems, burlesquing the German American, at once
became popular. In 1869 he went to Europe, and till 1880 was occupied,
chiefly in London, with literary work; after returning to Philadelphia
for six years, he again made his home in Europe, generally at Florence,
where he died on the 20th of March 1903. Though his humorous verses were
most attractive to the public, Leland was a serious student of
folk-lore, particularly of the gipsies, his writings on the latter (_The
English Gypsies and their Language_, 1872; _The Gypsies_, 1882; _Gypsy
Sorcery and Fortune-telling_ ..., 1891, &c.) being recognized as
valuable contributions to the literature of the subject. He was
president of the first European folk-lore congress, held in Paris in
1889.
His other publications include _Poetry and Mystery of Dreams_ (1855),
_Meister Karl's Sketch-book_ (1855), _Pictures of Travel_ (1856),
_Sunshine in Thought_ (1862), _Heine's Book of Songs_ (1862), _The Music
Lesson of Confucius_ (1870), _Egyptian Sketch-book_ (1873), _Abraham
Lincoln_ (1879), _The Minor Arts_ (1880), _Algonquin Legends of New
England_ (1884), _Songs of the Sea and Lays of the Land_ (1895), _Hans
Breitmann in Tyrol_ (1895), _One Hundred Profitable Acts_ (1897),
_Unpublished Legends of Vergil_ (1899), _Kuloskap the Master, and other
Algonquin Poems_ (1903, with J. Dyneley Prince).
See his _Memoirs_ (2 vols., 1893), and E. R. Pennell, _C. G. Leland_
(1906).
LELAND (LEYLAND or LAYLONDE), JOHN (c. 1506-1552), English antiquary,
was born in London on the 13th of September, probably in 1506. He owed
his education at St Paul's school under William Lilly, and at Christ's
College, Cambridge, to the kindness of a patron, Thomas Myles. He
graduated at Cambridge in 1521, and subsequently studied at All Souls
College, Oxford, and in Paris under François Dubois (Sylvius). On his
return to England he took holy orders. He had been tutor to Lord Thomas
Howard, son of the 3rd duke of Norfolk, and to Francis Hastings,
afterwards earl of Huntingdon. Meanwhile his learning had recommended
him to Henry VIII., who presented him to the rectory of Peuplingues in
the marches of Calais in 1530. He was already librarian and chaplain to
the king, and in 1533 he received a novel commission under the great
seal as king's antiquary, with power to search for records, manuscripts
and relics of antiquity in all the cathedrals, colleges and religious
houses of England. Probably from 1534, and definitely from 1536 onwards
to 1542, he was engaged on an antiquarian tour through England and
Wales. He sought to preserve the MSS. scattered at the dissolution of
the monasteries, but his powers did not extend to the actual collection
of MSS. Some valuable additions, however, he did procure for the king's
library, chiefly from the abbey of St Augustine at Canterbury. He had
received a special dispensation permitting him to absent himself from
his rectory of Peuplingues in 1536, and on his return from his itinerary
he received the rectory of Haseley in Oxfordshire; his support of the
church policy of Henry and Cranmer being further rewarded by a canonry
and prebend of King's College (now Christ Church), Oxford, and a prebend
of Salisbury. In a _Strena Henrico_[1] (pr. 1546), addressed to Henry
VIII. in 1545, he proposed to execute from the materials which he had
collected in his journeys a topography of England, an account of the
adjacent islands, an account of the British nobility, and a great
history of the antiquities of the British Isles. He toiled over his
papers at his house in the parish of St Michael le Querne, Cheapside,
London, but he was not destined to complete these great undertakings,
for he was certified insane in March 1550, and died on the 18th of April
1552.
Leland was an exact observer, and a diligent student of local
chronicles. The bulk of his work remained in MS. at the time of his
death, and various copies were made, one by John Stowe in 1576. After
passing through various hands the greater part of Leland's MSS. were
deposited by William Burton, the historian of Leicestershire, in the
Bodleian at Oxford. They had in the meantime been freely used by other
antiquaries, notably by John Bale, William Camden and Sir William
Dugdale. The account of his journey in England and Wales in eight MS.
quarto volumes received its name _The Itinerary of John Leland_ from
Thomas Burton and was edited by Thomas Hearne (9 vols., Oxford,
1710-1712; other editions in 1745 and 1770). The scattered portions
dealing with Wales were re-edited by Miss L. Toulmin Smith in 1907.
His other most important work, the _Collectanea_, in four folio MS.
volumes, was also published by Hearne (6 vols., Oxford, 1715). His
_Commentarii de scriptoribus Britannicis_, which had been used and
distorted by his friend John Bale, was edited by Anthony Hall (2
vols., Oxford, 1709). Some of Leland's MSS., which formerly belonged
to Sir Robert Cotton, passed into the possession of the British
Museum. He was a Latin poet of some merit, his most famous piece being
the _Cygneo Cantio_ (1545) in honour of Henry VIII. Many of his minor
works are included in Hearne's editions of the _Itinerary_ and the
_Collectanea_.
For accounts of Leland see John Bale, _Catalogus_ (1557); Anthony à
Wood, _Athenae Oxonienses_; W. Huddesford, _Lives of those eminent
Antiquaries John Leland, Thomas Hearne and Anthony à Wood_ (Oxford,
1772). A life of Leland, attributed to Edward Burton (c. 1750), from
the library of Sir Thomas Phillipps, printed in 1896 contains a
bibliography. See also the biography by Sidney Lee, in the _Dict. Nat.
Biog._
FOOTNOTE:
[1] Re-edited in 1549 by John Bale as _The laboryeuse Journey and
Serche of J. Leylande for Englandes Antiquitees geven of him for a
Neu Yeares Gifte, &c._, modern edition by W. A. Copinger (Manchester,
1895).
LELAND, JOHN (1691-1766), English Nonconformist divine, was born at
Wigan, Lancashire, and educated in Dublin, where he made such progress
that in 1716, without having attended any college or hall, he was
appointed first assistant and afterwards sole pastor of a congregation
of Presbyterians in New Row. This office he continued to fill until his
death on the 16th of January 1766. He received the degree of D.D. from
Aberdeen in 1739. His first publication was _A Defence of Christianity_
(1733), in reply to Matthew Tindal's _Christianity as old as the
Creation_; it was succeeded by his _Divine Authority of the Old and New
Testaments asserted_ (1738), in answer to _The Moral Philosopher_ of
Thomas Morgan; in 1741 he published two volumes, in the form of two
letters, being _Remarks on_ [H. Dodwell's] _Christianity not founded on
Argument_; and in 1753 _Reflexions on the late Lord Bolingbroke's
Letters on the Study and Use of History_. His _View of the Principal
Deistical Writers that have appeared in England_ was published in
1754-1756. This is the chief work of Leland--"most worthy, painstaking
and commonplace of divines," as Sir Leslie Stephen called him--and in
spite of many defects and inconsistencies is indispensable to every
student of the deistic movement of the 18th century.
His _Discourses on various Subjects_, with a _Life_ prefixed, was
published posthumously (4 vols., 1768-1789).
LELAND STANFORD JR. UNIVERSITY, near Palo Alto, California, U.S.A., in
the beautiful Santa Clara valley, was founded in 1885 by Leland
Stanford[1] (1824-1893), and by his wife Jane Lathrop Stanford
(1825-1905), as a memorial to their only child, Leland Stanford, Jr.,
who died in 1884 in his seventeenth year. The doors were opened in 1891
to 559 students. The university campus consists of Stanford's former
Palo Alto farm, which comprises about 9000 acres. From the campus there
are charming views of San Francisco Bay, of the Coast Range,
particularly of Mount Hamilton some 30 m. E. with the Lick Observatory
on its summit, of mountain foothills, and of the magnificent redwood
forests toward Santa Cruz.
The buildings, designed originally by H. H. Richardson and completed by
his successors, Shepley, Rutan and Coolidge, are of soft buff sandstone
in a style adapted from the old California mission (Moorish-Romanesque)
architecture, being long and low with wide colonnades, open arches and
red tiled roofs. An outer surrounds an inner quadrangle of buildings.
The inner quadrangle, about a court which is 586 by 246 ft. and is
faced by a continuous open arcade and adorned with large circular beds
of tropical plants and flowers, consists of twelve one-storey buildings
and a beautiful memorial church. Of the fourteen buildings of the outer
quadrangle some are two storeys high. A magnificent memorial arch (100
ft. high), adorned with a frieze designed by John Evans, representing
the "Progress of Civilization in America," and forming the main gateway,
was destroyed by the earthquake of 1906. Outside the quadrangles are
other buildings--a museum of art and archaeology, based on collections
made by Leland Stanford, Jr., chemical laboratories, engineering
work-shops, dormitories, a mausoleum of the founders, &c. There is a
fine arboretum (300 acres) and a cactus garden. The charming views, the
grace and harmonious colours of the buildings, and the tropic vegetation
make a campus of wonderful beauty. The students in 1907-1908 numbered
1738, of whom 126 were graduates, 99 special students, and 500 women.[2]
The university library (with the library of the law department)
contained in 1908 about 107,000 volumes. A marine biological laboratory,
founded by Timothy Hopkins, is maintained at Pacific Grove on the Bay of
Monterey. The university has an endowment from its founders estimated at
$30,000,000, including three great estates with 85,000 acres of farm and
vineyard lands, and several smaller tracts; but the endowment was very
largely in interest-bearing securities, income from which was
temporarily cut off in the early years of the university's life by
litigation. The founders wished the university "to qualify students for
personal success and direct usefulness in life; to promote the public
welfare by exercising an influence in behalf of humanity and
civilization, teaching the blessings of liberty regulated by law, and
inculcating love and reverence for the great principles of government as
derived from the inalienable rights of man to life, liberty and the
pursuit of happiness." There are no inflexible entrance requirements as
to particular studies except English composition to ensure a degree of
mental maturity, the minimum amount of preparation is fixed as that
which should be given by four years in a secondary school, leaving to
the applicants a wide choice of subjects (35 in 1906) ranging from
ancient history to woodworking and machine shop. In the curriculum,
liberty perhaps even greater than at Harvard is allowed as to
"electives." Work on some one major subject occupies about one-third of
the undergraduate course; the remaining two-thirds (or more) is purely
elective. The influence of sectarianism and politics is barred from the
university by its charter, and by its private origin and private
support. At the same time in its policy it is practically a state
university of the most liberal type. Instruction is entirely free. The
president of the university has the initiative in all appointments and
in all matters of general policy. Within the university faculty power
lies in an academic council, and, more particularly, in an advisory
board of nine professors, elected by the academic council, to which all
propositions of the president are submitted. The growth of the
university has been steady, and its conduct careful. David Starr
Jordan[3] was its first president.
See O. H. Elliot and O. V. Eaton, _Stanford University and
thereabouts_ (San Francisco, 1896), and the official publications of
the university.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Stanford was born in Watervliet, New York; studied law in Albany;
removed to California in 1852 and went into business at Michigan
Bluff, Placer county, whence he removed to Sacramento in 1856; was
made president in 1861 of the Central Pacific railroad company, which
built the first trans-continental railway line over the Sierra
Nevada; was governor of California in 1862-1863, and United States
senator in 1885-1893; and was owner of the great Vina farm (55,000
acres) in Tehama county, containing the largest vineyard in the world
(13,400 acres), the Gridley tract (22,000 acres) in Butte county, and
the Palo Alto breeding farm, which was the home of his famous
thoroughbred racers, Electioneer, Arion, Sunol, Palo Alto and
Advertiser.
[2] The number of women attending the university as students in any
semester is limited by the founding grant to 500.
[3] President Jordan was born in 1851 at Gainesville, New York; was
educated at Cornell, where he taught botany for a time; became an
assistant to the United States fish commission in 1872; in 1885-1891
was president of the university of Indiana, where from 1879 he had
been professor of zoology; and in 1891 was elected president of
Leland Stanford Jr. University. An eminent ichthyologist, he wrote,
with Barton Warren Evermann (b. 1853), of the United States Bureau of
Fisheries, _Fishes of North and Middle America_ (4 vols., 1896-1900),
and _Food and Game Fishes of North America_ (1902); and prepared _A
Guide to the Study of Fishes_ (1905).
LELEGES, the name applied by Greek writers to an early people or peoples
of which traces were believed to remain in Greek lands.
1. _In Asia Minor._--In Homer the Leleges are allies of the Trojans, but
they do not occur in the formal catalogue in _Iliad_, bk. ii., and
their habitat is not specified. They are distinguished from the Carians,
with whom some later writers confused them; they have a king Altes, and
a town Pedasus which was sacked by Achilles. The name Pedasus occurs
(i.) near Cyzicus, (ii.) in the Troad on the Satnioeis river, (iii.) in
Caria, as well as (iv.) in Messenia. Alcaeus (7th-6th centuries B.C.)
calls Antandrus in the Troad Lelegian, but Herodotus (5th century)
substitutes Pelasgian (q.v.). Gargara in the Troad also counted as
Lelegian. Pherecydes (5th century) attributed to Leleges the coast land
of Caria from Ephesus to Phocaea, with the islands of Samos and Chios,
placing the "true Carians" farther south from Ephesus to Miletus. If
this statement be from Pherecydes of Leros (c. 480) it has great weight.
In the 4th century, however, Philippus of Theangela in south Caria
describes Leleges still surviving as serfs of the true Carians, and
Strabo, in the 1st century B.C., attributes to the Leleges a well-marked
group of deserted forts, tombs and dwellings which ranged (and can still
be traced) from the neighbourhood of Theangela and Halicarnassus as far
north as Miletus, the southern limit of the "true Carians" of
Pherecydes. Plutarch also implies the historic existence of Lelegian
serfs at Tralles in the interior.
2. _In Greece and the Aegean._--A single passage in the Hesiodic
catalogue (fr. 136 Kinkel) places Leleges "in Deucalion's time," i.e. as
a primitive people, in Locris in central Greece. Not until the 4th
century B.C. does any other writer place them anywhere west of the
Aegean. But the confusion of the Leleges with the Carians (immigrant
conquerors akin to Lydians and Mysians, and probably to Phrygians) which
first appears in a Cretan legend (quoted by Herodotus, but repudiated,
as he says, by the Carians themselves) and is repeated by Callisthenes,
Apollodorus and other later writers, led easily to the suggestion of
Callisthenes, that Leleges joined the Carians in their (half legendary)
raids on the coasts of Greece. Meanwhile other writers from the 4th
century onwards claimed to discover them in Boeotia, west Acarnania
(Leucas), and later again in Thessaly, Euboea, Megara, Lacedaemon and
Messenia. In Messenia they were reputed immigrant founders of Pylos, and
were connected with the seafaring Taphians and Teleboans of Homer, and
distinguished from the Pelasgians; in Lacedaemon and in Leucas they were
believed to be aboriginal. These European Leleges must be interpreted in
connexion with the recurrence of place names like Pedasus, Physcus,
Larymna and Abae, (a) in Caria, and (b) in the "Lelegian" parts of
Greece; perhaps this is the result of some early migration; perhaps it
is also the cause of these Lelegian theories.
Modern speculations (mainly corollaries of Indo-Germanic theory) add
little of value to the Greek accounts quoted above. H. Kiepert ("Über
den Volksstamm der Leleges," in _Monatsber. Berl. Akad._, 1861, p.
114) makes the Leleges an aboriginal people akin to Albanians and
Illyrians; K. W. Deimling, _Die Leleger_ (Leipzig, 1862), starts them
in south-west Asia Minor, and brings them thence to Greece
(practically the Greek view); G. F. Unger, "Hellas in Thessalien," in
_Philologus_, Suppl. ii. (1863), makes them Phoenician, and derives
their name from [Greek: lalazein] (cf. the names [Greek: barbaros],
_Wälsche_). E. Curtius (_History of Greece_, i.) distinguished a
"Lelegian" phase of nascent Aegean culture. Most later writers follow
Deimling. For Strabo's "Lelegian" monuments, cf. Paton and Myres,
_Journal of Hellenic Studies_, xvi. 188-270. (J. L. M.)
LELEWEL, JOACHIM (1786-1861), Polish historian, geographer and
numismatist, was born at Warsaw on the 22nd of March 1786. His family
came from Prussia in the early part of the 18th century; his grandfather
was appointed physician to the reigning king of Poland, and his father
caused himself to be naturalized as a Polish citizen. The original form
of the name appears to have been Lölhöffel. Joachim was educated at the
university of Vilna, and became in 1807 a teacher in a school at
Krzemieniec in Volhynia, in 1814 teacher of history at Vilna, and in
1818 professor and librarian at the university of Warsaw. He returned to
Vilna in 1821. His lectures enjoyed great popularity, and enthusiasm
felt for him by the students is shown in the beautiful lines addressed
to him by Mickiewicz. But this very circumstance made him obnoxious to
the Russian government, and at Vilna Novosiltsev was then all-powerful.
Lelewel was removed from his professorship in 1824, and returned to
Warsaw, where he was elected a deputy to the diet in 1829. He joined the
revolutionary movement with more enthusiasm than energy, and though the
emperor Nicholas I. distinguished him as one of the most dangerous
rebels, did not appear to advantage as a man of action. On the
suppression of the rebellion he made his way in disguise to Germany, and
subsequently reached Paris in 1831. The government of Louis Philippe
ordered him to quit French territory in 1833 at the request of the
Russian ambassador. The cause of this expulsion is said to have been his
activity in writing revolutionary proclamations. He went to Brussels,
where for nearly thirty years he earned a scanty livelihood by his
writings. He died on the 29th of May 1861 in Paris, whither he had
removed a few days previously.
Lelewel, a man of austere character, simple tastes and the loftiest
conception of honour, was a lover of learning for its own sake. His
literary activity was enormous, extending from his _Edda Skandinawska_
(1807) to his _Géographie des Arabes_ (2 vols., Paris, 1851). One of his
most important publications was _La Géographie du moyen âge_ (5 vols.,
Brussels, 1852-1857), with an atlas (1849) of plates entirely engraved
by himself, for he rightly attached such importance to the accuracy of
his maps that he would not allow them to be executed by any one else.
His works on Polish history are based on minute and critical study of
the documents; they were collected under the title _Polska, dzieje i
rzeczy jej rozpatrzywane_ (_Poland, her History and Affairs surveyed_),
in 20 vols. (Posen, 1853-1876). He intended to write a complete history
of Poland on an extensive scale, but never accomplished the task. His
method is shown in the little history of Poland, first published at
Warsaw in Polish in 1823, under the title _Dzieje Polski_, and
afterwards almost rewritten in the _Histoire de Pologne_ (2 vols.,
Paris, 1844). Other works on Polish history which may be especially
mentioned are _La Pologne au moyen âge_ (3 vols., Posen, 1846-1851), an
edition of the _Chronicle of Matthew Cholewa_[1] (1811) and _Ancient
Memorials of Polish Legislation_ (_Ksiegi ustaw polskich i
mazowieckich_). He also wrote on the trade of Carthage, on Pytheas of
Marseilles, the geographer, and two important works on numismatics (_La
Numismatique du moyen âge_, Paris, 2 vols., 1835; _Études
numismatiques_, Brussels, 1840). While employed in the university
library of Warsaw he studied bibliography, and the fruits of his labours
may be seen in his _Bibliograficznych Ksiag dwoje_ (_A Couple of Books
on Bibliography_) (2 vols., Vilna, 1823-1826). The characteristics of
Lelewel as an historian are great research and power to draw inferences
from his facts; his style is too often careless, and his narrative is
not picturesque, but his expressions are frequently terse and incisive.
He left valuable materials for a just comprehension of his career in
the autobiography (_Adventures while Prosecuting Researches and
Inquiries on Polish Matters_) printed in his _Polska_.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] I.e. the three first books of the _Historia Polonica_ of
Vincentius (Kadlbek), bishop of Cracow (d. 1223), wrongly ascribed by
Lelewel to Matthaeus Cholewa, bishop of Cracow. See Potthast,
_Bibliotheca hist, med. aev., s.v._ "Vincentius."
LELONG, JACQUES (1665-1721), French bibliographer, was born at Paris on
the 19th of April 1665. He was a priest of the Oratory, and was
librarian to the establishment of the Order in Paris, where he spent his
life in seclusion. He died at Paris on the 13th of August 1721. He first
published a _Bibliotheca sacra_ (1709), an index of all the editions of
the Bible, then a _Bibliothèque historique de la France_ (1719), a
volume of considerable size, containing 17,487 items to which Lelong
sometimes appends useful notes. His work is far from complete. He vainly
hoped that his friend and successor Father Desmolets, would continue it;
but it was resumed by Charles-Marie Fevret de Fontette, a councillor of
the parlement of Dijon, who spent fifteen years of his life and a great
deal of money in rewriting the _Bibliothèque historique_. The first two
volumes (1768 and 1769) contained as many as 29,143 items. Fevret de
Fontette died on the 16th of February 1772, leaving the third volume
almost finished. It appeared in 1772, thanks to Barbaud de La Bruyère,
who later brought out the 4th and 5th volumes (1775 and 1778). In this
new edition the _Bibliothèque historique_ is a work of reference of the
highest order; it is still of great value.
LELY, SIR PETER (1617-1680) English painter, was born at Soest,
Westphalia, in 1617. His father, a military captain and a native of
Holland, was originally called van der Vaes; the nickname of Le Lys or
Lely, by which he was generally known, was adopted by his son as a
surname. After studying for two years under Peter de Grebber, an artist
of some note at Haarlem, Lely, induced by the patronage of Charles I.
for the fine arts, removed to England in 1641. There he at first painted
historical subjects and landscape; he soon became so eminent in his
profession as to be employed by Charles to paint his portrait shortly
after the death of Vandyck. He afterwards portrayed Cromwell. At the
Restoration his genius and agreeable manners won the favour of Charles
II., who made him his state-painter, and afterwards knighted him. He
formed a famous collection, the best of his time, containing drawings,
prints and paintings by the best masters; it sold by auction for no less
than £26,000. His great example, however, was Vandyck, whom, in some of
his most successful pieces, he almost rivals. Lely's paintings are
carefully finished, warm and clear in colouring, and animated in design.
The graceful posture of the heads, the delicate rounding of the hands,
and the broad folds of the draperies are admired in many of his
portraits. The eyes of the ladies are drowsy with languid sentiment, and
allegory of a commonplace sort is too freely introduced. His most famous
work is a collection of portraits of the ladies of the court of Charles
II., known as "the Beauties," formerly at Windsor Castle, and now
preserved at Hampton Court Palace. Of his few historical pictures, the
best is "Susannah and the Elders," at Burleigh House. His "Jupiter and
Europa," in the duke of Devonshire's collection, is also worthy of note.
Lely was nearly as famous for crayon work as for oil-painting. Towards
the close of his life he often retired to an estate which he had bought
at Kew. He died of apoplexy in the Piazza, Covent Garden, London, and
was buried in Covent Garden church, where a monument was afterwards
erected to his memory. Pepys characterized Lely as "a mighty proud man
and full of state." The painter married an English lady of family, and
left a son and daughter, who died young. His only disciples were J.
Greenhill and J. Buckshorn; he did not, however, allow them to obtain an
insight into his special modes of work. (W. M. R.)
LE MAÇON (or LE MASSON), ROBERT (c. 1365-1443), chancellor of France,
was born at Château du Loir, Sarthe. He was ennobled in March 1401, and
became six years later a councillor of Louis II., duke of Anjou and king
of Sicily. A partisan of the house of Orleans, he was appointed
chancellor to Isabella of Bavaria on the 29th of January 1414, on the
20th of July commissary of the mint, and in June 1416 chancellor to the
count of Ponthieu, afterwards Charles VII. On the 16th of August he
bought the barony of Trèves in Anjou, and henceforward bore the title of
seigneur of Trèves. When Paris was surprised by the Burgundians on the
night of the 29th of May 1418 he assisted Tanguy Duchâtel in saving the
dauphin. His devotion to the cause of the latter having brought down on
him the wrath of John the Fearless, duke of Burgundy, he was excluded
from the political amnesty known as the peace of Saint Maur des Fossés,
though he retained his seat on the king's council. He was by the
dauphin's side when John the Fearless was murdered at the bridge of
Montereau on the 10th of September 1419. He resigned the seals at the
beginning of 1422; but he continued to exercise great influence, and in
1426 he effected a reconciliation between the king and the duke of
Brittany. Having been captured by Jean de Langeac, seneschal of
Auvergne, in August of the same year, he was shut up for three months in
the château of Usson. When set at liberty he returned to court, where he
staunchly supported Joan of Arc against all the cabals that menaced her.
It was he who signed the patent of nobility for the Arc family in
December 1429. In 1430 he was once more entrusted with an embassy to
Brittany. Having retired from political life in 1436, he died on the
28th of January 1443, and was interred at Trèves, where his epitaph may
still be seen.
See C. Bourcier, "Robert le Masson," in the _Revue historique de
l'Anjou_ (1873); and the _Nouvelle biographie générale_, vol. xxx.
(J. V.*)
LE MAIRE DE BELGES, JEAN (1473-c. 1525), French poet and
historiographer, was born at Bavai in Hainault. He was a nephew of Jean
Molinet, and spent some time with him at Valenciennes, where the elder
writer held a kind of academy of poetry. Le Maire in his first poems
calls himself a disciple of Molinet. In certain aspects he does belong
to the school of the _grands rhétoriqueurs_, but his great merit as a
poet is that he emancipated himself from the affectations and
puerilities of his masters. This independence of the Flemish school he
owed in part perhaps to his studies at the university of Paris and to
the study of the Italian poets at Lyons, a centre of the French
renascence. In 1503 he was attached to the court of Margaret of Austria,
duchess of Savoy, afterwards regent of the Netherlands. For this
princess he undertook more than one mission to Rome; he became her
librarian and a canon of Valenciennes. To her were addressed his most
original poems, _Epistres de l'amand verd_, the _amant vert_ being a
green parrot belonging to his patroness. Le Maire gradually became more
French in his sympathies, eventually entering the service of Anne of
Brittany. His prose _Illustrations des Gaules et singularitez de Troye_
(1510-1512), largely adapted from Benoît de Sainte More, connects the
Burgundian royal house with Hector. Le Maire probably died before 1525.
Étienne Pasquier, Ronsard and Du Bellay all acknowledged their
indebtedness to him. In his love for antiquity, his sense of rhythm, and
even the peculiarities of his vocabulary he anticipated the _Pléiade_.
His works were edited in 1882-1885 by J. Stecher, who wrote the
article on him in the _Biographie nationale de Belgique_.
LEMAÎTRE, FRANÇOIS ÉLIE JULES (1853- ), French critic and dramatist,
was born at Vennecy (Loiret) on the 27th of April 1853. He became a
professor at the university of Grenoble, but he had already become known
by his literary criticisms, and in 1884 he resigned his position to
devote himself entirely to literature. He succeeded J. J. Weiss as
dramatic critic of the _Journal des Débats_, and subsequently filled the
same office on the _Revue des Deux Mondes_. His literary studies were
collected under the title of _Les Contemporains_ (7 series, 1886-1899),
and his dramatic _feuilletons as Impressions de théâtre_ (10 series,
1888-1898). His sketches of modern authors are interesting for the
insight displayed in them, the unexpectedness of the judgments and the
gaiety and originality of their expression. He published two volumes of
poetry: _Les Médaillons_ (1880) and _Petites orientales_ (1883); also
some volumes of _contes_, among them _En marge des vieux livres_ (1905).
His plays are: _Révoltée_ (1889), _Le député Leveau_, and _Le Mariage
blanc_ (1891), _Les Rois_ (1893), _Le Pardon_ and _L'Age difficile_
(1895), _La Massière_ (1905) and _Bertrade_ (1906). He was admitted to
the French Academy on the 16th of January 1896. His political views were
defined in _La Campagne nationaliste_ (1902), lectures delivered in the
provinces by him and by G. Cavaignac. He conducted a nationalist
campaign in the _Écho de Paris_, and was for some time president of the
Ligue de la Patrie Française, but resigned in 1904, and again devoted
himself to literature.
LE MANS, a town of north-western France, capital of the department of
Sarthe, 77 m. S.W. of Chartres on the railway from Paris to Brest. Pop.
(1906) town, 54,907, commune, 65,467. It is situated just above the
confluence of the Sarthe and the Huisne, on an elevation rising from the
left bank of the Sarthe. Several bridges connect the old town and the
new quarters which have sprung up round it with the more extensive
quarter of Pré on the right bank. Modern thoroughfares are gradually
superseding the winding and narrow streets of old houses; a tunnel
connects the Place des Jacobins with the river side. The cathedral,
built in the highest part of the town, was originally founded by St
Julian, to whom it is dedicated. The nave dates from the 11th and 12th
centuries. In the 13th century the choir was enlarged in the grandest
and boldest style of that period. The transepts, which are higher than
the nave, were rebuilt in the 15th century, and the bell-tower of the
south transept, the lower part of which is Romanesque, was rebuilt in
the 15th and 16th centuries. Some of the stained glass in the nave,
dating from the first half of the 12th century, is the oldest in France;
the west window, representing the legend of St Julian, is especially
interesting. The south lateral portal (12th century) is richly
decorated, and its statuettes exhibit many costumes of the period. The
austere simplicity of the older part of the building is in striking
contrast with the lavish richness of the ornamentation in the choir,
where the stained glass is especially fine. The rose-window (15th
century) of the north transept, representing the Last Judgment, contains
many historical figures. The cathedral also has curious tapestries and
some remarkable tombs, including that of Berengaria, queen of Richard
Coeur de Lion. Close to the western wall is a megalithic monument nearly
15 ft. in height. The church of La Couture, which belonged to an old
abbey founded in the 7th century by St Bertrand, has a porch of the 13th
century with fine statuary; the rest of the building is older. The
church of Notre-Dame du Pré, on the right bank of the Sarthe, is
Romanesque in style. The hôtel de ville was built in 1756 on the site of
the former castle of the counts of Maine; the prefecture (1760) occupies
the site of the monastery of La Couture, and contains the library, the
communal archives, and natural history and art collections; there is
also an archaeological museum. Among the old houses may be mentioned the
Hôtel du Grabatoire of the Renaissance, once a hospital for the canons
and the so-called house of Queen Berengaria (16th century), meeting
place of the historical and archaeological society of Maine. A monument
to General Chanzy commemorates the battle of Le Mans (1871). Le Mans is
the seat of a bishopric dating from the 3rd century, of a prefect, and
of a court of assizes, and headquarters of the IV. army corps. It has
also tribunals of first instance and of commerce, a council of
trade-arbitrators, a chamber of commerce, a branch of the Bank of
France, an exchange, a lycée for boys, training colleges, a higher
ecclesiastical seminary and a school of music. The town has a great
variety of industries, carried on chiefly in the southern suburb of
Pontlieue. The more important are the state manufacture of tobacco, the
preparation of preserved vegetables, fish, &c., tanning, hemp-spinning,
bell-founding, flour-milling, the founding of copper and other metals,
and the manufacture of railway wagons, machinery and engineering
material, agricultural implements, rope, cloth and stained glass. The
fattening of poultry is an important local industry, and there is trade
in cattle, wine, cloth, farm-produce, &c. The town is an important
railway centre.
As the capital of the Aulerci Cenomanni, Le Mans was called Suindinum or
Vindinum. The Romans built walls round it in the 3rd century, and traces
of them are still to be seen close to the left bank of the river near
the cathedral. In the same century the town was evangelized by St
Julian, who became its first bishop. Ruled at first by his
successors--notably St Aldric--Le Mans passed in the middle ages to the
counts of Maine (q.v.), whose capital and residence it became. About the
middle of the 11th century the citizens secured a communal charter, but
in 1063 the town was seized by William the Conqueror, who deprived them
of their liberties, which were recovered when the countship of Maine had
passed to the Plantagenet kings of England. Le Mans was taken by Philip
Augustus in 1189, recaptured by John, subsequently confiscated and later
ceded to Queen Berengaria, who did much for its prosperity. It was
several times besieged in the 15th and 16th centuries. In 1793 it was
seized by the Vendeans, who were expelled by the Republican generals
Marceau and Westermann after a stubborn battle in the streets. In 1799
it was again occupied by the Chouans.
The battle of Le Mans (10th-12th January 1871) was the culminating point
of General Chanzy's fighting retreat into western France after the
winter campaign in Beauce and Perche (see FRANCO-GERMAN WAR). The
numerous, but ill-trained and ill-equipped, levies of the French were
followed up by Prince Frederick Charles with the German II. Army, now
very much weakened but consisting of soldiers who had in six months'
active warfare acquired the self-confidence of veterans. The Germans
advanced with three army corps in first line and one in reserve. On the
9th of January the centre corps (III.) drove an advanced division of the
French from Ardenay (13 m. E. of Le Mans). On the 10th of January
Chanzy's main defensive position was approached. Its right wing was east
of the Sarthe and 3-5 m. from Le Mans, its centre on the heights of
Anvours with the river Huisne behind it, and its left scattered along
the western bank of the same river as far as Montfort (12 m. E.N.E. of
Le Mans) and thence northward for some miles. On the 10th there was a
severe struggle for the villages along the front of the French centre.
On the 11th Chanzy attempted a counter-offensive from many points, but
owing to the misbehaviour of certain of his rawest levies, the Germans
were able to drive him back, and as their cavalry now began to appear
beyond his extreme left flank, he retreated in the night of the 11th on
Laval, the Germans occupying Le Mans after a brief rearguard fight on
the 12th.
LE MARCHANT, JOHN GASPARD (1766-1812), English major-general, was the
son of an officer of dragoons, John Le Marchant, a member of an old
Guernsey family. After a somewhat wild youth, Le Marchant, who entered
the army in 1781, attained the rank of lieutenant-colonel in 1797. Two
years before this he had designed a new cavalry sword; and in 1801 his
scheme for establishing at High Wycombe and Great Marlow schools for the
military instruction of officers was sanctioned by Parliament, and a
grant of £30,000 was voted for the "royal military college," the two
original departments being afterwards combined and removed to Sandhurst.
Le Marchant was the first lieutenant-governor, and during the nine years
that he held this appointment he trained many officers who served with
distinction under Wellington in the Peninsula. Le Marchant himself was
given the command of a cavalry brigade in 1810, and greatly
distinguished himself in several actions, being killed at the battle of
Salamanca on the 22nd of July 1812, after the charge of his brigade had
had an important share in the English victory. He wrote several
treatises on cavalry tactics and other military subjects, but few of
them were published. By his wife, Mary, daughter of John Carey of
Guernsey, Le Marchant had four sons and six daughters.
His second son, SIR DENIS LE MARCHANT, Bart. (1795-1874), was educated
at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge, and was called to the bar in
1823. In 1830 he became secretary to Lord Chancellor Brougham, and in
the Reform Bill debates made himself exceedingly useful to the
ministers. Having been secretary to the board of trade from 1836 to
1841, he was created a baronet in 1841. He entered the House of Commons
in 1846, and was under secretary for the home department in the
government of Lord John Russell. He was chief clerk of the House of
Commons from 1850 to 1871. He published a _Life_ of his father in 1841,
and began a _Life_ of Lord Althorpe which was completed after his death
by his son; he also edited Horace Walpole's _Memoirs of the Reign of
George III._ (1845). Sir Denis Le Marchant died in London on the 30th of
October 1874.
The third son of General Le Marchant, SIR JOHN GASPARD LE MARCHANT
(1803-1874), entered the English army, and saw service in Spain in the
Carlist War of 1835-37. He was afterwards lieutenant-governor of
Newfoundland (1847-1852) and of Nova Scotia (1852-1857); governor of
Malta (1859-1864); commander-in-chief at Madras (1865-1868). He was made
K.C.B. in 1865, and died on the 6th of February 1874.
See Sir Denis Le Marchant, _Memoirs of General Le Marchant_ (1841);
Sir William Napier, _History of the War in the Peninsula_ (6 vols.,
1828-1840).
LEMBERG (Pol. _Lwów_, Lat. _Leopolis_), the capital of the crownland of
Galicia, Austria, 468 m. N.W. of Vienna by rail. Pop. (1900) 159,618, of
whom over 80% were Poles, 10% Germans, and 8% Ruthenians; nearly 30% of
the population were Jews. According to population Lemberg is the fourth
city in the Austrian empire, coming after Vienna, Prague and Trieste.
Lemberg is situated on the small river Peltew, an affluent of the Bug,
in a valley in the Sarmatian plateau, and is surrounded by hills. It is
composed of the inner town and of four suburbs. The inner town was
formerly fortified, but the fortifications were transformed into
pleasure grounds in 1811. Lemberg is the residence of Roman Catholic,
Greek Catholic and Armenian archbishops, and contains three cathedrals.
The Roman Catholic cathedral was finished by Casimir IV. in 1480 in
Gothic style; near it is a chapel (1609) remarkable for its architecture
and sculpture. The Greek cathedral, built in 1740-1779 in the Basilica
style, is situated on a height which dominates the town. The Armenian
cathedral was built in 1437 in the Armenian-Byzantine style. The
Dominican church, built in 1749 after the model of St Peter's at Rome,
contains a monument by Thorvaldsen to the Countess Dunin-Borkowska; the
Greek St Nicholas church was built in 1292; and the Roman Catholic St
Mary church was built in 1363 by the first German settlers. The town
hall (1828-1837) with a tower 250 ft. high is situated in the middle of
a square. Also notable are the hall of the estates (1877-1881), the
industrial museum, the theatre, the palace of the Roman Catholic
archbishop and several educational establishments. There are many
beautiful private buildings, broad and well-paved streets, numerous
squares and public gardens. At the head of the educational institutions
stands the university, founded in 1784 by Joseph II., transformed into a
lycée in 1803, and restored and reorganized in 1817. Since 1871 the
language of instruction has been Polish, and in 1901 the university had
110 lecturers, and was attended by 2060 students. There are also a
polytechnic, gymnasia--for Poles, Ruthenians and Germans
respectively--seminaries for priests, training colleges for teachers,
and other special and technical schools. In Lemberg is the National
Institute founded by Count Ossolinski, which contains a library of books
and manuscripts relating chiefly to the history and literature of
Poland, valuable antiquarian and scientific collections, and a printing
establishment; also the Dzieduszycki museum with collections of natural
history and ethnography relating chiefly to Galicia. Industrially and
commercially Lemberg is the most important city in Galicia, its
industries including the manufacture of machinery and iron wares,
matches, stearin candles and naphtha, arrack and liqueurs, chocolate,
chicory, leather and plaster of Paris, as well as brewing, corn-milling
and brick and tile making. It has important commerce in linen, flax,
hemp, wool and seeds, and a considerable transit trade. Of the
well-wooded hills which surround Lemberg, the most important is the
Franz-Josef-Berg to the N.E., with an altitude of 1310 ft. Several
beautiful parks have been laid out on this hill.
Leopolis was founded about 1259 by the Ruthenian prince Leo Danilowicz,
who moved here his residence from Halicz in 1270. From Casimir the
Great, who captured it in 1340, it received the Magdeburg rights, and
for almost two hundred years the public records were kept in German. In
1412 it became the see of a Roman Catholic archbishopric, and from 1432
until 1772 it was the capital of the Polish province of Reussen (_Terra
Russia_). During the whole period of Polish supremacy it was a most
important city, and after the fall of Constantinople it greatly
developed its trade with the East. In 1648 and 1655 it was besieged by
the Cossacks, and in 1672 by the Turks. Charles XII. of Sweden captured
it in 1704. In 1848 it was bombarded.
LEMERCIER, LOUIS JEAN NÉPOMUCÉNE (1771-1840), French poet and dramatist,
was born in Paris on the 21st of April 1771. His father had been
intendant successively to the duc de Penthièvre, the comte de Toulouse
and the unfortunate princesse de Lamballe, who was the boy's godmother.
Lemercier showed great precocity; before he was sixteen his tragedy of
_Méléagre_ was produced at the _Théâtre Français_. _Clarissa Harlowe_
(1792) provoked the criticism that the author was not _assez roué pour
peindre les roueries_. _Le Tartufe révolutionnaire_, a parody full of
the most audacious political allusions, was suppressed after the fifth
representation. In 1795 appeared Lemercier's masterpiece _Agamemnon_,
called by Charles Labitte the last great antique tragedy in French
literature. It was a great success, but was violently attacked later by
Geoffroy, who stigmatized it as a bad caricature of Crébillon. _Quatre
métamorphoses_ (1799) was written to prove that the most indecent
subjects might be treated without offence. The _Pinto_ (1800) was the
result of a wager that no further dramatic innovations were possible
after the comedies of Beaumarchais. It is a historical comedy on the
subject of the Portuguese revolution of 1640. This play was construed as
casting reflections on the first consul, who had hitherto been a firm
friend of Lemercier. His extreme freedom of speech finally offended
Napoleon, and the quarrel proved disastrous to Lemercier's fortune for
the time. None of his subsequent work fulfilled the expectations raised
by _Agamemnon_, with the exception perhaps of _Frédégonde et Brunéhaut_
(1821). In 1810 he was elected to the Academy, where he consistently
opposed the romanticists, refusing to give his vote to Victor Hugo. In
spite of this, he has some pretensions to be considered the earliest of
the romantic school. His _Christophe Colomb_ (1809), advertised on the
playbill as a _comédie shakespirienne_ (sic), represented the interior
of a ship, and showed no respect for the unities. Its numerous
innovations provoked such violent disturbances in the audience that one
person was killed and future representations had to be guarded by the
police. Lemercier wrote four long and ambitious epic poems: _Homère_,
_Alexandre_ (1801), _L'Atlantiade, ou la théogonie newtonienne_ (1812)
and _Moïse_ (1823), as well as an extraordinary _Panhypocrisiade_
(1819-1832), a distinctly romantic production in twenty cantos, which
has the sub-title _Spectacle infernal du XVI^e siècle_. In it
16th-century history, with Charles V. and Francis I. as principal
personages, is played out on an imaginary stage by demons in the
intervals of their sufferings. Lemercier died on the 7th of June 1840 in
Paris.
LEMERY, NICOLAS (1645-1715), French chemist, was born at Rouen on the
17th of November 1645. After learning pharmacy in his native town he
became a pupil of C. Glaser's in Paris, and then went to Montpellier,
where he began to lecture on chemistry. He next established a pharmacy
in Paris, still continuing his lectures, but in 1683, being a Calvinist,
he was obliged to retire to England. In the following year he returned
to France, and turning Catholic in 1686 was able to reopen his shop and
resume his lectures. He died in Paris on the 19th of June 1715. Lemery
did not concern himself much with theoretical speculations, but holding
chemistry to be a demonstrative science, confined himself to the
straightforward exposition of facts and experiments. In consequence, his
lecture-room was thronged with people of all sorts, anxious to hear a
man who shunned the barren obscurities of the alchemists, and did not
regard the quest of the philosopher's stone and the elixir of life as
the sole end of his science. Of his _Cours de chymie_ (1675) he lived to
see 13 editions, and for a century it maintained its reputation as a
standard work. His other publications included _Pharmacopée universelle_
(1697), _Traité universel des drogues simples_ (1698), _Traité de
l'antimoine_ (1707), together with a number of papers contributed to the
French Academy, one of which offered a chemical and physical explanation
of underground fires, earthquakes, lightning and thunder. He discovered
that heat is evolved when iron filings and sulphur are rubbed together
to a paste with water, and the artificial _volcan de Lemery_ was
produced by burying underground a considerable quantity of this mixture,
which he regarded as a potent agent in the causation of volcanic action.
His son LOUIS (1677-1743) was appointed physician at the Hôtel Dieu in
1710, and became demonstrator of chemistry at the Jardin du Roi in 1731.
He was the author of a _Traité des aliments_ (1702), and of a
_Dissertation sur la nature des os_ (1704), as well as of a number of
papers on chemical topics.
LEMERY, a town of the province of Batangas, Luzon, Philippine Islands,
on the Gulf of Balayan and the Pansipit river, opposite Taal (with which
it is connected by a bridge), and about 50 m. S. of Manila. Pop. of the
municipality (1903) 11,150. It has a fine church and convent. Lemery is
situated on a plain in a rich agricultural district, which produces
rice, Indian corn, sugar and cotton, and in which horses and cattle are
bred. It is also a port for coasting vessels, and has an important trade
with various parts of the archipelago. The language is Tagalog.
LEMGO, a town of Germany, in the principality of Lippe, in a broad and
fertile plain, 9 m. N. from Detmold and on the railway Hameln-Lage. Pop.
(1900) 8840. Its somewhat gloomy aspect, enhanced by the tortuous narrow
lanes flanked by gabled houses of the 15th century, has gained for it
among countryfolk the sobriquet of the "Witches' nest" (_Hexen-Nest_).
It is replete with interest for the antiquarian. It has four Evangelical
churches, two with curiously leaning, lead-covered spires; an old
town-hall; a gymnasium; and several philanthropic and religious
institutions. Among the latter is the Jungfrauenstift, of which a
princess of the reigning house of Lippe-Detmold has always been lady
superior since 1306. The chief industry of Lemgo is the manufacture of
meerschaum pipes, which has attained here a high pitch of excellence;
other industries are weaving, brewing and the manufacture of leather and
cigars. The town was a member of the Hanseatic league.
LEMIERRE, ANTOINE MARIN (1733-1793), French dramatist and poet, was born
in Paris on the 12th of January 1733. His parents were poor, but
Lemierre found a patron in the collector-general of taxes, Dupin, whose
secretary he became. Lemierre gained his first success on the stage with
_Hypermnestre_ (1758); _Térée_ (1761) and _Idoménée_ (1764) failed on
account of the subjects. _Artaxerce_, modelled on Metastasio, and
_Guillaume Tell_ were produced in 1766; other successful tragedies were
_La Veuve de Malabar_ (1770) and _Barnavelt_ (1784). Lemierre revived
_Guillaume Tell_ in 1786 with enormous success. After the Revolution he
professed great remorse for the production of a play inculcating
revolutionary principles, and there is no doubt that the horror of the
excesses he witnessed hastened his death, which took place on the 4th of
July 1793. He had been admitted to the Academy in 1781. Lemierre
published _La Peinture_ (1769), based on a Latin poem by the abbé de
Marsy, and a poem in six cantos, _Les Fastes, ou les usages de l'année_
(1779), an unsatisfactory imitation of Ovid's _Fasti_.
His _Oeuvres_ (1810) contain a notice of Lemierre by R. Perrin and his
_Oeuvres choisies_ (1811) one by F. Fayolle.
LEMIRE, JULES AUGUSTE (1853- ), French priest and social reformer, was
born at Vieux-Berquin (Nord) on the 23rd of April 1853. He was educated
at the college of St Francis of Assisi, Hazebrouck, where he
subsequently taught philosophy and rhetoric. In 1897 he was elected
deputy for Hazebrouck and was returned unopposed at the elections of
1898, 1902 and 1906. He organized a society called _La Ligue du coin de
terre et du foyer_, the object of which was to secure, at the expense of
the state, a piece of land for every French family desirous of
possessing one. The abbé Lemire sat in the chamber of deputies as a
conservative republican and Christian Socialist. He protested in 1893
against the action of the Dupuy cabinet in closing the Bourse du
Travail, characterizing it as the expression of "a policy of disdain of
the workers." In December 1893 he was seriously injured by the bomb
thrown by the anarchist Vaillant from the gallery of the chamber.
LEMMING, the native name of a small Scandinavian rodent mammal _Lemmus
norvegicus_ (or _L. lemmus_), belonging to the mouse tribe, or
_Muridae_, and nearly related, especially in the structure of its
cheek-teeth, to the voles. Specimens vary considerably in size and
colour, but the usual length is about 5 in., and the soft fur
yellowish-brown, marked with spots of dark brown and black. It has a
short, rounded head, obtuse muzzle, small bead-like eyes, and short
rounded ears, nearly concealed by the fur. The tail is very short. The
feet are small, each with five claws, those of the fore feet strongest,
and fitted for scratching and digging. The usual habitat of lemmings is
the high lands or fells of the great central mountain chain of Norway
and Sweden, from the southern branches of the Langfjeldene in
Christiansand _stift_ to the North Cape and the Varangerfjord. South of
the Arctic circle they are, under ordinary circumstances, confined to
the plateaus covered with dwarf birch and juniper above the
conifer-region, though in Tromsö _amt_ and in Finmarken they occur in
all suitable localities down to the level of the sea. The nest, under a
tussock of grass or a stone, is constructed of short dry straws, and
usually lined with hair. The number of young in each nest is generally
five, sometimes only three occasionally seven or eight, and at least two
broods are produced annually. Their food is entirely vegetable,
especially grass roots and stalks, shoots of dwarf birch, reindeer
lichens and mosses, in search of which they form, in winter, long
galleries through the turf or under the snow. They are restless,
courageous and pugnacious little animals. When suddenly disturbed,
instead of trying to escape they sit upright, with their back against a
stone, hissing and showing fight in a determined manner.
[Illustration: The Norwegian Lemming (_Lemmus Norvegicus_).]
The circumstance which has given popular interest to the lemming is that
certain districts of the cultivated lands of Norway and Sweden, where in
ordinary circumstances they are unknown, are, at uncertain intervals
varying from five to twenty or more years, overrun by an army of these
little creatures, which steadily and slowly advance, always in the same
direction, and regardless of all obstacles, swimming streams and even
lakes of several miles in breadth, and committing considerable
devastation on their line of march by the quantity of food they consume.
In their turn they are pursued and harassed by crowds of beasts and
birds of prey, as bears, wolves, foxes, dogs, wild cats, stoats,
weasels, eagles, hawks and owls, and never spared by man; even domestic
animals, as cattle, goats and reindeer, join in the destruction,
stamping them to the ground with their feet, and even eating their
bodies. Numbers also die from diseases produced apparently from
overcrowding. None returns, and the onward march of the survivors never
ceases until they reach the sea, into which they plunge, and swimming
onwards in the same direction perish in the waves. These sudden
appearances of vast bodies of lemmings, and their singular habit of
persistently pursuing the same onward course of migration, have given
rise to various speculations, from the ancient belief of the Norwegian
peasants, shared by Olaus Magnus, that they fall down from the clouds,
to the hypothesis that they are acting in obedience to an instinct
inherited from ancient times, and still seeking the congenial home in
the submerged Atlantis, to which their ancestors of the Miocene period
were wont to resort when driven from their ordinary dwelling-places by
crowding or scarcity of food. The principal facts regarding these
migrations seem to be as follows. When any combination of circumstances
has occasioned an increase of the numbers of the lemmings in their
ordinary dwelling-places, impelled by the restless or migratory instinct
possessed in a less developed degree by so many of their congeners, a
movement takes place at the edge of the elevated plateau, and a
migration towards the lower-lying land begins. The whole body moves
forward slowly, always advancing in the same general direction in which
they originally started, but following more or less the course of the
great valleys. They only travel by night; and, staying in congenial
places for considerable periods, with unaccustomed abundance of
provender, notwithstanding the destructive influences to which they are
exposed, they multiply excessively during their journey, having families
more numerous and frequent than in their usual homes. The progress may
last from one to three years, according to the route taken, and the
distance to be traversed until the sea-coast is reached, which in a
country so surrounded by water as the Scandinavian peninsula must be the
ultimate goal of such a journey. This may be either the Atlantic or the
Gulf of Bothnia, according as the migration has commenced from the west
or the east side of the central elevated plateau. Those that finally
perish in the sea, committing what appears to be a voluntary suicide,
are only acting under the same blind impulse which has led them
previously to cross shallower pieces of water with safety. In Eastern
Europe, Northern Asia and North America the group is represented by the
allied _L. obensis_, and in Alaska, by _L. nigripes_; while the
circumpolar banded lemming, _Dicrostonyx torquatus_, which turns white
in winter, represents a second genus taking its name from the double
claws on one of the toes of the forefeet.
For habits of lemmings, see R. Collett, _Myodes lemmus, its habits and
migrations in Norway_ (Christiania Videnskabs-Selskabs Forhandlinger,
1895). (W. H. F.; R. L.*)
LEMNISCATE (from Gr. [Greek: lêmniskos], ribbon), a quartic curve
invented by Jacques Bernoulli (_Acta Eruditorum_, 1694) and afterwards
investigated by Giulio Carlo Fagnano, who gave its principal properties
and applied it to effect the division of a quadrant into 2.2^m, 3.2^m
and 5.2^m equal parts. Following Archimedes, Fagnano desired the curve
to be engraved on his tombstone. The complete analytical treatment was
first given by Leonhard Euler. The lemniscate of Bernoulli may be
defined as the locus of a point which moves so that the product of its
distances from two fixed points is constant and is equal to the square
of half the distance between these points. It is therefore a particular
form of Cassini's oval (see OVAL). Its cartesian equation, when the line
joining the two fixed points is the axis of x and the middle point of
this line is the origin, is (x² + y²)² = 2a²(x² - y²) and the polar
equation is r² = 2a² cos 2[theta]. The curve (fig. 1) consists of two
loops symmetrically placed about the coordinate axes. The pedal equation
is r³ = a²p, which shows that it is the first positive pedal of a
rectangular hyperbola with regard to the centre. It is also the inverse
of the same curve for the same point. It is the envelope of circles
described on the central radii of an ellipse as diameters. The area of
the complete curve is 2a², and the length of any arc may be expressed in
the form [int](1 - x^4)^(-½)dx, an elliptic integral sometimes termed
the _lemniscatic integral_.
[Illustration: FIG. 1.]
[Illustration: FIG. 2.]
[Illustration: FIG. 3.]
[Illustration: FIG. 4.]
[Illustration: FIG. 5.]
The name lemniscate is sometimes given to any crunodal quartic curve
having only one real finite branch which is symmetric about the axis.
Such curves are given by the equation x² - y² = ax^4 + bx²y² + cy^4.
If a be greater than b the curve resembles fig. 2 and is sometimes
termed the _fishtail-lemniscate_; if a be less than b, the curve
resembles fig. 3. The same name is also given to the first positive
pedal of any central conic. When the conic is a rectangular hyperbola,
the curve is the lemniscate of Bernoulli previously described. The
_elliptic lemniscate_ has for its equation (x² + y²)² = a²x² + b²y² or
r² = a² cos²[theta] + b² sin²[theta] (a > b). The centre is a
conjugate point (or acnode) and the curve resembles fig. 4. The
_hyperbolic lemniscate_ has for its equation (x² + y²)² = a²x² - b²y²
or r² = a² cos²[theta] - b² sin²[theta]. In this case the centre is a
crunode and the curve resembles fig. 5. These curves are instances of
unicursal bicircular quartics.
LEMNOS (mod. _Limnos_), an island in the northern part of the Aegean
Sea. The Italian form of the name, Stalimene, i.e. [Greek: es tên
Lêmnon], is not used in the island itself, but is commonly employed in
geographical works. The island, which belongs to Turkey, is of
considerable size: Pliny says that the coast-line measured 112½ Roman
miles, and the area has been estimated at 150 sq. m. Great part is
mountainous, but some very fertile valleys exist, to cultivate which
2000 yoke of oxen are employed. The hill-sides afford pasture for 20,000
sheep. No forests exist on the island; all wood is brought from the
coast of Rumelia or from Thasos. A few mulberry and fruit trees grow,
but no olives. The population is estimated by some as high as 27,000, of
whom 2000 are Turks and the rest Greeks, but other authorities doubt
whether it reaches more than half this number. The chief towns are
Kastro on the western coast, with a population of 4000 Greeks and 800
Turks, and Mudros on the southern coast. Kastro possesses an excellent
harbour, and is the seat of all the trade carried on with the island.
Greek, English and Dutch consuls or consular agents were formerly
stationed there; but the whole trade is now in Greek hands. The
archbishops of Lemnos and Ai Strati, a small neighbouring island with
2000 inhabitants, resides in Kastro. In ancient times the island was
sacred to Hephaestus, who as the legend tells fell on Lemnos when his
father Zeus hurled him headlong out of Olympus. This tale, as well as
the name Aethaleia, sometimes applied to it, points to its volcanic
character. It is said that fire occasionally blazed forth from
Mosychlos, one of its mountains; and Pausanias (viii. 33) relates that a
small island called Chryse, off the Lemnian coast, was swallowed up by
the sea. All volcanic action is now extinct.
The most famous product of Lemnos is the medicinal earth, which is
still used by the natives. At one time it was popular over western
Europe under the name _terra sigillata_. This name, like the Gr.
[Greek: Lêmnia sphragis], is derived from the stamp impressed on each
piece of the earth; in ancient times the stamp was the head of
Artemis. The Turks now believe that a vase of this earth destroys the
effect of any poison drunk from it--a belief which the ancients
attached rather to the earth from Cape Kolias in Attica. Galen went to
see the digging up of this earth (see Kuhn, _Medic. Gr. Opera_, xii.
172 sq.); on one day in each year a priestess performed the due
ceremonies, and a waggon-load of earth was dug out. At the present
time the day selected is the 6th of August, the feast of Christ the
Saviour. Both the Turkish _hodja_ and the Greek priest are present to
perform the necessary ceremonies; the whole process takes place before
daybreak. The earth is sold by apothecaries in stamped cubical blocks.
The hill from which the earth is dug is a dry mound, void of
vegetation, beside the village of Kotschinos, and about two hours from
the site of Hephaestia. The earth was considered in ancient times a
cure for old festering wounds, and for the bite of poisonous snakes.
The name Lemnos is said by Hecataeus (ap. Steph. Byz.) to have been a
title of Cybele among the Thracians, and the earliest inhabitants are
said to have been a Thracian tribe, called by the Greeks Sinties, i.e.
"the robbers." According to a famous legend the women were all deserted
by their husbands, and in revenge murdered every man on the island. From
this barbarous act, the expression Lemnian deeds, [Greek: Lêmnia erga],
became proverbial. The Argonauts landing soon after found only women in
the island, ruled over by Hypsipyle, daughter of the old king Thoas.
From the Argonauts and the Lemnian women were descended the race called
Minyae, whose king Euneus, son of Jason and Hypsipyle, sent wine and
provisions to the Greeks at Troy. The Minyae were expelled by a
Pelasgian tribe who came from Attica. The historical element underlying
these traditions is probably that the original Thracian people were
gradually brought into communication with the Greeks as navigation began
to unite the scattered islands of the Aegean (see JASON); the Thracian
inhabitants were barbarians in comparison with the Greek mariners. The
worship of Cybele was characteristic of Thrace, whither it spread from
Asia Minor at a very early period, and it deserves notice that Hypsipyle
and Myrina (the name of one of the chief towns) are Amazon names, which
are always connected with Asiatic Cybele-worship. Coming down to a
better authenticated period, we find that Lemnos was conquered by
Otanes, one of the generals of Darius Hystaspis; but was soon
reconquered by Miltiades, the tyrant of the Thracian Chersonese.
Miltiades afterwards returned to Athens, and Lemnos continued an
Athenian possession till the Macedonian empire absorbed it. On the
vicissitudes of its history in the 3rd century B.C. see Köhler in
_Mittheil. Inst. Athen._ i. 261. The Romans declared it free in 197
B.C., but gave it over in 166 to Athens, which retained nominal
possession of it till the whole of Greece was made a Roman province. A
colony of Attic cleruchs was established by Pericles, and many
inscriptions on the island relate to Athenians. After the division of
the empire, Lemnos passed under the Byzantine emperors; it shared in the
vicissitudes of the eastern provinces, being alternately in the power of
Greeks, Italians and Turks, till finally the Turkish sultans became
supreme in the Aegean. In 1476 the Venetians successfully defended
Kotschinos against a Turkish siege; but in 1657 Kastro was captured by
the Turks from the Venetians after a siege of sixty-three days. Kastro
was again besieged by the Russians in 1770.
Homer speaks as if there were one town in the island called Lemnos, but
in historical times there was no such place. There were two towns,
Myrina, now Kastro, and Hephaestia. The latter was the chief town; its
coins are found in considerable number, the types being sometimes the
Athenian goddess and her owl, sometimes native religious symbols, the
caps of the Dioscuri, Apollo, &c. Few coins of Myrina are known. They
belong to the period of Attic occupation, and bear Athenian types. A few
coins are also known which bear the name, not of either city, but of the
whole island. Conze was the first to discover the site of Hephaestia, at
a deserted place named Palaeokastro on the east coast. It had once a
splendid harbour, which is now filled up. Its situation on the east
explains why Miltiades attacked it first when he came from the
Chersonese. It surrendered at once, whereas Myrina, with its very strong
citadel built on a perpendicular rock, sustained a siege. It is said
that the shadow of Mount Athos fell at sunset on a bronze cow in the
agora of Myrina. Pliny says that Athos was 87 m. to the north-west; but
the real distance is about 40 English miles. One legend localized in
Lemnos still requires notice. Philoctetes was left there by the Greeks
on their way to Troy; and there he suffered ten years' agony from his
wounded foot, until Ulysses and Neoptolemus induced him to accompany
them to Troy. He is said by Sophocles to have lived beside Mount
Hermaeus, which Aeschylus (_Agam._ 262) makes one of the beacon points
to flash the news of Troy's downfall home to Argos.
See Rhode, _Res Lemnicae_; Conze, _Reise auf den Inseln des
Thrakischen Meeres_ (from which the above-mentioned facts about the
present state of the island are taken); also Hunt in Walpole's
_Travels_; Belon du Mans, _Observations de plusieurs singularitez_,
&c.; Finlay, _Greece under the Romans_; von Hammer, _Gesch. des Osman.
Reiches; Gött. Gel. Anz._ (1837). The chief references in ancicnt
writers are _Iliad_ i. 593, v. 138, xiv. 229, &c.; Herod. iv. 145;
Str. pp. 124, 330; Plin. iv. 23, xxxvi. 13.
LEMOINNE, JOHN ÉMILE (1815-1892), French journalist, was born of French
parents, in London, on the 17th of October 1815. He was educated first
at an English school and then in France. In 1840 he began writing for
the _Journal des débats_, on English and other foreign questions, and
under the empire he held up to admiration the free institutions of
England by contrast with imperial methods. After 1871 he supported
Thiers, but his sympathies rather tended towards a liberalized monarchy,
until the comte de Chambord's policy made such a development an
impossibility, and he then ranged himself with the moderate Republicans.
In 1875 Lemoinne was elected to the French Academy, and in 1880 he was
nominated a life senator. Distinguished though he was for a real
knowledge of England among the French journalists who wrote on foreign
affairs, his tone towards English policy greatly changed in later days,
and though he never shared the extreme French bitterness against England
as regards Egypt, he maintained a critical attitude which served to
stimulate French Anglophobia. He was a frequent contributor to the
_Revue des deux mondes_, and published several books, the best known of
which is his _Études critiques et biographiques_ (1862). He died in
Paris on the 14th of December 1892.
LEMON, MARK (1809-1870), editor of _Punch_, was born in London on the
30th of November 1809. He had a natural talent for journalism and the
stage, and, at twenty-six, retired from less congenial business to
devote himself to the writing of plays. More than sixty of his
melodramas, operettas and comedies were produced in London. At the same
time he contributed to a variety of magazines and newspapers, and
founded and edited the _Field_. In 1841 Lemon and Henry Mayhew conceived
the idea of a humorous weekly paper to be called _Punch_, and when the
first number was issued, in July 1841, were joint-editors and, with the
printer and engraver, equal owners. The paper was for some time
unsuccessful, Lemon keeping it alive out of the profits of his plays. On
the sale of _Punch_ Lemon became sole editor for the new proprietors,
and it remained under his control until his death, achieving remarkable
popularity and influence. Lemon was an actor of ability, a pleasing
lecturer and a successful impersonator of Shakespearian characters. He
also wrote a host of novelettes and lyrics, over a hundred songs, a few
three-volume novels, several Christmas fairy tales and a volume of
jests. He died at Crawley, Sussex, on the 23rd of May 1870.
LEMON, the fruit of _Citrus Limonum_, which is regarded by some
botanists as a variety of _Citrus medica_. The wild stock of the lemon
tree is said to be a native of the valleys of Kumaon and Sikkim in the
North-West provinces of India, ascending to a height of 4000 ft., and
occurring under several forms. Sir George Watt (_Dictionary of Economic
Products of India_, ii. 352) regards the wild plants as wild forms of
the lime or citron and considers it highly probable that the wild form
of the lemon has not yet been discovered.
[Illustration: FIG. 1.--Lemon--_Citrus Limonum_.
1, Flowering shoot.
2, Flower with two petals and two bundles of stamens removed; slightly
enlarged.
3, Fruit.
4, Same cut across.
5, Seed.
6, Same cut lengthwise.]
The lemon seems to have been unknown to the ancient Greeks and Romans,
and to have been introduced by the Arabs into Spain between the 12th and
13th centuries. In 1494 the fruit was cultivated in the Azores, and
largely shipped to England, but since 1838 the exportation has ceased.
As a cultivated plant the lemon is now met with throughout the
Mediterranean region, in Spain and Portugal, in California and Florida,
and in almost all tropical and subtropical countries. Like the apple and
pear, it varies exceedingly under cultivation. Risso and Poiteau
enumerate forty-seven varieties of this fruit, although they maintain as
distinct the sweet lime, _C. Limetta_, with eight varieties, and the
sweet lemon, _C. Lumia_, with twelve varieties, which differ only in the
fruit possessing an insipid instead of an acid juice.
The lemon is more delicate than the orange, although, according to
Humboldt, both require an annual mean temperature of 62° Fahr. Unlike
the orange, which presents a fine close head of deep green foliage, it
forms a straggling bush, or small tree, 10 to 12 ft. high, with paler,
more scattered leaves, and short angular branches with sharp spines in
the axils. The flowers, which possess a sweet odour quite distinct
from that of the orange, are in part hermaphrodite and in part
unisexual, the outside of the corolla having a purplish hue. The
fruit, which is usually crowned with a nipple, consists of an outer
rind or peel, the surface of which is more or less rough from the
convex oil receptacles imbedded in it, and of a white inner rind,
which is spongy and nearly tasteless, the whole of the interior of the
fruit being filled with soft parenchymatous tissue, divided into about
ten to twelve compartments, each generally containing two or three
seeds. The white inner rind varies much in thickness in different
kinds, but is never so thick as in the citron. As lemons are much more
profitable to grow than oranges, on account of their keeping
properties, and from their being less liable to injury during voyages,
the cultivation of the lemon is preferred in Italy wherever it will
succeed. In damp valleys it is liable like the orange (q.v.) to be
attacked by a fungus sooty mould, the stem, leaves, and fruit becoming
covered with a blackish dust. This is coincident with or subsequent to
the attacks of a small oval brown insect, _Chermes hesperidum_. Trees
not properly exposed to sunlight and air suffer most severely from
these pests. Syringing with resin-wash or milk of lime when the young
insects are hatched, and before they have fixed themselves to the
plant, is a preventive. Since 1875 this fungoid disease has made great
ravages in Sicily among the lemon and citron trees, especially around
Catania and Messina. Heritte attributes the prevalence of the disease
to the fact that the growers have induced an unnatural degree of
fertility in the trees, permitting them to bear enormous crops year
after year. This loss of vitality is in some measure met by grafting
healthy scions of the lemon on the bitter orange, but trees so grafted
do not bear fruit until they are eight or ten years old.
The lemon tree is exceedingly fruitful, a large one in Spain or Sicily
ripening as many as three thousand fruits in favourable seasons. In the
south of Europe lemons are collected more or less during every month of
the year, but in Sicily the chief harvest takes place from the end of
October to the end of December, those gathered during the last two
months of the year being considered the best for keeping purposes. The
fruit is gathered while still green. After collection the finest
specimens are picked out and packed in cases, each containing about four
hundred and twenty fruits, and also in boxes, three of which are equal
to two cases, each lemon being separately packed in paper. The
remainder, consisting of ill-shaped or unsound fruits, are reserved for
the manufacture of essential oil and juice. The whole of the sound
lemons are usually packed in boxes, but those which are not exported
immediately are carefully picked over and the unsound ones removed
before shipment. The exportation is continued as required until April
and May. The large lemons with a rougher rind, which appear in the
London market in July and August, are grown at Sorrento near Naples, and
are allowed to remain on the trees until ripe.
Candied lemon peel is usually made in England from a larger variety of
the lemon cultivated in Sicily on higher ground than the common kind,
from which it is distinguished by its thicker rind and larger size. This
kind, known as the Spadaforese lemon, is also allowed to remain on the
trees until ripe, and when gathered the fruit is cut in half
longitudinally and pickled in brine, before being exported in casks.
Before candying the lemons are soaked in fresh water to remove the salt.
Citrons are also exported from Sicily in the same way, but these are
about six times as expensive as lemons, and a comparatively small
quantity is shipped. Besides those exported from Messina and Palermo,
lemons are also imported into England to a less extent from the Riviera
of Genoa, and from Malaga in Spain, the latter being the most esteemed.
Of the numerous varieties the wax lemon, the imperial lemon and the
Gaeta lemon are considered to be the best. Lemons are also extensively
grown in California and Florida.
Lemons of ordinary size contain about 2 oz. of juice, of specific
gravity 1.039-1.046, yielding on an average 32.5 to 42.53 grains of
citric acid per oz. The amount of this acid, according to Stoddart,
varies in different seasons, decreasing in lemons kept from February
to July, at first slowly and afterwards rapidly, until at the end of
that period it is all split up into glucose and carbonic acid--the
specific gravity of the juice being in February 1.046, in May 1.041
and in July 1.027, while the fruit is hardly altered in appearance. It
has been stated that lemons may be kept for some months with scarcely
perceptible deterioration by varnishing them with an alcoholic
solution of shellac--the coating thus formed being easily removed when
the fruit is required for household use by gently kneading it in the
hands. Besides citric acid, lemon juice contains 3 to 4% of gum and
sugar, albuminoid matters, malic acid and 2.28% of inorganic salts.
Cossa has determined that the ash of dried lemon juice contains 54% of
potash, besides 15% of phosphoric acid. In the white portion of the
peel (in common with other fruits of the genus) a bitter principle
called _hesperidin_ has been found. It is very slightly soluble in
boiling water, but is soluble in dilute alcohol and in alkaline
solutions, which it soon turns of a yellow or reddish colour. It is
also darkened by tincture of perchloride of iron. Another substance
named _lemonin_, crystallizing in lustrous plates, was discovered in
1879 by Palerno and Aglialoro in the seeds, in which it is present in
very small quantity, 15,000 grains of seed yielding only 80 grains of
it. It differs from hesperidin in dissolving in potash without
alteration. It melts at 275° F.
The simplest method of preserving lemon juice in small quantities for
medicinal or domestic use is to keep it covered with a layer of olive
or almond oil in a closed vessel furnished with a glass tap, by which
the clear liquid may be drawn off as required. Lemon juice is largely
used on shipboard as a preventive of scurvy. By the Merchant Shipping
Act 1867 every British ship going to other countries where lemon or
lime juice cannot be obtained was required to take sufficient to give
1 oz. to every member of the crew daily. Of this juice it requires
about 13,000 lemons to yield l pipe (108 gallons). Sicilian juice in
November yields about 9 oz. of crude citric acid per gallon, but only
6 oz. if the fruit is collected in April. The crude juice was formerly
exported to England, and was often adulterated with sea-water, but is
now almost entirely replaced by lime juice. A concentrated lemon juice
for the manufacture of citric acid is prepared in considerable
quantities, chiefly at Messina and Palermo, by boiling down the crude
juice in copper vessels over an open fire until its specific gravity
is about 1.239, seven to ten pipes of raw making only one of
concentrated lemon juice. "Lemon juice" for use on shipboard is
prepared also from the fruits of limes and Bergamot oranges. It is
said to be sometimes adulterated with sulphuric acid on arrival in
England.
The lemon used in medicine is described in the British pharmacopoeia
as being the fruit of _Citrus medica_, var. Limonum. The preparations
of lemon peel are of small importance. From the fresh peel is obtained
the _oleum limonis_ (dose ½-3 minims), which has the characters of its
class. It contains a terpene known as citrene or limonene, which also
occurs in orange peel: and citral, the aldehyde of geraniol, which is
the chief constituent of oil of roses. Of much importance is the
_succus limonis_ or lemon juice, 1 oz. of which contains about 40
grains of free citric acid, besides the citrate of potassium (.25%)
and malic acid, free and combined. Ten per cent. of alcohol must be
added to lemon juice if it is to be kept. From it are prepared the
_syrupus limonis_ (dose ½-2 drachms), which consists of sugar, lemon
juice and an alcoholic extract of lemon peel, and also citric acid
itself. Lemon juice is practically impure citric acid (q.v.).
_Essence or Essential Oil of Lemon._--The essential oil contained in
the rind of the lemon occurs in commerce as a distinct article. It is
manufactured chiefly in Sicily, at Reggio in Calabria, and at Mentone
and Nice in France. The small and irregularly shaped fruits are
employed while still green, in which state the yield of oil is greater
than when they are quite ripe. In Sicily and Calabria the oil is
extracted in November and December as follows. A workman cuts three
longitudinal slices off each lemon, leaving a three-cornered central
core having a small portion of rind at the apex and base. These pieces
are then divided transversely and cast on one side, and the strips of
peel are thrown in another place. Next day the pieces of peel are
deprived of their oil by pressing four or five times successively the
outer surface of the peel (zest or flavedo) bent into a convex shape,
against a flat sponge held in the palm of the left hand and wrapped
round the forefinger. The oil vesicles in the rind, which are ruptured
more easily in the fresh fruit than in the state in which lemons are
imported, yield up their oil to the sponge, which when saturated is
squeezed into an earthen vessel furnished with a spout and capable of
holding about three pints. After a time the oil separates from the
watery liquid which accompanies it, and is then decanted. By this
process four hundred fruits yield 9 to 14 oz. of essence. The prisms
of pulp are afterwards expressed to obtain lemon juice, and then
distilled to obtain the small quantity of volatile oil they contain.
At Mentone and Nice a different process is adopted. The lemons are
placed in an _écuelle à piquer_, a shallow basin of pewter about 8½
in. in diameter, having i a lip for pouring on one side and a closed
tube at the bottom about 5 in. long and 1 in. in diameter. A number of
stout brass pins stand up about half an inch from the bottom of the
vessel. The workman rubs a lemon over these pins, which rupture the
oil vesicles, and the oil collects in the tube, which when it becomes
full is emptied into another vessel that it may separate from the
aqueous liquid mixed with it. When filtered it is known as _Essence de
citron au zeste_, or, in the English market, as perfumers' essence of
lemon, inferior qualities being distinguished as druggists' essence of
lemon. An additional product is obtained by immersing the scarified
lemons in warm water and separating the oil which floats off. _Essence
de citron distillée_ is obtained by rubbing the surface of fresh
lemons (or of those which have been submitted to the action of the
_écuelle à piquer_) on a coarse grater of tinned iron, and distilling
the grated peel. The oil so obtained is colourless, and of inferior
fragrance, and is sold at a lower price, while that obtained by the
cold processes has a yellow colour and powerful odour.
Essence of lemon is chiefly brought from Messina and Palermo packed in
copper bottles holding 25 to 50 kilogrammes or more, and sometimes in
tinned bottles of smaller size. It is said to be rarely found in a
state of purity in commerce, almost all that comes into the market
being diluted with the cheaper distilled oil. This fact may be
considered as proved by the price at which the essence of lemon is
sold in England, this being less than it costs the manufacturer to
make it. When long kept the essence deposits a white greasy
stearoptene, apparently identical with the bergaptene obtained from
the essential oil of the Bergamot orange. The chief constituent of oil
of lemon is the terpene, C10H16, boiling at 348°.8 Fahr., which, like
oil of turpentine, readily yields crystals of terpin, C10H163OH2, but
differs in yielding the crystalline compound, C10H16 + 2Cl, oil of
turpentine forming one having the formula C10H16 + HCl. Oil of lemons
also contains, according to Tilden, another hydrocarbon, C10H16,
boiling at 3.20° Fahr., a small amount of _cymene_, and a compound
acetic ether, C2H3O·C10H17O. The natural essence of lemon not being
wholly soluble in rectified spirit of wine, an essence for culinary
purposes is sometimes prepared by digesting 6 oz of lemon peel in one
pint of pure alcohol of 95%, and, when the rind has become brittle,
which takes place in about two and a half hours, powdering it and
percolating the alcohol through it. This article is known as "lemon
flavour."
The name lemon is also applied to some other fruits. The Java lemon is
the fruit of _Citrus javanica_, the pear lemon of a variety of _C.
Limetta_, and the pearl lemon of _C. margarita_. The fruit of a
passion-flower, _Passiflora laurifolia_, is sometimes known as the
water-lemon, and that of a Berberidaceous plant, _Podophyllum peltatum_,
as the wild lemon. In France and Germany the lemon is known as the
citron, and hence much confusion arises concerning the fruits referred
to in different works. The essential oil known as oil of cedrat is
usually a factitious article instead of being prepared, as its name
implies, from the citron (Fr. _cédratier_). An essential oil is also
prepared from _C. Lumia_, at Squillace in Calabria, and has an odour
like that of Bergamot but less powerful.
[Illustration: FIG. 2.--Lime--_Citrus medica_, var. _acida_.
1, Flowering shoot.
2, Fruit.
3, Same cut transversely.
4, Seed.
5, Seed cut lengthwise.
6, Seed cut transversely.
7, Superficial view of portion of rind showing oil glands.]
The sour lime is _Citrus acida_, generally regarded as a var. (_acida_)
of _C. medica_. It is a native of India, ascending to about 4000 ft. in
the mountains, and occurring as a small, much-branched thorny bush. The
small flowers are white or tinged with pink on the outside; the fruit is
small and generally round, with a thin, light green or lemon-yellow
bitter rind, and a very sour, somewhat bitter juicy pulp. It is
extensively cultivated throughout the West Indies, especially in
Dominica, Montserrat and Jamaica, the approximate annual value of the
exports from these islands being respectively £45,000, £6000 and £6000.
The plants are grown from seed in nurseries and planted out about 200 to
the acre. They begin to bear from about the third year, but full crops
are not produced until the trees are six or seven years old. The ripe
yellow fruit is gathered as it falls. The fruit is bruised by hand in a
funnel-shaped vessel known as an _écuelle_, with a hollow stem; by
rolling the fruit on a number of points on the side of the funnel the
oil cells in the rind are broken and the oil collects in the hollow
stem--this is the essential oil or essence of limes. The fruits are then
taken to the mill, sorted, washed and passed through rollers and exposed
to two squeezings. Two-thirds of the juice is expressed by the first
squeezing, is strained at once, done up in puncheons and exported as raw
juice. The product of the second squeezing, together with the juice
extracted by a subsequent squeezing in a press, is strained and
evaporated down to make concentrated juice; ten gallons of the raw juice
yield one gallon of the concentrated juice. The raw juice is used for
preparations of lime juice cordial, the concentrated for manufactures of
citric acid.
On some estates citrate of lime is now manufactured in place of
concentrated acid. Distilled oil of limes is prepared by distilling
the juice, but its value is low in comparison with the expressed oil
obtained by hand as described above. Green limes and pickled limes
preserved in brine are largely exported to the United States, and more
recently green limes have been exported to the United Kingdom.
Limalade or preserved limes is an excellent substitute for marmalade.
A spineless form of the lime appeared as a sport in Dominica in 1892,
and is now grown there and elsewhere on a commercial scale. A form
with seedless fruits has also recently been obtained in Dominica and
Trinidad independently. The young leaves of the lime are used for
perfuming the water in finger-glasses, a few being placed in the water
and bruised before use.
LEMONNIER, ANTOINE LOUIS CAMILLE (1844- ), Belgian poet, was born at
Ixelles, Brussels, on the 24th of March 1844. He studied law, and then
took a clerkship in a government office, which he resigned after three
years. Lemonnier inherited Flemish blood from both parents, and with it
the animal force and pictorial energy of the Flemish temperament. He
published a _Salon de Bruxelles_ in 1863, and again in 1866. His early
friendships were chiefly with artists; and he wrote art criticisms with
recognized discernment. Taking a house in the hills near Namur, he
devoted himself to sport, and developed the intimate sympathy with
nature which informs his best work. _Nos Flamands_ (1869) and _Croquis
d'automne_ (1870) date from this time. _Paris-Berlin_ (1870), a pamphlet
pleading the cause of France, and full of the author's horror of war,
had a great success. His capacity as a novelist, in the fresh, humorous
description of peasant life, was revealed in _Un Coin de village_
(1879). In _Un Mâle_ (1881) he achieved a different kind of success. It
deals with the amours of a poacher and a farmer's daughter, with the
forest as a background. Cachaprès, the poacher, seems the very
embodiment of the wild life around him. The rejection of _Un Mâle_ by
the judges for the quinquennial prize of literature in 1883 made
Lemonnier the centre of a school, inaugurated at a banquet given in his
honour on the 27th of May 1883. _Le Mort_ (1882), which describes the
remorse of two peasants for a murder they have committed, is a
masterpiece in its vivid representation of terror. It was remodelled as
a tragedy in five acts (Paris, 1899) by its author. _Ceux de la glèbe_
(1889), dedicated to the "children of the soil," was written in 1885. He
turned aside from local subjects for some time to produce a series of
psychological novels, books of art criticism, &c., of considerable
value, but assimilating more closely to French contemporary literature.
The most striking of his later novels are: _L'Hystérique_ (1885);
_Happe-chair_ (1886), often compared with Zola's _Germinal_; _Le
Possédé_ (1890); _La Fin des bourgeois_ (1892); _L'Arche, journal d'une
maman_ (1894), a quiet book, quite different from his usual work; _La
Faute de Mme Charvet_ (1895); _L'Homme en amour_ (1897); and, with a
return to Flemish subjects, _Le Vent dans les moulins_ (1901); _Petit
Homme de Dieu_ (1902), and _Comme va le ruisseau_ (1903). In 1888
Lemonnier was prosecuted in Paris for offending against public morals by
a story in _Gil Blas_, and was condemned to a fine. In a later
prosecution at Brussels he was defended by Edmond Picard, and acquitted;
and he was arraigned for a third time, at Bruges, for his _Homme en
amour_, but again acquitted. He represents his own case in _Les Deux
consciences_ (1902), _L'Île vierge_ (1897) was the first of a trilogy to
be called _La Légende de la vie_, which was to trace, under the fortunes
of the hero, the pilgrimage of man through sorrow and sacrifice to the
conception of the divinity within him. In _Adam et Ève_ (1899), and _Au
Coeur frais de la forêt_ (1900), he preached the return to nature as the
salvation not only of the individual but of the community. Among his
other more important works are _G. Courbet, et ses oeuvres_ (1878);
_L'Histoire des Beaux-Arts en Belgique_ 1830-1887 (1887); _En Allemagne_
(1888), dealing especially with the Pinakothek at Munich; _La Belgique_
(1888), an elaborate descriptive work with many illustrations; _La Vie
belge_ (1905); and _Alfred Stevens et son oeuvre_ (1906).
Lemonnier spent much time in Paris, and was one of the early
contributors to the _Mercure de France_. He began to write at a time
when Belgian letters lacked style; and with much toil, and some initial
extravagances, he created a medium for the expression of his ideas. He
explained something of the process in a preface contributed to Gustave
Abel's _Labeur de la prose_ (1902). His prose is magnificent and
sonorous, but abounds in neologisms and strange metaphors.
See the _Revue de Belgique_ (15th February 1903), which contains the
syllabus of a series of lectures on Lemonnier by Edmond Picard, a
bibliography of his works, and appreciations by various writers.
LEMONNIER, PIERRE CHARLES (1715-1799), French astronomer, was born on
the 23rd of November 1715 in Paris, where his father was professor of
philosophy at the collège d'Harcourt. His first recorded observation was
made before he was sixteen, and the presentation of an elaborate lunar
map procured for him admission to the Academy, on the 21st of April
1736, at the early age of twenty. He was chosen in the same year to
accompany P. L. Maupertuis and Alexis Clairault on their geodetical
expedition to Lapland. In 1738, shortly after his return, he explained,
in a memoir read before the Academy, the advantages of J. Flamsteed's
mode of determining right ascensions. His persistent recommendation, in
fact, of English methods and instruments contributed effectively to the
reform of French practical astronomy, and constituted the most eminent
of his services to science. He corresponded with J. Bradley, was the
first to represent the effects of nutation in the solar tables, and
introduced, in 1741, the use of the transit-instrument at the Paris
observatory. He visited England in 1748, and, in company with the earl
of Morton and James Short the optician, continued his journey to
Scotland, where he observed the annular eclipse of July 25. The
liberality of Louis XV., in whose favour he stood high, furnished him
with the means of procuring the best instruments, many of them by
English makers. Amongst the fruits of his industry may be mentioned a
laborious investigation of the disturbances of Jupiter by Saturn, the
results of which were employed and confirmed by L. Euler in his prize
essay of 1748; a series of lunar observations extending over fifty
years; some interesting researches in terrestrial magnetism and
atmospheric electricity, in the latter of which he detected a regular
diurnal period; and the determination of the places of a great number of
stars, including twelve separate observations of Uranus, between 1765
and its discovery as a planet. In his lectures at the collège de France
he first publicly expounded the analytical theory of gravitation, and
his timely patronage secured the services of J. J. Lalande for
astronomy. His temper was irritable, and his hasty utterances exposed
him to retorts which he did not readily forgive. Against Lalande, owing
to some trifling pique, he closed his doors "during an entire revolution
of the moon's nodes." His career was arrested by paralysis late in 1791,
and a repetition of the stroke terminated his life. He died at Héril
near Bayeux on the 31st of May 1799. By his marriage with Mademoiselle
de Cussy he left three daughters, one of whom became the wife of J. L.
Lagrange. He was admitted in 1739 to the Royal Society, and was one of
the one hundred and forty-four original members of the Institute.
He wrote _Histoire céleste_ (1741); _Théorie des comètes_ (1743), a
translation, with additions of Hailey's _Synopsis; Institutions
astronomiques_ (1746), an improved translation of J. Keill's
text-book; _Nouveau zodiaque_ (1755); _Observations de la lune, du
soleil, et des étoiles fixes_ (1751-1775); _Lois du magnétisme_
(1776-1778), &c.
See J. J. Lalande, _Bibl. astr._, p. 819 (also in the _Journal des
savants_ for 1801); F. X. von Zach, _Allgemeine geog. Ephemeriden_
iii. 625; J. S. Bailly, _Hist. de l'astr. moderne_, iii.; J. B. J.
Delambre. _Hist. de l'astr. au XVIII^e. siècle_, p. 179; J. Mädler,
_Geschichte der Himmelskunde_, ii. 6; R. Wolf, _Geschichte der
Astronomie_, p. 480.
LEMOYNE, JEAN BAPTISTE (1704-1778), French sculptor, was the pupil of
his father, Jean Louis Lemoyne, and of Robert le Lorrain. He was a great
figure in his day, around whose modest and kindly personality there
waged opposing storms of denunciation and applause. Although his
disregard of the classic tradition and of the essentials of dignified
sculpture, as well as his lack of firmness and of intellectual grasp of
the larger principles of his art, lay him open to stringent criticism,
de Clarac's charge that he had delivered a mortal blow at sculpture is
altogether exaggerated. Lemoyne's more important works have for the most
part been destroyed or have disappeared. The equestrian statue of "Louis
XV." for the military school, and the composition of "Mignard's
daughter, Mme Feuquières, kneeling before her father's bust" (which bust
was from the hand of Coysevox) were subjected to the violence by which
Bouchardon's equestrian monument of Louis XIV. (q.v.) was destroyed. The
panels only have been preserved. In his busts evidence of his riotous
and florid imagination to a great extent disappears, and we have a
remarkable series of important portraits, of which those of women are
perhaps the best. Among Lemoyne's leading achievements in this class are
"Fontenelle" (at Versailles), "Voltaire," "Latour" (all of 1748), "Duc
de la Valière" (Versailles), "Comte de St Florentin," and "Crébillon"
(Dijon Museum); "Mlle Chiron" and "Mlle Dangeville," both produced in
1761 and both at the Théâtre Français in Paris, and "Mme de Pompadour,"
the work of the same year. Of the Pompadour he also executed a statue in
the costume of a nymph, very delicate and playful in its air of grace.
Lemoyne was perhaps most successful in his training of pupils, one of
the leaders of whom was Falconnet.
LEMPRIÈRE, JOHN (c. 1765-1824), English classical scholar, was born in
Jersey, and educated at Winchester and Pembroke College, Oxford. He is
chiefly known for his _Bibliotheca Classica_ or _Classical Dictionary_
(1788), which, edited by various later scholars, long remained a
readable if not very trustworthy reference book in mythology and
classical history. In 1792, after holding other scholastic posts, he was
appointed to the head-mastership of Abingdon grammar school, and later
became the vicar of that parish. While occupying this living, he
published a _Universal Biography of Eminent Persons in all Ages and
Countries_ (1808). In 1809 he succeeded to the head-mastership of Exeter
free grammar school. On retiring from this, in consequence of a
disagreement with the trustees, he was given the living of Meeth in
Devonshire, which, together with that of Newton Petrock, he held till
his death in London on the 1st of February 1824.
LEMUR (from Lat. _lemures_, "ghosts"), the name applied by Linnaeus to
certain peculiar Malagasy representatives of the order PRIMATES (q.v.)
which do not come under the designation of either monkeys or apes, and,
with allied animals from the same island and tropical Asia and Africa,
constitute the suborder _Prosimiae_, or _Lemuroidea_, the
characteristics of which are given in the article just mentioned. The
typical lemurs include species like _Lemur mongoz_ and _L. catta_, but
the English name "lemur" is often taken to include all the members of
the suborder, although the aberrant forms are often conveniently termed
"lemuroids." All the Malagasy lemurs, which agree in the structure of
the internal ear, are now included in the family _Lemuridae_, confined
to Madagascar and the Comoro Islands, which comprises the great majority
of the group. The other families are the _Nycticebidae_, common to
tropical Asia and Africa, and the _Tarsiidae_, restricted to the Malay
countries. In the more typical _Lemuridae_ there are two pairs of upper
incisor teeth, separated by a gap in the middle line; the premolars may
be either two or three, but the molars, as in the lower jaw, are always
three on each side. In the lower jaw the incisors and canines are
directed straight forwards, and are of small size and nearly similar
form; the function of the canine being discharged by the first premolar,
which is larger than the other teeth of the same series. With the
exception of the second toe of the hind-foot, the digits have
well-formed, flattened nails as in the majority of monkeys. In the
members of the typical genus _Lemur_, as well as in the allied
_Hapalemur_ and _Lepidolemur_, none of the toes or fingers are connected
by webs, and all have the hind-limbs of moderate length, and the tail
long. The maximum number of teeth is 36, there being typically two pairs
of incisors and three of premolars in each jaw. In habits some of the
species are nocturnal and others diurnal; but all subsist on a mixed
diet, which includes birds, reptiles, eggs, insects and fruits. Most are
arboreal, but the ring-tailed lemur (_L. catta_) often dwells among
rocks. The species of the genus _Lemur_ are diurnal, and may be
recognized by the length of the muzzle, and the large tufted ears. In
some cases, as in the black lemur (_L. macaco_) the two sexes are
differently coloured; but in others, especially the ruffed lemur (_L.
varius_), there is much individual variation in this respect, scarcely
any two being alike. The gentle lemurs (_Hapalemur_) have a rounder
head, with smaller ears and a shorter muzzle, and also a bare patch
covered with spines on the fore-arm. The sportive lemurs (_Lepidolemur_)
are smaller than the typical species of _Lemur_, and the adults
generally lose their upper incisors. The head is short and conical, the
ears large, round and mostly bare, and the tail shorter than the body.
Like the gentle lemurs they are nocturnal. (See AVAHI, AYE-AYE, GALAGO,
INDRI, LORIS, POTTO, SIFAKA and TARSIER.) (R. L.*)
LENA, a river of Siberia, rising in the Baikal Mountains, on the W. side
of Lake Baikal, in 54° 10´ N. and 107° 55´ E. Wheeling round by the S.,
it describes a semicircle, then flows N.N.E. and N.E., being joined by
the Kirenga and the Vitim, both from the right; from 113° E. it flows
E.N.E as far as Yakutsk (62° N., 127° 40´ E.), where it enters the
lowlands, after being joined by the Olekma, also from the right. From
Yakutsk it goes N. until joined by its right-hand affluent the Aldan,
which deflects it to the north-west; then, after receiving its most
important left-hand tributary, the Vilyui, it makes its way nearly due
N. to the Nordenskjöld Sea, a division of the Arctic, disemboguing S.W.
of the New Siberian Islands by a delta 10,800 sq. m. in area, and
traversed by seven principal branches, the most important being Bylov,
farthest east. The total length of the river is estimated at 2860 m. The
delta arms sometimes remain blocked with ice the whole year round. At
Yakutsk navigation is generally practicable from the middle of May to
the end of October, and at Kirensk, at the confluence of the Lena and
the Kirenga, from the beginning of May to about the same time. Between
these two towns there is during the season regular steamboat
communication. The area of the river basin is calculated at 895,500 sq.
m. Gold is washed out of the sands of the Vitim and the Olekma, and
tusks of the mammoth are dug out of the delta.
See G. W. Melville, _In the Lena Delta_ (1885).
LE NAIN, the name of three brothers, LOUIS, ANTOINE and MATHIEU, who
occupy a peculiar position in the history of French art. Although they
figure amongst the original members of the French Academy, their works
show no trace of the influences which prevailed when that body was
founded. Their sober execution and choice of colour recall
characteristics of the Spanish school, and when the world of Paris was
busy with mythological allegories, and the "heroic deeds" of the king,
the three Le Nain devoted themselves chiefly to subjects of humble life
such as "Boys Playing Cards," "The Forge," or "The Peasants' Meal."
These three paintings are now in the Louvre; various others may be found
in local collections, and some fine drawings may be seen in the British
Museum; but the Le Nain signature is rare, and is never accompanied by
initials which might enable us to distinguish the work of the brothers.
Their lives are lost in obscurity; all that can be affirmed is that they
were born at Laon in Picardy towards the close of the 16th century.
About 1629 they went to Paris; in 1648 the three brothers were received
into the Academy, and in the same year both Antoine and Louis died.
Mathieu lived on till August 1677; he bore the title of chevalier, and
painted many portraits. Mary of Medici and Mazarin were amongst his
sitters, but these works seem to have disappeared.
See Champfleury, _Essai sur la vie et l'oeuvre des Le Nain_ (1850),
and _Catalogue des tableaux des Le Nain_ (1861).
LENAU, NIKOLAUS, the pseudonym of NIKOLAUS FRANZ NIEMBSCH VON STREHLENAU
(1802-1850), Austrian poet, who was born at Csatád near Temesvar in
Hungary, on the 15th of August 1802. His father, a government official,
died at Budapest in 1807, leaving his children to the care of an
affectionate, but jealous and somewhat hysterical, mother, who in 1811
married again. In 1819 the boy went to the university of Vienna; he
subsequently studied Hungarian law at Pressburg and then spent the best
part of four years in qualifying himself in medicine. But he was unable
to settle down to any profession. He had early begun to write verses;
and the disposition to sentimental melancholy acquired from his mother,
stimulated by love disappointments and by the prevailing fashion of the
romantic school of poetry, settled into gloom after his mother's death
in 1829. Soon afterwards a legacy from his grandmother enabled him to
devote himself wholly to poetry. His first published poems appeared in
1827, in J. G. Seidl's _Aurora_. In 1831 he went to Stuttgart, where he
published a volume of _Gedichte_ (1832) dedicated to the Swabian poet
Gustav Schwab. Here he also made the acquaintance of Uhland, Justinus
Kerner, Karl Mayer[1] and others; but his restless spirit longed for
change, and he determined to seek for peace and freedom in America. In
October 1832 he landed at Baltimore and settled on a homestead in Ohio.
But the reality of life in "the primeval forest" fell lamentably short
of the ideal he had pictured; he disliked the Americans with their
eternal "English lisping of dollars" (_englisches Talergelispel_); and
in 1833 he returned to Germany, where the appreciation of his first
volume of poems revived his spirits. From now on he lived partly in
Stuttgart and partly in Vienna. In 1836 appeared his _Faust_, in which
he laid bare his own soul to the world; in 1837, _Savonarola_, an epic
in which freedom from political and intellectual tyranny is insisted
upon as essential to Christianity. In 1838 appeared his _Neuere
Gedichte_, which prove that _Savonarola_ had been but the result of a
passing exaltation. Of these new poems, some of the finest were inspired
by his hopeless passion for Sophie von Löwenthal, the wife of a friend,
whose acquaintance he had made in 1833 and who "understood him as no
other." In 1842 appeared _Die Albigenser_, and in 1844 he began writing
his _Don Juan_, a fragment of which was published after his death. Soon
afterwards his never well-balanced mind began to show signs of
aberration, and in October 1844 he was placed under restraint. He died
in the asylum at Oberdöbling near Vienna on the 22nd of August 1850.
Lenau's fame rests mainly upon his shorter poems; even his epics are
essentially lyric in quality. He is the greatest modern lyric poet of
Austria, and the typical representative in German literature of that
pessimistic _Weltschmerz_ which, beginning with Byron, reached its
culmination in the poetry of Leopardi.
Lenau's _Sämtliche Werke_ were published in 4 vols. by A. Grün (1855);
but there are several more modern editions, as those by M. Koch in
Kürschner's _Deutsche Nationalliteratur_, vols. 154-155 (1888), and by
E. Castle (2 vols., 1900). See A. Schurz, _Lenaus Leben, grösstenteils
aus des Dichters eigenen Briefen_ (1855); L. A. Frankl, _Zu Lenaus
Biographie_ (1854, 2nd ed., 1885); A. Marchand, _Les Poètes lyriques
de l'Autriche_ (1881); L. A. Frankl, _Lenaus Tagebuch und Briefe an
Sophie Löwenthal_ (1891); A. Schlossar, _Lenaus Briefe an die Familie
Reinbeck_ (1896); L. Roustan, _Lenau et son temps_ (1898); E. Castle,
_Lenau und die Familie Löwenthal_ (1906).
FOOTNOTE:
[1] Karl Friedrich Hartmann Mayer (1786-1870), poet, and biographer
of Uhland, was by profession a lawyer and government official in
Württemberg.
LENBACH, FRANZ VON (1836-1904), German painter, was born at
Schrobenhausen, in Bavaria, on the 13th of December 1836. His father was
a mason, and the boy was intended to follow his father's trade or be a
builder. With this view he was sent to school at Landsberg, and then to
the polytechnic at Augsburg. But after seeing Hofner, the animal
painter, executing some studies, he made various attempts at painting,
which his father's orders interrupted. However, when he had seen the
galleries of Augsburg and Munich, he finally obtained his father's
permission to become an artist, and worked for a short time in the
studio of Gräfle, the painter; after this he devoted much time to
copying. Thus he was already accomplished in technique when he became
the pupil of Piloty, with whom he set out for Italy in 1858. A few
interesting works remain as the outcome of this first journey--"A
Peasant seeking Shelter from Bad Weather" (1855), "The Goatherd" (1860,
in the Schack Gallery, Munich), and "The Arch of Titus" (in the Palfy
collection, Budapest). On returning to Munich, he was at once called to
Weimar to take the appointment of professor at the Academy. But he did
not hold it long, having made the acquaintance of Count Schack, who
commissioned a great number of copies for his collection. Lenbach
returned to Italy the same year, and there copied many famous pictures.
He set out in 1867 for Spain, where he copied not only the famous
pictures by Velasquez in the Prado, but also some landscapes in the
museums of Granada and the Alhambra (1868). In the previous year he had
exhibited at the great exhibition at Paris several portraits, one of
which took a third-class medal. Thereafter he exhibited frequently both
at Munich and at Vienna, and in 1900 at the Paris exhibition was awarded
a Grand Prix for painting. Lenbach, who died in 1904, painted many of
the most remarkable personages of his time.
See Berlepsch, "Lenbach," _Velhagen und Klasings Monatshefte_ (1891);
Bégouen, _Les Portraits de Lenbach à l'exposition de Munich_ (1899);
K. Knackfuss, _Lenbach_, and _Franz von Lenbach Bildnisse_ (1900).
LENCLOS, NINON DE (1615-1705), the daughter of a gentleman of good
position in Touraine, was born in Paris in November 1615. Her long and
eventful life divides into two periods, during the former of which she
was the typical Frenchwoman of the gayest and most licentious society of
the 17th century, during the latter the recognized leader of the fashion
in Paris, and the friend of wits and poets. All that can be pleaded in
defence of her earlier life is that she had been educated by her father
in epicurean and sensual beliefs, and that she retained throughout the
frank demeanour, and disregard of money, which won from Saint Évremond
the remark that she was an _honnête homme_. She had a succession of
distinguished lovers, among them being Gaspard de Coligny, the marquis
d'Éstrées, La Rochefoucauld, Condé and Saint Évremond. Queen Christina
of Sweden visited her, and Anne of Austria was powerless against her.
After she had continued her career for a preposterous length of time,
she settled down to the social leadership of Paris. Among her friends
she counted Mme de la Sablière, Mme de la Fayette and Mme de Maintenon.
It became the fashion for young men as well as old to throng round her,
and the best of all introductions for a young man who wished to make a
figure in society was an introduction to Mlle de Lenclos. Her long
friendship with Saint Évremond must be briefly noticed. They were of the
same age, and had been lovers in their youth, and throughout his long
exile the wit seems to have kept a kind remembrance of her. The few
really authentic letters of Ninon are those addressed to her old friend,
and the letters of both in the last few years of their equally long
lives are exceptionally touching, and unique in the polite compliments
with which they try to keep off old age. If Ninon owes part of her
posthumous fame to Saint Évremond, she owes at least as much to
Voltaire, who was presented to her as a promising boy poet by the abbé
de Chateauneuf. To him she left 2000 francs to buy books, and his letter
on her was the chief authority of many subsequent biographers. Her
personal appearance is, according to Sainte-Beuve, best described in
_Clélie_, a novel by Mlle de Scudéry, in which she figures as Clarisse.
Her distinguishing characteristic was neither beauty nor wit, but high
spirits and perfect evenness of temperament.
The letters of Ninon published after her death were, according to
Voltaire, all spurious, and the only authentic ones are those to Saint
Évremond, which can be best studied in Dauxmesnil's edition of _Saint
Évremond_, and his notice on her. Sainte-Beuve has an interesting
notice of these letters in the _Causeries du Lundi_, vol. iv. The
_Correspondance authentique_ was edited by E. Colombey in 1886. See
also Helen K. Hayes, _The Real Ninon de l'Enclos_ (1908); and Mary C.
Rowsell, _Ninon de l'Enclos and her century_ (1910).
LENFANT, JACQUES (1661-1728), French Protestant divine, was born at
Bazoche in La Beauce on the 13th of April 1661, son of Paul Lenfant,
Protestant pastor at Bazoche and afterwards at Châtillon-sur-Loing until
the revocation of the edict of Nantes, when he removed to Cassel. After
studying at Saumur and Geneva, Lenfant completed his theological course
at Heidelberg, where in 1684 he was ordained minister of the French
Protestant church, and appointed chaplain to the dowager electress
palatine. When the French invaded the Palatinate in 1688 Lenfant
withdrew to Berlin, as in a recent book he had vigorously attacked the
Jesuits. Here in 1689 he was again appointed one of the ministers of the
French Protestant church; this office he continued to hold until his
death, ultimately adding to it that of chaplain to the king, with the
dignity of _Consistorialrath_. He visited Holland and England in 1707,
preached before Queen Anne, and, it is said, was invited to become one
of her chaplains. He was the author of many works, chiefly on church
history. In search of materials he visited Helmstädt in 1712, and
Leipzig in 1715 and 1725. He died at Berlin on the 7th of August 1728.
An exhaustive catalogue of his publications, thirty-two in all, will
be found in J. G. de Chauffepié's _Dictionnaire_. See also E. and S.
Haag's _France Protestante_. He is now best known by his _Histoire du
concile de Constance_ (Amsterdam, 1714; 2nd ed., 1728; English trans.,
1730). It is of course largely dependent upon the laborious work of
Hermann von der Hardt (1660-1746), but has literary merits peculiar to
itself, and has been praised on all sides for its fairness. It was
followed by _Histoire du concile de Pise_ (1724), and (posthumously)
by _Histoire de la guerre des Hussites et du concile de Basle_
(Amsterdam, 1731; German translation, Vienna, 1783-1784). Lenfant was
one of the chief promoters of the _Bibliothèque Germanique_, begun in
1720; and he was associated with Isaac Beausobre (1659-1738) in the
preparation of the new French translation of the New Testament with
original notes, published at Amsterdam in 1718.
LENKORAN, a town in Russian Transcaucasia, in the government of Baku,
stands on the Caspian Sea, at the mouth of a small stream of its own
name, and close to a large lagoon. The lighthouse stands in 38° 45´ 38´´
N. and 48° 50´ 18´´ E. Taken by storm on New Year's day 1813 by the
Russians, Lenkoran was in the same year formally surrendered by Persia
to Russia by the treaty of Gulistan, along with the khanate of Talysh,
of which it was the capital. Pop. (1867) 15,933, (1897) 8768. The fort
has been dismantled; and in trade the town is outstripped by Astara, the
customs station on the Persian frontier.
The DISTRICT OF LENKORAN (2117 sq. m.) is a thickly wooded mountainous
region, shut off from the Persian plateau by the Talysh range (7000-8000
ft. high), and with a narrow marshy strip along the coast. The climate
is exceptionally moist and warm (annual rainfall 52.79 in; mean
temperature in summer 75° F., in winter 40°), and fosters the growth of
even Indian species of vegetation. The iron tree (_Parrotia persica_),
the silk acacia, _Carpinus betulus_, _Quercus iberica_, the box tree and
the walnut flourish freely, as well as the sumach, the pomegranate, and
the _Gleditschia caspica_. The Bengal tiger is not unfrequently met
with, and wild boars are abundant. Of the 131,361 inhabitants in 1897
the Talyshes (35,000) form the aboriginal element, belonging to the
Iranian family, and speaking an independently developed language closely
related to Persian. They are of middle height and dark complexion, with
generally straight nose, small round skull, small sharp chin and large
full eyes, which are expressive, however, rather of cunning than
intelligence. They live exclusively on rice. In the northern half of the
district the Tatar element predominates (40,000) and there are a number
of villages occupied by Russian Raskolniks (Nonconformists).
Agriculture, bee-keeping, silkworm-rearing and fishing are the principal
occupations.
LENNEP, JACOB VAN (1802-1868), Dutch poet and novelist, was born on the
24th of March 1802 at Amsterdam, where his father, David Jacob van
Lennep (1774-1853), a scholar and poet, was professor of eloquence and
the classical languages in the Athenaeum. Lennep took the degree of
doctor of laws at Leiden, and then settled as an advocate in Amsterdam.
His first poetical efforts had been translations from Byron, of whom he
was an ardent admirer, and in 1826 he published a collection of original
_Academische Idyllen_, which had some success. He first attained genuine
popularity by the _Nederlandsche Legenden_ (2 vols., 1828) which
reproduced, after the manner of Sir Walter Scott, some of the more
stirring incidents in the early history of his fatherland. His fame was
further raised by his patriotic songs at the time of the Belgian revolt,
and by his comedies _Het Dorp aan de Grenzen_ (1830) and _Het Dorp over
de Grenzen_ (1831), which also had reference to the political events of
1830. In 1833 he broke new ground with the publication of _De Pleegzoon
(The Adopted Son)_, the first of a series of historical romances in
prose, which have acquired for him in Holland a position somewhat
analogous to that of Sir Walter Scott in Great Britain. The series
included _De Roos van Dekama_ (2 vols., 1836), _Onze Voorouders_ (5
vols., 1838), _De Lotgevallen van Ferdinand Huyck_ (2 vols., 1840),
_Elizabeth Musch_ (3 vols., 1850), and _De Lotgevallen van Klaasje
Zevenster_ (5 vols., 1865), several of which have been translated into
German and French, and two--_The Rose of Dekama_ (1847) and _The Adopted
Son_ (New York, 1847)--into English. His Dutch history for young people
(_Voornaamste Geschiedenissen van Noord-Nederland aan mijne Kindern
verhaald_, 4 vols., 1845) is attractively written. Apart from the two
comedies already mentioned, Lennep was an indefatigable journalist and
literary critic, the author of numerous dramatic pieces, and of an
excellent edition of Vondel's works. For some years Lennep held a
judicial appointment, and from 1853 to 1856 he was a member of the
second chamber, in which he voted with the conservative party. He died
at Oosterbeek near Arnheim on the 25th of August 1868.
There is a collective edition of his _Poetische Werken_ (13 vols.,
1859-1872), and also of his _Romantische Werken_ (23 vols.,
1855-1872). See also a bibliography by P. Knoll (1869); and Jan ten
Brink, _Geschiedenis der Noord-Nederlandsche Letteren in de XIX^e
Eeuw_ (No. iii.).
LENNEP, a town of Germany, in the Prussian Rhine province, 18 m. E. of
Düsseldorf, and 9 m. S. of Barmen by rail, at a height of 1000 ft. above
the level of the sea. Pop. (1905) 10,323. It lies in the heart of one of
the busiest industrial districts in Germany, and carries on important
manufactures of the finer kinds of cloth, wool, yarn and felt, and also
of iron and steel goods. It has an Evangelical and a Protestant church,
a modern school and a well-equipped hospital. Lennep, which was the
residence of the counts of Berg from 1226 to 1300, owes the foundation
of its prosperity to an influx of Cologne weavers during the 14th
century.
LENNOX, a name given to a large district in Dumbartonshire and
Stirlingshire, which was erected into an earldom in the latter half of
the 12th century. It embraced the ancient sheriffdom of Dumbarton and
nineteen parishes with the whole of the lands round Loch Lomond,
formerly Loch Leven, and the river of that name which glides into the
estuary of the Clyde at the ancient castle of Dumbarton.
On this river Leven, at Balloch, was the seat of Alwin, first earl of
Lennox. It is probable that he was of Celtic descent, but the records
are silent as to his part in history; that he was earl at all is only
proved from the charters of his son, another Alwin, and he died some
time before 1217. The second Alwin was father of ten sons, one of whom
founded the clan Macfarlane, famous in the annals of the district, while
another was ancestor of Walter of Farlane, who married the heiress of
the 6th earl of Lennox. Maldouen, the 3rd earl, eldest of the sons of
Alwin the younger, is an historical personage; he was a witness to the
treaty between Alexander II., king of Scotland, and his brother-in-law
the English king Henry III., at Newcastle in 1237, concerning the much
disputed northern counties of England. His grandson, Malcolm, successor
to the title, swore fealty to Edward I. in 1296; it was apparently his
son, another Malcolm, the 5th earl, who was summoned by Edward to
parliament and entrusted with the important post of guarding the fords
of the river Forth. But the 5th earl soon after gave his services to the
party of Bruce, the cause of that family having been embraced by his
father as early as 1292. As a result the English king bestowed the
earldom on Sir John Menteith, who was holding it in 1307 while the real
earl was with King Robert Bruce in his wanderings in the Lennox country.
For his services he was rewarded with a renewal of the earldom and the
keeping of Dumbarton Castle; he fell fighting for his country at Halidon
Hill in 1333. His son Donald, the 6th earl, an adherent of King David
II., left a daughter, Margaret, countess of Lennox, who was married to
her kinsman the above-mentioned Walter of Farlane, nearest heir male of
the Lennox family.
In 1392, on the marriage of their grand-daughter Isabella, eldest
daughter of Duncan, 8th earl, with Sir Murdoch Stewart, afterwards duke
of Albany, the earldom was resigned into the hands of the king, who
re-granted it to Earl Duncan, with remainder to the heirs male of his
body, with remainder to Murdoch and Isabella and the heirs of their
bodies begotten between them, with eventual remainder to Earl Duncan's
nearest and lawful heirs. In 1424, when Murdoch, then duke of Albany,
succeeded in ransoming the poet king James I. from his long English
captivity, the aged Earl Duncan went with the Scottish party to Durham.
The next year, however, he suffered the fate of Albany, being executed
perhaps for no other reason than that he was his father-in-law. The
earldom was not forfeited, and the widowed duchess of Albany, now also
countess of Lennox, lived secure in her island castle of Inchmurrin on
Loch Lomond until her death. Of her four sons, none of whom left
legitimate issue, the eldest died in 1421, the two next suffered their
father's fate at Stirling, while the youngest had to flee for his life
to Ireland. Her daughter Isobel appears to have been the wife of Sir
Walter Buchanan of that ilk.
It was from Elizabeth, sister of the countess, that the next holders of
the title descended. She was married to Sir John Stewart of Darnley
(distinguished in the military history of France as seigneur d'Aubigny),
whose immediate ancestor was brother of James, 5th high steward of
Scotland. Their grandson, another Sir John Stewart, created a lord of
parliament as Lord Darnley, was served heir to his great-grandfather
Duncan, earl of Lennox, in 1473, and was designated as earl of Lennox in
a charter under the great seal in the same year. Thereafter followed
disputes with John of Haldane, whose wife's great-grandmother had been
another of the three daughters of Duncan, 8th earl of Lennox, and in her
right he contested the succession. Lord Darnley, however, appears to
have silenced all opposition and for the last seven years of his life
maintained his right to the earldom undisputed. Three of his younger
sons were greatly distinguished in the French service, one being captain
of Scotsmen-at-arms, another _premier homme d'armes_, and a third
_maréchal de France_. Their elder brother Matthew, 2nd earl of this
line, fell on Flodden Field, leaving by his wife Elizabeth, daughter of
James, earl of Arran, and niece of James III., a son and successor John,
who became one of the guardians of James V. and was murdered in 1526.
His son Matthew, the 4th earl, played a great part in the intrigues of
his time, and by his marriage with Margaret Douglas allied himself to
the royal house of England as well as strengthening the ties which bound
his family to that of Scotland; because Margaret was the daughter and
heir of the 6th earl of Angus by his wife, Margaret Tudor, sister of
King Henry VIII. and widow of King James IV. Though his estates were
forfeited in 1545, Earl Matthew in 1564 not only had them restored but
had the satisfaction of getting his eldest son Henry married to Mary,
queen of Scots. The murder of Lord Darnley, now created earl of Rosse,
lord of Ardmanoch and duke of Albany, took place in February 1567, and
in July his only son James, by Mary's abdication, became king of
Scotland. The old earl of Lennox, now grandfather of his sovereign,
obtained the regency in 1570, but in the next year was killed in the
attack made on the parliament at Stirling, being the third earl in
succession to meet with a violent death.
The title was now merged in the crown in the person of James VI. the
next heir, but was soon after granted to the king's uncle Charles, who
died in 1576, leaving an only child, the unfortunate Lady Arabella
Stewart.
Two years later the title was granted to Robert Stewart, the king's
grand-uncle, second son of John, the 3rd earl, but he in 1580 exchanged
it for that of earl of March. On the same day the earldom of Lennox was
given to Esme Stewart, first cousin of the king and grandson of the 3rd
earl, he being son of John Stewart (adopted heir of the maréchal
d'Aubigny) and his French wife, Anne de la Queulle. In the following
year Esme was created duke of Lennox, earl of Darnley, Lord Aubigny,
Tarboulton and Dalkeith, and other favours were heaped upon him, but the
earl of Ruthven sent him back to France where he died soon after. His
elder son, Ludovic, was thereupon summoned to Scotland by James, who
invested him with all his father's honours and estates, and after his
accession to the English throne created him Lord Settrington and earl of
Richmond (1613), and earl of Newcastle-upon-Tyne and duke of Richmond
(1623), all these titles being in the peerage of England. After holding
many appointments the 2nd duke died without issue in 1624, being
succeeded in his Scottish titles by his brother Esme, who had already
been created earl of March and Lord Clifton of Leighton Bromswold in the
peerage of England (1619) and was seigneur d'Aubigny in France. Of his
sons, Henry succeeded to Aubigny and died young at Venice; Ludovic,
seigneur d'Aubigny, entered the Roman Catholic Church and received a
cardinal's hat just before his death; while the three other younger
sons, George, seigneur d'Aubigny, John and Bernard, were all
distinguished as royalists in the Civil war. Each met a soldier's death,
George at Edgehill, John at Alresford and Bernard at Rowton Heath.
James, the eldest son and 4th duke of Lennox, was created duke of
Richmond in 1641, being like his brother a devoted adherent of Charles
I.
With the death of his little son Esme, the 5th duke, in 1660, the
titles, including that of Richmond, passed to his first cousin Charles,
who had already been created Lord Stuart of Newbury and earl of
Lichfield, being likewise now seigneur d'Aubigny. Disliked by Charles
II., principally because of his marriage with "la belle Stuart"--"the
noblest romance and example of a brave lady that ever I read in my
life," writes Pepys--he was sent into exile as ambassador to Denmark,
where he was drowned in 1672. His wife had had the Lennox estates
granted to her for life, but his only sister Katharine, wife of Henry
O'Brien, heir apparent of the 7th earl of Thomond, was served heir to
him. Her only daughter, the countess of Clarendon, was mother of
Theodosia Hyde, ancestress of the present earls of Darnley.
The Lennox dukedom, being to heirs male, now devolved upon Charles II.,
who bestowed it with the titles of earl of Darnley and Lord Tarbolton
upon one of his bastards, Charles Lennox, son of the celebrated duchess
of Portsmouth, he having previously been created duke of Richmond, earl
of March and Lord Settrington in the peerage of England. The ancient
lands of the Lennox title were also granted to him, but these he sold to
the duke of Montrose.
His son Charles, who inherited his grandmother's French dukedom of
Aubigny, was a soldier of distinction, as were the 3rd and 4th dukes.
The wife of the last, Lady Charlotte Gordon, as heir of her brother
brought the ancient estates of her family to the Lennoxes; the
additional name of Gordon being taken by the 5th duke of Richmond and of
Lennox on the death of his uncle, the 5th duke of Gordon. In the next
generation further honours were granted to the family in the person of
the 6th duke, who was rewarded for his great public services with the
titles of duke of Gordon and earl of Kinrara in the peerage of the
United Kingdom (1876).
_See Scots Peerage_, vol. v., for excellent accounts of these peerages
by the Rev. John Anderson, curator Historical Dept. H.M. Register
House; A. Francis Steuart and Francis J. Grant, Rothesay Herald. See
also _The Lennox_ by William Fraser.
LENNOX, CHARLOTTE (1720-1804), British writer, daughter of Colonel James
Ramsay, lieutenant-governor of New York, was born in 1720. She went to
London in 1735, and, being left unprovided for at her father's death,
she began to earn her living by writing. She made some unsuccessful
appearances on the stage and married in 1748. Samuel Johnson had an
exaggerated admiration for her. "Three such women," he said, speaking of
Elizabeth Carter, Hannah More and Fanny Burney, "are not to be found; I
know not where to find a fourth, except Mrs Lennox, who is superior to
them all." Her chief works are: _The Female Quixote; or the Adventures
of Arabella_ (1752), a novel; _Shakespear illustrated; or the novels and
histories on which the plays ... are founded_ (1753-1754), in which she
argued that Shakespeare had spoiled the stories he borrowed for his
plots by interpolating unnecessary intrigues and incidents; _The Life of
Harriot Stuart_ (1751), a novel; and _The Sister_, a comedy produced at
Covent Garden (18th February 1769). This last was withdrawn after the
first night, after a stormy reception, due, said Goldsmith, to the fact
that its author had abused Shakespeare.
LENNOX, MARGARET, COUNTESS OF (1515-1578), daughter of Archibald
Douglas, 6th earl of Angus, and Margaret Tudor, daughter of Henry VII.
of England and widow of James IV. of Scotland, was born at Harbottle
Castle, Northumberland, on the 8th of October 1515. On account of her
nearness to the English crown, Lady Margaret Douglas was brought up
chiefly at the English court in close association with the Princess
Mary, who remained her fast friend throughout life. She was high in
Henry VIII.'s favour, but was twice disgraced; first for an attachment
to Lord Thomas Howard, who died in the Tower in 1537, and again in 1541
for a similar affair with Sir Charles Howard, brother of Queen Catherine
Howard. In 1544 she married a Scottish exile, Matthew Stewart, 4th earl
of Lennox (1516-1571), who was regent of Scotland in 1570-1571. During
Mary's reign the countess of Lennox had rooms in Westminster Palace; but
on Elizabeth's accession she removed to Yorkshire, where her home at
Temple Newsam became a centre for Catholic intrigue. By a series of
successful manoeuvres she married her son Henry Stewart, Lord Darnley,
to Mary, queen of Scots. In 1566 she was sent to the Tower, but after
the murder of Darnley in 1567 she was released. She was at first loud in
her denunciations of Mary, but was eventually reconciled with her
daughter-in-law. In 1574 she again aroused Elizabeth's anger by the
marriage of her son Charles, earl of Lennox, with Elizabeth Cavendish,
daughter of the earl of Shrewsbury. She was sent to the Tower with Lady
Shrewsbury, and was only pardoned after her son's death in 1577. Her
diplomacy largely contributed to the future succession of her grandson
James to the English throne. She died on the 7th of March 1578.
The famous Lennox jewel, made for Lady Lennox as a memento of her
husband, was bought by Queen Victoria in 1842.
LENO, DAN, the stage-name of George Galvin (1861-1904), English
comedian, who was born at Somers Town, London, in February 1861. His
parents were actors, known as Mr and Mrs Johnny Wilde. Dan Leno was
trained to be an acrobat, but soon became a dancer, travelling with his
brother as "the brothers Leno," and winning the world's championship in
clog-dancing at Leeds in 1880. Shortly afterwards he appeared in London
at the Oxford, and in 1886-1887 at the Surrey Theatre. In 1888-1889 he
was engaged by Sir Augustus Harris to play the Baroness in the _Babes in
the Wood_, and from that time he was a principal figure in the Drury
Lane pantomimes. He was the wittiest and most popular comedian of his
day, and delighted London music-hall audiences by his shop-walker,
stores-proprietor, waiter, doctor, beef-eater, bathing attendant, "Mrs
Kelly," and other impersonations. In 1900 he engaged to give his entire
services to the Pavilion Music Hall, where he received £100 per week. In
November 1901 he was summoned to Sandringham to do a "turn" before the
king, and was proud from that time to call himself the "king's jester."
Dan Leno's generosity endeared him to his profession, and he was the
object of much sympathy during the brain failure which recurred during
the last eighteen months of his life. He died on the 31st of October
1904.
LENORMANT, FRANÇOIS (1837-1883), French Assyriologist and archaeologist,
was born in Paris on the 17th of January 1837. His father, Charles
Lenormant, distinguished as an archaeologist, numismatist and
Egyptologist, was anxious that his son should follow in his steps. He
made him begin Greek at the age of six, and the child responded so well
to this precocious scheme of instruction, that when he was only fourteen
an essay of his, on the Greek tablets found at Memphis, appeared in the
_Revue archéologique_. In 1856 he won the numismatic prize of the
Académie des Inscriptions with an essay entitled _Classification des
monnaies des Lagides_. In 1862 he became sub-librarian of the Institute.
In 1859 he accompanied his father on a journey of exploration to Greece,
during which Charles Lenormant succumbed to fever at Athens (24th
November). Lenormant returned to Greece three times during the next six
years, and gave up all the time he could spare from his official work to
archaeological research. These peaceful labours were rudely interrupted
by the war of 1870, when Lenormant served with the army and was wounded
in the siege of Paris. In 1874 he was appointed professor of archaeology
at the National Library, and in the following year he collaborated with
Baron de Witte in founding the _Gazette archéologique_. As early as 1867
he had turned his attention to Assyrian studies; he was among the first
to recognize in the cuneiform inscriptions the existence of a
non-Semitic language, now known as Accadian. Lenormant's knowledge was
of encyclopaedic extent, ranging over an immense number of subjects, and
at the same time thorough, though somewhat lacking perhaps in the strict
accuracy of the modern school. Most of his varied studies were directed
towards tracing the origins of the two great civilizations of the
ancient world, which were to be sought in Mesopotamia and on the shores
of the Mediterranean. He had a perfect passion for exploration. Besides
his early expeditions to Greece, he visited the south of Italy three
times with this object, and it was while exploring in Calabria that he
met with an accident which ended fatally in Paris on the 9th of December
1883, after a long illness. The amount and variety of Lenormant's work
is truly amazing when it is remembered that he died at the early age of
forty-six. Probably the best known of his books are _Les Origines de
l'histoire d'après la Bible_, and his ancient history of the East and
account of Chaldean magic. For breadth of view, combined with
extraordinary subtlety of intuition, he was probably unrivalled.
LENOX, a township of Berkshire county, Massachusetts, U.S.A. Pop. (1900)
2942, (1905) 3058; (1910) 3060. Area, 19.2 sq. m. The principal village,
also named Lenox (or Lenox-on-the-Heights), lies about 2 m. W. of the
Housatonic river, at an altitude of about 1000 ft., and about it are
high hills--Yokun Seat (2080 ft.), South Mountain (1200 ft.), Bald Head
(1583 ft.), and Rattlesnake Hill (1540 ft.). New Lenox and Lenoxdale are
other villages in the township. Lenox is a fashionable summer and autumn
resort, much frequented by wealthy people from Washington, Newport and
New York. There are innumerable lovely walks and drives in the
surrounding region, which contains some of the most beautiful country of
the Berkshires--hills, lakes, charming intervales and woods. As early as
1835 Lenox began to attract summer residents. In the next decade began
the creation of large estates, although the great holdings of the
present day, and the villas scattered over the hills, are comparatively
recent features. The height of the season is in the autumn, when there
are horse-shows, golf, tennis, hunts and other outdoor amusements. The
Lenox library (1855) contained about 20,000 volumes in 1908. Lenox was
settled about 1750, was included in Richmond township in 1765, and
became an independent township in 1767. The names were those of Sir
Charles Lennox, third duke of Richmond and of Lennox (1735-1806), one of
the staunch friends of the American colonies during the War of
Independence. Lenox was the county-seat from 1787 to 1868. It has
literary associations with Catherine M. Sedgwick (1789-1867), who passed
here the second half of her life; with Nathaniel Hawthorne, whose brief
residence here (1850-1851) was marked by the production of the _House
of the Seven Gables_ and the _Wonder Book_; with Fanny Kemble, a summer
resident from 1836-1853; and with Henry Ward Beecher (see his _Star
Papers_). Elizabeth (Mrs Charles) Sedgwick, the sister-in-law of
Catherine Sedgwick, maintained here from 1828 to 1864 a school for
girls, in which Harriet Hosmer, the sculptor, and Maria S. Cummins
(1827-1866), the novelist, were educated; and in Lenox academy (1803), a
famous classical school (now a public high school) were educated W. L.
Yancey, A. H. Stephens, Mark Hopkins and David Davis (1815-1886), a
circuit judge of Illinois from 1848 to 1862, a justice (1862-1877) of
the United States Supreme Court, a Republican member of the United
States Senate from Illinois in 1877-1883, and president of the Senate
from the 31st of October 1881, when he succeeded Chester A. Arthur,
until the 3rd of March 1883. There is a statue commemorating General
John Paterson (1744-1808) a soldier from Lenox in the War of
Independence.
See R. de W. Mallary, _Lenox and the Berkshire Highlands_ (1902); J.
C. Adams, _Nature Studies in Berkshire_; C. F. Warner, _Picturesque
Berkshire_ (1890); and Katherine M. Abbott, _Old Paths and Legends of
the New England Border_ (1907).
LENS, a town of Northern France, in the department of Pas-de-Calais, 13
m. N.N.E. of Arras by rail on the Déûle and on the Lens canal. Pop.
(1906) 27,692. Lens has important iron and steel foundries, and
engineering works and manufactories of steel cables, and occupies a
central position in the coalfields of the department. Two and a half
miles W.S.W. lies Liévin (pop. 22,070), likewise a centre of the
coalfield. In 1648 the neighbourhood of Lens was the scene of a
celebrated victory gained by Louis II. of Bourbon, prince of Condé, over
the Spaniards.
LENS (from Lat. _lens_, lentil, on account of the similarity of the form
of a lens to that of a lentil seed), in optics, an instrument which
refracts the luminous rays proceeding from an object in such a manner as
to produce an image of the object. It may be regarded as having four
principal functions: (1) to produce an image larger than the object, as
in the magnifying glass, microscope, &c.; (2) to produce an image
smaller than the object, as in the ordinary photographic camera; (3) to
convert rays proceeding from a point or other luminous source into a
definite pencil, as in lighthouse lenses, the engraver's globe, &c.; (4)
to collect luminous and heating rays into a smaller area, as in the
burning glass. A lens made up of two or more lenses cemented together or
very close to each other is termed "composite" or "compound"; several
lenses arranged in succession at a distance from each other form a
"system of lenses," and if the axes be collinear a "centred system."
This article is concerned with the general theory of lenses, and more
particularly with spherical lenses. For a special part of the theory of
lenses see ABERRATION; the instruments in which the lenses occur are
treated under their own headings.
The most important type of lens is the spherical lens, which is a piece
of transparent material bounded by two spherical surfaces, the boundary
at the edge being usually cylindrical or conical. The line joining the
centres, C1, C2 (fig. 1), of the bounding surfaces is termed the _axis_;
the points S1, S2, at which the axis intersects the surfaces, are termed
the "vertices" of the lens; and the distance between the vertices is
termed the "thickness." If the edge be everywhere equidistant from the
vertex, the lens is "centred."
[Illustration: FIG. 1.]
Although light is really a wave motion in the aether, it is only
necessary, in the investigation of the optical properties of systems of
lenses, to trace the rectilinear path of the waves, i.e. the direction
of the normal to the wave front, and this can be done by purely
geometrical methods. It will be assumed that light, so long as it
traverses the same medium, always travels in a straight line; and in
following out the geometrical theory it will always be assumed that the
light travels from left to right; accordingly all distances measured in
this direction are positive, while those measured in the opposite
direction are negative.
_Theory of Optical Representation._--If a pencil of rays, i.e. the
totality of the rays proceeding from a luminous point, falls on a lens
or lens system, a section of the pencil, determined by the dimensions
of the system, will be transmitted. The emergent rays will have
directions differing from those of the incident rays, the alteration,
however, being such that the transmitted rays are convergent in the
"image-point," just as the incident rays diverge from the
"object-point." With each incident ray is associated an emergent ray;
such pairs are termed "conjugate ray pairs." Similarly we define an
object-point and its image-point as "conjugate points"; all
object-points lie in the "object-space," and all image-points lie in
the "image-space."
[Illustration: FIG. 2.]
The laws of optical representations were first deduced in their most
general form by E. Abbe, who assumed (1) that an optical
representation always exists, and (2) that to every point in the
object-space there corresponds a point in the image-space, these
points being mutually convertible by straight rays; in other words,
with each object-point is associated one, and only one, image-point,
and if the object-point be placed at the image-point, the conjugate
point is the original object-point. Such a transformation is termed a
"collineation," since it transforms points into points and straight
lines into straight lines. Prior to Abbe, however, James Clerk Maxwell
published, in 1856, a geometrical theory of optical representation,
but his methods were unknown to Abbe and to his pupils until O.
Eppenstein drew attention to them. Although Maxwell's theory is not so
general as Abbe's, it is used here since its methods permit a simple
and convenient deduction of the laws.
[Illustration]
Maxwell assumed that two object-planes perpendicular to the axis are
represented sharply and similarly in two image-planes also
perpendicular to the axis (by "sharply" is meant that the assumed
ideal instrument unites all the rays proceeding from an object-point
in one of the two planes in its image-point, the rays being generally
transmitted by the system). The symmetry of the axis being premised,
it is sufficient to deduce laws for a plane containing the axis. In
fig. 2 let O1, O2 be the two points in which the perpendicular
object-planes meet the axis; and since the axis corresponds to itself,
the two conjugate points O´1, O´2, are at the intersections of the two
image-planes with the axis. We denote the four planes by the letters
O1, O2, and O´1, O´2. If two points A, C be taken in the plane O1,
their images are A´, C´ in the plane O´1, and since the planes are
represented similarly, we have O´1A´:O1A = O´1C´1:O1C = [beta]1 (say),
in which [beta]1 is easily seen to be the _linear magnification_ of
the plane-pair O1, O´1. Similarly, if two points B, D be taken in the
plane O2 and their images B´, D´ in the plane O´2, we have O´2B´:O2B =
O´2D´:O2D = [beta]2 (say), [beta]2 being the linear magnification of
the plane-pair O2, O´2. The joins of A and B and of C and D intersect
in a point P, and the joins of the conjugate points similarly
determine the point P´.
If P´ is the only possible image-point of the object-point P, then the
conjugate of every ray passing through P must pass through P´. To
prove this, take a third line through P intersecting the planes O1, O2
in the points E, F, and by means of the magnifications [beta]1,
[beta]2 determine the conjugate points E´, F´ in the planes O´1, O´2.
Since the planes O1, O2 are parallel, then AC/AE = BD/BF; and since
these planes are represented similarly in O´1, O´2, then A´C´/A´E´ =
B´D´/B´F´. This proportion is only possible when the straight line
E´F´ contains the point P´. Since P was any point whatever, it follows
that every point of the object-space is represented in one and only
one point in the image-space.
Take a second object-point P1, vertically under P and defined by the
two rays CD1, and EF1, the conjugate point P´1 will be determined by
the intersection of the conjugate rays C´D´1 and E´F´1, the points
D´1, F´1, being readily found from the magnifications [beta]1,
[beta]2. Since PP1 is parallel to CE and also to DF, then DF = D1F1.
Since the plane O2 is similarly represented in O´2, D´F´ = D´1F´1;
this is impossible unless P´P´1 be parallel to C´E´. Therefore every
perpendicular object-plane is represented by a perpendicular
image-plane.
Let O be the intersection of the line PP1 with the axis, and let O´ be
its conjugate; then it may be shown that a fixed magnification [beta]3
exists for the planes O and O´. For PP1/FF1 = OO1/O1O2, P´P´1/F´F´1 =
O´O´/O´1O´2, and F´F´1 = [beta]2FF1. Eliminating FF1 and F´F´1 between
these ratios, we have P´P´1/PP1[beta]2 = O´O´1·O1O2/OO1. O´1O´2, or
[beta]3 = [beta]2·O´O´1·O1O2/OO1·O´1O´2, i.e. [beta]3 = [beta]2 × a
product of the axial distances.
The determination of the image-point of a given object-point is
facilitated by means of the so-called "cardinal points" of the optical
system. To determine the image-point O´1 (fig. 3) corresponding to the
object-point O1, we begin by choosing from the ray pencil proceeding
from O1, the ray parallel with the axis, i.e. intersecting the axis at
infinity. Since the axis is its own conjugate, the parallel ray
through O1 must intersect the axis after refraction (say at F´). Then
F´ is the image-point of an object-point situated at infinity on the
axis, and is termed the "second principal focus" (German _der
bildseitige Brennpunkt_, the image-side focus). Similarly if O´4 be on
the parallel through O1 but in the image-space, then the conjugate ray
must intersect the axis at a point (say F), which is conjugate with
the point at infinity on the axis in the image-space. This point is
termed the "first principal focus" (German _der objektseitige
Brennpunkt_, the object-side focus).
Let H1, H´1 be the intersections of the focal rays through F and F´
with the line O1O´4. These two points are in the position of object
and image, since they are each determined by two pairs of conjugate
rays (O1H1 being conjugate with H´1F´, and O´4H´1 with H1F). It has
already been shown that object-planes perpendicular to the axis are
represented by image-planes also perpendicular to the axis. Two
vertical planes through H1 and H´1, are related as object- and
image-planes; and if these planes intersect the axis in two points H
and H´, these points are named the "principal," or "Gauss points" of
the system, H being the "object-side" and H´ the "image-side principal
point." The vertical planes containing H and H´ are the "principal
planes." It is obvious that conjugate points in these planes are
equidistant from the axis; in other words, the magnification [beta] of
the pair of planes is unity. An additional characteristic of the
principal planes is that the object and image are direct and not
inverted. The distances between F and H, and between F´ and H´ are
termed the focal lengths; the former may be called the "object-side
focal length" and the latter the "image-side focal length." The two
focal points and the two principal points constitute the so-called
four cardinal points of the system, and with their aid the image of
any object can be readily determined.
_Equations relating to the Focal Points._--We know that the ray
proceeding from the object point O1, parallel to the axis and
intersecting the principal plane H in H1, passes through H´1 and F´.
Choose from the pencil a second ray which contains F and intersects
the principal plane H in H2; then the conjugate ray must contain
points corresponding to F and H2. The conjugate of F is the point at
infinity on the axis, i.e. on the ray parallel to the axis. The image
of H2 must be in the plane H´ at the same distance from, and on the
same side of, the axis, as in H´2. The straight line passing through
H´2 parallel to the axis intersects the ray H´1F´ in the point O´1,
which must be the image of O1. If O be the foot of the perpendicular
from O1 to the axis, then OO1 is represented by the line O´O´1 also
perpendicular to the axis.
[Illustration: FIG. 3.]
This construction is not applicable if the object or image be
infinitely distant. For example, if the object OO1 be at infinity (O
being assumed to be on the axis for the sake of simplicity), so that
the object appears under a constant angle w, we know that the second
principal focus is conjugate with the infinitely distant axis-point.
If the object is at infinity in a plane perpendicular to the axis, the
image must be in the perpendicular plane through the focal point F´
(fig. 4).
The size y´ of the image is readily deduced. Of the parallel rays from
the object subtending the angle w, there is one which passes through
the first principal focus F, and intersects the principal plane H in
H1. Its conjugate ray passes through H´ parallel to, and at the same
distance from the axis, and intersects the image-side focal plane in
O´1; this point is the image of O1, and y´ is its magnitude. From the
figure we have tan w = HH1/FH = y´/f, or f = y´/tan w; this equation
was used by Gauss to define the focal length.
[Illustration: FIG. 4.]
Referring to fig. 3, we have from the similarity of the triangles OO1F
and HH2F, HH2/OO1 = FH/FO, or O´O´1/OO1 = FH/FO. Let y be the
magnitude of the object OO1, y´ that of the image O´O´1, x the focal
distance FO of the object, and f the object-side focal distance FH;
then the above equation may be written y´/y = f/x. From the similar
triangles H´1H´F´ and O´1O´F´, we obtain O´O´1/OO1 = F´O´/F´H´. Let x´
be the focal distance of the image F´O´, and f´ the image-side focal
length F´H´; then y´/y = x´/f´. The ratio of the size of the image to
the size of the object is termed the _lateral magnification_. Denoting
this by [beta], we have
[beta] = y´/y = f/x = x´/f´, (1)
and also
xx´ = ff´. (2)
By differentiating equation (2) we obtain
dx´= -(ff´/x²)dx or dx´/dx = -ff´/x². (3)
The ratio of the displacement of the image dx´ to the displacement of
the object dx is the axial magnification, and is denoted by [alpha].
Equation (3) gives important information on the displacement of the
image when the object is moved. Since f and f´ always have contrary
signs (as is proved below), the product -ff´ is invariably positive,
and since x² is positive for all values of x, it follows that dx and
dx´ have the same sign, i.e. the object and image always move in the
same direction, either both in the direction of the light, or both in
the opposite direction. This is shown in fig. 3 by the object O3O2 and
the image O´3O´2.
If two conjugate rays be drawn from two conjugate points on the axis,
making angles u and u´ with the axis, as for example the rays OH1,
O´H´1, in fig. 3, u is termed the "angular aperture for the object,"
and u´ the "angular aperture for the image." The ratio of the tangents
of these angles is termed the "convergence" and is denoted by [gamma],
thus [gamma] = tan u´/tan u. Now tan u´= H´H´1/O´H´ = H´H´1/(O´F´+
F´H´) = H´H´1/(F´H´- F´O´). Also tan u = HH1/OH = HH1/(OF + FH) =
HH1/(FH-FO). Consequently [gamma] = (FH - FO)/(F´H´-F´O´), or, in our
previous notation, [gamma] = (f - x)/(f´- x´).
From equation (1) f/x = x´/f´, we obtain by subtracting unity from
both sides (f-x)/x = (x´-f´)/f´, and consequently
f - x x f
------- = - -- = - -- = [gamma]. (4)
f´ - x´ f´ x´
From equations (1), (3) and (4), it is seen that a simple relation
exists between the lateral magnification, the axial magnification and
the convergence, viz. [alpha][gamma] = [beta].
[Illustration: FIG. 5.]
In addition to the four cardinal points F, H, F´, H´, J. B. Listing,
"Beiträge aus physiologischen Optik," _Göttinger Studien_ (1845)
introduced the so-called "nodal points" (_Knotenpunkte_) of the
system, which are the two conjugate points from which the object and
image appear under the same angle. In fig. 5 let K be the nodal point
from which the object y appears under the same angle as the image y´
from the other nodal point K´. Then OO1/KO = O´O´1/K´O´, or OO1/(KF +
FO) = O´O´1/(K´F´+ F´O´), or OO1/(FO - FK) = O´O´1/(F´O´- F´K´).
Calling the focal distances FK and F´K´, X and X´, we have y/(x - X) =
y´/(x´- X´), and since y´/y = [beta], it follows that 1/(x - X) =
[beta]/(x´- X´). Replace x´ and X´ by the values given in equation
(2), and we obtain
1 /ff´ ff´\ xX
----- = [beta]/( --- - --- ) or 1 = -[beta]---.
x - X \ x X / ff´
Since [beta] = f/x = x´/f´, we have f´ = -X, f = -X´.
These equations show that to determine the nodal points, it is only
necessary to measure the focal distance of the second principal focus
from the first principal focus, and vice versa. In the special case
when the initial and final medium is the same, as for example, a lens
in air, we have f = -f´, and the nodal points coincide with the
principal points of the system; we then speak of the "nodal point
property of the principal points," meaning that the object and
corresponding image subtend the same angle at the principal points.
_Equations Relating to the Principal Points._--It is sometimes
desirable to determine the distances of an object and its image, not
from the focal points, but from the principal points. Let A (see fig.
3) be the principal point distance of the object and A´ that of the
image, we then have
A = HO = HF + FO = FO - FH = x - f,
A´ = H´O´ = H´F´ + F´O´ = F´O´ - F´H´ = x´ - f´,
whence
x = A + f and x´ = A´ + f´.
Using xx´ = ff´, we have (A + f)(A´ + f´) = ff´, which leads to AA´ +
Af´ + A´f = O, or
f´ f
1 + -- + - = O;
A´ A
this becomes in the special case when f = -f´,
1 1 1
-- - -- = --.
A´ A f
To express the linear magnification in terms of the principal point
distances, we start with equation (4) (f - x)/(f´ - x´) = -x/f´. From
this we obtain A/A´ = -x/f´, or x = -f´A/A´; and by using equation (1)
we have [beta] = -fA´/f´A.
In the special case of f = -f´, this becomes [beta] = A´/A = y´/y,
from which it follows that the ratio of the dimensions of the object
and image is equal to the ratio of the distances of the object and
image from the principal points.
The convergence can be determined in terms of A and A´ by substituting
x = -f´A/A´ in equation (4), when we obtain [gamma] = A/A´.
_Compound Systems._--In discussing the laws relating to compound
systems, we assume that the cardinal points of the component systems
are known, and also that the combinations are centred, i.e. that the
axes of the component lenses coincide. If some object be represented
by two systems arranged one behind the other, we can regard the
systems as co-operating in the formation of the final image.
[Illustration: FIG. 6.]
Let such a system be represented in fig. 6. The two single systems are
denoted by the suffixes 1 and 2; for example, F1 is the first
principal focus of the first, and F´2 the second principal focus of
the second system. A ray parallel to the axis at a distance y passes
through the second principal focus F´1 of the first system,
intersecting the axis at an angle w´1. The point F´1 will be
represented in the second system by the point F´, which is therefore
conjugate to the point at infinity for the entire system, i.e. it is
the second principal focus of the compound system. The representation
of F´1 in F´ by the second system leads to the relations F2F´1 = x2,
and F´2F´ = x´2, whence x2x´2 = f2f´2. Denoting the distance between
the adjacent focal planes F´1, F2 by [Delta], we have [Delta] = F´1F2
= -F2F´1, so that x´2 = -f2f´2/[Delta]. A similar ray parallel to the
axis at a distance y proceeding from the image-side will intersect the
axis at the focal point F2; and by finding the image of this point in
the first system, we determine the first principal focus of the
compound system. Equation (2) gives x1x´1 = f1f´1, and since x´1 =
F´1F2 = [Delta], we have x1 = f1f´1/[Delta] as the distance of the
first principal focus F of the compound system from the first
principal focus F1 of the first system.
To determine the focal lengths f and f´ of the compound system and the
principal points H and H´, we employ the equations defining the focal
lengths, viz. f = y´/tan w, and f´ = y/tan w´. From the construction
(fig. 6) tan w´1 = y/f´1. The variation of the angle w´1 by the second
system is deduced from the equation to the convergence, viz. [gamma] =
tan w´2/tan w2 = -x2/f´2 = [Delta]/f´2, and since w2 = w´1, we have
tan w´2 = ([Delta]/f´2) tan w´1. Since w´ = w´2 in our system of
notation, we have
y yf´2 f´1.
f´ = ------ = --------------- = -----------. (5)
tan w´ [Delta] tan w´1 f´2/[Delta]
By taking a ray proceeding from the image-side we obtain for the first
principal focal distance of the combination
f = -f1f2/[Delta].
In the particular case in which [Delta] = 0, the two focal planes F´1,
F2 coincide, and the focal lengths f, f´ are infinite. Such a system
is called a telescopic system, and this condition is realized in a
telescope focused for a normal eye.
So far we have assumed that all the rays proceeding from an
object-point are exactly united in an image-point after transmission
through the ideal system. The question now arises as to how far this
assumption is justified for spherical lenses. To investigate this it
is simplest to trace the path of a ray through one spherical
refracting surface. Let such a surface divide media of refractive
indices n and n´, the former being to the left. The point where the
axis intersects the surface is the vertex S (fig. 7). Denote the
distance of the axial object-point O from S by s; the distance from O
to the point of incidence P by p; the radius of the spherical surface
by r; and the distance OC by c, C being the centre of the sphere. Let
u be the angle made by the ray with the axis, and i the angle of
incidence, i.e. the angle between the ray and the normal to the sphere
at the point of incidence. The corresponding quantities in the
image-space are denoted by the same letters with a dash. From the
triangle O´PC we have sin u = (r/c) sin i, and from the triangle O´PC
we have sin u´ = (r/c´) sin i´. By Snell's law we have n´/n = sin
i/sin i´, and also [phi] = u´ + i´. Consequently c´ and the position
of the image may be found.
[Illustration: FIG. 7.]
To determine whether all the rays proceeding from O are refracted
through O´, we investigate the triangle OPO´. We have p/p´ = sin
u´/sin u. Substituting for sin u and sin u´ the values found above, we
obtain p´/p = c´ sin i/c sin i´ = n´c´/nc. Also c = OC = CS + SO = -SC
+ SO = s - r, and similarly c´ = s´ - r. Substituting these values we
obtain
p´ n´(s´ - r) n(s - r) n´(s´ - r)
-- = ----------, or -------- = ----------. (6)
p n(s - r) p p´
To obtain p and p´ we use the triangles OPC and O´PC; we have p² = (s
- r)² + r² + 2r(s - r) cos [phi], p´² = (s´ - r)² + r² + 2r(s´ - r)
cos [phi]. Hence if s, r, n and n´ be constant, s´ must vary as [phi]
varies. The refracted rays therefore do not reunite in a point, and
the deflection is termed the spherical aberration (see ABERRATION).
Developing cos [phi] in powers of [phi], we obtain
/ [phi]² [phi]^4 [phi]^6 \
p² = (s - r)² + r² + 2r(s - r) ( 1 - ------ + ------- - ------- + ...),
\ 2! 4! 6! /
and therefore for such values of [phi] for which the second and higher
powers may be neglected, we have p² = (s - r)² + r² + 2r(s - r), i.e.
p = s, and similarly p´ = s´. Equation (6) then becomes n(s - r)/s =
n´(s´ - r)/s´ or
n´ n n´- n
-- = -- + -----. (7)
s´ s r
This relation shows that in a very small central aperture in which the
equation p = s holds, all rays proceeding from an object-point are
exactly united in an image-point, and therefore the equations
previously deduced are valid for this aperture. K. F. Gauss derived
the equations for thin pencils in his _Dioptrische Untersuchungen_
(1840) by very elegant methods. More recently the laws relating to
systems with finite aperture have been approximately realized, as for
example, in well-corrected photographic objectives.
_Position of the Cardinal Points of a Lens._--Taking the case of a
single spherical refracting surface, and limiting ourselves to the
small central aperture, it is seen that the second principal focus F´
is obtained when s is infinitely great. Consequently s´ = -f´; the
difference of sign is obvious, since s´ is measured from S, while f´
is measured from F´. The focal lengths are directly deducible from
equation (7):--
f´ = -n´r/(n´ - n) (8)
f = nr/(n´ - n). (9)
By joining this simple refracting system with a similar one, so that
the second spherical surface limits the medium of refractive index n´,
we derive the spherical lens. Generally the two spherical surfaces
enclose a glass lens, and are bounded on the outside by air of
refractive index 1.
The deduction of the cardinal points of a spherical glass lens in air
from the relations already proved is readily effected if we regard the
lens as a combination of two systems each having one refracting
surface, the light passing in the first system from air to glass, and
in the second from glass to air. If we know the refractive index of
the glass n, the radii r1, r2 of the spherical surfaces, and the
distances of the two lens-vertices (or the thickness of the lens d) we
can determine all the properties of the lens. A biconvex lens is shown
in fig. 8. Let F1 be the first principal focus of the first system of
radius r1, and F1´ the second principal focus; and let S1 be its
vertex. Denote the distance F1 S1 (the first principal focal length)
by f1, and the corresponding distance F´1 S1 by f´1. Let the
corresponding quantities in the second system be denoted by the same
letters with the suffix 2.
By equations (8) and (9) we have
r1 nr1 nr2 r2
f1 = -----, f´1 = - -----, f2 = - -----, f´2 = -----,
n - 1 n - 1 n - 1 n - 1
f2 having the opposite sign to f1. Denoting the distance F´1F2 by
[Delta], we have [Delta] = F´1F2 = F´1S1 + S1S2 + S2F2 = F´1S1 + S1S2
- F2S2 = f´1 + d - f2.
Substituting for f´1 and f2 we obtain
nr1 nr2
[Delta] = ----- + d + -----.
n - 1 n - 1
Writing R = [Delta](n - 1), this relation becomes
R = n(r2 - r1) + d(n - 1).
We have already shown that f (the first principal focal length of a
compound system) = -f1f2/[Delta]. Substituting for f1, f2 and [Delta]
the values found above, we obtain
r1r2n r1r2n
f = --------- = ------------------------------, (10)
(n - 1)R} (n - 1){n(r2 - r1) + d(n - 1)}
which is equivalent to
1 /1 1 \ (n-1)²d
-- = (n - 1)( -- - -- ) + -------.
f \r1 r2/ r1r2n
If the lens be infinitely thin, i.e. if d be zero, we have for the
first principal focal length.
1 /1 1 \
-- = (n - 1)( -- - -- ).
f \r1 r2/
By the same method we obtain for the second principal focal length
f´1f´2 nr1r2
f´ = ------- = - --------- = -f.
[Delta] (n - 1)R
[Illustration: FIG. 8.]
The reciprocal of the focal length is termed the _power_ of the lens
and is denoted by [phi]. In formulae involving [phi] it is customary
to denote the reciprocal of the radii by the symbol [rho]; we thus
have [phi] = 1/f, [rho] = 1/r. Equation (10) thus becomes
(n - 1)²d[rho]1[rho]2
[phi] = (n - 1)([rho]1 - [rho]2) + ---------------------.
n
The unit of power employed by spectacle-makers is termed the _diopter_
or _dioptric_ (see SPECTACLES).
We proceed to determine the distances of the focal points from the
vertices of the lens, i.e. the distances FS1 and F´S2. Since F is
represented by the first system in F2, we have by equation (2)
f1f´1 f1f´1 nr1²
x1 = ----- = ------- = --------,
x´1 [Delta] (n - 1)R
where x1 = F1F, and x´1 = F´1F2 = [Delta]. The distance of the first
principal focus from the vertex S, i.e. S1F, which we denote by s_F
is given by s_F = S1F = S1F1 + F1F = -F1S1 + F1F. Now F1S1 is the
distance from the vertex of the first principal focus of the first
system, i.e. f1 and F1F = x1. Substituting these values, we obtain
r1 nr1² r1(nr1 + R)
s_F = - ----- - -------- = -----------.
n - 1 (n - 1)R (n - 1)R
The distance F´2F´ or x´2 is similarly determined by considering F´1
to be represented by the second system in F´.
We have
f2f´2 f2f´2 nr2²
x´2 = ----- = ------- = --------,
x2 [Delta] (n - 1)R
so that
r2(nr2 - R)
s_F´ = x´2 - f´2 = -----------,
(n - 1)R
where s_F´ denotes the distance of the second principal focus from
the vertex S2.
The two focal lengths and the distances of the foci from the vertices
being known, the positions of the remaining cardinal points, i.e. the
principal points H and H´, are readily determined. Let s_H = S1H, i.e.
the distance of the object-side principal point from the vertex of the
first surface, and s_H´ = S2H´, i.e. the distance of the image-side
principal point from the vertex of the second surface, then f = FH =
FS1 + S1H = -S1F + S1H = -s_F + s_H; hence s_H = s_F + f = -dr1/R.
Similarly s_H´ = s_F´ + f´ = -dr2/R. It is readily seen that the
distances s_H and s_H´ are in the ratio of the radii r1 and r2.
The distance between the two principal planes (the interstitium) is
deduced very simply. We have S1S2 = S1H + HH´ + H´S2, or HH´ = S1S2 -
S1H + S2H´. Substituting, we have
HH´ = d - s_H + s_H´ = d(n - 1)(r2 - r1 + d)/R.
The interstitium becomes zero, or the two principal planes coincide,
if d = r1 - r2.
We have now derived all the properties of the lens in terms of its
elements, viz. the refractive index, the radii of the surfaces, and
the thickness.
_Forms of Lenses._--By varying the signs and relative magnitude of the
radii, lenses may be divided into two groups according to their
action, and into four groups according to their form.
According to their action, lenses are either collecting, convergent
and condensing, or divergent and dispersing; the term positive is
sometimes applied to the former, and the term negative to the latter.
Convergent lenses transform a parallel pencil into a converging one,
and increase the convergence, and diminish the divergence of any
pencil. Divergent lenses, on the other hand, transform a parallel
pencil into a diverging one, and diminish the convergence, and
increase the divergence of any pencil. In convergent lenses the first
principal focal distance is positive and the second principal focal
distance negative; in divergent lenses the converse holds.
The four forms of lenses are interpretable by means of equation (10).
r1r2n
f = -------------------------------.
(n - 1) {n(r2 - r1) + d(n - 1)}
[Illustration: FIG. 9.]
(1) If r1 be positive and r2 negative. This type is called biconvex
(fig. 9, 1). The first principal focus is in front of the lens, and
the second principal focus behind the lens, and the two principal
points are inside the lens. The order of the cardinal points is
therefore FS1HH´S2F´. The lens is convergent so long as the thickness
is less than n(r1 - r2)/(n - 1). The special case when one of the
radii is infinite, in other words, when one of the bounding surfaces
is plane is shown in fig. 9, 2. Such a collective lens is termed
_plano-convex_. As d increases, F and H move to the right and F´ and
H´ to the left. If d = n(r1 - r2)/(n - 1), the focal length is
infinite, i.e. the lens is telescopic. If the thickness be greater
than n(r1 - r2)/(n - 1), the lens is dispersive, and the order of the
cardinal points is HFS1S2F´H´.
(2) If r1 is negative and r2 positive. This type is called _biconcave_
(fig. 9, 4). Such lenses are dispersive for all thicknesses. If d
increases, the radii remaining constant, the focal lengths diminish.
It is seen from the equations giving the distances of the cardinal
points from the vertices that the first principal focus F is always
behind S1, and the second principal focus F´ always in front of S2,
and that the principal points are within the lens, H´ always following
H. If one of the radii becomes infinite, the lens is _plano-concave_
(fig. 9, 5).
(3) If the radii are both positive. These lenses are called
_convexo-concave_. Two cases occur according as r2 > r1, or < r1. (a)
If r2 > r1, we obtain the _mensicus_ (fig. 9, 3). Such lenses are
always collective; and the order of the cardinal points is FHH´F´.
Since s_F and s_H are always negative, the object-side cardinal
points are always in front of the lens. H´ can take up different
positions. Since s_H´ = -dr2/R = -dr2/{n(r2 - r1) + d(n - 1)}, s_H´
is greater or less than d, i.e. H´ is either in front of or inside the
lens, according as d < or > {r2 - n(r2 - r1)}/(n - 1). (b) If r2 < r1 the
lens is dispersive so long as d < n(r1 - r2)/(n-1). H is always behind
S1 and H´ behind S2, since s_H and s_H´ are always positive. The
focus F is always behind S1 and F´ in front of S2. If the thickness be
small, the order of the cardinal points is F´HH´F; a dispersive lens
of this type is shown in fig. 9, 6. As the thickness increases, H, H´
and F move to the right, F more rapidly than H, and H more rapidly
than H´; F´, on the other hand, moves to the left. As with biconvex
lenses, a telescopic lens, having all the cardinal points at infinity,
results when d = n(r1 - r2)/(n - 1). If d > n(r1 - r2)/(n - 1), f is
positive and the lens is collective. The cardinal points are in the
same order as in the mensicus, viz. FHH´F´; and the relation of the
principal points to the vertices is also the same as in the mensicus.
(4) If r1 and r2 are both negative. This case is reduced to (3) above,
by assuming a change in the direction of the light, or, in other
words, by interchanging the object- and image-spaces.
The six forms shown in fig. 9 are all used in optical constructions.
It may be stated fairly generally that lenses which are thicker at the
middle are collective, while those which are thinnest at the middle
are dispersive.
[Illustration: FIG. 10.]
_Different Positions of Object and Image._--The principal points are
always near the surfaces limiting the lens, and consequently the lens
divides the direct pencil containing the axis into two parts. The
object can be either in front of or behind the lens as in fig. 10. If
the object point be in front of the lens, and if it be realized by
rays passing from it, it is called _real_. If, on the other hand, the
object be behind the lens, it is called _virtual_; it does not
actually exist, and can only be realized as an image.
[Illustration: FIG. 11.]
When we speak of "object-points," it is always understood that the
rays from the object traverse the first surface of the lens before
meeting the second. In the same way, images may be either real or
virtual. If the image be behind the second surface, it is _real_, and
can be intercepted on a screen. If, however, it be in front of the
lens, it is visible to an eye placed behind the lens, although the
rays do not actually intersect, but only appear to do so, but the
image cannot be intercepted on a screen behind the lens. Such an image
is said to be _virtual_. These relations are shown in fig. 11.
[Illustration: FIG. 12.]
By referring to the equations given above, it is seen that a thin
convergent lens produces both real and virtual images of real objects,
but only a real image of a virtual object, whilst a divergent lens
produces a virtual image of a real object and both real and virtual
images of a virtual object. The construction of a real image of a real
object by a convergent lens is shown in fig. 3; and that of a virtual
image of a real object by a divergent lens in fig. 12.
[Illustration: FIG. 13.]
_The optical centre of a lens_ is a point such that, for any ray which
passes through it, the incident and emergent rays are parallel. The
idea of the optical centre was originally due to J. Harris (_Treatise
on Optics_, 1775); it is not properly a cardinal point, although it
has several interesting properties. In fig. 13, let C1P1 and C2P2 be
two parallel radii of a biconvex lens. Join P1P2 and let O1P1 and O2P2
be incident and emergent rays which have P1P2 for the path through the
lens. Then if M be the intersection of P1P2 with the axis, we have
angle C1P1M = angle C2P2M; these two angles are--for a ray travelling
in the direction O1P1P2O2--the angles of emergence and of incidence
respectively. From the similar triangles C2P2M and C1P1M we have
C1M : C2M = C1P1 : C2P2 = r1 : r2. (11)
Such rays as P1P2 therefore divide the distance C1C2 in the ratio of
the radii, i.e. at the fixed point M, the optical centre. Calling S1M
= s1, S2M = s2, then C1S1 = C1M + MS1 = C1M - S1M, i.e. since C1S1 =
r1, C1M = r1 + s1, and similarly C2M = r2 + s2. Also S1S2 = S1M + MS2
= S1M - S2M, i.e. d = s1 - s2. Then by using equation (11) we have s1
= r1d/(r - r2) and s2 = r2d/(r1 - r2), and hence s1/s2 = r1/r2. The
vertex distances of the optical centre are therefore in the ratio of
the radii.
The values of s1 and s2 show that the optical centre of a biconvex or
biconcave lens is in the interior of the lens, that in a plano-convex
or plano-concave lens it is at the vertex of the curved surface, and
in a concavo-convex lens outside the lens.
_The Wave-theory Derivation of the Focal Length._--The formulae above
have been derived by means of geometrical rays. We here give an
account of Lord Rayleigh's wave-theory derivation of the focal length
of a convex lens in terms of the aperture, thickness and refractive
index (_Phil. Mag._ 1879 (5) 8, p. 480; 1885, 20, p. 354); the
argument is based on the principle that the optical distance from
object to image is constant.
[Illustration: FIG. 14.]
"Taking the case of a convex lens of glass, let us suppose that
parallel rays DA, EC, GB (fig. 14) fall upon the lens ACB, and are
collected by it to a focus at F. The points D, E, G, equally distant
from ACB, lie upon a front of the wave before it impinges upon the
lens. The focus is a point at which the different parts of the wave
arrive at the same time, and that such a point can exist depends upon
the fact that the propagation is slower in glass than in air. The ray
ECF is retarded from having to pass through the thickness (d) of glass
by the amount (n - 1)d. The ray DAF, which traverses only the extreme
edge of the lens, is retarded merely on account of the crookedness of
its path, and the amount of the retardation is measured by AF - CF. If
F is a focus these retardations must be equal, or AF - CF = (n - 1)d.
Now if y be the semi-aperture AC of the lens, and f be the focal
length CF, AF - CF = [root](f² + y²) - f = ½y²/f approximately, whence
f = ½y²/(n - 1)d. (12)
In the case of plate-glass (n - 1) = ½ (nearly), and then the rule
(12) may be thus stated: _the semi-aperture is a mean proportional
between the focal length and the thickness_. The form (12) is in
general the more significant, as well as the more practically useful,
but we may, of course, express the thickness in terms of the
curvatures and semi-aperture by means of d = ½y²[r1^(-1) - r2^(-1)].
In the preceding statement it has been supposed for simplicity that
the lens comes to a sharp edge. If this be not the case we must take
as the thickness of the lens the difference of the thicknesses at the
centre and at the circumference. In this form the statement is
applicable to concave lenses, and we see that the focal length is
positive when the lens is thickest at the centre, but negative when
the lens is thickest at the edge."
_Regulation of the Rays._
The geometrical theory of optical instruments can be conveniently
divided into four parts: (1) The relations of the positions and sizes of
objects and their images (see above); (2) the different aberrations from
an ideal image (see ABERRATION); (3) the intensity of radiation in the
object- and image-spaces, in other words, the alteration of brightness
caused by physical or geometrical influences; and (4) the regulation of
the rays (_Strahlenbegrenzung_).
[Illustration: FIG. 15.]
The regulation of rays will here be treated only in systems free from
aberration. E. Abbe first gave a connected theory; and M. von Rohr has
done a great deal towards the elaboration. The Gauss cardinal points
make it simple to construct the image of a given object. No account is
taken of the size of the system, or whether the rays used for the
construction really assist in the reproduction of the image or not.
The diverging cones of rays coming from the object-points can only
take a certain small part in the production of the image in
consequence of the apertures of the lenses, or of diaphragms. It often
happens that the rays used for the construction of the image do not
pass through the system; the image being formed by quite different
rays. If we take a luminous point of the object lying on the axis of
the system then an eye introduced at the image-point sees in the
instrument several concentric rings, which are either the fittings of
the lenses or their images, or the real diaphragms or their images.
The innermost and smallest ring is completely lighted, and forms the
origin of the cone of rays entering the image-space. Abbe called it
the _exit pupil_. Similarly there is a corresponding smallest ring in
the object-space which limits the entering cone of rays. This is
called the _entrance pupil_. The real diaphragm acting as a limit at
any part of the system is called the _aperture-diaphragm_. These
diaphragms remain for all practical purposes the same for all points
lying on the axis. It sometimes happens that one and the same
diaphragm fulfils the functions of the entrance pupil and the
aperture-diaphragm or the exit pupil and the aperture-diaphragm.
Fig. 15 shows the general but simplified case of the different
diaphragms which are of importance for the regulation of the rays. S1,
S2 are two centred systems. A´ is a real diaphragm lying between them.
B1 and B´2 are the fittings of the systems. Then S1 produces the
virtual image A of the diaphragm A´ and the image B2 of the fitting
B´2, whilst the system S2 makes the virtual image A´´ of the diaphragm
A´ and the virtual image B´1 of the fitting B1. The object-point O is
reproduced really through the whole system in the point O´. From the
object-point O three diaphragms can be seen in the object-space, viz.
the fitting B1, the image of the fitting B2 and the image A of the
diaphragm A´ formed by the system S1. The cone of rays nearest to B2
is not received to its total extent by the fitting B1, and the cone
which has entered through B1 is again diminished in its further
course, when passing through the diaphragm A´, so that the cone of
rays really used for producing the image is limited by A, the
diaphragm which seen from O appears to be the smallest. A is therefore
the entrance pupil. The real diaphragm A´ which limits the rays in the
centre of the system is the aperture diaphragm. Similarly three
diaphragms lying in the image-space are to be seen from the
image-point O´--namely B´, A´´, and B´2. A´´ limits the rays in the
image-space, and is therefore the exit pupil. As A is conjugate to the
diaphragm A´ in the system S1, and A´´ to the same diaphragm A´ in the
system S2, the entrance pupil A is conjugate to the exit pupil A´´
throughout the instrument. This relation between entrance and exit
pupils is general.
The apices of the cones of rays producing the image of points near the
axis thus lie in the object-points, and their common base is the
entrance pupil. The axis of such a cone, which connects the object
point with the centre of the entrance pupil, is called the _principal
ray_. Similarly, the principal rays in the image-space join the centre
of the exit pupil with the image-points. The centres of the entrance
and exit pupils are thus the intersections of the principal rays.
[Illustration: FIG. 16.]
[Illustration: FIG. 17a.]
[Illustration: FIG. 17b.]
For points lying farther from the axis, the entrance pupil no longer
alone limits the rays, the other diaphragms taking part. In fig. 16
only one diaphragm L is present besides the entrance pupil A, and the
object-space is divided to a certain extent into four parts. The
section M contains all points rendered by a system with a complete
aperture; N contains all points rendered by a system with a gradually
diminishing aperture; but this diminution does not attain the
principal ray passing through the centre C. In the section O are those
points rendered by a system with an aperture which gradually decreases
to zero. No rays pass from the points of the section P through the
system and no image can arise from them. The second diaphragm L
therefore limits the three-dimensional object-space containing the
points which can be rendered by the optical system. From C through
this diaphragm L this three-dimensional object-space can be seen as
through a window. L is called by M von Rohr the _entrance luke_. If
several diaphragms can be seen from C, then the entrance _luke_ is the
diaphragm which seen from C appears the smallest. In the sections N
and O the entrance _luke_ also takes part in limiting the cones of
rays. This restriction is known as the "vignetting" action of the
entrance _luke_. The base of the cone of rays for the points of this
section of the object-space is no longer a circle but a two-cornered
curve which arises from the object-point by the projection of the
entrance _luke_ on the entrance pupil. Fig. 17a shows the base of such
a cone of rays. It often happens that besides the entrance _luke_,
another diaphragm acts in a vignetting manner, then the operating
aperture of the cone of rays is a curve made up of circular arcs
formed out of the entrance pupil and the two projections of the two
acting diaphragms (fig. 17b).
If the entrance pupil is narrow, then the section NO, in which the
vignetting is increasing, is diminished, and there is really only one
division of the section M which can be reproduced, and of the section
P which cannot be reproduced. The angle w + w = 2w, comprising the
section which can be reproduced, is called the angle of the field of
view on the object-side. The field of view 2w retains its importance
if the entrance pupil is increased. It then comprises all points
reached by principal rays. The same relations apply to the
image-space, in which there is an exit _luke_, which, seen from the
middle of the exit pupil, appears under the smallest angle. It is the
image of the entrance _luke_ produced by the whole system. The
image-side field of view 2w´ is the angle comprised by the principal
rays reaching the edge of the exit _luke_.
[Illustration: FIG. 18.]
Most optical instruments are used to observe object-reliefs
(three-dimensional objects), and generally an image-relief (a
three-dimensional image) is conjugate to this object-relief. It is
sometimes required, however, to represent by means of an optical
instrument the object-relief on a plane or on a ground-glass as in the
photographic camera. For simplicity we shall assume the intercepting
plane as perpendicular to the axis and shall call it, after von Rohr,
the "ground glass plane." All points of the image not lying in this
plane produce circular spots (corresponding to the form of the pupils)
on it, which are called "circles of confusion." The ground-glass plane
(fig. 18) is conjugate to the object-plane E in the object-space,
perpendicular to the axis, and called the "plane focused for." All
points lying in this plane are reproduced exactly on the ground-glass
plane as the points OO. The circle of confusion Z on the plane focused
for corresponds to the circle of confusion Z´ on the ground-glass
plane. The figure formed on the plane focused for by the cones of rays
from all of the object-points of the total object-space directed to
the entrance pupil, was called "object-side representation" (_imago_)
by M von Rohr. This representation is a central projection. If, for
instance, the entrance pupil is imagined so small that only the
principal rays pass through, then they project directly, and the
intersections of the principal rays represent the projections of the
points of the object lying off the plane focused for. The centre of
the projection or the perspective centre is the middle point of the
entrance pupil C. If the entrance pupil is opened, in place of points,
circles of confusion appear, whose size depends upon the size of the
entrance pupil and the position of the object-points and the plane
focused for. The intersection of the principal ray is the centre of
the circle of confusion. The clearness of the representation on the
plane focused for is of course diminished by the circles of confusion.
This central projection does not at all depend upon the instrument,
but is entirely geometrical, arising when the position and the size of
the entrance pupil, and the position of the plane focused for have
been fixed. The instrument then produces an image on the ground-glass
plane of this perspective representation on the plane focused for, and
on account of the exact likeness which this image has to the
object-side representation it is called the "representation copy." By
moving it round an angle of 180°, this representation can be brought
into a perspective position to the objects, so that all rays coming
from the middle of the entrance pupil and aiming at the object-points,
would always meet the corresponding image-points. This representation
is accessible to the observer in different ways in different
instruments. If the observer desires a perfectly correct perspective
impression of the object-relief the distance of the pivot of the eye
from the representation copy must be equal to the nth part of the
distance of the plane focused for from the entrance pupil, if the
instrument has produced a nth diminution of the object-side
representation. The pivot of the eye must coincide with the centre of
the perspective, because all images are observed in direct vision. It
is known that the pivot of the eye is the point of intersection of all
the directions in which one can look. Thus all these points
represented by circles of confusion which are less than the angular
sharpness of vision appear clear to the eye; the space containing all
these object-points, which appear clear to the eye, is called the
_depth_. The depth of definition, therefore, is not a special property
of the instrument, but depends on the size of the entrance pupil, the
position of the plane focused for and on the conditions under which
the representation can be observed.
If the distance of the representation from the pivot of the eye be
altered from the correct distance already mentioned, the angles of
vision under which various objects appear are changed; perspective
errors arise, causing an incorrect idea to be given of the depth. A
simple case is shown in fig. 19. A cube is the object, and if it is
observed as in fig. 19a with the representation copy at the correct
distance, a correct idea of a cube will be obtained. If, as in figs.
19b and 19c, the distance is too great, there can be two results. If
it is known that the farthest section is just as high as the nearer
one then the cube appears exceptionally deepened, like a long
parallelepipedon. But if it is known to be as deep as it is high then
the eye will see it low at the back and high at the front. The reverse
occurs when the distance of observation is too short, the body then
appears either too flat, or the nearer sections seem too low in
relation to those farther off. These perspective errors can be seen in
any telescope. In the telescope ocular the representation copy has to
be observed under too large an angle or at too short a distance: all
objects therefore appear flattened, or the more distant objects appear
too large in comparison with those nearer at hand.
[Illustration: FIG. 19. After von Rohr.]
[Illustration: FIG. 20. After von Rohr.]
[Illustration: FIG. 21. After von Rohr.]
[Illustration: FIG. 22. After von Rohr.]
From the above the importance of experience will be inferred. But it
is not only necessary that the objects themselves be known to the
observer but also that they are presented to his eye in the customary
manner. This depends upon the way in which the principal rays pass
through the system--in other words, upon the special kind of
"transmission" of the principal rays. In ordinary vision the pivot of
the eye is the centre of the perspective representation which arises
on the very distant plane standing perpendicular to the mean direction
of sight. In this kind of central projection all objects lying in
front of the plane focused for are diminished when projected on this
plane, and those lying behind it are magnified. (The distances are
always given in the direction of light.) Thus the objects near to the
eye appear large and those farther from it appear small. This
perspective has been called by M von Rohr[1] "entocentric
transmission" (fig. 20). If the entrance pupil of the instrument lies
at infinity, then all the principal rays are parallel and the
projections of all objects on the plane focused for are exactly as
large as the objects themselves. After E. Abbe, this course of rays is
called "telecentric transmission" (fig. 21). The exit pupil then lies
in the image-side focus of the system. If the perspective centre lies
in front of the plane focused for, then the objects lying in front of
this plane are magnified and those behind it are diminished. This is
just the reverse of perspective representation in ordinary sight, so
that the relations of size and the arrangements for space must be
quite incorrectly indicated (fig. 22); this representation is called
by M von Rohr a "hypercentric transmission." (O. Hr.)
FOOTNOTE:
[1] M von Rohr, _Zeitschr. für Sinnesphysiologie_ (1907), xli. 408-429.
LENT (O. Eng. _lencten_, "spring," M. Eng. _lenten_, _lente_, _lent_;
cf. Dut. _lente_, Ger. _Lenz_, "spring," O. H. Ger. _lenzin_,
_lengizin_, _lenzo_, probably from the same root as "long" and referring
to "the lengthening days"), in the Christian Church, the period of
fasting preparatory to the festival of Easter. As this fast falls in the
early part of the year, it became confused with the season, and
gradually the word Lent, which originally meant spring, was confined to
this use. The Latin name for the fast, _Quadragesima_ (whence Ital.
_quaresima_, Span. _cuaresma_ and Fr. _carême_), and its Gr. equivalent
[Greek: tessarakostê] (now superseded by the term [Greek: hê nêsteia]
"the fast"), are derived from the Sunday which was the fortieth day
before Easter, as _Quinquagesima_ and _Sexagesima_ are the fiftieth and
sixtieth, Quadragesima being until the 7th century the _caput jejunii_
or first day of the fast.
The length of this fast and the rigour with which it has been observed
have varied greatly at different times and in different countries (see
FASTING). In the time of Irenaeus the fast before Easter was very short,
but very severe; thus some ate nothing for forty hours between the
afternoon of Good Friday and the morning of Easter. This was the only
authoritatively prescribed fast known to Tertullian (_De jejunio_, 2,
13, 14; _De oratione_, 18). In Alexandria about the middle of the 3rd
century it was already customary to fast during Holy Week; and earlier
still the Montanists boasted that they observed a two weeks' fast
instead of one. Of the Lenten fast or Quadragesima, the first mention is
in the fifth canon of the council of Nicaea (325), and from this time it
is frequently referred to, but chiefly as a season of preparation for
baptism, of absolution of penitents or of retreat and recollection. In
this season fasting played a part, but it was not universally nor
rigorously enforced. At Rome, for instance, the whole period of fasting
was but three weeks, according to the historian Socrates (_Hist. eccl._
v. 22), these three weeks, in Mgr. Duchesne's opinion, being not
continuous but, following the primitive Roman custom, broken by
intervals. Gradually, however, the fast as observed in East and West
became more rigorously defined. In the East, where after the example of
the Church of Antioch the Quadragesima fast had been kept distinct from
that of Holy Week, the whole fast came to last for seven weeks, both
Saturdays and Sundays (except Holy Saturday) being, however, excluded.
In Rome and Alexandria, and even in Jerusalem, Holy Week was included in
Lent and the whole fast lasted but six weeks, Saturdays, however, not
being exempt. Both at Rome and Constantinople, therefore, the actual
fast was but thirty-six days. Some Churches still continued the three
weeks' fast, but by the middle of the 5th century most of these
divergences had ceased and the usages of Antioch-Constantinople and
Rome-Alexandria had become stereotyped in their respective spheres of
influence.
The thirty-six days, as forming a tenth part of the year and therefore a
perfect number, at first found a wide acceptance (so Cassianus, _Coll._
xxi. 30); but the inconsistency of this period with the name
Quadragesima, and with the forty days' fast of Christ, came to be noted,
and early in the 7th century four days were added, by what pope is
unknown, Lent in the West beginning henceforth on Ash Wednesday (q.v.).
About the same time the cycle of paschal solemnities was extended to the
ninth week before Easter by the institution of stational masses for
Septuagesima, Sexagesima and Quinquagesima Sundays. At Constantinople,
too, three Sundays were added and associated with the Easter festival in
the same way as the Sundays in Lent proper. These three Sundays were
added in the Greek Church also, and the present custom of keeping an
eight weeks' fast (i.e. exactly 8×5 days), now universal in the Eastern
Church, originated in the 7th century. The Greek Lent begins on the
Monday of Sexagesima, with a week of preparatory fasting, known as
[Greek: turophagia], or the "butter-week"; the actual fast, however,
starts on the Monday of Quinquagesima (Estomihi), this week being known
as "the first week of the fast" ([Greek: hebdomas tôn nêsteiôn]). The
period of Lent is still described as "the six weeks of the fast"
([Greek: hex hebdomades tôn nêsteiôn]), Holy Week ([Greek: hê hagia kai
megalê hebdomas]) not being reckoned in. The Lenten fast was retained at
the Reformation in some of the reformed Churches, and is still observed
in the Anglican and Lutheran communions. In England a Lenten fast was
first ordered to be observed by Earconberht, king of Kent (640-664). In
the middle ages, meat, eggs and milk were forbidden in Lent not only by
ecclesiastical but by statute law; and this rule was enforced until the
reign of william III. The chief Lenten food from the earliest days was
fish, and entries in the royal household accounts of Edward III. show
the amount of fish supplied to the king. Herring-pies were a great
delicacy. Charters granted to seaports often stipulated that the town
should send so many herrings or other fish to the king annually during
Lent. How severely strict medieval abstinence was may be gauged from the
fact that armies and garrisons were sometimes, in default of
dispensations, as in the case of the siege of Orleans in 1429, reduced
to starvation for want of Lenten food, though in full possession of meat
and other supplies. The battle of the Herrings (February 1429) was
fought in order to cover the march of a convoy of Lenten food to the
English army besieging Orleans. Dispensations from fasting were,
however, given in case of illness.
During the religious confusion of the Reformation, the practice of
fasting was generally relaxed and it was found necessary to reassert the
obligation of keeping Lent and the other periods and days of abstinence
by a series of proclamations and statutes. In these, however, the
religious was avowedly subordinate to a political motive, viz. to
prevent the ruin of the fisheries, which were the great nursery of
English seamen. Thus the statute of 2 and 3 Edward VI., cap. 9 (1549),
while inculcating that "due and godly abstinence from flesh is a means
to virtue," adds that "by the eating of fish much flesh is saved to the
country," and that thereby, too, the fishing trade is encouraged. The
statute, however, would not seem to have had much effect; for in spite
of a proclamation of Queen Elizabeth in 1560 imposing a fine of £20 for
each offence on butchers slaughtering animals during Lent, in 1563 Sir
William Cecil, in _Notes upon an Act for the Increase of the Navy_, says
that "in old times no flesh at all was eaten on fish days; even the king
himself could not have license; which was occasion of eating so much
fish as now is eaten in flesh upon fish days." The revolt against fish
had ruined the fisheries and driven the fishermen to turn pirates, to
the great scandal and detriment of the realm. Accordingly, in the
session of 1562-1563, Cecil forced upon an unwilling parliament "a
politic ordinance on fish eating," by which the eating of flesh on fast
days was made punishable by a fine of three pounds or three months'
imprisonment, one meat dish being allowed on Wednesdays on condition
that three fish dishes were present on the table. The kind of argument
by which Cecil overcame the Protestant temper of the parliament is
illustrated by a clause which he had meditated adding to the statute, a
draft of which in his own handwriting is preserved: "Because no person
should misjudge the intent of the statute," it runs, "which is politicly
meant only for the increase of fishermen and mariners, and not for any
superstition for choice of meats; whoever shall preach or teach that
eating of fish or forbearing of flesh is for the saving of the soul of
man, or for the service of God, shall be punished as the spreader of
false news" (Dom. MSS., Elizabeth, vol. xxvii.). But in spite of
statutes and proclamations, of occasional severities and of the
patriotic example of Queen Elizabeth, the practice of fasting fell more
and more into disuse. Ostentatious avoidance of a fish-diet became,
indeed, one of the outward symbols of militant Protestantism among the
Puritans. "I have often noted," writes John Taylor, the water-poet, in
his _Jack a Lent_ (1620), "that if any superfluous feasting or
gormandizing, paunch-cramming assembly do meet, it is so ordered that it
must be either in Lent, upon a Friday, or a fasting: for the meat does
not relish well except it be sauced with disobedience and comtempt of
authority." The government continued to struggle against this spirit of
defiance; proclamations of James I. in 1619 and 1625, and of Charles I.
in 1627 and 1631, again commanded abstinence from all flesh during Lent,
and the High Church movement of the 17th century lent a fresh religious
sanction to the official attitude. So late as 1687, James II. issued a
proclamation ordering abstention from meat; but, after the Revolution,
the Lenten laws fell obsolete, though they remained on the statute-book
till repealed by the Statute Law Revision Act 1863. But during the 18th
century, though the strict observance of the Lenten fast was generally
abandoned, it was still observed and inculcated by the more earnest of
the clergy, such as William Law and John Wesley; and the custom of women
wearing mourning in Lent, which had been followed by Queen Elizabeth and
her court, survived until well into the 19th century. With the growth of
the Oxford Movement in the English Church, the practice of observing
Lent was revived; and, though no rules for fasting are authoritatively
laid down, the duty of abstinence is now very generally inculcated by
bishops and clergy, either as a discipline or as an exercise in
self-denial. For the more "advanced" Churches, Lenten practice tends to
conform to that of the pre-Reformation Church.
Mid-Lent, or the fourth Sunday in Lent, was long known as _Mothering
Sunday_, in allusion to the custom for girls in service to be allowed a
holiday on that day to visit their parents. They usually took as a
present for their mother a small cake known as a _simnel_. In shape it
resembled a pork-pie but in materials it was a rich plum-pudding. The
word is derived through M. Lat. _simenellus_, _simella_, from Lat.
_simila_, wheat flour. In Gloucestershire simnel cakes are still
common; and at Usk, Monmouth, the custom of mothering is still
scrupulously observed.
LENTHALL, WILLIAM (1591-1662), English parliamentarian, speaker of the
House of Commons, second son of William Lenthall, of Lachford,
Oxfordshire, a descendent of an old Herefordshire family, was born at
Henley-on-Thames in June 1591. He left Oxford without taking a degree in
1609, and was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn in 1616, becoming a
bencher in 1633. He represented Woodstock in the Short Parliament (April
1640), and was chosen by King Charles I. to be speaker of the Long
Parliament, which met on the 3rd of November 1640. According to
Clarendon, a worse choice could not have been made, for Lenthall was of
a "very timorous nature." He was treated with scanty respect in the
chair, and seems to have had little control over the proceedings. On the
4th of January 1642, however, when the king entered the House of Commons
to seize the five members, Lenthall behaved with great prudence and
dignity. Having taken the speaker's chair and looked round in vain to
discover the offending members, Charles turned to Lenthall standing
below, and demanded of him "whether any of those persons were in the
House, whether he saw any of them and where they were." Lenthall fell on
his knees and replied: "May it please your Majesty, I have neither eyes
to see nor tongue to speak in this place but as the House is pleased to
direct me, whose servant I am here." On the outbreak of the great
rebellion, Lenthall threw in his lot with the parliament. He had already
called attention to the inadequacy of his salary and been granted a sum
of £6000 (9th of April 1642); and he was now appointed master of the
rolls (22nd of November 1643), and one of the commissioners of the great
seal (Oct. 1646-March 1648).
He carried on his duties as speaker without interruption till 1647, when
the power of the parliament had been transferred to the army. On the
26th of July a mob invaded the House of Commons and obliged it to
rescind the ordinance re-establishing the old parliamentary committee of
militia; Lenthall was held in the chair by main force and compelled to
put to the vote a resolution inviting the king to London. Threats of
worse things came subsequently to Lenthall's ears, and, taking the mace
with him, he left London on the 29th to join the army and Fairfax.
Lenthall and Manchester, the speaker of the Lords, headed the fugitive
members at the review on Hounslow Heath on the 3rd of August, being
received by the soldiers "as so many angels sent from heaven for their
good." Returning to London with the army, he was installed again by
Fairfax in the chair (6th August), and all votes passed during his
absence were annulled. He adhered henceforth to the army party, but with
a constant bias in favour of the king.
At the Restoration he claimed to have sent money to the king at Oxford,
to have provided the queen with comforts and necessaries and to have
taken care of the royal children. But he put the question for the king's
trial from the chair, and continued to act as speaker after the king's
execution. He still continued to use his influence in favour of the
royalists, whenever this was possible without imperilling his own
interests, and he saved the lives of both the earl of Norwich (8th March
1649) and Sir W. D'Avenant (3rd July 1650) by his casting vote. The
removal of the king had left the parliament supreme; and Lenthall as its
representative, though holding little real power, was the first man in
the state.
His speakership continued till the 20th of April 1653, when the Long
Parliament was summarily expelled. Cromwell directed Colonel Harrison,
on the refusal of Lenthall to quit the chair, to pull him out--and
Lenthall submitted to the show of force. He took no part in politics
till the assembling of the first protectorate parliament, on the 3rd of
September 1654, in which he sat as member for Oxfordshire. He was again
chosen speaker, his former experience and his pliability of character
being his chief recommendations. In the second protectorate parliament,
summoned by Cromwell on the 17th of September 1656, Lenthall was again
chosen member for Oxfordshire, but had some difficulty in obtaining
admission, and was not re-elected speaker. He supported Cromwell's
administration, and was active in urging the protector to take the title
of king. In spite of his services, Lenthall was not included by Cromwell
in his new House of Lords, and was much disappointed and crestfallen at
his omission. The protector, hearing of his "grievous complaint," sent
him a writ, and Lenthall was elated at believing he had secured a
peerage. After Cromwell's death, the officers, having determined to
recall the "Rump" Parliament, assembled at Lenthall's house at the Rolls
(6th May 1659), to desire him to send out the writs. Lenthall, however,
had no wish to resume his duties as speaker, preferring the House of
Lords, and made various excuses for not complying. Nevertheless, upon
the officers threatening to summon the parliament without his aid, and
hearing the next morning that several members had assembled, he led the
procession to the parliament house. Lenthall was now restored to the
position of dignity which he had filled before. He was temporarily made
keeper of the new great seal (14th of May). On the 6th of June it was
voted that all commissions should be signed by Lenthall and not by the
commander-in-chief. His exalted position, however, was not left long
unassailed. On the 13th of October Lambert placed soldiers round the
House and prevented the members from assembling. Lenthall's coach was
stopped as he was entering Palace Yard, the mace was seized and he was
obliged to return. The army, however, soon returned to their allegiance
to the parliament. On the 24th of December they marched to Lenthall's
house, and expressed their sorrow. On the 29th the speaker received the
thanks of the reassembled parliament.
Lenthall now turned his attention to bring about the Restoration. He
"very violently" opposed the oath abjuring the house of Stuart, now
sought to be imposed by the republican faction on the parliament, and
absented himself from the House for ten days, to avoid, it was said, any
responsibility for the bill. He had been in communication with Monk for
some time, and on Monk entering London with his army (3rd February 1660)
Lenthall met him in front of Somerset House. On the 6th of February Monk
visited the House of Commons, when Lenthall pronounced a speech of
thanks. On the 28th of March Lenthall forwarded to the king a paper
containing "Heads of Advice." According to Monk, he "was very active for
the restoring of His Majesty and performed many services ... which could
not have been soe well effected without his helpe." Lenthall
notwithstanding found himself in disgrace at the Restoration. In spite
of Monk's recommendation, he was not elected by Oxford University for
the Convention Parliament, nor was he allowed by the king, though he had
sent him a present of £3000, to remain master of the rolls. On the 11th
of June he was included by the House of Commons, in spite of a
recommendatory letter from Monk, among the twenty persons excepted from
the act of indemnity and subject to penalties not extending to life. In
the House of Lords, however, Monk's testimony and intercession were
effectual, and Lenthall was only declared incapable of holding for the
future any public office. His last public act was a disgraceful one.
Unmindful now of the privileges of parliament, he consented to appear as
a witness against the regicide Thomas Scot, for words spoken in the
House of Commons while Lenthall was in the chair. It was probably after
this that he was allowed to present himself at court, and his
contemporaries took a malicious glee in telling how "when, with some
difficulty, he obtained leave to kiss the king's hand he, out of guilt,
fell backward, as he was kneeling."
Lenthall died on the 3rd of September 1662. In his will he desired to be
buried without any state and without a monument, "but at the utmost a
plain stone with this superscription only, _Vermis sum_, acknowledging
myself to be unworthy of the least outward regard in this world and
unworthy of any remembrance that hath been so great a sinner." He was
held in little honour by his contemporaries, and was universally
regarded as a time-server. He was, however, a man of good intentions,
strong family affections and considerable ability. Unfortunately he was
called by the irony of fate to fill a great office, in which governed
constantly by fears for his person and estate, he was seduced into a
series of unworthy actions. He left one son, Sir John Lenthall, who had
descendants. His brother, Sir John Lenthall, who, it was said, had too
much influence with him, was notorious for his extortions as keeper of
the King's Bench prison.
See C. H. Firth in the _Dict. Nat. Biog._; Wood (ed. Bliss), _Ath.
Oxon._ iii. 603, who gives a list of his printed speeches and letters;
Foss, _Lives of the Judges_, vi. 447; and J. A. Manning, _Lives of the
Speakers of the House of Commons_. There are numerous references to
Lenthall in his official capacity, and letters written by and to him,
in the Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, and in various MSS.
calendared in the Hist. MSS. Commission Series. See also D'Ewes's
_Diary_, in the Harleian Collection, British Museum, some extracts
from which have been given by J. Forster, _Case of the Five Members_,
233 sq.; and _Notes and Queries_, ser. iii., vii. 45 ("Lenthall's
Lamentation"), viii., i. 165, 338, 2, ix., xi. 57.
LENTIL, the seed of _Lens esculenta_ (also known as _Ervum Lens_), a
small annual of the vetch tribe. The plant varies from 6 to 18 in. in
height, and has many long ascending branches. The leaves are alternate,
with six pairs of oblong-linear, obtuse, mucronate leaflets. The
flowers, two to four in number, are of a pale blue colour, and are borne
in the axils of the leaves, on a slender footstalk nearly equalling the
leaves in length; they are produced in June or early in July. The pods
are about ½ in. long, broadly oblong, slightly inflated, and contain two
seeds, which are of the shape of a doubly convex lens, and about 1/6
in. in diameter. There are several cultivated varieties of the plant,
differing in size, hairiness and colour of the leaves, flowers and
seeds. The last may be more or less compressed in shape, and in colour
may vary from yellow or grey to dark brown; they are also sometimes
mottled or speckled. In English commerce two kinds of lentils are
principally met with, French and Egyptian. The former are usually sold
entire, and are of an ash-grey colour externally and of a yellow tint
within; the latter are usually sold like split peas, without the seed
coat, and consist of the reddish-yellow cotyledons, which are smaller
and rounder than those of the French lentil; the seed coat when present
is of a dark brown colour. Considerable quantities of lentils are also
imported into the United States.
The native country of the lentil is not known. It was probably one of
the first plants brought under cultivation by mankind; lentils have been
found in the lake dwellings of St Peter's Island, Lake of Bienne, which
are of the Bronze age. The name 'adas (Heb. [Hebrew: adash]) appears to
be an original Semitic word, and the red pottage of lentils for which
Esau sold his birthright (Gen. xxv. 34) was apparently made from the red
Egyptian lentil. This lentil is cultivated in one or other variety in
India, Persia, Syria, Egypt, Nubia and North Africa, and in Europe,
along the coast of the Mediterranean, and as far north as Germany,
Holland and France. In Egypt, Syria and other Eastern countries the
parched seeds are exposed for sale in shops, and esteemed the best food
to carry on long journeys. Lentils form a chief ingredient in the
Spanish puchero, and are used in a similar way in France and other
countries. For this purpose they are usually sold in the shelled state.
The reddish variety of the lentil (_lentillon d'hiver_) is the kind
most esteemed in Paris on account of the superior flavour of its
smaller seeds. It is sown in autumn either with a cereal crop or
alone, and is cultivated chiefly in the north and east of France. The
large or common variety, _lentille large blonde_, cultivated in
Lorraine and at Gallardon (Eure-et-Loir), and largely in Germany, is
the most productive, but is less esteemed. This kind has very small
whitish flowers, two or rarely three on a footstalk, and the pods are
generally one-seeded, the seeds being of a whitish or cream colour,
about 3/8 of an inch broad and 1/8 in. thick. A single plant produces
from 100 to 150 pods, which are flattened, about ¾ in. long and ½ in.
broad. Another variety, with seeds similar in form and colour to the
last, but of much smaller size, is known as the _lentillon de Mars_.
It is sown in spring. This variety and the _lentille large_ are both
sometimes called the _lentille à la reine_. A small variety, _lentille
verte du Puy_, cultivated chiefly in the departments of Haute Loire
and Cantal, is also grown as a vegetable and for forage. The Egyptian
lentil was introduced into Britain in 1820. It has blue flowers.
Another species of lentil, _Ervum monanthos_, is grown in France about
Orleans and elsewhere under the name of _jarosse_ and _jarande_. It
is, according to Vilmorin, one of the best kinds of green food to grow
on a poor dry sandy soil; on calcareous soil it does not succeed so
well. It is usually sown in autumn with a little rye or winter oats,
at the rate of a hectolitre to a hectare.
The lentil prefers a light warm sandy soil; on rich land it runs to
leaf and produces but few pods. The seeds are sown in March or April
or early in May, according to the climate of the country, as they
cannot endure night frosts. If for fodder they are sown broadcast, but
in drills if the ripe seeds are required. The pods are gathered in
August or September, as soon as they begin to turn brown--the plants
being pulled up like flax while the foliage is still green, and on a
dry day lest the pods split in drying and loss of seed takes place.
Lentils keep best in the husk so far as flavour is concerned, and will
keep good in this way for two years either for sowing or for food. An
acre of ground yields on an average about 11 cwt. of seed and 30 cwt.
of straw. The amount and character of the mineral matter requisite in
the soil may be judged from the analysis of the ash, which in the
seeds has as its chief ingredients--potash 34.6%, soda 9.5, lime 6.3,
phosphoric acid 36.2, chloride of sodium 7.6, while in the straw the
percentages are--potash 10.8, lime 52.3, silica 17.6, phosphoric acid
12.3, chloride of sodium 2.1.
Lentils have attracted considerable notice among vegetarians as a food
material, especially for soup. A Hindu proverb says, "Rice is good,
but lentils are my life." The husk of the seed is indigestible, and to
cook lentils properly requires at least two and a half hours, but they
are richer in nutritious matter than almost any other kind of pulse,
containing, according to Payen's analysis, 25.2% of nitrogenous matter
(legumin), 56% of starch and 2.6% of fatty matter. Fresenius's
analysis differs in giving only 35% of starch; Einhoff gives 32.81 of
starch and 37.82% of nitrogenous matter. Lentils are more properly the
food of the poor in all countries where they are grown, and have often
been spurned when better food could be obtained, hence the proverb
_Dives factus jam desiit gaudere lente_. The seeds are said to be good
for pigeons, or mixed in a ground state with potatoes or barley for
fattening pigs. The herbage is highly esteemed as green food for
suckling ewes and all kinds of cattle (being said to increase the
yield of milk), also for calves and lambs. Haller says that lentils
are so flatulent as to kill horses. They were also believed to be the
cause of severe scrofulous disorders common in Egypt. This bad
reputation may possibly be due to the substitution of the seeds of the
bitter vetch or tare lentil, _Ervum Ervilia_, a plant which closely
resembles the true lentil in height, habit, flower and pod, but whose
seeds are without doubt possessed of deleterious properties--producing
weakness or even paralysis of the extremities in horses which have
partaken of them. The poisonous principle seems to reside chiefly in
the bitter seed coat, and can apparently be removed by steeping in
water, since Gerard, speaking of the "bitter vetch" (_E. Ervilia_),
says "kine in Asia and in most other countries do eat thereof, being
made sweet by steeping in water." The seed of _E. Ervilia_ is about
the same size and almost exactly of the same reddish-brown colour as
that of the Egyptian lentil, and when the seed coat is removed they
are both of the same orange red hue, but the former is not so bright
as the latter. The shape is the best means of distinguishing the two
seeds, that of E. _Ervilia_ being obtusely triangular.
Sea-lentil is a name sometimes applied to the gulfweed _Sargassum
vulgare_.
LENTULUS, the name of a Roman patrician family of the Cornelian gens,
derived from _lentes_ ("lentils"), which its oldest members were fond of
cultivating (according to Pliny, _Nat. Hist._ xviii. 3, 10). The word
_Lentulitas_ ("Lentulism"; cf. _Appietas_) is coined by Cicero (_Ad
Fam._ iii. 7, 5) to express the attributes of a pronounced aristocrat.
The three first of the name were L. Cornelius Lentulus (consul 327
B.C.), Servius Cornelius Lentulus (consul 303) and L. Cornelius Lentulus
Caudinus (consul 275). Their connexion with the later Lentuli
(especially those of the Ciceronian period) is very obscure and
difficult to establish. The following members of the family deserve
mention.
PUBLIUS CORNELIUS LENTULUS, nicknamed SURA, one of the chief figures in
the Catilinarian conspiracy. When accused by Sulla (to whom he had been
quaestor in 81 B.C.) of having squandered the public money, he refused
to render any account, but insolently held out the calf of his leg
(_sura_), on which part of the person boys were punished when they made
mistakes in playing ball. He was praetor in 75, governor of Sicily 74,
consul 71. In 70, being expelled from the senate with a number of others
for immorality, he joined Catiline. Relying upon a Sibylline oracle that
three Cornelii should be rulers of Rome, Lentulus regarded himself as
the destined successor of Cornelius Sulla and Cornelius Cinna. When
Catiline left Rome after Cicero's first speech _In Catilinam_, Lentulus
took his place as chief of the conspirators in the city. In conjunction
with C. Cornelius Cethegus, he undertook to murder Cicero and set fire
to Rome, but the plot failed owing to his timidity and indiscretion.
Ambassadors from the Allobroges being at the time in Rome, the bearers
of a complaint against the oppressions of provincial governors, Lentulus
made overtures to them, with the object of obtaining armed assistance.
Pretending to fall in with his views, the ambassadors obtained a written
agreement signed by the chief conspirators, and informed Q. Fabius
Sanga, their "patron" in Rome, who in his turn acquainted Cicero. The
conspirators were arrested and forced to admit their guilt. Lentulus was
compelled to abdicate his praetorship, and, as it was feared that there
might be an attempt to rescue him, he was put to death in the Tullianum
on the 5th of December 63.
See Dio Cassius xxxvii. 30, xlvi. 20; Plutarch, _Cicero_, 17; Sallust,
_Catilina_; Cicero, _In Catilinam_, iii., iv.; _Pro Sulla_, 25; also
CATILINE.
PUBLIUS CORNELIUS LENTULUS, called SPINTHER from his likeness to an
actor of that name, one of the chief adherents of the Pompeian party. In
63 B.C. he was curule aedile, assisted Cicero in the suppression of the
Catilinarian conspiracy, and distinguished himself by the splendour of
the games he provided. Praetor in 60, he obtained the governorship of
Hispania Citerior (59) through the support of Caesar, to whom he was
also indebted for his election to the consulship (57). Lentulus played a
prominent part in the recall of Cicero from exile, and although a
temporary coolness seems to have arisen between them, Cicero speaks of
him in most grateful terms. From 56-53 Lentulus was governor of the
province of Cilicia (with Cyprus) and during that time was commissioned
by the senate to restore Ptolemy XI. Auletes to his kingdom (see
PTOLEMIES). The Sibylline books, however, declared that the king must
not be restored by force of arms, at the risk of peril to Rome. As a
provincial governor, Lentulus appears to have looked after the interests
of his subjects, and did not enrich himself at their expense. In spite
of his indebtedness to Caesar, Lentulus joined the Pompeians on the
outbreak of civil war (49). The generosity with which he was treated by
Caesar after the capitulation of Corfinium made him hesitate, but he
finally decided in favour of Pompey. After the battle of Pharsalus,
Lentulus escaped to Rhodes, where he was at first refused admission,
although he subsequently found an asylum there (Cicero, _Ad Att._ xi.
13. 1). According to Aurelius Victor (_De vir. ill._ lxxviii., 9, if the
reading be correct), he subsequently fell into Caesar's hands and was
put to death.
See Caesar, _Bell. Civ._ i. 15-23, iii. 102; Plutarch, _Pomp._ 49;
Valerius Maximus ix. 14, 4; many letters of Cicero, especially _Ad
Fam._ i. 1-9.
LUCIUS CORNELIUS LENTULUS, surnamed CRUS or CRUSCELLO (for what reason
is unknown), member of the anti-Caesarian party. In 61 B.C. he was the
chief accuser of P. Clodius (q.v.) in the affair of the festival of Bona
Dea. When consul (49) he advised the rejection of all peace terms
offered by Caesar, and declared that, if the senate did not at once
decide upon opposing him by force of arms, he would act upon his own
responsibility. There seems no reason to doubt that Lentulus was mainly
inspired by selfish motives, and hoped to find in civil war an
opportunity for his own aggrandizement. But in spite of his brave words
he fled in haste from Rome as soon as he heard of Caesar's advance, and
crossed over to Greece. After Pharsalus, he made his way to Rhodes (but
was refused admission), thence, by way of Cyprus, to Egypt. He landed at
Pelusium the day after the murder of Pompey, was immediately seized by
Ptolemy, imprisoned, and put to death.
See Caesar, _Bell. Civ._ i. 4, iii. 104; Plutarch, _Pompey_, 80.
A full account of the different Cornelii Lentuli, with genealogical
table, will be found in Pauly-Wissowa's _Realencyclopädie_, iv. pt. 1,
p. 1355 (1900) (s.v. "Cornelius"); see also V. de Vit, _Onomasticon_,
ii. 433.
LENZ, JAKOB MICHAEL REINHOLD (1751-1792), German poet, was born at
Sesswegen in Livonia, the son of the village pastor, on the 12th of
January 1751. He removed with his parents to Dorpat in 1759, and soon
began to compose sacred odes, in the manner of Klopstock. In 1768 he
entered the university of Königsberg as a student of theology, and in
1771 accompanied, as tutor, two young German nobles, named von Kleist,
to Strassburg, where they were to enter the French army. In Strassburg
Lenz was received into the literary circle that gathered round Friedrich
Rudolf Salzmann (1749-1821) and became acquainted with Goethe, at that
time a student at the university. In order to be close to his young
pupils, Lenz had to remove to Fort Louis in the neighbourhood, and while
here became deeply enamoured of Goethe's friend, Friederike Elisabeth
Brion (1752-1813), daughter of the pastor of Sesenheim. Lenz
endeavoured, after Goethe's departure from Strassburg, to replace the
great poet in her affections, and to her he poured out songs and poems
(_Die Liebe auf dem Lande_) which were long attributed to Goethe
himself, as was also Lenz's first drama, the comedy, _Der Hofmeister,
oder Vorteile der Privaterziehung_ (1774). In 1776 he visited Weimar and
was most kindly received by the duke; but his rude, overbearing manner
and vicious habits led to his expulsion. In 1777 he became insane, and
in 1779 was removed from Emmendingen, where J. G. Schlosser (1739-1799),
Goethe's brother-in-law, had given him a home, to his native village.
Here he lived in great poverty for several years, and then was given,
more out of charity than on account of his merits, the appointment of
tutor in a pension school near Moscow, where he died on the 24th of May
1792. Lenz, though one of the most talented poets of the _Sturm und
Drang_ period, presented a strange medley of genius and childishness.
His great, though neglected and distorted, abilities found vent in
ill-conceived imitations of Shakespeare. His comedies, _Der Hofmeister_;
_Der neue Menoza_ (1774); _Die Soldaten_ (1776); _Die Freunde machen den
Philosophen_ (1776), though accounted the best of his works, are
characterized by unnatural situations and an incongruous mixture of
tragedy and comedy.
Lenz's _Gesammelte Schriften_ were published by L. Tieck in three
volumes (1828); supplementary to these volumes are E. Dorer-Egloff,
_J. M. R. Lenz und seine Schriften_ (1857) and K. Weinhold,
_Dramatischer Nachlass von J. M. R. Lenz_ (1884); a selection of
Lenz's writings will be found in A. Sauer, _Stürmer und Dränger_, ii.;
Kürschner's _Deutsche Nationalliteratur_, vol. lxxx., (1883). See
further E. Schmidt, _Lenz und Klinger_ (1878); J. Froitzheim, _Lenz
und Goethe_ (1891); H. Rauch, _Lenz und Shakespeare_ (1892); F.
Waldmann, _Lenz in Briefen_ (1894).
LEO, the name of thirteen popes.
LEO I., who alone of Roman pontiffs shares with Gregory I. the surname
of THE GREAT, pope from 440 to 461, was a native of Rome, or, according
to a less probable account, of Volterra in Tuscany. Of his family or
early life nothing is known; that he was highly cultivated according to
the standards of his time is obvious, but it does not appear that he
could write Greek, or even that he understood that language. In one of
the letters (_Ep._ 104) of Augustine, an acolyte named Leo is mentioned
as having been in 418 the bearer of a communication from Sixtus of Rome
(afterwards pope) to Aurelius of Carthage against the Pelagians. In 429,
when the first unmistakable reference to Pope Leo occurs, he was still
only a deacon, but already a man of commanding influence; it was at his
suggestion that the _De incarnatione_ of the aged Cassianus, having
reference to the Nestorian heresy, was composed in that year, and about
431 we find Cyril of Alexandria writing to him that he might prevent the
Roman Church from lending its support in any way to the ambitious
schemes of Juvenal of Jerusalem. In 440, while Leo was in Gaul, whither
he had been sent to compose some differences between Aetius and another
general named Albinus, Pope Sixtus III. died. The absent deacon, or
rather archdeacon, was unanimously chosen to succeed him, and received
consecration on his return six weeks afterwards (September 29). In 443
he began to take measures against the Manichaeans (who since the capture
of Carthage by Genseric in 439 had become very numerous at Rome), and in
the following year he was able to report to the Italian bishops that
some of the heretics had returned to Catholicism, while a large number
had been sentenced to perpetual banishment "in accordance with the
constitutions of the Christian emperors," and others had fled; in
seeking these out the help of the provincial clergy was sought. It was
during the earlier years of Leo's pontificate that the events in Gaul
occurred which resulted in this triumph over Hilarius of Arles,
signalized by the edict of Valentinian III. (445), denouncing the
contumacy of the Gallic bishop, and enacting "that nothing should be
done in Gaul, contrary to ancient usage, without the authority of the
bishop of Rome, and that the decree of the apostolic see should
henceforth be law." In 447 Leo held the correspondence with Turribus of
Astorga which led to the condemnation of the Priscillianists by the
Spanish national church. In 448 he received with commendation a letter
from Eutyches, the Constantinopolitan monk, complaining of the revival
of the Nestorian heresy there; and in the following year Eutyches wrote
his circular, appealing against the sentence which at the instance of
Eusebius of Dorylaeum had been passed against him at a synod held in
Constantinople under the presidency of the patriarch Flavian, and asking
papal support at the oecumenical council at that time under summons to
meet at Ephesus. The result of a correspondence was that Leo by his
legates sent to Flavian that famous epistle in which he sets forth with
great fulness of detail the doctrine ever since recognized as orthodox
regarding the union of the two natures in the one person of Jesus
Christ. The events at the "robber" synod at Ephesus belong to general
church history rather than to the biography of Leo; his letter, though
submitted, was not read by the assembled fathers, and the papal legates
had some difficulty in escaping with their lives from the violence of
the theologians who, not content with deposing Flavian and Eusebius,
shouted for the dividing of those who divided Christ. When the news of
the result of this oecumenical council (oecumenical in every
circumstance except that it was not presided over by the pope) reached
Rome, Leo wrote to Theodosius "with groanings and tears," requesting the
emperor to sanction another council, to be held this time, however, in
Italy. In this petition he was supported by Valentinian III., by the
empress-mother Galla Placidia and by the empress Eudoxia, but the appeal
was made in vain. A change, however, was brought about by the accession
in the following year of Marcian, who three days after coming to the
throne published an edict bringing within the scope of the penal laws
against heretics the supporters of the dogmas of Apollinaris and
Eutyches. To convoke a synod in which greater orthodoxy might reasonably
be expected was in these circumstances no longer difficult, but all
Leo's efforts to secure that the meeting should take place on Italian
soil were unavailing. When the synod of Chalcedon assembled in 451, the
papal legates were treated with great respect, and Leo's former letter
to Flavian was adopted by acclamation as formulating the creed of the
universal church on the subject of the person of Christ. Among the
reasons urged by Leo for holding this council in Italy had been the
threatening attitude of the Huns; the dreaded irruption took place in
the following year (452). After Aquileia had succumbed to Attila's long
siege, the conqueror set out for Rome. Near the confluence of the Mincio
and the Po he was met by Leo, whose eloquence persuaded him to turn
back. Legend has sought to enhance the impressiveness of the occurrence
by an unnecessarily imagined miracle. The pope was less successful with
Genseric when the Vandal chief arrived under the walls of Rome in 455,
but he secured a promise that there should be no incendiarism or murder,
and that three of the oldest basilicas should be exempt from plunder--a
promise which seems to have been faithfully observed. Leo died on the
10th of November 461, the liturgical anniversary being the 11th of
April. His successor was Hilarius or Hilarus, who had been one of the
papal legates at the "robber" synod in 449.
The title of _doctor ecclesiae_ was given to Leo by Benedict XIV. As
bishop of the diocese of Rome, Leo distinguished himself above all his
predecessors by his preaching, to which he devoted himself with great
zeal and success. From his short and pithy _Sermones_ many of the
lessons now to be found in the Roman breviary have been taken. Viewed in
conjunction with his voluminous correspondence, the sermons sufficiently
explain the secret of his greatness, which chiefly lay in the
extraordinary strength and purity of his convictions as to the primacy
of the successors of St Peter at a time when the civil and
ecclesiastical troubles of the civilized world made men willing enough
to submit themselves to any authority whatsoever that could establish
its right to exist by courage, honesty and knowledge of affairs.
The works of Leo I. were first collectively edited by Quesnel (Lyons,
1700), and again, on the basis of this, in what is now the standard
edition by Ballerini (Venice, 1753-1756). Ninety-three Sermones and
one hundred and seventy-three _Epistolae_ occupy the first volume; the
second contains the _Liber Sacramentorum_, usually attributed to Leo,
and the _De Vocatione Omnium Gentium_, also ascribed, by Quesnel and
others, to him, but more probably the production of a certain Prosper,
of whom nothing further is known. The works of Hilary of Arles are
appended.
LEO II., pope from August 682 to July 683, was a Sicilian by birth, and
succeeded Agatho I. Agatho had been represented at the sixth oecumenical
council (that of Constantinople in 681), where Pope Honorius I. was
anathematized for his views in the Monothelite controversy as a favourer
of heresy, and the only fact of permanent historical interest with
regard to Leo is that he wrote once and again in approbation of the
decision of the council and in condemnation of Honorius, whom he
regarded as one who _profana proditione immaculatam fidem subvertere
conatus est_. In their bearing upon the question of papal infallibility
these words have excited considerable attention and controversy, and
prominence is given to the circumstance that in the Greek text of the
letter to the emperor in which the phrase occurs the milder expression
[Greek: parechôrêsen] (_subverti permisit_) is used for subvertere
conatus est. This Hefele in his _Conciliengeschichte_ (iii. 294) regards
as alone expressing the true meaning of Leo. It was during Leo's
pontificate that the dependence of the see of Ravenna upon that of Rome
was finally settled by imperial edict. Benedict II. succeeded him.
LEO III., whose pontificate (795-816) covered the last eighteen years of
the reign of Charlemagne, was a native of Rome, and having been chosen
successor of Adrian I. on the 26th of December 795, was consecrated to
the office on the following day. His first act was to send to Charles as
patrician the standard of Rome along with the keys of the sepulchre of
St Peter and of the city; a gracious and condescending letter in reply
made it still more clear where all real power at that moment lay. For
more than three years his term of office was uneventful; but at the end
of that period the feelings of disappointment which had secretly been
rankling in the breasts of Paschalis and Campulus, nephews of Adrian I.,
who had received from him the offices of _primicerius_ and _sacellarius_
respectively, suddenly manifested themselves in an organized attack upon
Leo as he was riding in procession through the city on the day of the
Greater Litany (25th April 799); the object of his assailants was, by
depriving him of his eyes and tongue, to disqualify him for the papal
office, and, although they were unsuccessful in this attempt, he found
it necessary to accept the protection of Winegis, the Frankish duke of
Spoleto, who came to the rescue. Having vainly requested the presence of
Charles in Rome, Leo went beyond the Alps to meet the king at Paderborn;
he was received with much ceremony and respect, but his enemies having
sent in serious written charges, of which the character is not now
known, Charles decided to appoint both the pope and his accusers to
appear as parties before him when he should have arrived in Rome. Leo
returned in great state to his diocese, and was received with honour;
Charles, who did not arrive until November in the following year, lost
no time in assuming the office of a judge, and the result of his
investigation was the acquittal of the pope, who at the same time,
however, was permitted or rather required to clear himself by the oath
of compurgation. The coronation of the emperor followed two days
afterwards; its effect was to bring out with increased clearness the
personally subordinate position of Leo. The decision of the emperor,
however, secured for Leo's pontificate an external peace which was only
broken after the accession of Louis the Pious. His enemies began to
renew their attacks; the violent repression of a conspiracy led to an
open rebellion at Rome; serious charges were once more brought against
him, when he was overtaken by death in 816. It was under this
pontificate that Felix of Urgel, the adoptianist, was anathematized
(798) by a Roman synod. Leo at another synod held in Rome in 810
admitted the dogmatic correctness of the _filioque_, but deprecated its
introduction into the creed. On this point, however, the Frankish Church
persevered in the course it had already initiated. Leo's successor was
Stephen IV.
LEO IV., pope from 847 to 855, was a Roman by birth, and succeeded
Sergius II. His pontificate was chiefly distinguished by his efforts to
repair the damage done by the Saracens during the reign of his
predecessor to various churches of the city, especially those of St
Peter and St Paul. It was he who built and fortified the suburb on the
right bank of the Tiber still known as the Civitas Leonina. A frightful
conflagration, which he is said to have extinguished by his prayers, is
the subject of Raphael's great work in the Sala dell' Incendio of the
Vatican. He held three synods, one of them (in 850) distinguished by the
presence of Louis II., who was crowned emperor on the occasion, but none
of them otherwise of importance. The history of the papal struggle with
Hincmar of Reims, which began during Leo's pontificate, belongs rather
to that of Nicholas I. Benedict III. was Leo's immediate successor.
LEO V., a native of Ardea, was pope for two months in 903 after the
death of Benedict IV. He was overthrown and cast into prison by the
priest Christopher, who installed himself in his place.
LEO VI. succeeded John X. in 928, and reigned seven months and a few
days. He was succeeded by Stephen VIII.
LEO VII., pope from 936 to 939, was preceded by John XI., and followed
by Stephen IX.
LEO VIII., pope from 963 to 965, a Roman by birth, held the lay office
of _protoscrinius_ when he was elected to the papal chair at the
instance of Otto the Great by the Roman synod which deposed John XII. in
December 963. Having been hurried with unseemly haste through all the
intermediate orders, he received consecration two days after his
election, which was unacceptable to the people. In February 964, the
emperor having withdrawn from the city, Leo found it necessary to seek
safety in flight, whereupon he was deposed by a synod held under the
presidency of John XII. On the sudden death of the latter, the populace
chose Benedict V. as his successor; but Otto, returning and laying siege
to the city, compelled their acceptance of Leo. It is usually said that,
at the synod which deposed Benedict, Leo conceded to the emperor and his
successors as sovereign of Italy full rights of investiture, but the
genuineness of the document on which this allegation rests is more than
doubtful. Leo VIII. was succeeded by John XIII.
LEO IX., pope from 1049 to 1054, was a native of Upper Alsace, where he
was born on the 21st of June 1002. His proper name was Bruno; the family
to which he belonged was of noble rank, and through his father he was
related to the emperor Conrad II. He was educated at Toul, where he
successively became canon and (1026) bishop; in the latter capacity he
rendered important political services to his relative Conrad II., and
afterwards to Henry III., and at the same time he became widely known as
an earnest and reforming ecclesiastic by the zeal he showed in spreading
the rule of the order of Cluny. On the death of Damasus II., Bruno was
in December 1048, with the concurrence both of the emperor and of the
Roman delegates, selected his successor by an assembly at Worms; he
stipulated, however, as a condition of his acceptance that he should
first proceed to Rome and be canonically elected by the voice of clergy
and people. Setting out shortly after Christmas, he had a meeting with
abbot Hugo of Cluny at Besançon, where he was joined by the young monk
Hildebrand, who afterwards became Pope Gregory VII.; arriving in pilgrim
garb at Rome in the following February, he was received with much
cordiality, and at his consecration assumed the name of Leo IX. One of
his first public acts was to hold the well-known Easter synod of 1049,
at which celibacy of the clergy (down to the rank of subdeacon) was anew
enjoined, and where he at least succeeded in making clear his own
convictions against every kind of simony. The greater part of the year
that followed was occupied in one of those progresses through Italy,
Germany and France which form a marked feature in Leo's pontificate.
After presiding over a synod at Pavia, he joined the emperor Henry III.
in Saxony, and accompanied him to Cologne and Aix-la-Chapelle; to Reims
he also summoned a meeting of the higher clergy, by which several
important reforming decrees were passed. At Mainz also he held a
council, at which the Italian and French as well as the German clergy
were represented, and ambassadors of the Greek emperor were present;
here too simony and the marriage of the clergy were the principal
matters dealt with. After his return to Rome he held (29th April 1050)
another Easter synod, which was occupied largely with the controversy
about the teachings of Berengarius of Tours; in the same year he
presided over provincial synods at Salerno, Siponto and Vercelli, and in
September revisited Germany, returning to Rome in time for a third
Easter synod, at which the question of the reordination of those who had
been ordained by simonists was considered. In 1052 he joined the emperor
at Pressburg, and vainly sought to secure the submission of the
Hungarians; and at Regensburg, Bamberg and Worms the papal presence was
marked by various ecclesiastical solemnities. After a fourth Easter
synod in 1053 Leo set out against the Normans in the south with an army
of Italians and German volunteers, but his forces sustained a total
defeat at Astagnum near Civitella (18th June 1053); on going out,
however, from the city to meet the enemy he was received with every
token of submission, relief from the pressure of his ban was implored
and fidelity and homage were sworn. From June 1053 to March 1054 he was
nevertheless detained at Benevento in honourable captivity; he did not
long survive his return to Rome, where he died on the 19th of April
1054. He was succeeded by Victor II.
LEO X. [Giovanni de' Medici] (1475-1521), pope from the 11th of March
1513 to the 1st of December 1521, was the second son of Lorenzo de'
Medici, called the Magnificent, and was born at Florence on the 11th of
December 1475. Destined from his birth for the church, he received the
tonsure at the age of seven and was soon loaded with rich benefices and
preferments. His father prevailed on Innocent VIII. to name him
cardinal-deacon of Sta Maria in Dominica in March 1489, although he was
not allowed to wear the insignia or share in the deliberations of the
college until three years later. Meanwhile he received a careful
education at Lorenzo's brilliant humanistic court under such men as
Angelo Poliziano, the classical scholar, Pico della Mirandola, the
philosopher and theologian, the pious Marsilio Ficino who endeavoured to
unite the Platonic cult with Christianity and the poet Bernardo Dovizio
Bibbiena. From 1489 to 1491 he studied theology and canon law at Pisa
under Filippo Decio and Bartolomeo Sozzini. On the 23rd of March 1492 he
was formally admitted into the sacred college and took up his residence
at Rome, receiving a letter of advice from his father which ranks among
the wisest of its kind. The death of Lorenzo on the 8th of April,
however, called the seventeen-year-old cardinal to Florence. He
participated in the conclave which followed the death of Innocent VIII.
in July 1492 and opposed the election of Cardinal Borgia. He made his
home with his elder brother Piero at Florence throughout the agitation
of Savonarola and the invasion of Charles VIII. of France, until the
uprising of the Florentines and the expulsion of the Medici in November
1494. While Piero found refuge at Venice and Urbino, Cardinal Giovanni
travelled in Germany, in the Netherlands and in France. In May 1500 he
returned to Rome, where he was received with outward cordiality by
Alexander VI., and where he lived for several years immersed in art and
literature. In 1503 he welcomed the accession of Julius II. to the
pontificate; the death of Piero de' Medici in the same year made
Giovanni head of his family. On the 1st of October 1511 he was appointed
papal legate of Bologna and the Romagna, and when the Florentine
republic declared in favour of the schismatic Pisans Julius II. sent him
against his native city at the head of the papal army. This and other
attempts to regain political control of Florence were frustrated, until
a bloodless revolution permitted the return of the Medici on the 14th of
September 1512. Giovanni's younger brother Giuliano was placed at the
head of the republic, but the cardinal actually managed the government.
Julius II. died in February 1513, and the conclave, after a stormy seven
day's session, united on Cardinal de' Medici as the candidate of the
younger cardinals. He was ordained to the priesthood on the 15th of
March, consecrated bishop on the 17th, and enthroned with the name of
Leo X. on the 19th. There is no evidence of simony in the conclave, and
Leo's election was hailed with delight by the Romans on account of his
reputation for liberality, kindliness and love of peace. Following the
example of many of his predecessors, he promptly repudiated his election
"capitulation" as an infringement on the divinely bestowed prerogatives
of the Holy See.
Many problems confronted Leo X. on his accession. He must preserve the
papal conquests which he had inherited from Alexander VI. and Julius II.
He must minimize foreign influence, whether French, Spanish or German,
in Italy. He must put an end to the Pisan schism and settle the other
troubles incident to the French invasion. He must restore the French
Church to Catholic unity, abolish the pragmatic sanction of Bourges, and
bring to a successful close the Lateran council convoked by his
predecessor. He must stay the victorious advance of the Turks. He must
quiet the disagreeable wranglings of the German humanists. Other
problems connected with his family interests served to complicate the
situation and eventually to prevent the successful consummation of many
of his plans. At the very time of Leo's accession Louis XII. of France,
in alliance with Venice, was making a determined effort to regain the
duchy of Milan, and the pope, after fruitless endeavours to maintain
peace, joined the league of Mechlin on the 5th of April 1513 with the
emperor Maximilian I., Ferdinand I. of Spain and Henry VIII. of England.
The French and Venetians were at first successful, but on the 6th of
June met overwhelming defeat at Novara. The Venetians continued the
struggle until October. On the 19th of December the fifth Lateran
council, which had been reopened by Leo in April, ratified the peace
with Louis XII. and registered the conclusion of the Pisan schism. While
the council was engaged in planning a crusade and in considering the
reform of the clergy, a new crisis occurred between the pope and the
king of France. Francis I., who succeeded Louis XII. on the 1st of
January 1515, was an enthusiastic young prince, dominated by the
ambition of recovering Milan and Naples. Leo at once formed a new league
with the emperor and the king of Spain, and to ensure English support
made Wolsey a cardinal. Francis entered Italy in August and on the 14th
of September won the battle of Marignano. The pope in October signed an
agreement binding him to withdraw his troops from Parma and Piacenza,
which had been previously gained at the expense of the duchy of Milan,
on condition of French protection at Rome and Florence. The king of
Spain wrote to his ambassador at Rome "that His Holiness had hitherto
played a double game and that all his zeal to drive the French from
Italy had been only a mask"; this reproach seemed to receive some
confirmation when Leo X. held a secret conference with Francis at
Bologna in December 1515. The ostensible subjects under consideration
were the establishment of peace between France, Venice and the Empire,
with a view to an expedition against the Turks, and the ecclesiastical
affairs of France. Precisely what was arranged is unknown. During these
two or three years of incessant political intrigue and warfare it was
not to be expected that the Lateran council should accomplish much. Its
three main objects, the peace of Christendom, the crusade and the reform
of the church, could be secured only by general agreement among the
powers, and Leo or the council failed to secure such agreement. Its most
important achievements were the registration at its eleventh sitting
(19th December 1516) of the abolition of the pragmatic sanction, which
the popes since Pius II. had unanimously condemned, and the confirmation
of the concordat between Leo X. and Francis I., which was destined to
regulate the relations between the French Church and the Holy See until
the Revolution. Leo closed the council on the 16th of March 1517. It had
ended the schism, ratified the censorship of books introduced by
Alexander VI. and imposed tithes for a war against the Turks. It raised
no voice against the primacy of the pope.
The year which marked the close of the Lateran council was also
signalized by Leo's unholy war against the duke of Urbino. The pope was
naturally proud of his family and had practised nepotism from the
outset. His cousin Giulio, who subsequently became Clement VII., he had
made the most influential man in the curia, naming him archbishop of
Florence, cardinal and vice-chancellor of the Holy See. Leo had intended
his younger brother Giuliano and his nephew Lorenzo for brilliant
secular careers. He had named them Roman patricians; the latter he had
placed in charge of Florence; the former, for whom he planned to carve
out a kingdom in central Italy of Parma, Piacenza, Ferrara and Urbino,
he had taken with himself to Rome and married to Filiberta of Savoy. The
death of Giuliano in March 1516, however, caused the pope to transfer
his ambitions to Lorenzo. At the very time (December 1516) that peace
between France, Spain, Venice and the Empire seemed to give some promise
of a Christendom united against the Turk, Leo was preparing an
enterprise as unscrupulous as any of the similar exploits of Cesare
Borgia. He obtained 150,000 ducats towards the expenses of the
expedition from Henry VIII. of England, in return for which he entered
the imperial league of Spain and England against France. The war lasted
from February to September 1517 and ended with the expulsion of the duke
and the triumph of Lorenzo; but it revived the nefarious policy of
Alexander VI., increased brigandage and anarchy in the States of the
Church, hindered the preparations for a crusade and wrecked the papal
finances. Guicciardini reckoned the cost of the war to Leo at the
prodigious sum of 800,000 ducats. The new duke of Urbino was the Lorenzo
de' Medici to whom Machiavelli addressed _The Prince_. His marriage in
March 1518 was arranged by the pope with Madeleine la Tour d'Auvergne, a
royal princess of France, whose daughter was the Catherine de' Medici
celebrated in French history. The war of Urbino was further marked by a
crisis in the relations between pope and cardinals. The sacred college
had grown especially worldly and troublesome since the time of Sixtus
IV., and Leo took advantage of a plot of several of its members to
poison him, not only to inflict exemplary punishments by executing one
and imprisoning several others, but also to make a radical change in the
college. On the 3rd of July 1517 he published the names of thirty-one
new cardinals, a number almost unprecedented in the history of the
papacy. Some of the nominations were excellent, such as Lorenzo
Campeggio, Giambattista Pallavicini, Adrian of Utrecht, Cajetan,
Cristoforo Numai and Egidio Canisio. The naming of seven members of
prominent Roman families, however, reversed the wise policy of his
predecessor which had kept the dangerous factions of the city out of the
curia. Other promotions were for political or family considerations or
to secure money for the war against Urbino. The pope was accused of
having exaggerated the conspiracy of the cardinals for purposes of
financial gain, but most of such accusations appear to be
unsubstantiated.
Leo, meanwhile, felt the need of staying the advance of the warlike
sultan, Selim I., who was threatening western Europe, and made elaborate
plans for a crusade. A truce was to be proclaimed throughout
Christendom; the pope was to be the arbiter of disputes; the emperor and
the king of France were to lead the army; England, Spain and Portugal
were to furnish the fleet; and the combined forces were to be directed
against Constantinople. Papal diplomacy in the interests of peace
failed, however; Cardinal Wolsey made England, not the pope, the arbiter
between France and the Empire; and much of the money collected for the
crusade from tithes and indulgences was spent in other ways. In 1519
Hungary concluded a three years' truce with Selim I., but the succeeding
sultan, Suliman the Magnificent, renewed the war in June 1521 and on the
28th of August captured the citadel of Belgrade. The pope was greatly
alarmed, and although he was then involved in war with France he sent
about 30,000 ducats to the Hungarians. Leo treated the Uniate Greeks
with great loyalty, and by bull of the 18th of May 1521 forbade Latin
clergy to celebrate mass in Greek churches and Latin bishops to ordain
Greek clergy. These provisions were later strengthened by Clement VII.
and Paul III. and went far to settle the chronic disputes between the
Latins and Uniate Greeks.
Leo was disturbed throughout his pontificate by heresy and schism. The
dispute between Reuchlin and Pfefferkorn relative to the Talmud and
other Jewish books was referred to the pope in September 1513. He in
turn referred it to the bishops of Spires and Worms, who gave decision
in March 1514 in favour of Reuchlin. After the appeal of the
inquisitor-general, Hochstraten, and the appearance of the _Epistolae
obscurorum virorum_, however, Leo annulled the decision (June 1520) and
imposed silence on Reuchlin. The pope had already authorized the
extensive grant of indulgences in order to secure funds for the crusade
and more particularly for the rebuilding of St Peter's at Rome. Against
the attendant abuses the Augustinian monk Martin Luther (q.v.) posted
(31st October 1517) on the church door at Wittenberg his famous
ninety-five theses, which were the signal for widespread revolt against
the church. Although Leo did not fully comprehend the import of the
movement, he directed (3rd February 1518) the vicar-general of the
Augustinians to impose silence on the monks. On the 30th of May Luther
sent an explanation of his theses to the pope; on the 7th of August he
was cited to appear at Rome. An arrangement was effected, however,
whereby that citation was cancelled, and Luther betook himself in
October 1518 to Augsburg to meet the papal legate, Cardinal Cajetan, who
was attending the imperial diet convened by the emperor Maximilian to
impose the tithes for the Turkish war and to elect a king of the Romans;
but neither the arguments of the learned cardinal, nor the dogmatic
papal bull of the 9th of November to the effect that all Christians must
believe in the pope's power to grant indulgences, moved Luther to
retract. A year of fruitless negotiation followed, during which the
pamphlets of the reformer set all Germany on fire. A papal bull of the
15th of June 1520, which condemned forty-one propositions extracted from
Luther's teachings, was taken to Germany by Eck in his capacity of
apostolic nuncio, published by him and the legates Alexander and
Caracciola, and burned by Luther on the 10th of December at Wittenberg.
Leo then formally excommunicated Luther by bull of the 3rd of January
1521; and in a brief directed the emperor to take energetic measures
against heresy. On the 26th of May 1521 the emperor signed the edict of
the diet of Worms, which placed Luther under the ban of the Empire; on
the 21st of the same month Henry VIII. of England sent to Leo his book
against Luther on the seven sacraments. The pope, after careful
consideration, conferred on the king of England the title "Defender of
the Faith" by bull of the 11th of October 1521. Neither the imperial
edict nor the work of Henry VIII. stayed the Lutheran movement, and
Luther himself, safe in the solitude of the Wartburg, survived Leo X. It
was under Leo X. also that the Protestant movement had its beginning in
Scandinavia. The pope had repeatedly used the rich northern benefices to
reward members of the Roman curia, and towards the close of the year
1516 he sent the grasping and impolitic Arcimboldi as papal nuncio to
Denmark to collect money for St Peter's. King Christian II. took
advantage of the growing dissatisfaction on the part of the native
clergy toward the papal government, and of Arcimboldi's interference in
the Swedish revolt, in order to expel the nuncio and summon (1520)
Lutheran theologians to Copenhagen. Christian approved a plan by which a
formal state church should be established in Denmark, all appeals to
Rome should be abolished, and the king and diet should have final
jurisdiction in ecclesiastical causes. Leo sent a new nuncio to
Copenhagen (1521) in the person of the Minorite Francesco de Potentia,
who readily absolved the king and received the rich bishopric of Skara.
The pope or his legate, however, took no steps to remove abuses or
otherwise reform the Scandinavian churches.
That Leo did not do more to check the tendency toward heresy and schism
in Germany and Scandinavia is to be partially explained by the political
complications of the time, and by his own preoccupation with schemes of
papal and Medicean aggrandizement in Italy. The death of the emperor
Maximilian on the 12th of January 1519 had seriously affected the
situation. Leo vacillated between the powerful candidates for the
succession, allowing it to appear at first that he favoured Francis I.
while really working for the election of some minor German prince. He
finally accepted Charles I. of Spain as inevitable, and the election of
Charles (28th of June 1519) revealed Leo's desertion of his French
alliance, a step facilitated by the death at about the same time of
Lorenzo de' Medici and his French wife. Leo was now anxious to unite
Ferrara, Parma and Piacenza to the States of the Church. An attempt late
in 1519 to seize Ferrara failed, and the pope recognized the need of
foreign aid. In May 1521 a treaty of alliance was signed at Rome between
him and the emperor. Milan and Genoa were to be taken from France and
restored to the Empire, and Parma and Piacenza were to be given to the
Church on the expulsion of the French. The expense of enlisting 10,000
Swiss was to be borne equally by pope and emperor. Charles took Florence
and the Medici family under his protection and promised to punish all
enemies of the Catholic faith. Leo agreed to invest Charles with Naples,
to crown him emperor, and to aid in a war against Venice. It was
provided that England and the Swiss might join the league. Henry VIII.
announced his adherence in August. Francis I. had already begun war with
Charles in Navarre, and in Italy, too, the French made the first hostile
movement (23rd June 1521). Leo at once announced that he would
excommunicate the king of France and release his subjects from their
allegiance unless Francis laid down his arms and surrendered Parma and
Piacenza. The pope lived to hear the joyful news of the capture of Milan
from the French and of the occupation by papal troops of the
long-coveted provinces (November 1521). Leo X. died on the 1st of
December 1521, so suddenly that the last sacraments could not be
administered; but the contemporary suspicions of poison were unfounded.
His successor was Adrian VI.
Several minor events of Leo's pontificate are worthy of mention. He was
particularly friendly with King Emmanuel of Portugal on account of the
latter's missionary enterprises in Asia and Africa. His concordat with
Florence (1516) guaranteed the free election of the clergy in that city.
His constitution of the 1st of March 1519 condemned the king of Spain's
claim to refuse the publication of papal bulls. He maintained close
relations with Poland because of the Turkish advance and the Polish
contest with the Teutonic Knights. His bull of the 1st of July 1519,
which regulated the discipline of the Polish Church, was later
transformed into a concordat by Clement VII. Leo showed special favours
to the Jews and permitted them to erect a Hebrew printing-press at Rome.
He approved the formation of the Oratory of Divine Love, a group of
pious men at Rome which later became the Theatine Order, and he
canonized Francesco di Paola.
As patron of learning Leo X. deserves a prominent place among the popes.
He raised the church to a high rank as the friend of whatever seemed to
extend knowledge or to refine and embellish life. He made the capital of
Christendom the centre of culture. Every Italian artist and man of
letters in an age of singular intellectual brilliancy tasted or hoped to
taste of his bounty, while yet a cardinal, he had restored the church of
Sta Maria in Domnica after Raphael's designs; and as pope he built S.
Giovanni on the Via Giulia after designs by Jacopo Sansovino and pressed
forward the work on St Peter's and the Vatican under Raphael and Chigi.
His constitution of the 5th of November 1513 reformed the Roman
university, which had been neglected by Julius II. He restored all its
faculties, gave larger salaries to the professors, and summoned
distinguished teachers from afar; and, although it never attained to the
importance of Padua or Bologna, it nevertheless possessed in 1514 an
excellent faculty of eighty-eight professors. Leo called Theodore
Lascaris to Rome to give instruction in Greek, and established a Greek
printing-press from which the first Greek book printed at Rome appeared
in 1515. He made Raphael custodian of the classical antiquities of Rome
and the vicinity. The distinguished Latinists Pietro Bembo (1470-1547)
and Jacopo Sadoleto (1477-1547) were papal secretaries, as well as the
famous poet Bernardo Accolti (d. 1534). Writers of poetry like Vida
(1490-1566), Trissino (1478-1550), and Bibbiena (1470-1520), writers of
_novelle_ like Bandello, and a hundred other _literati_ of the time were
bishops, or papal scriptors or abbreviators, or in other papal employ.
Leo's lively interest in art and literature, to say nothing of his
natural liberality, his nepotism, his political ambitions and
necessities, and his immoderate personal luxury, exhausted within two
years the hard savings of Julius II., and precipitated a financial
crisis from which he never emerged and which was a direct cause of most
of the calamities of his pontificate. He created many new offices and
shamelessly sold them. He sold cardinals' hats. He sold membership in
the "Knights of Peter." He borrowed large sums from bankers, curials,
princes and Jews. The Venetian ambassador Gradenigo estimated the paying
number of offices on Leo's death at 2150, with a capital value of nearly
3,000,000 ducats and a yearly income of 328,000 ducats. Marino Giorgi
reckoned the ordinary income of the pope for the year 1517 at about
580,000 ducats, of which 420,000 came from the States of the Church,
100,000 from annates, and 60,000 from the composition tax instituted by
Sixtus IV. These sums, together with the considerable amounts accruing
from indulgences, jubilees, and special fees, vanished as quickly as
they were received. Then the pope resorted to pawning palace furniture,
table plate, jewels, even statues of the apostles. Several banking firms
and many individual creditors were ruined by the death of the pope.
In the past many conflicting estimates were made of the character and
achievements of the pope during whose pontificate Protestantism first
took form. More recent studies have served to produce a fairer and more
honest opinion of Leo X. A report of the Venetian ambassador Marino
Giorgi bearing date of March 1517 indicates some of his predominant
characteristics:--"The pope is a good-natured and extremely free-hearted
man, who avoids every difficult situation and above all wants peace; he
would not undertake a war himself unless his own personal interests were
involved; he loves learning; of canon law and literature he possesses
remarkable knowledge; he is, moreover, a very excellent musician." Leo
was dignified in appearance and elegant in speech, manners and writing.
He enjoyed music and the theatre, art and poetry, the masterpieces of
the ancients and the wonderful creations of his contemporaries, the
spiritual and the witty--life in every form. It is by no means certain
that he made the remark often attributed to him, "Let us enjoy the
papacy since God has given it to us," but there is little doubt that he
was by nature devoid of moral earnestness or deep religious feeling. On
the other hand, in spite of his worldliness, Leo was not an unbeliever;
he prayed, fasted, and participated in the services of the church with
conscientiousness. To the virtues of liberality, charity and clemency he
added the Machiavellian qualities of falsehood and shrewdness, so highly
esteemed by the princes of his time. Leo was deemed fortunate by his
contemporaries, but an incurable malady, wars, enemies, a conspiracy of
cardinals, and the loss of all his nearest relations darkened his days;
and he failed entirely in his general policy of expelling foreigners
from Italy, of restoring peace throughout Europe, and of prosecuting war
against the Turks. He failed to recognize the pressing need of reform
within the church and the tremendous dangers which threatened the papal
monarchy; and he unpardonably neglected the spiritual needs of the time.
He was, however, zealous in firmly establishing the political power of
the Holy See; he made it unquestionably supreme in Italy; he
successfully restored the papal power in France; and he secured a
prominent place in the history of culture.
AUTHORITIES.--The life of Leo X. was written shortly after his death
by Paolo Giovio, bishop of Nocera, who had known him intimately. Other
important contemporary sources are the Italian _History_ of the
Florentine writer Guicciardini, covering the period 1492-1530 (4
vols., Milan, 1884); the reports of the Venetian ambassadors, Marino
Giorgi (1517), Marco Minio (1520) and Luigi Gradenigo (1523), in vol.
iii. of the 2nd series of _Le Relazioni degli ambasciatori Veneti_,
edited by Alberi (Florence, 1846); and the _Diarii_ of the Venetian
Marino Sanuto (58 vols., 1879-1903). Other materials for the biography
are to be found in the incomplete _Regesta_ edited by Joseph Cardinal
Hergenröther (Freiburg-i-B., 1884 ff.); in the Turin collection of
papal bulls (1859, &c.); in _Il Diario di Leone X. dai volumi
manoscritti degli archivi Vaticani della S. Sede connote di M.
Armellini_ (Rome, 1884); and in "Documenti risguardanti Giovanni de'
Medici e il pontifice Leone X.," appendix to vol. 1 of the _Archivio
storico Italiano_ (Florence, 1842).
See L. Pastor, _Geschichte der Päpste im Zeitalter der Renaissance u.
der Glaubensspaltung von der Wahl Leos X. bis zum Tode Klemens VII._
part 1 (Freiburg-i.-B., 1906); M. Creighton, _History of the Papacy_,
vol. 6 (1901); F. Gregorovius, _Rome in the Middle Ages_, trans. by
Mrs G. W. Hamilton, vol. viii., part 1 (1902); L. von Ranke, _History
of the Popes_, vol. i., trans. by E. Foster in the Bohn Library;
_Histoire de France_, ed. by E. Lavisse, vol. 5, part 1 (1903); Walter
Friedensburg, "Ein rotulus familiae Papst Leos X.," in _Quellen u.
Forschungen aus italienischen Archiven u. Bibliotheken_, vol. vi.
(1904); W. Roscoe, _Life and Pontificate of Leo X._ (6th ed., 2 vols.,
1853), a celebrated biography but considerably out of date in spite of
the valuable notes of the German and Italian translators, Henke and
Bossi; F. S. Nitti, _Leone X. e la sua politica secondo documenti e
carteggi inediti_ (Florence, 1892); A. Schulte, _Die Fugger in Rom
1495-1523_ (2 vols., Leipzig, 1906); and H. M. Vaughan, _The Medici
Popes_ (1908). (C. H. Ha.)
LEO XI. (Alessandro de' Medici) was elected pope on the 1st of April
1605, at the age of seventy. He had long been archbishop of Florence and
nuncio to Tuscany; and was entirely pro-French in his sympathies. He
died on the 27th day of his pontificate, and was succeeded by Paul V.
See the contemporary life by Vitorelli, continuator of Ciaconius,
_Vitae et res gestae summorum Pontiff. Rom._; Ranke, _Popes_ (Eng.
trans., Austin), ii. 330; v. Reumont, _Gesch. der Stadt Rom._ iii. 2,
604; Brosch, _Gesch. des Kirchenstaates_ (1880), i. 350.
LEO XII. (Annibale della Genga), pope from 1823 to 1829, was born of a
noble family, near Spoleto, on the 22nd of August 1760. Educated at the
Accademia dei Nobili ecclesiastici at Rome, he was ordained priest in
1783, and in 1790 attracted favourable attention by a tactful sermon
commemorative of the emperor Joseph II. In 1792 Pius VI. made him his
private secretary, in 1793 creating him titular archbishop of Tyre and
despatching him to Lucerne as nuncio. In 1794 he was transferred to the
nunciature at Cologne, but owing to the war had to make his residence in
Augsburg. During the dozen or more years he spent in Germany he was
entrusted with several honourable and difficult missions, which brought
him into contact with the courts of Dresden, Vienna, Munich and
Württemberg, as well as with Napoleon. It is, however, charged at one
time during this period that his finances were disordered, and his
private life not above suspicion. After the abolition of the States of
the Church, he was treated by the French as a state prisoner, and lived
for some years at the abbey of Monticelli, solacing himself with music
and with bird-shooting, pastimes which he did not eschew even after his
election as pope. In 1814 he was chosen to carry the pope's
congratulations to Louis XVIII.; in 1816 he was created cardinal-priest
of Santa Maria Maggiore, and appointed to the see of Sinigaglia, which
he resigned in 1818. In 1820 Pius VII. gave him the distinguished post
of cardinal vicar. In the conclave of 1823, in spite of the active
opposition of France, he was elected pope by the _zelanti_ on the 28th
of September. His election had been facilitated because he was thought
to be on the edge of the grave; but he unexpectedly rallied. His foreign
policy, entrusted at first to Della Somaglia and then to the more able
Bernetti, moved in general along lines laid down by Consalvi; and he
negotiated certain concordats very advantageous to the papacy.
Personally most frugal, Leo reduced taxes, made justice less costly, and
was able to find money for certain public improvements; yet he left the
finances more confused than he had found them, and even the elaborate
jubilee of 1825 did not really mend matters. His domestic policy was one
of extreme reaction. He condemned the Bible societies, and under Jesuit
influence reorganized the educational system. Severe ghetto laws led
many of the Jews to emigrate. He hunted down the _Carbonari_ and the
Freemasons; he took the strongest measures against political agitation
in theatres. A well-nigh ubiquitous system of espionage, perhaps most
fruitful when directed against official corruption, sapped the
foundations of public confidence. Leo, temperamentally stern,
hard-working in spite of bodily infirmity, died at Rome on the 10th of
February 1829. The news was received by the populace with unconcealed
joy. He was succeeded by Pius VIII.
AUTHORITIES.--Artaud de Montor, _Histoire du Pape Léon XII._ (2 vols.,
1843; by the secretary of the French embassy in Rome); Brück, "Leo
XII.," in Wetzer and Welte's _Kirchenlexikon_, vol. vii. (Freiburg,
1891); F. Nippold, _The Papacy in the 19th Century_ (New York, 1900),
chap. 5; Benrath, "Leo XII.," in Herzog-Hauck, _Realencyklopädie_,
vol. xi.-(Leipzig, 1902), 390-393, with bibliography; F. Nielsen, _The
History of the Papacy in the 19th century_ (1906), vol. ii. 1-30; Lady
Blennerhassett, in the _Cambridge Modern History_, vol. x. (1907),
151-154. (W. W. R.*)
LEO XIII. (Gioacchino Pecci) (1810-1903), pope from 1878 to 1903,
reckoned the 257th successor of St Peter, was born at Carpineto on the
2nd of March 1810. His family was Sienese in origin, and his father,
Colonel Domenico Pecci, had served in the army of Napoleon. His mother,
Anna Prosperi, is said to have been a descendant of Rienzi, and was a
member of the third order of St Francis. He and his elder brother
Giuseppe (known as Cardinal Pecci) received their earliest education
from the Jesuits at Viterbo, and completed their education in Rome. In
the jubilee year 1825 he was selected by his fellow-students at the
Collegium Romanum to head a deputation to Pope Leo XII., whose memory he
subsequently cherished and whose name he assumed in 1878. Weak health,
consequent on over-study, prevented him from obtaining the highest
academical honours, but he graduated as doctor in theology at the age of
twenty-two, and then entered the Accademia dei Nobili ecclesiastici, a
college in which clergy of aristocratic birth are trained for the
diplomatic service of the Roman Church. Two years later Gregory XVI.
appointed him a domestic prelate, and bestowed on him, by way of
apprenticeship, various minor administrative offices. He was ordained
priest on the 31st of December 1837, and a few weeks later was made
apostolic delegate of the small papal territory of Benevento, where he
had to deal with brigands and smugglers, who enjoyed the protection of
some of the noble families of the district. His success here led to his
appointment in 1841 as delegate of Perugia, which was at that time a
centre of anti-papal secret societies. This post he held for eighteen
months only, but in that brief period he obtained a reputation as a
social and municipal reformer. In 1843 he was sent as nuncio to
Brussels, being first consecrated a bishop (19th February), with the
title of archbishop of Damietta. During his three years' residence at
the Belgian capital he found ample scope for his gifts as a diplomatist
in the education controversy then raging, and as mediator between the
Jesuits and the Catholic university of Louvain. He gained the esteem of
Leopold I., and was presented to Queen Victoria of England and the
Prince Consort. He also made the acquaintance of many Englishmen,
Archbishop Whately among them. In January 1846, at the request of the
magistrates and people of Perugia, he was appointed bishop of that city
with the rank of archbishop; but before returning to Italy he spent
February in London, and March and April in Paris. On his arrival in Rome
he would, at the request of King Leopold, have been created cardinal but
for the death of Gregory XVI. Seven years later, 19th December 1853, he
received the red hat from Pius IX. Meanwhile, and throughout his long
episcopate of thirty-two years, he foreshadowed the zeal and the
enlightened policy later to be displayed in the prolonged period of his
pontificate, building and restoring many churches, striving to elevate
the intellectual as well as the spiritual tone of his clergy, and
showing in his pastoral letters an unusual regard for learning and for
social reform. His position in Italy was similar to that of Bishop
Dupanloup in France; and, as but a moderate supporter of the policy
enunciated in the Syllabus, he was not altogether _persona grata_ to
Pius IX. But he protested energetically against the loss of the pope's
temporal power in 1870, against the confiscation of the property of the
religious orders, and against the law of civil marriage established by
the Italian government, and he refused to welcome Victor Emmanuel in his
diocese. Nevertheless, he remained in the comparative obscurity of his
episcopal see until the death of Cardinal Antonelli; but in 1877, when
the important papal office of _camerlengo_ became vacant, Pius IX.
appointed to it Cardinal Pecci, who thus returned to reside in Rome,
with the prospect of having shortly responsible functions to perform
during the vacancy of the Holy See, though the _camerlengo_ was
traditionally regarded as disqualified by his office from succeeding to
the papal throne.
When Pius IX. died (7th February 1878) Cardinal Pecci was elected pope
at the subsequent conclave with comparative unanimity, obtaining at the
third scrutiny (20th February) forty-four out of sixty-one votes, or
more than the requisite two-thirds majority. The conclave was remarkably
free from political influences, the attention of Europe being at the
time engrossed by the presence of a Russian army at the gates of
Constantinople. It was said that the long pontificate of Pius IX. led
some of the cardinals to vote for Pecci, since his age (within a few
days of sixty-eight) and health warranted the expectation that his reign
would be comparatively brief; but he had for years been known as one of
the few "papable" cardinals; and although his long seclusion at Perugia
had caused his name to be little known outside Italy, there was a
general belief that the conclave had selected a man who was a prudent
statesman as well as a devout churchman; and Newman (whom he created a
cardinal in the year following) is reported to have said, "In the
successor of Pius I recognize a depth of thought, a tenderness of heart,
a winning simplicity, and a power answering to the name of Leo, which
prevent me from lamenting that Pius is no longer here."
The second day after his election Pope Leo XIII. crossed the Tiber
_incognito_ to his former residence in the Falconieri Palace to collect
his papers, returning at once to the Vatican, where he continued to
regard himself as "imprisoned" so long as the Italian government
occupied the city of Rome. He was crowned in the Sistine Chapel 3rd
March 1878, and at once began a reform of the papal household on austere
and economic lines which found little favour with the _entourage_ of the
former pope. To fill posts near his own person he summoned certain of
the Perugian clergy who had been trained under his own eye, and from the
first he was less accessible than his predecessor had been, either in
public or private audience. Externally uneventful as his life henceforth
necessarily was, it was marked chiefly by the reception of distinguished
personages and of numerous pilgrimages, often on a large scale, from all
parts of the world, and by the issue of encyclical letters. The stricter
theological training of the Roman Catholic clergy throughout the world
on the lines laid down by St Thomas Aquinas was his first care, and to
this end he founded in Rome and endowed an academy bearing the great
schoolman's name, further devoting about £12,000 to the publication of a
new and splendid edition of his works, the idea being that on this basis
the later teaching of Catholic theologians and many of the speculations
of modern thinkers could best be harmonized and brought into line. The
study of Church history was next encouraged, and in August 1883 the pope
addressed a letter to Cardinals de Luca, Pitra and Hergenröther, in
which he made the remarkable concession that the Vatican archives and
library might be placed at the disposal of persons qualified to compile
manuals of history. His belief was that the Church would not suffer by
the publication of documents. A man of literary taste and culture,
familiar with the classics, a facile writer of Latin verses[1] as well
as of Ciceronian prose, he was as anxious that the Roman clergy should
unite human science and literature with their theological studies as
that the laity should be educated in the principles of religion; and to
this end he established in Rome a kind of voluntary school board, with
members both lay and clerical; and the rivalry of the schools thus
founded ultimately obliged the state to include religious teaching in
its curriculum. The numerous encyclicals by which the pontificate of Leo
XIII. will always be distinguished were prepared and written by himself,
but were submitted to the customary revision. The encyclical _Aeterni
Patris_ (4th August 1879) was written in the defence of the philosophy
of St Thomas Aquinas. In later ones, working on the principle that the
Christian Church should superintend and direct every form of civil life,
he dealt with the Christian constitution of states (_Immortale Dei_, 1st
November 1885), with human liberty (_Libertas_, 20th June 1888), and
with the condition of the working classes (_Rerum novarum_, 15th May
1891). This last was slightly tinged with modern socialism; it was
described as "the social Magna Carta of Catholicism," and it won for Leo
the name of "the working-man's pope." Translated into the chief modern
languages, many thousands of copies were circulated among the working
classes in Catholic countries. Other encyclicals, such as those on
Christian marriage (_Arcanum divinae sapientiae_, 10th February 1880),
on the Rosary (_Supremi apostolatus officii_, 1st September 1883, and
_Superiore anno_, 5th September 1898), and on Freemasonry (_Humanum
genus_, 20th April 1884), dealt with subjects on which his predecessor
had been accustomed to pronounce allocutions, and were on similar lines.
It was the knowledge that in all points of religious faith and practice
Leo XIII. stood precisely where Pius IX. had stood that served to render
ineffectual others of his encyclicals, in which he dealt earnestly and
effectively with matters in which orthodox Protestants had a sympathetic
interest with him and might otherwise have lent an ear to his counsels.
Such were the letters on the study of Holy Scripture (18th November
1893), and on the reunion of Christendom (20th June 1894). He showed
special anxiety for the return of England to the Roman Catholic fold,
and addressed a letter _ad Anglos_, dated 14th April 1895. This he
followed up by an encyclical on the unity of the Church (_Satis
cognitum_, 29th June 1896); and the question of the validity of Anglican
ordinations from the Roman Catholic point of view having been raised in
Rome by Viscount Halifax, with whom the abbé Louis Duchesne and one or
two other French priests were in sympathy, a commission was appointed to
consider the subject, and on the 15th of September 1896 a condemnation
of the Anglican form as theologically insufficient was issued, and was
directed to be taken as final.
The establishment of a diocesan hierarchy in Scotland had been decided
upon before the death of Pius IX., but the actual announcement of it was
made by Leo XIII. On the 25th of July 1898 he addressed to the Scottish
Catholic bishops a letter, in the course of which he said that "many of
the Scottish people who do not agree with us in faith sincerely love the
name of Christ and strive to ascertain His doctrine and to imitate His
most holy example." The Irish and American bishops he summoned to Rome
to confer with him on the subjects of Home Rule and of "Americanism"
respectively. In India he established a diocesan hierarchy, with seven
archbishoprics, the archbishop of Goa taking precedence with the rank of
patriarch.
With the government of Italy his general policy was to be as
conciliatory as was consistent with his oath as pope never to surrender
the "patrimony of St Peter"; but a moderate attitude was rendered
difficult by partisans on either side in the press, each of whom claimed
to represent his views. In 1879, addressing a congress of Catholic
journalists in Rome, he exhorted them to uphold the necessity of the
temporal power, and to proclaim to the world that the affairs of Italy
would never prosper until it was restored; in 1887 he found it necessary
to deprecate the violence with which this doctrine was advocated in
certain journals. A similar counsel of moderation was given to the
Canadian press in connexion with the Manitoba school question in
December 1897. The less conciliatory attitude towards the Italian
government was resumed in an encyclical addressed to the Italian clergy
(5th August 1898), in which he insisted on the duty of Italian Catholics
to abstain from political life while the papacy remained in its
"painful, precarious and intolerable position." And in January 1902,
reversing the policy which had its inception in the encyclical, _Rerum
novarum_, of 1891, and had further been developed ten years later in a
letter to the Italian bishops entitled _Graves de communi_, the "Sacred
Congregation of Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs" issued
instructions concerning "Christian Democracy in Italy," directing that
the popular Christian movement, which embraced in its programme a number
of social reforms, such as factory laws for children, old-age pensions,
a minimum wage in agricultural industries, an eight-hours' day, the
revival of trade gilds, and the encouragement of Sunday rest, should
divert its attention from all such things as savoured of novelty and
devote its energies to the restoration of the temporal power. The
reactionary policy thus indicated gave the impression that a similar aim
underlay the appointment about the same date of a commission to inquire
into Biblical studies; and in other minor matters Leo XIII. disappointed
those who had looked to him for certain reforms in the devotional system
of the Church. A revision of the breviary, which would have involved the
omission of some of the less credible legends, came to nothing, while
the recitation of the office in honour of the Santa Casa at Loreto was
imposed on all the clergy. The worship of Mary, largely developed during
the reign of Pius IX., received further stimulus from Leo; nor did he do
anything during his pontificate to correct the superstitions connected
with popular beliefs concerning relics and indulgences.
His policy towards all governments outside Italy was to support them
wherever they represented social order; and it was with difficulty that
he persuaded French Catholics to be united in defence of the republic.
The German _Kulturkampf_ was ended by his exertions. In 1885 he
successfully arbitrated between Germany and Spain in a dispute
concerning the Caroline Islands. In Ireland he condemned the "Plan of
Campaign" in 1888, but he conciliated the Nationalists by appointing Dr
Walsh archbishop of Dublin. His hope that his support of the British
government in Ireland would be followed by the establishment of formal
diplomatic relations between the court of St James's and the Vatican was
disappointed. But the jubilee of Queen Victoria in 1887 and the pope's
priestly jubilee a few months later were the occasion of friendly
intercourse between Rome and Windsor, Mgr. Ruffo Scilla coming to London
as special papal envoy, and the duke of Norfolk being received at the
Vatican as the bearer of the congratulations of the queen of England.
Similar courtesies were exchanged during the jubilee of 1897, and again
in March 1902, when Edward VII. sent the earl of Denbigh to Rome to
congratulate Leo XIII. on reaching his ninety-third year and the
twenty-fifth year of his pontificate. The visit of Edward VII. to Leo
XIII. in April 1903 was a further proof of the friendliness between the
English court and the Vatican.
The elevation of Newman to the college of Cardinals in 1879 was regarded
with approval throughout the English-speaking world, both on Newman's
account and also as evidence that Leo XIII. had a wider horizon than his
predecessor; and his similar recognition of two of the most
distinguished "inopportunist" members of the Vatican council, Haynald,
archbishop of Kalocsa, and Prince Fürstenberg, archbishop of Olmütz, was
even more noteworthy. Dupanloup would doubtless have received the same
honour had he not died shortly after Leo's accession. Döllinger the pope
attempted to reconcile, but failed. He laboured much to bring about the
reunion of the Oriental Churches with the see of Rome, establishing
Catholic educational centres in Athens and in Constantinople with that
end in view. He used his influence with the emperor of Russia, as also
with the emperors of China and Japan and with the shah of Persia, to
secure the free practice of their religion for Roman Catholics within
their respective dominions. Among the canonizations and beatifications
of his pontificate that of Sir Thomas More, author of _Utopia_, is
memorable. His encyclical issued at Easter 1902, and described by
himself as a kind of will, was mainly a reiteration of earlier
condemnations of the Reformation, and of modern philosophical systems,
which for their atheism and materialism he makes responsible for all
existing moral and political disorders. Society, he earnestly pleaded,
can only find salvation by a return to Christianity and to the fold of
the Roman Catholic Church.
Grave and serious in manner, speaking slowly, but with energetic
gestures, simple and abstemious in his life--his daily bill of fare
being reckoned as hardly costing a couple of francs--Leo XIII.
distributed large sums in charity, and at his own charges placed costly
astronomical instruments in the Vatican observatory, providing also
accommodation and endowment for a staff of officials. He always showed
the greatest interest in science and in literature, and he would have
taken a position as a statesman of the first rank had he held office in
any secular government. He may be reckoned the most illustrious pope
since Benedict XIV., and under him the papacy acquired a prestige
unknown since the middle ages. On the 3rd of March 1903 he celebrated
his jubilee in St Peter's with more than usual pomp and splendour; he
died on the 20th of July following. His successor was Pius X.
See _Scelta di atti episcopali del cardinale G. Pecci ..._ (Rome,
1879); _Leonis XIII. Pont. Max. acta_ (17 vols., Rome, 1881-1898);
_Sanctissimi Domini N. Leonis XIII. allocutiones, epistolae, &c._
(Bruges and Lille, 1887, &c.); the encyclicals (_Sämtliche
Rundschreiben_) with a German translation (6 vols., Freiburg,
1878-1904); _Discorsi del Sommo Pontefice Leone XIII. 1878-1882_
(Rome, 1882). There are lives of Leo XIII. by B. O'Reilly (new ed.,
Chicago, 1903), H. des Houx (pseudonym of Durand Morimbeau) (Paris,
1900), by W. Meynell (1887), by J. McCarthy (1896), by Boyer d'Agen,
(_Jeunesse de Léon XIII._ (1896); _La Prélature_, 1900), by M. Spahn
(Munich, 1905), by L. K. Goetz (Gotha, 1899), &c. A life of Leo XIII.
(4 vols.) was undertaken by F. Marion Crawford, Count Edoardo Soderini
and Professor Giuseppe Clementi. (A. W. Hu.; M. Br.)
FOOTNOTE:
[1] _Leonis XIII. Pont. Maximi carmina_, ed. Brunelli (Udine, 1883);
_Leonis XIII. carmina, inscriptiones, numismata_, ed. J. Bach
(Cologne, 1903).
LEO, the name of six emperors of the East.
LEO I., variously surnamed THRAX, MAGNUS and MAKELLES, emperor of the
East, 457-474, was born in Thrace about 400. From his position as
military tribune he was raised to the throne by the soldiery and
recognized both by senate and clergy; his coronation by the patriarch of
Constantinople is said to have been the earliest instance of such a
ceremony. Leo owed his elevation mainly to Aspar, the commander of the
guards, who was debarred by his Arianism from becoming emperor in his
own person, but hoped to exercise a virtual autocracy through his former
steward and dependant. But Leo, following the traditions of his
predecessor Marcian, set himself to curtail the domination of the great
nobles and repeatedly acted in defiance of Aspar. Thus he vigorously
suppressed the Eutychian heresy in Egypt, and by exchanging his Germanic
bodyguard for Isaurians removed the chief basis of Aspar's power. With
the help of his generals Anthemius and Anagastus, he repelled invasions
of the Huns into Dacia (466 and 468). In 467 Leo had Anthemius elected
emperor of the West, and in concert with him equipped an armament of
more than 1100 ships and 100,000 men against the pirate empire of the
Vandals in Africa. Through the remissness of Leo's brother-in-law
Basiliscus, who commanded the expedition, the fleet was surprised by the
Vandal king, Genseric, and half of its vessels sunk or burnt (468). This
failure was made a pretext by Leo for killing Aspar as a traitor (471),
and Aspar's murder served the Goths in turn as an excuse for ravaging
Thrace up to the walls of the capital. In 473 the emperor associated
with himself his infant grandson, LEO II., who, however, survived him by
only a few months. His surnames Magnus (Great) and Makelles (butcher)
respectively reflect the attitude of the Orthodox and the Arians towards
his religious policy.
See E. Gibbon, _The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_ (ed. Bury,
1896), iv. 29-37; J. B. Bury, _The Later Roman Empire_ (1889), i.
227-233.
LEO III. (c. 680-740), surnamed THE ISAURIAN, emperor of the East,
717-740. Born about 680 in the Syrian province of Commagene, he rose to
distinction in the military service, and under Anastasius II. was
invested with the command of the eastern army. In 717 he revolted
against the usurper Theodosius III. and, marching upon Constantinople,
was elected emperor in his stead. The first year of Leo's reign saw a
memorable siege of his capital by the Saracens, who had taken advantage
of the civil discord in the Roman empire to bring up a force of 80,000
men to the Bosporus. By his stubborn defence the new ruler wore out the
invaders who, after a twelve months' investment, withdrew their forces.
An important factor in the victory of the Romans was their use of Greek
fire. Having thus preserved the empire from extinction, Leo proceeded to
consolidate its administration, which in the previous years of anarchy
had become completely disorganized. He secured its frontiers by inviting
Slavonic settlers into the depopulated districts and by restoring the
army to efficiency; when the Arabs renewed their invasions in 726 and
739 they were decisively beaten. His civil reforms include the abolition
of the system of prepaying taxes which had weighed heavily upon the
wealthier proprietors, the elevation of the serfs into a class of free
tenants, the remodelling of family and of maritime law. These measures,
which were embodied in a new code published in 740, met with some
opposition on the part of the nobles and higher clergy. But Leo's most
striking legislative reforms dealt with religious matters. After an
apparently successful attempt to enforce the baptism of all Jews and
Montanists in his realm (722), he issued a series of edicts against the
worship of images (726-729). This prohibition of a custom which had
undoubtedly given rise to grave abuses seems to have been inspired by a
genuine desire to improve public morality, and received the support of
the official aristocracy and a section of the clergy. But a majority of
the theologians and all the monks opposed these measures with
uncompromising hostility, and in the western parts of the empire the
people refused to obey the edict. A revolt which broke out in Greece,
mainly on religious grounds, was crushed by the imperial fleet (727),
and two years later, by deposing the patriarch of Constantinople, Leo
suppressed the overt opposition of the capital. In Italy the defiant
attitude of Popes Gregory II. and III. on behalf of image-worship led to
a fierce quarrel with the emperor. The former summoned councils in Rome
to anathematize and excommunicate the image-breakers (730, 732); Leo
retaliated by transferring southern Italy and Greece from the papal
diocese to that of the patriarch. The struggle was accompanied by an
armed outbreak in the exarchate of Ravenna (727), which Leo finally
endeavoured to subdue by means of a large fleet. But the destruction of
the armament by a storm decided the issue against him; his south Italian
subjects successfully defied his religious edicts, and the province of
Ravenna became detached from the empire. In spite of this partial
failure Leo must be reckoned as one of the greatest of the later Roman
emperors. By his resolute stand against the Saracens he delivered all
eastern Europe from a great danger, and by his thorough-going reforms he
not only saved the empire from collapse, but invested it with a
stability which enabled it to survive all further shocks for a space of
five centuries.
See E. Gibbon, _The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_ (ed. Bury,
1896), v. 185 seq., 251 seq. and appendices, vi. 6-12; J. B. Bury,
_The Later Roman Empire_ (1889), ii. 401-449; K. Schenk, _Kaiser Leo
III._ (Halle, 1880), and in _Byzantinische Zeitschrift_ (1896), v.
257-301; T. Hodgkin, _Italy and her Invaders_ (1892, &c.), bk. vii.,
chs. 11, 12. See also ICONOCLASTS.
LEO IV., called CHOZAR, succeeded his father, Constantine V., as emperor
of the East in 775. In 776 he associated his young son, Constantine,
with himself in the empire, and suppressed a rising led by his five
step-brothers which broke out as a result of this proceeding. Leo was
largely under the influence of his wife Irene (q.v.), and when he died
in 780 he left her as the guardian of his successor, Constantine VI.
LEO V., surnamed THE ARMENIAN, emperor of the East, 813-820, was a
distinguished general of Nicephorus I. and Michael I. After rendering
good service on behalf of the latter in a war with the Arabs (812), he
was summoned in 813 to co-operate in a campaign against the Bulgarians.
Taking advantage of the disaffection prevalent among the troops, he left
Michael in the lurch at the battle of Adrianople and subsequently led a
successful revolution against him. Leo justified his usurpation by
repeatedly defeating the Bulgarians who had been contemplating the siege
of Constantinople (814-817). By his vigorous measures of repression
against the Paulicians and image-worshippers he roused considerable
opposition, and after a conspiracy under his friend Michael Psellus had
been foiled by the imprisonment of its leader, he was assassinated in
the palace chapel on Christmas Eve, 820.
See E. Gibbon, _The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_ (ed. Bury,
1896), v. 193-195. (M. O. B. C.)
LEO VI., surnamed THE WISE and THE PHILOSOPHER, Byzantine emperor,
886-911. He was a weak-minded ruler, chiefly occupied with unimportant
wars with barbarians and struggles with churchmen. The chief event of
his reign was the capture of Thessalonica (904) by Mahommedan pirates
(described in _The Capture of Thessalonica_ by John Cameniata) under the
renegade Leo of Tripolis. In Sicily and Lower Italy the imperial arms
were unsuccessful, and the Bulgarian Symeon, who assumed the title of
"Czar of the Bulgarians and autocrat of the Romaei" secured the
independence of his church by the establishment of a patriarchate. Leo's
somewhat absurd surname may be explained by the facts that he "was less
ignorant than the greater part of his contemporaries in church and
state, that his education had been directed by the learned Photius, and
that several books of profane and ecclesiastical science were composed
by the pen, or in the name, of the imperial philosopher" (Gibbon). His
works include seventeen _Oracula_, in iambic verse, on the destinies of
future emperors and patriarchs of Constantinople; thirty-three
_Orations_, chiefly on theological subjects (such as church festivals);
_Basilica_, the completion of the digest of the laws of Justinian, begun
by Basil I., the father of Leo; some epigrams in the Greek _Anthology_;
an iambic lament on the melancholy condition of the empire; and some
palindromic verses, curiously called [Greek: karkinoi] (crabs). The
treatise on military tactics, attributed to him, is probably by Leo
III., the Isaurian.
Complete edition in Migne, _Patrologia Graeca_, cvii.; for the
literature of individual works see C. Krumbacher, _Geschichte der
byzantinischen Litteratur_ (1897). (J. H. F.)
LEO, BROTHER (d. c. 1270), the favourite disciple, secretary and
confessor of St Francis of Assisi. The dates of his birth and of his
becoming a Franciscan are not known; but he was one of the small group
of most trusted companions of the saint during his last years. After
Francis's death Leo took a leading part in the opposition to Elias: he
it was who broke in pieces the marble box which Elias had set up for
offertories for the completion of the basilica at Assisi. For this Elias
had him scourged, and this outrage on St Francis's dearest disciple
consolidated the opposition to Elias and brought about his deposition.
Leo was the leader in the early stages of the struggle in the order for
the maintenance of St Francis's ideas on strict poverty, and the chief
inspirer of the tradition of the Spirituals on St Francis's life and
teaching. The claim that he wrote the so-called _Speculum perfectionis_
cannot be allowed, but portions of it no doubt go back to him. A little
volume of his writings has been published by Lemmeus (_Scripta Iratris
Leonis_, 1901). Leo assisted at St Clara's death-bed, 1253; after
suffering many persecutions from the dominant party in the order he died
at the Portiuncula in extreme old age.
All that is known concerning him is collected by Paul Sabatier in the
"Introduction" to the _Speculum perfectionis_ (1898). See ST FRANCIS
and FRANCISCANS. (E. C. B.)
LEO, HEINRICH (1799-1878), German historian, was born at Rudolstadt on
the 19th of March 1799, his father being chaplain to the garrison there.
His family, not of Italian origin--as he himself was inclined to believe
on the strength of family tradition--but established in Lower Saxony so
early as the 16th century, was typical of the German upper middle
classes, and this fact, together with the strongly religious atmosphere
in which he was brought up and his early enthusiasm for nature, largely
determined the bent of his mind. The taste for historical study was,
moreover, early instilled into him by the eminent philologist Karl
Wilhelm Göttling (1793-1869), who in 1816 became a master at the
Rudolstadt gymnasium. From 1816 to 1819 Leo studied at the universities
of Breslau, Jena and Göttingen, devoting himself more especially to
history, philology and theology. At this time the universities were
still agitated by the Liberal and patriotic aspirations aroused by the
War of Liberation; at Breslau Leo fell under the influence of Jahn, and
joined the political gymnastic association (_Turnverein_); at Jena he
attached himself to the radical wing of the German _Burschenschaft_, the
so-called "Black Band," under the leadership of Karl Follen. The murder
of Kotzebue by Karl Sand, however, shocked him out of his extreme
revolutionary views, and from this time he tended, under the influence
of the writings of Hamann and Herder, more and more in the direction of
conservatism and romanticism, until at last he ended, in a mood almost
of pessimism, by attaching himself to the extreme right wing of the
forces of reaction. So early as April 1819, at Göttingen, he had fallen
under the influence of Karl Ludwig von Haller's _Handbuch der
allgemeinen Staatenkunde_ (1808), a text-book of the counter-Revolution.
On the 11th of May 1820 he took his doctor's degree; in the same year he
qualified as _Privatdozent_ at the university of Erlangen. For this
latter purpose he had chosen as his thesis the constitution of the free
Lombard cities in the middle ages, the province in which he was destined
to do most for the scientific study of history. His interest in it was
greatly stimulated by a journey to Italy in 1823; in 1824 he returned to
the subject, and, as the result, published in five volumes a history of
the Italian states (1829-1832). Meanwhile he had been established
(1822-1827) as _Dozent_ at Berlin, where he came in contact with the
leaders of German thought and was somewhat spoilt by the flattering
attentions of the highest Prussian society. Here, too, it was that
Hegel's philosophy of history made a deep impression upon him. It was at
Halle, however, where he remained for forty years (1828-1868), that he
acquired his fame as an academical teacher. His wonderful power of
exposition, aided by a remarkable memory, is attested by the most
various witnesses. In 1830 he became ordinary professor.
In addition to his lecturing, Leo found time for much literary and
political work. He collaborated in the _Jahrbücher für Wissenschaftliche
Kritik_ from its foundation in 1827 until the publication was stopped in
1846. As a critic of independent views he won the approval of Goethe; on
the other hand, he fell into violent controversy with Ranke about
questions connected with Italian history. Up to the revolutionary year
1830 his religious views had remained strongly tinged with rationalism,
Hegel remaining his guide in religion as in practical politics and the
treatment of history. It was not till 1838 that Leo's polemical work
_Die Hegelingen_ proclaimed his breach with the radical developments of
the philosopher's later disciples; a breach which developed into
opposition to the philosopher himself. Under the impression of the July
revolution in Paris and of the orthodox and pietistic influences at
Halle, Leo's political convictions were henceforth dominated by
reactionary principles. As a friend of the Prussian "Camarilla" and of
King Frederick William IV. he collaborated especially in the high
conservative _Politisches Wochenblatt_, which first appeared in 1831, as
well as in the _Evangelische Kirchenzeitung_, the _Kreuzzeitung_ and the
_Volksblatt für Stadt und Land_. In all this his critics scented an
inclination towards Catholicism; and Leo did actually glorify the
counter-Reformation, e.g. in his _History of the Netherlands_ (2 vols.
1832-1835). His other historical works also, notably his
_Universalgeschichte_ (6 vols., 1835-1844), display a very one-sided
point of view. When, however, in connexion with the quarrel about the
archbishopric of Cologne (1837), political Catholicism raised its head
menacingly, Leo turned against it with extreme violence in his open
letter (1838) to Goerres, its foremost champion. On the other hand, he
took a lively part in the politico-religious controversies within the
fold of Prussian Protestantism.
Leo was by nature highly excitable and almost insanely passionate,
though at the same time strictly honourable, unselfish, and in private
intercourse even gentle. During the last year of his life his mind
suffered rapid decay, of which signs had been apparent so early as 1868.
He died at Halle on the 24th of April 1878. In addition to the works
already mentioned, he left behind an account of his early life (_Meine
Jugendzeit_, Gotha, 1880) which is of interest.
See Lord Acton, _English Historical Review_, i. (1886); H. Haupt,
_Karl Follen und die Giessener Schwarzen_ (Giessen, 1907); W. Herbst,
_Deutsch-Evangelische Blätter_, Bd. 3; P. Krägelin, _H. Leo_, vol. i.
(1779-1844) (Leipzig, 1908); P. Kraus, _Allgemeine Konservative
Monatsschrift_, Bd. 50 u. 51; R. M. Meyer, _Gestalten und Probleme_
(1904); W. Schrader, _Geschichte der Friedrichs-Universität in Halle_
(Berlin, 1894); C. Varrentrapp, _Historische Zeitschrift_, Bd. 92; F.
X. Wegele, _Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie_, Bd. 18 (1883);
_Geschichte der deutschen Historiographie_ (1885); G. Wolf,
_Einführung in das Studium der neueren Geschichte_ (1910). Leo's
_Rectitudines singularum personarum nebst einer einleitenden
Abhandlung über Landsiedelung, Landbau, gutsherrliche und bäuerliche
Verhältnisse der Angelsachsen_, was translated into English by Lord
Acton (1852). (J. Hn.)
LEO, JOHANNES (c. 1494-1552), in Italian GIOVANNI LEO or LEONE, usually
called LEO AFRICANUS, sometimes ELIBERITANUS (i.e. of Granada), and
properly known among the Moors as Al Hassan Ibn Mahommed Al Wezaz Al
Fasi, was the author of a _Descrizione dell' Affrica_, or _Africae
descriptio_, which long ranked as the best authority on Mahommedan
Africa. Born probably at Granada of a noble Moorish stock (his father
was a landowner; an uncle of his appears as an envoy from Fez to
Timbuktu), he received a great part of his education at Fez, and while
still very young began to travel widely in the Barbary States. In 1512
we trace him at Morocco, Tunis, Bugia and Constantine; in 1513 we find
him returning from Tunis to Morocco; and before the close of the latter
year he seems to have started on his famous Sudan and Sahara journeys
(1513-1515) which brought him to Timbuktu, to many other regions of the
Great Desert and the Niger basin (Guinea, Melli, Gago, Walata, Aghadez,
Wangara, Katsena, &c.), and apparently to Bornu and Lake Chad. In
1516-1517 he travelled to Constantinople, probably visiting Egypt on the
way; it is more uncertain when he visited the three Arabias (_Deserta_,
_Felix_ and _Petraea_), Armenia and "Tartary" (the last term is perhaps
satisfied by his stay at Tabriz). His three Egyptian journeys,
immediately after the Turkish conquest, all probably fell between 1517
and 1520; on one of these he ascended the Nile from Cairo to Assuan. As
he was returning from Egypt about 1520 he was captured by pirates near
the island of Gerba, and was ultimately presented as a slave to Leo X.
The pope discovered his merit, assigned him a pension, and having
persuaded him to profess the Christian faith, stood sponsor at his
baptism, and bestowed on him (as Ramusio says) his own names, Johannes
and Leo. The new convert, having made himself acquainted with Latin and
Italian, taught Arabic (among his pupils was Cardinal Egidio Antonini,
bishop of Viterbo); he also wrote books in both the Christian tongues he
had acquired. His _Description of Africa_ was first, apparently, written
in Arabic, but the primary text now remaining is that of the Italian
version, issued by the author at Rome, on the 10th of March 1526, three
years after Pope Leo's death, though originally undertaken at the
latter's suggestion. The Moor seems to have lived on Rome for some time
longer, but he returned to Africa some time before his death at Tunis in
1552; according to some, he renounced his Christianity and returned to
Islam; but the later part of his career is obscure.
The _Descrizione dell' Affrica_ in its original Arabic MS. is said to
have existed for some time in the library of Vincenzo Pinelli
(1535-1601); the Italian text, though issued in 1526, was first
printed by Giovanni Battista Ramusio in his _Navigationi et Viaggi_
(vol. i.) of 1550. This was reprinted in 1554, 1563, 1588, &c. In 1556
Jean Temporal executed at Lyons an admirable French version from the
Italian (_Historiale description de l'Afrique_); and in the same year
appeared at Antwerp both Christopher Plantin's and Jean Bellere's
pirated issues of Temporal's translation, and a new (very inaccurate)
Latin version by Joannes Florianus, _Joannis Leonis Africani de totius
Africae descriptione libri i.-ix._ The latter was reprinted in 1558,
1559 (Zürich), and 1632 (Leiden), and served as the basis of John
Pory's Elizabethan English translation, made at the suggestion of
Richard Hakluyt (_A Geographical Historie of Africa_, London, 1600).
Pory's version was reissued, with notes, maps, &c., by Robert Brown,
E. G. Ravenstein, &c. (3 vols., Hakluyt Society, London, 1896). An
excellent German translation was made by Lorsbach, from the Italian,
in 1805 (_Johann Leos des Afrikaners Beschreibung von Afrika_,
Herborn). See also Francis Moore's _Travels into the inland parts of
Africa_ (1738), containing a translation of Leo's account of negro
kingdoms. Heinrich Barth intended to have made a fresh version, with a
commentary, but was prevented by death; as it is, his own great works
on the Sudan are the best elucidation of the _Descrizione dell'
Affrica_.
Leo also wrote lives of the Arab physicians and philosophers (_De
viris quibusdam illustribus apud Arabes_; see J. A. Fabricius,
_Bibliotheca Graeca_, Hamburg, 1726, xiii. 259-298); a Spanish-Arabic
vocabulary, now lost, but noticed by Ramusio as having been consulted
by the famous Hebrew physician, Jacob Mantino; a collection of Arabic
epitaphs in and near Fez (the MS. of this Leo presented, it is said,
to the brother of the king); and poems, also lost. It is stated,
moreover, that Leo intended writing a history of the Mahommedan
religion, an epitome of Mahommedan chronicles, and an account of his
travels in Asia and Egypt. (C. R. B.)
LEO, LEONARDO (1694-1744), more correctly LIONARDO ORONZO SALVATORE DE
LEO, Italian musical composer, was born on the 5th of August 1694 at S.
Vito dei Normanni, near Brindisi. He became a student at the
Conservatorio della Piètà dei Turchini at Naples in 1703, and was a
pupil first of Provenzale and later of Nicola Fago. It has been supposed
that he was a pupil of Pitoni and Alessandro Scarlatti, but he could not
possibly have studied with either of these composers, although he was
undoubtedly influenced by their compositions. His earliest known work
was a sacred drama, _L'Infedeltà abbattuta_, performed by his
fellow-students in 1712. In 1714 he produced, at the court theatre, an
opera, _Pisistrato_, which was much admired. He held various posts at
the royal chapel, and continued to write for the stage, besides teaching
at the conservatorio. After adding comic scenes to Gasparini's
_Bajazette_ in 1722 for performance at Naples, he composed a comic
opera, _La Mpeca scoperta_, in Neapolitan dialect, in 1723. His most
famous comic opera was _Amor vuol sofferenze_ (1739), better known as
_La Finta Frascatana_, highly praised by Des Brosses. He was equally
distinguished as a composer of serious opera, _Demofoonte_ (1735),
_Farnace_ (1737) and _L'Olimpiade_ (1737) being his most famous works in
this branch, and is still better known as a composer of sacred music. He
died of apoplexy on the 31st of October 1744 while engaged in the
composition of new airs for a revival of _La Finta Frascatana_.
Leo was the first of the Neapolitan school to obtain a complete mastery
over modern harmonic counterpoint. His sacred music is masterly and
dignified, logical rather than passionate, and free from the
sentimentality which disfigures the work of F. Durante and G. B.
Pergolesi. His serious operas suffer from a coldness and severity of
style, but in his comic operas he shows a keen sense of humour. His
_ensemble_ movements are spirited, but never worked up to a strong
climax.
A fine and characteristic example of his sacred music is the _Dixit
Dominus_ in C, edited by C. V. Stanford and published by Novello. A
number of songs from operas are accessible in modern editions.
(E. J. D.)
LEO (THE LION), in astronomy, the fifth sign of the zodiac (q.v.),
denoted by the symbol [Omega]. It is also a constellation, mentioned by
Eudoxus (4th century B.C.) and Aratus (3rd century B.C.). According to
Greek mythology this constellation is the Nemean lion, which, after
being killed by Hercules, was raised to the heavens by Jupiter in honour
of Hercules. A part of Ptolemy's Leo is now known as Coma Berenices
(q.v.). [alpha] Leonis, also known as Cor Leonis or the Lion's Heart,
Regulus, Basilicus, &c., is a very bright star of magnitude 1.23, and
parallax 0.02´´, and proper motion 0.27´´ per annum. [gamma] Leonis is a
very fine orange-yellow binary star, of magnitudes 2 and 4, and period
400 years. [iota] Leonis is a binary, composed of a 4th magnitude pale
yellow star, and a 7th magnitude blue star. The Leonids are a meteoric
swarm, appearing in November and radiating from this constellation (see
METEOR).
LEOBEN, a town in Styria, Austria, 44 m. N.W. of Graz by rail. Pop.
(1900) 10,204. It is situated on the Mur, and part of its old walls and
towers still remain. It has a well-known academy of mining and a number
of technical schools. Its extensive iron-works and trade in iron are a
consequence of its position on the verge of the important lignite
deposits of Upper Styria and in the neighbourhood of the iron mines and
furnaces of Vordernberg and Eisenerz. On the 18th of April 1797 a
preliminary peace was concluded here between Austria and France, which
led to the treaty of Campo-Formio.
LEOBSCHÜTZ (Bohemian _Lubczyce_), a town of Germany, in the Prussian
province of Silesia, on the Zinna, about 20 m. to the N.W. of Ratibor by
rail. Pop. (1905) 12,700. It has a large trade in wool, flax and grain,
its markets for these commodities being very numerously attended. The
principal industries are malting, carriage-building, wool-spinning and
glass-making. The town contains three Roman Catholic churches, a
Protestant church, a synagogue, a new town-hall and a gymnasium.
Leobschütz existed in the 10th century, and from 1524 to 1623 was the
capital of the principality of Jägerndorf.
See F. Troska, _Geschichte der Stadt Leobschütz_ (Leobschütz, 1892).
LEOCHARES, a Greek sculptor who worked with Scopas on the Mausoleum
about 350 B.C. He executed statues of the family of Philip of Macedon,
in gold and ivory, which were set up by that king in the Philippeum at
Olympia. He also with Lysippus made a group in bronze at Delphi
representing a lion-hunt of Alexander. Of this the base with an
inscription was recently found. We hear of other statues by Leochares of
Zeus, Apollo and Ares. The statuette in the Vatican, representing
Ganymede being carried away by an eagle, though considerably restored
and poor in execution, so closely corresponds with Pliny's description
of a group by Leochares that we are justified in considering it a copy
of that group, especially as the Vatican statue shows all the
characteristics of Attic 4th-century art. Pliny (_N.H._ 34. 79) writes:
"Leochares made a group of an eagle aware whom it is carrying off in
Ganymede and to whom it is bearing him; holding the boy delicately in
its claws, with his garment between." (For engraving see GREEK ART,
Plate I. fig. 53.) The tree stem is skilfully used as a support; and the
upward strain of the group is ably rendered. The close likeness both in
head and pose between the Ganymede and the well-known Apollo Belvidere
has caused some modern archaeologists to assign the latter also to
Leochares. With somewhat more confidence we may regard the fine statue
of Alexander the Great at Munich as a copy of his gold and ivory
portrait at Olympia. (P. G.)
LEOFRIC (d. 1057), earl of Mercia, was a son of Leofwine, earl of
Mercia, and became earl at some date previous to 1032. Henceforth, being
one of the three great earls of the realm, he took a leading part in
public affairs. On the death of King Canute in 1035 he supported the
claim of his son Harold to the throne against that of Hardicanute; and
during the quarrel between Edward the Confessor and Earl Godwine in 1051
he played the part of a mediator. Through his efforts civil war was
averted, and in accordance with his advice the settlement of the dispute
was referred to the Witan. When he became earl of Mercia his direct rule
seems to have been confined to Cheshire, Staffordshire, Shropshire and
the borders of north Wales, but afterwards he extended the area of his
earldom. As Chester was his principal residence and the seat of his
government, he is sometimes called earl of Chester. Leofric died at
Bromley in Staffordshire on the 31st of August 1057. His wife was
Godgifu, famous in legend as Lady Godiva. Both husband and wife were
noted as liberal benefactors to the church, among their foundations
being the famous Benedictine monastery at Coventry. Leofric's son,
Ælfgar, succeeded him as earl of Mercia.
See E. A. Freeman, _The Norman Conquest_, vols. i. and ii. (1877).
LEOMINSTER, a market-town and municipal borough in the Leominster
parliamentary division of Herefordshire, England, in a rich agricultural
country on the Lugg, 157 m. W.N.W. of London and 12½ N. of Hereford on
the Great Western and London & North-Western railways. Pop. (1901) 5826.
Area, 8728 acres. Some fine old timber houses lend picturesqueness to
the wide streets. The parish church, of mixed architecture, including
the Norman nave of the old priory church, and containing some of the
most beautiful examples of window tracery in England, was restored in
1866, and enlarged by the addition of a south nave in 1879. The Butter
Cross, a beautiful example of timber work of the date 1633, was removed
when the town-hall was building, and re-erected in the pleasure ground
of the Grange. Trade is chiefly in agricultural produce, wool and cider,
as the district is rich in orchards. Brewing (from the produce of local
hop-gardens) and the manufacture of agricultural implements are also
carried on. The town is under a mayor, four aldermen and twelve
councillors.
Merewald, king of Mercia, is said to have founded a religious house in
Leominster (Llanlieni, Leofminstre, Lempster) in 660, and a nunnery
existed here until the Conquest, when the place became a royal demesne.
It was granted by Henry I. to the monks of Reading, who built in it a
cell of their abbey, and under whose protection the town grew up and was
exempted from the sphere of the county and hundred courts. In 1539 it
reverted to the crown; and in 1554 was incorporated, by a charter
renewed in 1562, 1563, 1605, 1666, 1685 and 1786. The borough returned
two members to the parliament of 1295 and to other parliaments, until by
the Representation Act 1867 it lost one representative, and by the
Redistribution of Seats Act 1885 separate representation. A fair was
granted in the time of Henry II., and fairs in the seasons of Michaelmas
and the feasts of St Philip and St James and of Edward the Confessor, in
1265, 1281 and 1290 respectively. Charters to the burghers authorized
fairs on the days of St Peter and of St Simon and St Jude in 1554, on St
Bartholomew's day in 1605, in Mid-lent week in 1665, and on the feast of
the Purification and on the 2nd of May in 1685; these fairs have modern
representatives. A market was held by the abbey by a grant of Henry I.;
Friday is now market day. Leominster was famous for wool from the 13th
to the 18th century. There were gilds of mercers, tailors, drapers,
dyers and glovers in the 16th century. In 1835 the wool trade was said
to be dead; and that of glove-making, which had been important, was
diminishing. Hops and apples were grown in 1715.
See G. Townsend, _The Town and Borough of Leominster_ (1863), and John
Price, _An Historical and Topographical Account of Leominster and its
Vicinity_ (Ludlow, 1715).
LEOMINSTER, a township of Worcester county, Massachusetts, U.S.A., about
45 m. N.W. of Boston and about 20 m. N. by E. of Worcester. Pop. (1890)
7269; (1900) 12,392, of whom 2827 were foreign-born; (1910 census)
17,580. It is a broken, hilly district, 26.48 sq. m. in area, traversed
by the Nashua river, crossed by the Northern Division of the New York,
New Haven & Hartford railroad, and by the Fitchburg Division of the
Boston & Maine, and connected with Boston, Worcester and other cities by
interurban electric lines. Along the N.E. border and mostly in the
township of Lunenburg are Whalom Lake and Whalom Park, popular pleasure
resorts. The principal villages are Leominster, 5 m. S.E. of Fitchburg,
and North Leominster; the two adjoin and are virtually one. According to
the Special U.S. Census of Manufactures of 1905 the township had in that
year a greater diversity of important manufacturing industries than any
place of its size in the state, or, probably, in the United States; its
65 manufactories, with a capital of $4,572,726 and with a product for
the year valued at $7,501,720 (39% more than in 1900), produced
celluloid and horn work (the manufacture of which is a more important
industry here than elsewhere in the United States), celluloid combs,
furniture, paper, buttons, pianos and piano-cases, children's carriages
and sleds, stationery, leatherboard, worsted, woollen and cotton goods,
shirts, paper boxes, &c. Leominster owns and operates its water-works.
The township was formed from a part of Lancaster township in 1740.
LEÓN, LUIS PONCE DE (1527-1591), Spanish poet and mystic, was born at
Belmonte de Cuenca, entered the university of Salamanca at the age of
fourteen, and in 1544 joined the Augustinian order. In 1561 he obtained
a theological chair at Salamanca, to which in 1571 was added that of
sacred literature. He was denounced to the Inquisition for translating
the book of Canticles, and for criticizing the text of the Vulgate. He
was consequently imprisoned at Valladolid from March 1572 till December
1576; the charges against him were then abandoned, and he was released
with an admonition. He returned to Salamanca as professor of Biblical
exegesis, and was again reported to the Inquisition in 1582, but without
result. In 1583-1585 he published the three books of a celebrated mystic
treatise, _Los Nombres de Cristo_, which he had written in prison. In
1583 also appeared the most popular of his prose works, a treatise
entitled _La Perfecta Casada_, for the use of a lady newly married. Ten
days before his death, which occurred at Madrigal on the 23rd of August
1591, he was elected vicar general of the Augustinian order. Luis de
León is not only the greatest of Spanish mystics; he is among the
greatest of Spanish lyrical poets. His translations of Euripides,
Pindar, Virgil and Horace are singularly happy; his original pieces,
whether devout like the ode _De la vida del cielo_, or secular like the
ode _A Salinas_, are instinct with a serene sublimity unsurpassed in any
literature, and their form is impeccable. Absorbed by less worldly
interests, Fray Luis de León refrained from printing his poems, which
were not issued till 1631, when Quevedo published them as a counterblast
to _culteranismo_.
The best edition of Luis de León's works is that of Merino (6 vols.,
Madrid, 1816); the reprint (Madrid, 1885) by C. Muñoz Saenz is
incorrect. The text of _La Perfecta Casada_ has been well edited by
Miss Elizabeth Wallace (Chicago, 1903). See _Coleccion de documentos
inéditos para la historia de España_, vols. x.-xi.; F. H. Reusch,
_Luis de León und die spanische Inquisition_ (Bonn, 1873); M.
Gutiérrez, _Fray Luis de León y la filosofía española_ (Madrid, 1885);
M. Menendez y Pelayo, _Estudios de crítica literaria_ (Madrid, 1893),
Primera série, pp. 1-72.
LEON, MOSES [BEN SHEM-TOB] DE (d. 1305), Jewish scholar, was born in
Leon (Spain) in the middle of the 13th century and died at Arevalo. His
fame is due to his authorship of the most influential Kabbalist work,
the _Zohar_ (see KABBALA), which was attributed to Simon b. Yohai, a
Rabbi of the 2nd century. In modern times the discovery of the modernity
of the _Zohar_ has led to injustice to the author. Moses de Leon
undoubtedly used old materials and out of them constructed a work of
genius. The discredit into which he fell was due partly to the
unedifying incidents of his personal career. He led a wandering life,
and was more or less of an adventurer. But as to the greatness of his
work, the profundity of his philosophy and the brilliance of his
religious idealism, there can be no question.
See Graetz, _History of the Jews_, vol. iv. ch. i.; Geiger, _Leon de
Modena_. (I. A.)
LEON OF MODENA (1571-1648), Jewish scholar, was born in Venice, of a
notable French family which had migrated to Italy after the expulsion of
the Jews from France. He was a precocious child, but, as Graetz points
out, his lack of stable character prevented his gifts from maturing. "He
pursued all sorts of occupations to support himself, viz. those of
preacher, teacher of Jews and Christians, reader of prayers,
interpreter, writer, proof-reader, bookseller, broker, merchant, rabbi,
musician, matchmaker and manufacturer of amulets." Though he failed to
rise to real distinction he earned a place by his criticism of the
Talmud among those who prepared the way for the new learning in Judaism.
One of Leon's most effective works was his attack on the Kabbala (_'Ari
Nohem_, first published in 1840), for in it he demonstrated that the
"Bible of the Kabbalists" (the _Zohar_) was a modern composition. He
became best known, however, as the interpreter of Judaism to the
Christian world. At the instance of an English nobleman he prepared an
account of the religious customs of the Synagogue, _Riti Ebraici_
(1637). This book was widely read by Christians; it was rendered into
various languages, and in 1650 was translated into English by Edward
Chilmead. At the time the Jewish question was coming to the fore in
London, and Leon of Modena's book did much to stimulate popular
interest. He died at Venice.
See Graetz, _History of the Jews_ (Eng. trans.), vol. v. ch. iii.;
_Jewish Encyclopedia_, viii. 6; Geiger, _Leon de Modena_. (I. A.)
LEÓN, or LEÓN DE LAS ALDAMAS, a city of the state of Guanajuato, Mexico,
209 m. N.W. of the federal capital and 30 m. W. by N. of the city of
Guanajuato. Pop. (1895) 90,978; (1900) 62,623, León ranking fourth in
the latter year among the cities of Mexico. The Mexican Central gives it
railway connexion with the national capital and other prominent cities
of the Republic. León stands in a fertile plain on the banks of the
Turbio, a tributary of the Rio Grande de Lerma, at an elevation of 5862
ft. above sea-level and in the midst of very attractive surroundings.
The country about León is considered to be one of the richest
cereal-producing districts of Mexico. The city itself is subject to
disastrous floods, sometimes leading to loss of life as well as damage
to property, as in the great flood of 1889. León is essentially a
manufacturing and commercial city; it has a cathedral and a theatre,
the latter one of the largest and finest in the republic. The city is
regularly built, with wide streets and numerous shady parks and gardens.
It manufactures saddlery and other leather work, gold and silver
embroideries, cotton and woollen goods, especially _rebozos_ (long
shawls), soap and cutlery. There are also tanneries and flour mills. The
city has a considerable trade in wheat and flour. The first settlement
of León occurred in 1552, but its formal foundation was in 1576, and it
did not reach the dignity of a city until 1836.
LEON, the capital of the department of Leon, Nicaragua, an episcopal
see, and the largest city in the republic, situated midway between Lake
Managua and the Pacific Ocean, 50 m. N.W. of Managua, on the railway
from that city to the Pacific port of Corinto. Pop. (1905) about 45,000,
including the Indian town of Subtiaba. Leon covers a very wide area,
owing to its gardens and plantations. Its houses are usually
one-storeyed, built of adobe and roofed with red tiles; its public
buildings are among the finest in Central America. The massive and
elaborately ornamented cathedral was built in the Renaissance style
between 1746 and 1774; a Dominican church in Subtiaba is little less
striking. The old (1678) and new (1873) episcopal palaces, the hospital,
the university and the barracks (formerly a Franciscan monastery) are
noteworthy examples of Spanish colonial architecture. Leon has a large
general trade, and manufactures cotton and woollen fabrics, ice, cigars,
boots, shoes and saddlery; its tanneries supply large quantities of
cheap leather for export. But its population (about 60,000 in 1850)
tends to decrease.
At the time of the Spanish conquest Subtiaba was the residence of the
great cacique of Nagrando, and contained an important Indian temple. The
city of Leon, founded by Francisco Hernandez de Cordova in 1523, was
originally situated at the head of the western bay of Lake Managua, and
was not removed to its present position till 1610. Thomas Gage, who
visited it in 1665, describes it as a splendid city; and in 1685 it
yielded rich booty to William Dampier (q.v.). Until 1855 Leon was the
capital of Nicaragua, although its great commercial rival Granada
contested its claim to that position, and the jealousy between the two
cities often resulted in bloodshed. Leon was identified with the
interests of the democracy of Nicaragua, Granada with the clerical and
aristocratic parties.
See NICARAGUA; E. G. Squier, _Central America_, vol. i. (1856); and T.
Gage, _Through Mexico_, &c. (1665).
LEON, the name of a modern province and of an ancient kingdom,
captaincy-general and province in north-western Spain. The modern
province, founded in 1833, is bounded on the N. by Oviedo, N.E. by
Santander, E. by Palencia, S. by Valladolid and Zamora and W. by Orense
and Lugo. Pop. (1900) 386,083. Area, 5986 sq. m. The boundaries of the
province on the north and west, formed respectively by the central ridge
and southerly offshoots of the Cantabrian Mountains (q.v.), are strongly
marked; towards the south-east the surface merges imperceptibly into the
Castilian plateau, the line of demarcation being for the most part
merely conventional. Leon belongs partly to the river system of the Miño
(see SPAIN), partly to that of the Duero or Douro (q.v.), these being
separated by the Montañas de Leon, which extend in a continuous wall
(with passes at Manzanal and Poncebadon) from north to south-west. To
the north-west of the Montañas de Leon is the richly wooded pastoral and
highland district known as the Vierzo, which in its lower valleys
produces grain, fruit, and wine in abundance. The Tierra del Campo in
the west of the province is fairly productive, but in need of
irrigation. The whole province is sparsely peopled. Apart from
agriculture, stock-raising and mining, its commerce and industries are
unimportant. Cattle, mules, butter, leather, coal and iron are exported.
The hills of Leon were worked for gold in the time of the Romans; iron
is still obtained, and coal-mining developed considerably towards the
close of the 19th century. The only towns with more than 5000
inhabitants in 1900 were Leon (15,580) and Astorga (5573) (q.v.). The
main railway from Madrid to Corunna passes through the province, and
there are branches from the city of Leon to Vierzo, Oviedo, and the
Biscayan port of Gijón.
At the time of the Roman conquest, the province was inhabited by the
Vettones and Callaici; it afterwards formed part of Hispania
Tarraconensis. Among the Christian kingdoms which arose in Spain as the
Moorish invasion of the 8th century receded, Leon was one of the oldest.
The title of king of Leon was first assumed by Ordoño in 913. Ferdinand
I. (the Great) of Castile united the crowns of Castile and Leon in the
11th century; the two were again separated in the 12th, until a final
union took place (1230) in the person of St Ferdinand. The limits of the
kingdom varied with the vicissitudes of war, but roughly speaking it may
be said to have embraced what are now the provinces of Leon, Palencia,
Valladolid, Zamora and Salamanca. For a detailed account of this
kingdom, see SPAIN: _History_. The captaincy-general of the province of
Leon before 1833 included Leon, Zamora and Salamanca. The Leonese, or
inhabitants of these three provinces, have less individuality, in
character and physique, than the people of Galicia, Catalonia or
Andalusia, who are quite distinct from what is usually regarded as the
central or national Spanish type, i.e. the Castilian. The Leonese belong
partly to the Castilian section of the Spaniards, partly to the
north-western section which includes the Galicians and Asturians. They
have comparatively few of the Moorish traits which are so marked in the
south and east of Spain. Near Astorga there dwells a curious tribe, the
Maragatos, sometimes considered to be a remnant of the original
Celtiberian inhabitants. As a rule the Maragatos earn their living as
muleteers or carriers; they wear a distinctive costume, mix as little as
possible with their neighbours and do not marry outside their own tribe.
LEON, an episcopal see and the capital of the Spanish province of Leon,
situated on a hill 2631 ft. above sea-level, in the angle made by the
Torio and Bernesga, streams which unite on the south, and form the river
Leon, a tributary of the Esla. Pop. (1900) 15,580. Leon is on the main
railway from Madrid to Oviedo, and is connected with Astorga by a branch
line. The older quarters of the city, which contain the cathedral and
other medieval buildings, are surrounded by walls, and have lost little
of their beauty and interest from the restoration carried out in the
second half of the 19th century. During the same period new suburbs grew
up outside the walls to house the industrial population which was
attracted by the development of iron-founding and the manufacture of
machinery, railway-plant, chemicals and leather. Leon thus comprises two
towns--the old, which is mainly ecclesiastical in its character, and the
new, which is industrial. The cathedral, founded in 1199 and only
finished at the close of the 14th century, is built of a warm
cream-coloured stone, and is remarkable for simplicity, lightness and
strength. It is one of the finest examples of Spanish Gothic, smaller,
indeed, than the cathedrals of Burgos and Toledo, but exquisite in
design and workmanship. The chapter library contains some valuable
manuscripts. The collegiate church of San Isidoro was founded by
Ferdinand I. of Castile in 1063 and consecrated in 1149. Its
architecture is Romanesque. The church contains some fine plate,
including the silver reliquary in which the bones of St Isidore of
Seville are preserved, and a silver processional cross dating from the
16th century, which is one of the most beautiful in the country. The
convent and church of San Marcos, planned in 1514 by Ferdinand the
Catholic, founded by Charles V. in 1537, and consecrated in 1541, are
Renaissance in style. They are built on the site of a hostel used by
pilgrims on their way to Santiago de Compostela. The provincial museum
occupies the chapterhouse and contains some interesting Roman monuments.
The lower part of the city walls consists of Roman masonry dating from
the 3rd century. Other buildings are the high school, ecclesiastical
seminaries, hospital, episcopal palace and municipal and provincial
halls.
Leon (Arab. _Liyun_) owes its name to the Legio Septima Gemina of Galba,
which, under the later emperors, had its headquarters here. About 540
Leon fell into the hands of the Gothic king Leovigild, and in 717 it
capitulated to the Moors. Retaken about 742, it ultimately, in the
beginning of the 10th century, became the capital of the kingdom of Leon
(see SPAIN: _History_). About 996 it was taken by Almansur, but on his
death soon afterwards it reverted to the Spaniards. It was the seat of
several ecclesiastical councils, the first of which was held under
Alphonso V. in 1012 and the last in 1288.
LEONARDO DA VINCI (1452-1519), the great Italian painter, sculptor,
architect, musician, mechanician, engineer and natural philosopher, was
the son of a Florentine lawyer, born out of wedlock by a mother in a
humble station, variously described as a peasant and as of gentle birth.
The place of his birth was Vinci, a _castello_ or fortified hill village
in the Florentine territory near Empoli, from which his father's family
derived its name. The Christian name of the father was Piero (the son of
Antonio the son of Piero the son of Guido, all of whom had been men of
law like their descendant). Leonardo's mother was called Catarina. Her
relations with Ser Piero da Vinci seem to have come to an end almost
immediately upon the birth of their son. She was soon afterwards married
to one Accattabriga di Piero del Vacca, of Vinci. Ser Piero on his part
was four times married, and had by his last two wives nine sons and two
daughters; but he had from the first acknowledged the boy Leonardo and
brought him up in his own house, principally, no doubt, at Florence. In
that city Ser Piero followed his profession with success, as notary to
many of the chief families in the city, including the Medici, and
afterwards to the signory or governing council of the state. The son
born to him before marriage grew up into a youth of shining promise. To
splendid beauty and activity of person he joined a winning charm of
temper and manners, a tact for all societies, and an aptitude for all
accomplishments. An inexhaustible intellectual energy and curiosity lay
beneath this amiable surface. Among the multifarious pursuits to which
the young Leonardo set his hand, the favourites at first were music,
drawing and modelling. His father showed some of his drawings to an
acquaintance, Andrea del Verrocchio, who at once recognized the boy's
artistic vocation, and was selected by Ser Piero to be his master.
Verrocchio, although hardly one of the great creative or inventive
forces in the art of his age at Florence, was a first-rate craftsman
alike as goldsmith, sculptor and painter, and particularly distinguished
as a teacher. In his studio Leonardo worked for several years (about
1470-1477) in the company of Lorenzo di Credi and other less celebrated
pupils. Among his contemporaries he formed special ties of friendship
with the painters Sandro Botticelli and Pietro Perugino. He had soon
learnt all that Verrocchio had to teach--more than all, if we are to
believe the oft-told tale of the figure, or figures, executed by the
pupil in the picture of Christ's Baptism designed by the master for the
monks of Vallombrosa. The work in question is now in the Academy at
Florence. According to Vasari the angel kneeling on the left, with a
drapery over the right arm, was put in by Leonardo, and when Verrocchio
saw it his sense of its superiority to his own work caused him to
forswear painting for ever after. The latter part of the story is
certainly false. The picture, originally painted in tempera, has
suffered much from later repaints in oil, rendering exact judgment
difficult. The most competent opinion inclines to acknowledge the hand
of Leonardo, not only in the face of the angel, but also in parts of the
drapery and of the landscape background. The work was probably done in
or about 1470, when Leonardo was eighteen years old. By 1472 we find him
enrolled in the lists of the painters' gild at Florence. Here he
continued to live and work for ten or eleven years longer. Up till 1477
he is still spoken of as a pupil or apprentice of Verrocchio; but in
that year he seems to have been taken into special favour by Lorenzo the
Magnificent, and to have worked as an independent artist under his
patronage until 1482-1483. In 1478 we find him receiving an important
commission from the signory, and in 1480 another from the monks of San
Donato in Scopeto.
Leonardo was not one of those artists of the Renaissance who sought the
means of reviving the ancient glories of art mainly in the imitation of
ancient models. The antiques of the Medici gardens seem to have had
little influence on him beyond that of generally stimulating his passion
for perfection. By his own instincts he was an exclusive student of
nature. From his earliest days he had flung himself upon that study
with an unprecedented ardour of delight and curiosity. In drawing from
life he had early found the way to unite precision with freedom and
fire--the subtlest accuracy of expressive definition with vital movement
and rhythm of line--as no draughtsman had been able to unite them
before. He was the first painter to recognize the play of light and
shade as among the most significant and attractive of the world's
appearances, the earlier schools having with one consent subordinated
light and shade to colour and outline. Nor was he a student of the
broad, usual, patent appearances only of the world; its fugitive,
fantastic, unaccustomed appearances attracted him most of all. Strange
shapes of hills and rocks, rare plants and animals, unusual faces and
figures of men, questionable smiles and expressions, whether beautiful
or grotesque, far-fetched objects and curiosities, were things he loved
to pore upon and keep in memory. Neither did he stop at mere appearances
of any kind, but, having stamped the image of things upon his brain,
went on indefatigably to probe their hidden laws and causes. He soon
satisfied himself that the artist who was content to reproduce the
external aspects of things without searching into the hidden workings of
nature behind them, was one but half equipped for his calling. Every
fresh artistic problem immediately became for him a far-reaching
scientific problem as well. The laws of light and shade, the laws of
"perspective," including optics and the physiology of the eye, the laws
of human and animal anatomy and muscular movement, those of the growth
and structure of plants and of the powers and properties of water, all
these and much more furnished food almost from the beginning to his
insatiable spirit of inquiry.
The evidence of the young man's predilections and curiosities is
contained in the legends which tell of lost works produced by him in
youth. One of these was a cartoon or monochrome painting of Adam and Eve
in tempera, and in this, besides the beauty of the figures, the infinite
truth and elaboration of the foliage and animals in the background are
celebrated in terms which bring to mind the treatment of the subject by
Albrecht Dürer in his famous engraving done thirty years later. Again, a
peasant of Vinci having in his simplicity asked Ser Piero to get a
picture painted for him on a wooden shield, the father is said to have
laughingly handed on the commission to his son, who thereupon shut
himself up with all the noxious insects and grotesque reptiles he could
find, observed and drew and dissected them assiduously, and produced at
last a picture of a dragon compounded of their various shapes and
aspects, which was so fierce and so life-like as to terrify all who saw
it. With equal research and no less effect he painted on another
occasion the head of a snaky-haired Medusa. (A picture of this subject
which long did duty at the Uffizi for Leonardo's work is in all
likelihood merely the production of some later artist to whom the
descriptions of that work have given the cue.) Lastly, Leonardo is
related to have begun work in sculpture about this time by modelling
several heads of smiling women and children.
Of certified and accepted paintings produced by the young genius,
whether during his apprentice or his independent years at Florence
(about 1470-1482), very few are extant, and the two most important are
incomplete. A small and charming strip of an oblong "Annunciation" at
the Louvre is generally accepted as his work, done soon after 1470; a
very highly wrought drawing at the Uffizi, corresponding on a larger
scale to the head of the Virgin in the same picture, seems rather to be
a copy by a later hand. This little Louvre "Annunciation" is not very
compatible in style with another and larger, much-debated "Annunciation"
at the Uffizi, which manifestly came from the workshop of Verrocchio
about 1473-1474, and which many critics claim confidently for the young
Leonardo. It may have been joint studio-work of Verrocchio and his
pupils including Leonardo, who certainly was concerned in it, since a
study for the sleeve of the angel, preserved at Christ Church, Oxford,
is unquestionably by his hand. The landscape, with its mysterious spiry
mountains and winding waters, is very Leonardesque both in this picture
and in another contemporary product of the workshop, or as some think
of Leonardo's hand, namely a very highly and coldly finished small
"Madonna with a Pink" at Munich. The likeness he is recorded to have
painted of Ginevra de' Benci used to be traditionally identified with
the fine portrait of a matron at the Pitti absurdly known as _La
Monaca_: more lately it has been recognized in a rather dull,
expressionless Verrocchiesque portrait of a young woman with a fanciful
background of pine-sprays in the Liechtenstein gallery at Vienna.
Neither attribution can be counted convincing. Several works of
sculpture, including a bas-relief at Pistoia and a small terra-cotta
model of a St John at the Victoria and Albert Museum, have also been
claimed, but without general consent, as the young master's handiwork.
Of many brilliant early drawings by him, the first that can be dated is
a study of landscape done in 1473. A magnificent silver-point head of a
Roman warrior at the British Museum was clearly done, from or for a
bas-relief, under the immediate influence of Verrocchio. A number of
studies of heads in pen or silver point, with some sketches for
Madonnas, including a charming series in the British Museum for a
"Madonna with the Cat," may belong to the same years or the first years
of his independence. A sheet with two studies of heads bears a MS. note
of 1478, saying that in one of the last months of that year he began
painting the "Two Maries." One of the two may have been a picture of the
Virgin appearing to St Bernard, which we know he was commissioned to
paint in that year for a chapel in the Palace of the Signory, but never
finished: the commission was afterwards transferred to Filippino Lippi,
whose performance is now in the Badia. One of the two heads on this
dated sheet may probably have been a study for the same St Bernard; it
was used afterwards by some follower for a St Leonard in a stiff and
vapid "Ascension of Christ," wrongly attributed to the master himself in
the Berlin Museum. A pen-drawing representing a ringleader of the Pazzi
conspiracy, Bernardo Baroncelli, hung out of a window of the Bargello
after his surrender by the sultan at Constantinople to the emissaries of
Florence, can be dated from its subject as done in December 1479. A
number of his best drawings of the next following years are preparatory
pen-studies for an altar-piece of the "Adoration of the Magi,"
undertaken early in 1481 on the commission of the monks of S. Donato at
Scopeto. The preparation in monochrome for this picture, a work of
extraordinary power both of design and physiognomical expression, is
preserved at the Uffizi, but the painting itself was never carried out,
and after Leonardo's failure to fulfil his contract Filippino Lippi had
once more to be employed in his place. Of equal or even more intense
power, though of narrower scope, is an unfinished monochrome preparation
for a St Jerome, found accidentally at Rome by Cardinal Fesch and now in
the Vatican gallery; this also seems to belong to the first Florentine
period, but is not mentioned in documents.
The tale of completed work for these twelve or fourteen years (1470-1483
or thereabouts) is thus very scanty. But it must be remembered that
Leonardo was already full of projects in mechanics, hydraulics,
architecture, and military and civil engineering, ardently feeling his
way in the work of experimental study and observation in every branch of
theoretical or applied science in which any beginning had been made in
his age, as well as in some in which he was himself the first pioneer.
He was full of new ideas concerning both the laws and the applications
of mechanical forces. His architectural and engineering projects were of
a daring which amazed even the fellow-citizens of Alberti and
Brunelleschi. History presents few figures more attractive to the mind's
eye than that of Leonardo during this period of his all-capable and
dazzling youth. He did not indeed escape calumny, and was even denounced
on a charge of immoral practices, but fully and honourably acquitted.
There was nothing about him, as there was afterwards about Michelangelo,
dark-tempered, secret or morose; he was open and genial with all men. He
has indeed praised "the self-sufficing power of solitude" in almost the
same phrase as Wordsworth, and from time to time would even in youth
seclude himself for a season in complete intellectual absorption, as
when he toiled among his bats and wasps and lizards, forgetful of rest
and food, and insensible to the noisomeness of their corruption. But we
have to picture him as anon coming out and gathering about him a
tatterdemalion company, and jesting with them until they were in fits of
laughter, for the sake of observing their burlesque physiognomies; anon
as eagerly frequenting the society of men of science and learning of an
older generation like the mathematician Benedetto Aritmetico, the
physician, geographer and astronomer Paolo Toscanelli, the famous Greek
Aristotelian Giovanni Argiropoulo; or as out-rivalling all the youth of
the city now by charm of recitation, now by skill in music and now by
feats of strength and horsemanship; or as stopping to buy caged birds in
the market that he might set them free and watch them rejoicing in their
flight; or again as standing radiant in his rose-coloured cloak and his
rich gold hair among the throng of young and old on the piazza, and
holding them spellbound while he expatiated on the great projects in art
and mechanics that were teeming in his mind. Unluckily it is to written
records and to imagination that we have to trust exclusively for our
picture. No portrait of Leonardo as he appeared during this period of
his life has come down to us.
But his far-reaching schemes and studies brought him no immediate gain,
and diverted him from the tasks by which he should have supported
himself. For all his shining power and promise he remained poor.
Probably also his exclusive belief in experimental methods, and slight
regard for mere authority whether in science or art made the
intellectual atmosphere of the Medicean circle, with its passionate
mixed cult of the classic past and of a Christianity mystically blended
and reconciled with Platonism, uncongenial to him. At any rate he was
ready to leave Florence when the chance was offered him of fixed service
at the court of Ludovico Sforza (il Moro) at Milan. Soon after that
prince had firmly established his power as nominal guardian and
protector of his nephew Gian Galeazzo but really as usurping ruler of
the state, he revived a project previously mooted for the erection of an
equestrian monument in honour of the founder of his house's greatness,
Francesco Sforza, and consulted Lorenzo dei Medici on the choice of an
artist. Lorenzo recommended the young Leonardo, who went to Milan
accordingly (at some uncertain date in or about 1483), taking as a gift
from Lorenzo and a token of his own skill a silver lute of wondrous
sweetness fashioned in the likeness of a horse's head. Hostilities were
at the moment imminent between Milan and Venice; it was doubtless on
that account that in the letter commending himself to the duke, and
setting forth his own capacities, Leonardo rests his title to patronage
chiefly on his attainments and inventions in military engineering. After
asserting these in detail under nine different heads, he speaks under a
tenth of his proficiency as a civil engineer and architect, and adds
lastly a brief paragraph with reference to what he can do in painting
and sculpture, undertaking in particular to carry out in a fitting
manner the monument to Francesco Sforza.
The first definite documentary evidence of Leonardo's employments at
Milan dates from 1487. Some biographers have supposed that the interval,
or part of it, between 1483 and that date was occupied by travels in the
East. The grounds of the supposition are some drafts occurring among his
MSS. of a letter addressed to the _diodario_ or _diwâdar_ of Syria,
lieutenant of the sultan of Babylon (Babylon meaning according to a
usage of that time Cairo). In these drafts Leonardo describes in the
first person, with sketches, a traveller's strange experiences in Egypt,
Cyprus, Constantinople, the Cilician coasts about Mount Taurus and
Armenia. He relates the rise and persecution of a prophet and preacher,
the catastrophe of a falling mountain and submergence of a great city,
followed by a general inundation, and the claim of the prophet to have
foretold these disasters; adding physical descriptions of the Euphrates
river and the marvellous effects of sunset light on the Taurus range. No
contemporary gives the least hint of Leonardo's having travelled in the
East; to the places he mentions he gives their classical and not their
current Oriental names; the catastrophes he describes are unattested
from any other source; he confuses the Taurus and the Caucasus; some of
the phenomena he mentions are repeated from Aristotle and Ptolemy; and
there seems little reason to doubt that these passages in his MSS. are
merely his drafts of a projected geographical treatise or perhaps
romance. He had a passion for geography and travellers' tales, for
descriptions of natural wonders and ruined cities, and was himself a
practised fictitious narrator and fabulist, as other passages in his
MSS. prove. Neither is the gap in the account of his doings after he
first went to the court of Milan really so complete as has been
represented. Ludovico was vehemently denounced and attacked during the
earlier years of his usurpation, especially by the partisans of his
sister-in-law Bona of Savoy, the mother of the rightful duke, young Gian
Galeazzo. To repel these attacks he employed the talents of a number of
court poets and artists, who in public recitation and pageant, in
emblematic picture and banner and device, proclaimed the wisdom and
kindness of his guardianship and the wickedness of his assailants. That
Leonardo was among the artists thus employed is proved both by notes and
projects among his MSS. and by allegoric sketches still extant. Several
such sketches are at Christ Church, Oxford: one shows a horned hag or
she-fiend urging her hounds to an attack on the state of Milan, and
baffled by the Prudence and Justice of Il Moro (all this made clear by
easily recognizable emblems). The allusion must almost certainly be to
the attempted assassination of Ludovico by agents of the duchess Bona in
1484. Again, it must have been the pestilence decimating Milan in
1484-1485 which gave occasion to the projects submitted by Leonardo to
Ludovico for breaking up the city and reconstructing it on improved
sanitary principles. To 1485-1486 also appears to belong the inception
of his elaborate though unfulfilled architectural plans for beautifying
and strengthening the _Castello_, the great stronghold of the ruling
power in the state. Very soon afterwards he must have begun work upon
his plans and models, undertaken during an acute phase of the
competition which the task had called forth between German and Italian
architects, for another momentous enterprise, the completion of Milan
cathedral. Extant records of payments made to him in connexion with
these architectural plans extend from August 1487 to May 1490: in the
upshot none of them was carried out. From the beginning of his residence
with Ludovico his combination of unprecedented mechanical ingenuity with
apt allegoric invention and courtly charm and eloquence had made him the
directing spirit in all court ceremonies and festivities. On the
occasion of the marriage of the young duke Gian Galeazzo with Isabella
of Aragon in 1487, we find Leonardo devising all the mechanical and
spectacular part of a masque of Paradise; and presently afterwards
designing a bathing pavilion of unheard-of beauty and ingenuity for the
young duchess. Meanwhile he was filling his note-books as busily as ever
with the results of his studies in statics and dynamics, in human
anatomy, geometry and the phenomena of light and shade. It is probable
that from the first he had not forgotten his great task of the Sforza
monument, with its attendant researches in equine movement and anatomy,
and in the science and art of bronze casting on a great scale. The many
existing sketches for the work (of which the chief collection is at
Windsor) cannot be distinctly dated. In 1490, the seventh year of his
residence at Milan, after some expressions of impatience on the part of
his patron, he had all but got his model ready for display on the
occasion of the marriage of Ludovico with Beatrice d'Este, but at the
last moment was dissatisfied with what he had done and determined to
begin all over again.
In the same year, 1490, Leonardo enjoyed some months of uninterrupted
mathematical and physical research in the libraries and among the
learned men of Pavia, whither he had been called to advise on some
architectural difficulties concerning the cathedral. Here also the study
of an ancient equestrian monument (the so-called _Regisole_, destroyed
in 1796) gave him fresh ideas for his Francesco Sforza. In January 1491
a double Sforza-Este marriage (Ludovico Sforza himself with Beatrice
d'Este, Alfonso d'Este with Anna Sforza the sister of Gian Galeazzo)
again called forth his powers as a masque and pageant-master. For the
next following years the ever-increasing gaiety and splendour of the
Milanese court gave him continual employment in similar kinds, including
the composition and recitation of jests, tales, fables and "prophecies"
(i.e. moral and social satires and allegories cast in the future tense);
among his MSS. occur the drafts of many such, some of them both profound
and pungent. Meanwhile he was again at work upon the monument to
Francesco Sforza, and this time to practical purpose. When ambassadors
from Austria came to Milan towards the close of 1493 to escort the
betrothed bride of their emperor Maximilian, Bianca Maria Sforza, away
on her nuptial journey, the finished colossal model, 26 ft. high, was at
last in its place for all to see in the courtyard of the Castello.
Contemporary accounts attest the magnificence of the work and the
enthusiasm it excited, but are not precise enough to enable us to judge
to which of the two main groups of extant sketches its design
corresponded. One of these groups shows the horse and rider in
relatively tranquil march, in the manner of the Gattemalata monument put
up fifty years before by Donatello at Padua and the Colleoni monument on
which Verocchio was now engaged at Venice. Another group of sketches
shows the horse galloping or rearing in violent action, in some
instances in the act of trampling a fallen enemy. Neither is it possible
to discriminate with certainty the sketches intended for the Sforza
monument from others which Leonardo may have done in view of another and
later commission for an equestrian statue, namely, that in honour of
Ludovico's great enemy, Gian Giacomo Trivulzio.
The year 1494 is a momentous one in the history of Italian politics. In
that year the long ousted and secluded prince, Gian Galeazzo, died under
circumstances more than suspicious. In that year Ludovico, now duke of
Milan in his own right, for the strengthening of his power against
Naples, first entered into those intrigues with Charles VIII. of France
which later brought upon Italy successive floods of invasion, revolution
and calamity. The same year was one of special importance in the
prodigiously versatile activities of Leonardo da Vinci. Documents show
him, among other things, planning during an absence of several months
from the city vast new engineering works for improving the irrigation
and water-ways of the Lomellina and adjacent regions of the Lombard
plain; ardently studying phenomena of storm and lightning, of river
action and of mountain structure; co-operating with his friend, Donato
Bramante, the great architect, in fresh designs for the improvement and
embellishment of the Castello at Milan; and petitioning the duke to
secure him proper payment for a Madonna lately executed with the help of
his pupil, Ambrogio de Predis, for the brotherhood of the Conception of
St Francis at Milan. (This is almost certainly the fine, slightly
altered second version of the "Virgin of the Rocks," now in the National
Gallery, London. The original and earlier version is one of the glories
of the Louvre, and shows far more of a Florentine and less of a Milanese
character than the London picture.) In the same year, 1494, or early in
the next, Leonardo, if Vasari is to be trusted, paid a visit to Florence
to take part in deliberations concerning the projected new council-hall
to be constructed in the palace of the Signory. Lastly, recent research
has proved that it was in 1494 that Leonardo got to work in earnest on
what was to prove not only by far his greatest but by far his most
expeditiously and steadily executed work in painting. This was the "Last
Supper" undertaken for the refectory of the convent church of Sta Maria
delle Grazie at Milan on the joint commission (as it would appear) of
Ludovico and of the monks themselves.
This picture, the world-famous "Cenacolo" of Leonardo, has been the
subject of much erroneous legend and much misdirected experiment. Having
through centuries undergone cruel injury, from technical imperfections
at the outset, from disastrous atmospheric conditions, from vandalism
and neglect, and most of all from unskilled repair, its remains have at
last (1904-1908) been treated with a mastery of scientific resource and
a tenderness of conscientious skill that have revived for ourselves and
for posterity a great part of its power. At the same time its true
history has been investigated and re-established. The intensity of
intellectual and manual application which Leonardo threw into the work
is proved by the fact that he finished it within four years, in spite of
all his other avocations and of those prolonged pauses of concentrated
imaginative effort and intense self-critical brooding to which we have
direct contemporary witness. He painted the picture on the wall in
tempera, not, according to the legend which sprung up within twenty
years of its completion, in oil. The tempera vehicle, perhaps including
new experimental ingredients, did not long hold firmly to its plaster
ground, nor that to the wall. Flaking and scaling set in; hard crusts of
mildew formed, dissolved and re-formed with changes of weather over both
the loosened parts and those that remained firm. Decade after decade
these processes went on, a rain of minute scales and grains falling,
according to one witness, continually from the surface, till the picture
seemed to be perishing altogether. In the 18th century attempts were
first made at restoration. They all proceeded on the false assumption,
dating from the early years of the 16th century, that the work had been
executed in oil. With oil it was accordingly at one time saturated in
hopes of reviving the colours. Other experimenters tried various
"secrets," which for the most part meant deleterious glues and
varnishes. Fortunately not very much of actual repainting was
accomplished except on some parts of the garments. The chief operations
were carried on by Bellotti in 1726, by Mazza in 1770, and by Barezzi in
1819 and the following years. None of them arrested, some actually
accelerated, the natural agencies of damp and disintegration, decay and
mildew. Yet this mere ghost of a picture, this evocation, half vanished
as it was, by a great world-genius of a mighty spiritual world-event,
remained a thing indescribably impressive. The ghost has now been
brought back to much of true life again by the skill of the most
scrupulous of all restorers, Cavaliere Cavenaghi, who, acting under the
authority of a competent commission, and after long and patient
experiment, found it possible to secure to the wall the innumerable
blistered, mildewed and half-detached flakes and scales of the original
work that yet remained, to clear the surface thus obtained of much of
the obliterating accretions due to decay and mishandling, and to bring
the whole to unity by touching tenderly in with tempera the spots and
spaces actually left bare. A further gain obtained through these
operations has been the uncovering, immediately above the main subject,
of a beautiful scheme of painted lunettes and vaultings, the lunettes
filled by Leonardo's hand with inscribed scutcheons and interlaced plait
or knot ornaments (_intrecciamenti_), the vaultings with stars on a blue
ground. The total result, if adequate steps can be taken to counteract
the effects of atmospheric change in future, will remain a splendid gain
for posterity and a happy refutation of D'Annunzio's despairing poem,
the _Death of a Masterpiece_.
Leonardo's "Last Supper," for all its injuries, became from the first,
and has ever since remained, for all Christendom the typical
representation of the scene. Goethe in his famous criticism has said all
that needs to be said of it. The painter has departed from precedent in
grouping the disciples, with their Master in the midst, along the far
side and the two ends of a long, narrow table, and in leaving the near
or service side of the table towards the spectator free. The chamber is
seen in a perfectly symmetrical perspective, its rear wall pierced by
three plain openings which admit the sense of quiet distance and mystery
from the open landscape beyond; by the central of these openings, which
is the widest of the three, the head and shoulders of the Saviour are
framed in. On His right and left are ranged the disciples in equal
numbers. The furniture and accessories of the chamber, very simply
conceived, have been rendered with scrupulous exactness and
distinctness; yet they leave to the human and dramatic elements the
absolute mastery of the scene. The serenity of the holy company has
within a moment been broken by the words of their Master, "One of you
shall betray Me." In the agitation of their consciences and affections,
the disciples have started into groups or clusters along the table,
some standing, some still remaining seated. There are four of these
groups, of three disciples each, and each group is harmoniously
interlinked by some natural connecting action with the next. Leonardo,
though no special student of the Greeks, has perfectly carried out the
Greek principle of expressive variety in particulars subordinated to
general symmetry. He has used all his acquired science of linear and
aerial perspective to create an almost complete illusion to the eye, but
an illusion that has in it nothing trivial, and in heightening our sense
of the material reality of the scene only heightens its profound
spiritual impressiveness and gravity. The results of his intensest
meditations on the psychology and the human and divine significance of
the event (on which he has left some pregnant hints in written words of
his own) are perfectly fused with those of his subtlest technical
calculations on the rhythmical balancing of groups and arrangement of
figures in space.
Of authentic preparatory studies for this work there remain but few.
There is a sheet at the Louvre of much earlier date than the first idea
or commission for this particular picture, containing some nude sketches
for the arrangement of the subject; another later and farther advanced,
but still probably anterior to the practical commission, at Venice, and
a MS. sheet of great interest at the Victoria and Albert Museum, on
which the painter has noted in writing the dramatic motives appropriate
to the several disciples. At Windsor and Milan are a few finished
studies in red chalk for the heads. A highly-reputed series of
life-sized chalk drawings of the same heads, of which the greater
portion is at Weimar, consists of early copies, and is interesting
though having no just claim to originality. Scarcely less doubtful is
the celebrated unfinished and injured study of the head of Christ at the
Brera, Milan.
Leonardo's triumph with his "Last Supper" encouraged him in the hope of
proceeding now to the casting of the Sforza monument or "Great Horse,"
the model of which had stood for the last three years the admiration of
all beholders, in the Corte Vecchio of the Castello. He had formed a new
and close friendship with Luca Pacioli of Borgo San Sepolcro, the great
mathematician, whose _Summa de aritmetica_, _geometrica_, &c., he had
eagerly bought at Pavia on its first appearance, and who arrived at the
Court of Milan about the moment of the completion of the "Cenacolo."
Pacioli was equally amazed and delighted at Leonardo's two great
achievements in sculpture and painting, and still more at the genius for
mathematical, physical and anatomical research shown in the collections
of MS. notes which the master laid before him. The two began working
together on the materials for Pacioli's next book, _De divina
proportione_. Leonardo obtained Pacioli's help in calculations and
measurements for the great task of casting the bronze horse and man. But
he was soon called away by Ludovico to a different undertaking, the
completion of the interior decorations, already begun by another hand
and interrupted, of certain chambers of the Castello called the _Saletta
Negra_ and the _Sala Grande dell' Asse_, or _Sala della Torre_. When, in
the last decade of the 19th century, works of thorough architectural
investigation and repair were undertaken in that building under the
superintendence of Professor Luca Beltrami, a devoted foreign student,
Dr Paul Müller-Walde, obtained leave to scrape for traces of Leonardo's
handiwork beneath the replastered and white-washed walls and ceilings of
chambers that might be identified with these. In one small chamber there
was cleared a frieze of cupids intermingled with foliage; but in this,
after the first moments of illusion, it was only possible to acknowledge
the hand of some unknown late and lax decorator of the school,
influenced as much by Raphael as by Leonardo. In another room (_Sala del
Tesoro_) was recovered a gigantic headless figure, in all probability of
Mercury, also wrongly claimed at first for Leonardo, and afterwards, to
all appearance rightly, for Bramante. But in the great _Sala dell' Asse_
(or _della Torre_) abundant traces of Leonardo's own hand were found, in
the shape of a decoration of intricate geometrical knot or plait work
combined with natural leafage; the abstract puzzle-pattern, of a kind
in which Leonardo took peculiar pleasure, intermingling in cunning play
and contrast with a pattern of living boughs and leaves exquisitely
drawn in free and vital growth. Sufficient portions of this design were
found in good preservation to enable the whole to be accurately
restored--a process as legitimate in such a case as censurable in the
case of a figure-painting. For these and other artistic labours Leonardo
was rewarded in 1498 (ready money being with difficulty forthcoming and
his salary being long in arrears) by the gift of a suburban garden
outside the Porta Vercelli.
But again he could not get leave to complete the task in hand. He was
called away on duty as chief military engineer (_ingegnere camerale_)
with the special charge of inspecting and maintaining all the canals and
waterways of the duchy. Dangers were accumulating upon Ludovico and the
state of Milan. France had become Ludovico's enemy; and Louis XII., the
pope and Venice had formed a league to divide his principality among
them. He counted on baffling them by forming a counter league of the
principalities of northern Italy, and by raising the Turks against
Venice, and the Germans and Swiss against France. Germans and Swiss,
however, inopportunely fell to war against each other. Ludovico
travelled to Innsbruck, the better to push his interests (September
1499). In his absence Louis XII. invaded the Milanese, and the officers
left in charge of the city surrendered it without striking a blow. The
invading sovereign, going to Sta Maria delle Grazie with his retinue to
admire the renowned painting of the "Last Supper," asked if it could not
be detached from the wall and transported to France. The French
lieutenant in Milan, Gian Giacomo Trivulzio, the embittered enemy of
Ludovico, began exercising a vindictive tyranny over the city which had
so long accepted the sway of the usurper. Great artists were usually
exempt from the consequences of political revolutions, and Trivulzio,
now or later, commissioned Leonardo to design an equestrian monument to
himself. Leonardo, having remained unmolested at Milan for two months
under the new régime, but knowing that Ludovico was preparing a great
stroke for the re-establishment of his power, and that fresh convulsions
must ensue, thought it best to provide for his own security. In December
he left Milan with his friend Luca Pacioli, having first sent some of
his modest savings to Florence for investment. His intention was to
watch events. They took a turn which made him a stranger to Milan for
the next seven years. Ludovico, at the head of an army of Swiss
mercenaries, returned victoriously in February 1500, and was welcomed by
a population disgusted with the oppression of the invaders. But in April
he was once more overthrown by the French in a battle fought at Novara,
his Swiss clamouring at the last moment for their overdue pay, and
treacherously refusing to fight against a force of their own countrymen
led by La Trémouille. Ludovico was taken prisoner and carried to France;
the city, which had been strictly spared on the first entry of Louis
XII., was entered and sacked; and the model of Leonardo's great statue
made a butt (as eye witnesses tell) for Gascon archers. Two years later
we find the duke Ercole of Ferrara begging the French king's lieutenant
in Milan to let him have the model, injured as it was, for the adornment
of his own city; but nothing came of the petition, and within a short
time it seems to have been totally broken up.
Thus, of Leonardo's sixteen years' work at Milan (1483-1499) the results
actually remaining are as follows: The Louvre "Virgin of the Rocks"
possibly, i.e. as to its execution; the conception and style are
essentially Florentine, carried out by Leonardo to a point of intense
and almost glittering finish, of quintessential, almost overstrained,
refinement in design and expression, and invested with a new element of
romance by the landscape in which the scene is set--a strange watered
country of basaltic caves and arches, with the lights and shadows
striking sharply and yet mysteriously among rocks, some upright, some
jutting, some pendent, all tufted here and there with exquisite growths
of shrub and flower. The National Gallery "Virgin of the Rocks"
certainly, with help from Ambrogio de Predis; in this the Florentine
character of the original is modified by an admixture of Milanese
elements, the tendency to harshness and over-elaboration of detail
softened, the strained action of the angel's pointing hand altogether
dropped, while in many places pupils' work seems recognizable beside
that of the master. The "Last Supper" of Sta Maria delle Grazie, his
masterpiece; as to its history and present condition enough has been
said. The decorations of the ceiling of the Sala della Torre in the
Castello. Other paintings done by him at Milan are mentioned, and
attempts have been made to identify them with works still existing. He
is known to have painted portraits of two of the king's mistresses,
Cecilia Gallerani and Lucrezia Crivelli. Cecilia Gallerani used to be
identified as a lady with ringlets and a lute, depicted in a portrait at
Milan, now rightly assigned to Bartolommeo Veneto. More lately she has
by some been conjecturally recognized in a doubtful, though
Leonardesque, portrait of a lady with a weasel in the Czartoryski
collection at Prague. Lucrezia Crivelli has, with no better reason, been
identified with the famous "Belle Ferronnière" (a mere misnomer, caught
from the true name of another portrait which used to hang near it) at
the Louvre; this last is either a genuine Milanese portrait by Leonardo
himself or an extraordinarily fine work of his pupil Boltraffio. Strong
claims have also been made on behalf of a fine profile portrait
resembling Beatrice d'Este in the Ambrosiana; but this the best judges
are agreed in regarding as a work, done in a lucky hour, of Ambrogio de
Predis. A portrait of a musician in the same gallery is in like manner
contested between the master and the pupil. Mention is made of a
"Nativity" painted for and sent to the emperor Maximilian, and also
apparently of some picture painted for Matthias Corvinus, king of
Hungary; both are lost or at least unidentified. The painters especially
recorded as Leonardo's immediate pupils during this part of his life at
Milan are the two before mentioned, Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio and
Ambrogio Preda or de Predis, with Marco d'Oggionno and Andrea Salai, the
last apparently less a fully-trained painter than a studio assistant and
personal attendant, devotedly attached and faithful in both capacities.
Leonardo's own native Florentine manner had at first been not a little
modified by that of the Milanese school as he found it represented in
the works of such men as Bramantino, Borgognone and Zenale; but his
genius had in its turn reacted far more strongly upon the younger
members of the school, and exercised, now or later, a transforming and
dominating influence not only upon his immediate pupils, but upon men
like Luini, Giampetrino, Bazzi, Cesare da Sesto and indeed the whole
Lombard school in the early 15th century. Of sculpture done by him
during this period we have no remains, only the tragically tantalizing
history of the Sforza monument. Of drawings there are very many,
including few only for the "Last Supper," many for the Sforza monument,
as well as the multitude of sketches, scientific and other, which we
find intermingled among the vast body of his miscellaneous MSS., notes
and records. In mechanical, scientific and theoretical studies of all
kinds it was a period, as these MSS. attest, of extraordinary activity
and self-development. At Pavia in 1494 we find him taking up literary
and grammatical studies, both in Latin and the vernacular; the former,
no doubt, in order the more easily to read those among the ancients who
had laboured in the fields that were his own, as Euclid, Galen, Celsus,
Ptolemy, Pliny, Vitruvius and, above all, Archimedes; the latter with a
growing hope of some day getting into proper form and order the mass of
materials he was daily accumulating for treatises on all his manifold
subjects of enquiry. He had been much helped by his opportunities of
intercourse with the great architects, engineers and mathematicians who
frequented the court of Milan--Bramante, Alberghetti, Andrea di Ferrara,
Pietro Monti, Fazio Cardano and, above all, Luca Pacioli. The knowledge
of Leonardo's position among and familiarity with such men early helped
to spread the idea that he had been at the head of a regularly
constituted academy of arts and sciences at Milan. The occurrence of the
words "Achademia Leonardi Vinci" on certain engravings, done after his
drawings, of geometric "knots" or puzzle-patterns (things for which we
have already learned his partiality), helped to give currency to this
impression not only in Italy but in the North, where the same
engravings were copied by Albrecht Dürer. The whole notion has been
proved mistaken. There existed no such academy at Milan, with Leonardo
as president. The academies of the day represented the prevailing
intellectual tendency of Renaissance humanism, namely, an absorbing
enthusiasm for classic letters and for the transcendental speculations
of Platonic and neo-Platonic mysticism, not unmixed with the traditions
and practice of medieval alchemy, astrology and necromantics. For these
last pursuits Leonardo had nothing but contempt. His many-sided and
far-reaching studies in experimental science were mainly his own,
conceived and carried out long in advance of his time, and in communion
with only such more or less isolated spirits as were advancing along one
or another of the same paths of knowledge. He learnt indeed on these
lines eagerly wherever he could, and in learning imparted knowledge to
others. But he had no school in any proper sense except his studio, and
his only scholars were those who painted there. Of these one or two, as
we have evidence, tried their hands at engraving; among their engravings
were these "knots," which, being things of use for decorative craftsmen
to copy, were inscribed for identification, and perhaps for protection,
as coming from the Achademia Leonardi Vinci; a trifling matter
altogether, and quite unfit to sustain the elaborate structure of
conjecture which has been built on it.
To return to the master: when he and Luca Pacioli left Milan in December
1499, their destination was Venice. They made a brief stay at Mantua,
where Leonardo was graciously received by the duchess Isabella Gonzaga,
the most cultured of the many cultured great ladies of her time, whose
portrait he promised to paint on a future day; meantime he made the fine
chalk drawing of her now at the Louvre. Arrived at Venice, he seems to
have occupied himself chiefly with studies in mathematics and
cosmography. In April the friends heard of the second and final
overthrow of Ludovico il Moro, and at that news, giving up all idea of a
return to Milan, moved on to Florence, which they found depressed both
by internal troubles and by the protraction of the indecisive and
inglorious war with Pisa. Here Leonardo undertook to paint an
altar-piece for the Church of the Annunziata, Filippino Lippi, who had
already received the commission, courteously retiring from it in his
favour. A year passed by, and no progress had been made with the
painting. Questions of physical geography and engineering engrossed him
as much as ever. He writes to correspondents making enquiries about the
tides in the Euxine and Caspian Seas. He reports for the information of
the _Arte de' Mercanti_ on the precautions to be taken against a
threatening landslip on the hill of S. Salvatore dell' Osservanza. He
submits drawings and models for the canalization and control of the
waters of the Arno, and propounds, with compulsive eloquence and
conviction, a scheme for transporting the Baptistery of St John, the
"bel San Giovanni" of Dante, to another part of the city, and elevating
it on a stately basement of marble. Meantime the Servite brothers of the
Annunziata were growing impatient for the completion of their
altar-piece. In April 1501 Leonardo had only finished the cartoon, and
this all Florence flocked to see and admire. Isabella Gonzaga, who
cherished the hope that he might be induced permanently to attach
himself to the court of Mantua, wrote about this time to ask news of
him, and to beg for a painting from him for her study, already adorned
with masterpieces by the first hands of Italy, or at least for a "small
Madonna, devout and sweet as is natural to him." In reply her
correspondent says that the master is wholly taken up with geometry and
very impatient of the brush, but at the same time tells her all about
his just completed cartoon for the Annunziata. The subject was the
Virgin seated in the lap of St Anne, bending forward to hold her child
who had half escaped from her embrace to play with a lamb upon the
ground. The description answers exactly to the composition of the
celebrated picture of the Virgin and St Anne at the Louvre. A cartoon of
this composition in the Esterhazy collection at Vienna is held to be
only a copy, and the original cartoon must be regarded as lost. But
another of kindred though not identical motive has come down to us and
is preserved in the Diploma Gallery at the Royal Academy. In this
incomparable work St Anne, pointing upward with her left hand, smiles
with an intense look of wondering, questioning, inward sweetness into
the face of the Virgin, who in her turn smiles down upon her child as He
leans from her lap to give the blessing to the little St John standing
beside her. Evidently two different though nearly related designs had
been maturing in Leonardo's mind. A rough first sketch for the motive of
the Academy cartoon is in the British Museum; one for the motive of the
lost cartoon and of the Louvre picture is at Venice. No painting by
Leonardo from the Academy cartoon exists, but in the Ambrosiana at Milan
there is one by Luini, with the figure of St Joseph added. It remains a
matter of debate whether the Academy cartoon or that shown by Leonardo
at the Annunziata in 1501 was the earlier. The probabilities seem in
favour of the Academy cartoon. This, whether done at Milan or at
Florence, is in any case a typically perfect and harmonious example of
the master's Milanese manner; while in the other composition with the
lamb the action and attitude of the Virgin are somewhat strained, and
the original relation between her head and her mother's, lovely both in
design and expression, is lost.
In spite of the universal praise of his cartoon, Leonardo did not
persevere with the picture, and the monks of the Annunziata had to give
back the commission to Filippino Lippi, at whose death the task was
completed by Perugino. It remains uncertain whether a small Madonna with
distaff and spindle, which the correspondent of Isabella Gonzaga reports
Leonardo as having begun for one Robertet, a favourite of the king of
France, was ever finished. He painted one portrait, it is said, at this
time, that of Ginevra Benci, a kinswoman, perhaps sister, of a youth
Giovanni di Amerigo Benci, who shared his passion for cosmographical
studies; and probably began another, the famous "La Gioconda," which was
only finished four years afterwards. The gonfalionere Soderini offered
him in vain, to do with it what he would, the huge half-spoiled block of
marble out of which Michelangelo three years later wrought his "David."
Isabella Gonzaga again begged, in an autograph letter, that she might
have a painting by his hand, but her request was put off; he did her,
however, one small service by examining and reporting on some jewelled
vases, formerly the property of Lorenzo de' Medici, which had been
offered her. The importunate expectations of a masterpiece or
masterpieces in painting or sculpture, which beset him on all hands in
Florence, inclined him to take service again with some princely patron,
if possible of a genius commensurate with his own, who would give him
scope to carry out engineering schemes on a vast scale. Accordingly he
suddenly took service, in the spring of 1502, with Cesare Borgia, duke
of Valentinois, then almost within sight of the realization of his huge
ambitions, and meanwhile occupied in consolidating his recent conquests
in the Romagna. Between May 1502 and March 1503 Leonardo travelled as
chief engineer to Duke Caesar over a great part of central Italy.
Starting with a visit to Piombino, on the coast opposite Elba, he went
by way of Siena to Urbino, where he made drawings and began works; was
thence hastily summoned by way of Pesaro and Rimini to Cesena; spent two
months between there and Cesenatico, projecting and directing canal and
harbour works, and planning the restoration of the palace of Frederic
II.; thence hurriedly joined his master, momentarily besieged by enemies
at Imola; followed him probably to Sinigaglia and Perugia, through the
whirl of storms and surprises, vengeances and treasons, which marked his
course that winter, and finally, by way of Chiusi and Acquapendente, as
far as Orvieto and probably to Rome, where Caesar arrived on the 14th of
February 1503. The pope's death and Caesar's own downfall were not
destined to be long delayed. But Leonardo apparently had already had
enough of that service, and was back at Florence in March. He has left
dated notes and drawings made at most of the stations we have named,
besides a set of six large-scale maps drawn minutely with his own hand,
and including nearly the whole territory of the Maremma, Tuscany and
Umbria between the Apennines and the Tyrrhene Sea.
At Florence he was at last persuaded, on the initiative of Piero
Soderini, to undertake for his native city a work of painting as great
as that with which he had adorned Milan. This was a battle-piece to
decorate one of the walls of the new council-hall in the palace of the
signory. He chose an episode in the victory won by the generals of the
republic in 1440 over Niccolo Piccinino near a bridge at Anghiari, in
the upper valley of the Tiber. To the young Michelangelo was presently
entrusted a rival battle-piece to be painted on another wall of the same
apartment; he chose, as is well known, a surprise of the Florentine
forces in the act of bathing near Pisa. About the same time Leonardo
took part in the debate on the proper site for Michelangelo's newly
finished colossal "David," and voted in favour of the Loggia dei Lanzi,
against a majority which included Michelangelo himself. Neither
Leonardo's genius nor his noble manners could soften the rude and
taunting temper of the younger man, whose style as an artist,
nevertheless, in subjects both of tenderness and terror, underwent at
this time a profound modification from Leonardo's example.
In one of the sections of his projected _Treatise on Painting_, Leonardo
has detailed at length, and obviously from his own observation, the
pictorial aspects of a battle. His choice of subject in this instance
was certainly not made from any love of warfare or indifference to its
horrors. In his MSS. there occur almost as many trenchant sayings on
life and human affairs as on art and natural law; and of war he has
disposed in two words as a "bestial frenzy" (_pazzia bestialissima_). In
his design for the Hall of Council he set himself to depict this frenzy
at its fiercest. He chose the moment of a terrific struggle for the
colours between the opposing sides; hence the work became commonly known
as the "Battle of the Standard." Judging by the accounts of those who
saw it, and the fragmentary evidences which remain, the tumultuous
medley of men and horses, and the expressions of martial fury and
despair, must have been conceived and rendered with a mastery not less
commanding than had been the looks and gestures of bodeful sorrow and
soul's perplexity among the quiet company on the convent wall at Milan.
The place assigned to Leonardo for the preparation of his cartoon was
the Sala del Papa at Santa Maria Novella. He for once worked steadily
and unremittingly at his task. His accounts with the signory enable us
to follow its progress step by step. He had finished the cartoon in less
than two years (1504-1505), and when it was exhibited along with that of
Michelangelo, the two rival works seemed to all men a new revelation of
the powers of art, and served as a model and example of the students of
that generation, as the frescoes of Masaccio in the Carmine had served
to those of two generations earlier. The young Raphael, whose
incomparable instinct for rhythmical design had been trained hitherto on
subjects of holy quietude and rapt contemplation according to the
traditions of Umbrian art, learnt from Leonardo's example to apply the
same instinct to themes of violent action and strife. From the same
example Fra Bartolommeo and a crowd of other Florentine painters of the
rising or risen generation took in like manner a new impulse. The master
lost no time in proceeding to the execution of his design upon the mural
surface; this time he had devised a technical method of which, after a
preliminary trial in the Sala del Papa, he regarded the success as
certain; the colours, whether tempera or other remains in doubt, were to
be laid on a specially prepared ground, and then both colours and ground
made secure upon the wall by the application of heat. When the central
group was done the heat was applied, but it was found to take effect
unequally; the colours in the upper part ran or scaled from the wall,
and the result was a failure more or less complete. The unfinished and
decayed painting remained for some fifty years on the wall, but after
1560 was covered over with new frescoes by Vasari. The cartoon did not
last so long. After doing its work as the most inspiring of all examples
for students it seems to have been cut up. When Leonardo left Italy for
good in 1516 he is recorded to have left "the greater part of it" in
deposit at the hospital of S. Maria Nuova, where he was accustomed also
to deposit his moneys, and whence it seems before long to have
disappeared. Our only existing memorials of the great work are a number
of small pen-studies of fighting men and horses, three splendid studies
in red chalk at Budapest for heads in the principal group, one head at
Oxford copied by a contemporary of the size of the original cartoon
(above life); a tiny sketch, also at Oxford, by Raphael after the
principal group; an engraving done by Zacchia of Lucca in 1558 not after
the original but after a copy; a 16th-century Flemish drawing of the
principal group, and another, splendidly spirited, by Rubens, both
copies of copies; with Edelinck's fine engraving after the Rubens
drawing.
During these years, 1503-1506, Leonardo also resumed (if it is true that
he had already begun it before his travels with Cesare Borgia) the
portrait of Madonna Lisa, the Neapolitan wife of Zanobi del Giocondo,
and finished it to the last pitch of his powers. In this lady he had
found a sitter whose face and smile possessed in a singular degree the
haunting, enigmatic charm in which he delighted. He worked, it is said,
at her portrait during some portion of four successive years, causing
music to be played during the sittings that the rapt expression might
not fade from off her countenance. The picture was bought afterwards by
Francis I. for four thousand gold florins, and is now one of the glories
of the Louvre. The richness of colouring on which Vasari expatiates has
indeed flown, partly from injury, partly because in striving for effects
of light and shade the painter was accustomed to model his figures on a
dark ground, and in this as in his other oil-pictures the ground has to
a large extent come through. Nevertheless, in its dimmed and blackened
state, the portrait casts an irresistible spell alike by subtlety of
expression, by refinement and precision of drawing, and by the romantic
invention of its background. It has been the theme of endless critical
rhapsodies, among which that of Pater is perhaps the most imaginative as
it is the best known.
In the spring of 1506 Leonardo, moved perhaps by chagrin at the failure
of his work in the Hall of Council, accepted a pressing invitation to
Milan, from Charles d'Amboise, Maréchal de Chaumont, the lieutenant of
the French king in Lombardy. The leave of absence granted to him by the
signory on the request of the French viceroy was for three months only.
The period was several times extended, at first grudgingly, Soderini
complaining that Leonardo had treated the republic ill in the matter of
the battle picture; whereupon the painter honourably offered to refund
the money paid, an offer which the signory as honourably refused. Louis
XII. sent messages urgently desiring that Leonardo should await his own
arrival in Milan, having seen a small Madonna by him in France (probably
that painted for Robertet) and hoping to obtain from him works of the
same class and perhaps a portrait. The king arrived in May 1507, and
soon afterwards Leonardo's services were formally and amicably
transferred from the signory of Florence to Louis, who gave him the
title of painter and engineer in ordinary. In September of the same year
troublesome private affairs called him to Florence. His father had died
in 1504, apparently intestate. After his death Leonardo experienced
unkindness from his seven half-brothers, Ser Piero's legitimate sons.
They were all much younger than himself. One of them, who followed his
father's profession, made himself the champion of the others in
disputing Leonardo's claim to his share, first in the paternal
inheritance, and then in that which had been left to be divided between
the brothers and sisters by an uncle. The litigation that ensued dragged
on for several years, and forced upon Leonardo frequent visits to
Florence and interruptions of his work at Milan, in spite of pressing
letters to the authorities of the republic from Charles d'Amboise, from
the French king himself, and from others of his powerful friends and
patrons, begging that the proceedings might be accelerated. There are
traces of work done during these intervals of compulsory residence at
Florence. A sheet of sketches drawn there in 1508 shows the beginning of
a Madonna now lost except in the form of copies, one of which (known as
the "Madonna Litta") is at St Petersburg, another in the Poldi-Pezzoli
Museum at Milan. A letter from Leonardo to Charles d'Amboise in 1511,
announcing the end of his law troubles, speaks of two Madonnas of
different sizes that he means to bring with him to Milan. One was no
doubt that just mentioned; can the other have been the Louvre "Virgin
with St Anne and St John," now at last completed from the cartoon
exhibited in 1501? Meantime the master's main home and business were at
Milan. Few works of painting and none of sculpture (unless the
unfulfilled commission for the Trivulzio monument belongs to this time)
are recorded as occupying him during the seven years of his second
residence in that city (1506-1513). He had attached to himself a new and
devoted young friend and pupil of noble birth, Francesco Melzi. At the
villa of the Melzi family at Vaprio, where Leonardo was a frequent
visitor, a colossal Madonna on one of the walls is traditionally
ascribed to him, but is rather the work of Sodoma or of Melzi himself
working under the master's eye. Another painter in the service of the
French king, Jehan Perréal or Jehan de Paris, visited Milan, and
consultations on technical points were held between him and Leonardo.
But Leonardo's chief practical employments were evidently on the
continuation of his great hydraulic and irrigation works in Lombardy.
His old trivial office of pageant-master and inventor of scientific toys
was revived on the occasion of Louis XII.'s triumphal entry after the
victory of Agnadello in 1509, and gave intense delight to the French
retinue of the king. He was consulted on the construction of new
choir-stalls for the cathedral. He laboured in the natural sciences as
ardently as ever, especially at anatomy in company with the famous
professor of Pavia, Marcantonio della Torre. To about this time, when he
was approaching his sixtieth year, may belong the noble portrait-drawing
of himself in red chalk at Turin. He looks too old for his years, but
quite unbroken; the character of a veteran sage has fully imprinted
itself on his countenance; the features are grand, clear and deeply
lined, the mouth firmly set and almost stern, the eyes strong and intent
beneath their bushy eyebrows, the hair flows untrimmed over his
shoulders and commingles with a majestic beard.
Returning to Milan with his law-suits ended in 1511, Leonardo might have
looked forward to an old age of contented labour, the chief task of
which, had he had his will, would undoubtedly have been to put in order
the vast mass of observations and speculations accumulated in his
note-books, and to prepare some of them for publication. But as his star
seemed rising that of his royal protector declined. The hold of the
French on Lombardy was rudely shaken by hostile political powers, then
confirmed again for a while by the victories of Gaston de Foix, and
finally destroyed by the battle in which that hero fell under the walls
of Ravenna. In June 1512 a coalition between Spain, Venice and the pope
re-established the Sforza dynasty in power at Milan in the person of
Ludovico's son Massimiliano. This prince must have been familiar with
Leonardo as a child, but perhaps resented the ready transfer of his
allegiance to the French, and at any rate gave him no employment. Within
a few months the ageing master uprooted himself from Milan, and moved
with his chattels and retinue of pupils to Rome, into the service of the
house that first befriended him, the Medici. The vast enterprises of
Pope Julius II. had already made Rome the chief seat and centre of
Italian art. The accession of Giulio de' Medici in 1513 under the title
of Leo X. raised on all hands hopes of still ampler and more sympathetic
patronage. Leonardo's special friend at the papal court was the pope's
youngest brother, Giuliano de' Medici, a youth who combined dissipated
habits with thoughtful culture and a genuine interest in arts and
sciences. By his influence Leonardo and his train were accommodated with
apartments in the Belvedere of the Vatican. But the conditions of the
time and place proved adverse. The young generation held the field.
Michelangelo and Raphael, who had both, as we have seen, risen to
greatness partly on Leonardo's shoulders, were fresh from the glory of
their great achievements in the Sistine Chapel and the Stanze. Their
rival factions hated each other, but both, especially the faction of
Michelangelo, turned bitterly against the veteran newcomer. The pope,
indeed, is said to have been delighted with Leonardo's minor experiments
and ingenuities in science, and especially by a kind of zoological toys
which he had invented by way of pastime, as well as mechanical tricks
played upon living animals. But for the master's graver researches and
projects he cared little, and was far more interested in the dreams of
astrologers and alchemists. When Leonardo, having received a commission
for a picture, was found distilling for himself a new medium of oils and
herbs before he had begun the design, the pope was convinced, not quite
unreasonably, that nothing serious would come of it. The only paintings
positively recorded as done by him at Rome are two small panels for an
official of the papal court, one of a child, the other of a Madonna,
both now lost or unrecognized. To this time may also belong a lost Leda,
standing upright with the god in swan's guise at her side and the four
children near their feet. This picture was at Fontainebleau in the 16th
century and is known from several copies, the finest of them at the
Borghese gallery, as well as from one or two preliminary sketches by the
master himself and a small sketch copy by Raphael. A portrait of a
Florentine lady, said to have been painted for Giuliano de' Medici and
seen afterwards in France, may also have been done at Rome; or may what
we learn of this be only a confused account of the Monna Lisa? Tradition
ascribes to Leonardo an attractive fresco of a Madonna with a donor in
the convent of St Onofrio, but this seems to be clearly the work of
Boltraffio. The only engineering works we hear of at this time are some
on the harbour and defences of Cività Vecchia. On the whole the master
in these Roman days found himself slighted for the first and only time
in his life. He was, moreover, plagued by insubordination and malignity
on the part of two German assistant craftsmen lodged in his apartments.
Charges of impiety and body-snatching laid by these men in connexion
with his anatomical studies caused the favour of the pope to be for a
time withdrawn. After a stay of less than two years, Leonardo left Rome
under the following circumstances. Louis XII. of France had died in the
last days of 1514. His young and brilliant successor, Francis I.,
surprised Europe by making a sudden dash at the head of an army across
the Alps to vindicate his rights in Italy. After much hesitation Leo X.
in the summer of 1515 ordered Giuliano de' Medici, as gonfalonier of the
Church, to lead a papal force into the Emilia and watch the movements of
the invader. Leonardo accompanied his protector on the march, and
remained with the headquarters of the papal army at Piacenza when
Giuliano fell ill and retired to Florence. After the battle of Marignano
it was arranged that Francis and the pope should meet in December at
Bologna. The pope, travelling by way of Florence and discussing there
the great new scheme of the Laurentian library, entertained the idea of
giving the commission to Leonardo; but Michelangelo came in hot haste
from Rome and succeeded in securing it for himself. As the time for the
meeting of the potentates at Bologna drew near, Leonardo proceeded
thither from Piacenza, and in due course was presented to the king.
Between the brilliant young sovereign and the grand old sage an
immediate and strong sympathy sprang up; Leonardo accompanied Francis on
his homeward march as far as Milan, and there determined to accept the
royal invitation to France, where a new home was offered him with every
assurance of honour and regard.
The remaining two and a half years of Leonardo's life were spent at the
Castle of Cloux near Amboise, which was assigned, with a handsome
pension, to his use. The court came often to Amboise, and the king
delighted in his company, declaring his knowledge both of the fine arts
and of philosophy to be beyond those of all mortal men. In the spring of
1518 Leonardo had occasion to exercise his old talents as a
festival-master when the dauphin was christened and a Medici-Bourbon
marriage celebrated. He drew the designs for a new palace at Amboise,
and was much engaged with the project of a great canal to connect the
Loire and Saône. An ingenious attempt has been made to prove, in the
absence of records, that the famous spiral staircase at Blois was also
of his designing.
Among his visitors was a fellow-countryman, Cardinal Louis of Aragon,
whose secretary has left an account of the day. Leonardo, it seems, was
suffering from some form of slight paralysis which impaired his power of
hand. But he showed the cardinal three pictures, the portrait of a
Florentine lady done for Giuliano de' Medici (the Gioconda?), the Virgin
in the lap of St Anne (the Louvre picture; finished at Florence or Milan
1507-1513?), and a youthful John the Baptist. The last, which may have
been done since he settled in France, is the darkened and partly
repainted, but still powerful and haunting half-length figure in the
Louvre, with the smile of inward ravishment and the prophetic finger
beckoning skyward like that of St Anne in the Academy cartoon. Of the
"Pomona" mentioned by Lomazzo as a work of the Amboise time his visitor
says nothing, nor yet of the Louvre "Bacchus," which tradition ascribes
to Leonardo but which is clearly pupil's work. Besides pictures, the
master seems also to have shown and explained to his visitors some of
his vast store of notes and observations on anatomy and physics. He kept
hoping to get some order among his papers, the accumulation of more than
forty years, and perhaps to give the world some portion of the studies
they contained. But his strength was nearly exhausted. On Easter Eve
1519, feeling that the end was near, he made his will. It made
provision, as became a great servant of the most Christian king, for
masses to be said and candles to be offered in three different churches
of Amboise, first among them that of St Florentin, where he desired to
be buried, as well as for sixty poor men to serve as torch-bearers at
his funeral. Vasari babbles of a death-bed conversion and repentance.
But Leonardo had never been either a friend or an enemy of the Church.
Sometimes, indeed, he denounces fiercely enough the arts and pretensions
of priests; but no one has embodied with such profound spiritual insight
some of the most vital moments of the Christian story. His insatiable
researches into natural fact brought upon him among the vulgar some
suspicion of practising those magic arts which of all things he scouted
and despised. The bent of his mind was all towards the teachings of
experience and against those of authority, and laws of nature certainly
occupied far more of his thoughts than dogmas of religion; but when he
mentions these it is with respect as throwing light on the truth of
things from a side which was not his own. His conformity at the end had
in it nothing contradictory of his past. He received the sacraments of
the Church and died on the 2nd of May 1519. King Francis, then at his
court of St Germain-en-Laye, is said to have wept for the loss of such a
servant; that he was present beside the death-bed and held the dying
painter in his arms is a familiar but an untrue tale. After a temporary
sepulture elsewhere his remains were transported on the 12th of August
to the cloister of St Florentin according to his wish. He left all his
MSS. and apparently all the contents of his studio, with other gifts, to
the devoted Melzi, whom he named executor; to Salai and to his servant
Battista Villanis a half each of his vineyard outside Milan; gifts of
money and clothes to his maid Maturina; one of money to the poor of the
hospital in Amboise; and to his unbrotherly half-brothers a sum of four
hundred ducats lying to his credit at Florence.
History tells of no man gifted in the same degree as Leonardo was at
once for art and science. In art he was an inheritor and perfecter, born
in a day of great and many-sided endeavours on which he put the crown,
surpassing both predecessors and contemporaries. In science, on the
other hand, he was a pioneer, working wholly for the future, and in
great part alone. That the two stupendous gifts should in some degree
neutralize each other was inevitable. No imaginable strength of any
single man would have sufficed to carry out a hundredth part of what
Leonardo essayed. The mere attempt to conquer the kingdom of light and
shade for the art of painting was destined to tax the skill of
generations, and is perhaps not wholly and finally accomplished yet.
Leonardo sought to achieve that conquest and at the same time to carry
the old Florentine excellences of linear drawing and psychological
expression to a perfection of which other men had not dreamed. The
result, though marvellous in quality, is in quantity lamentably meagre.
Knowing and doing allured him equally, and in art, which consists in
doing, his efforts were often paralysed by his strained desire to know.
The thirst for knowledge had first been aroused in him by the desire of
perfecting the images of beauty and power which it was his business to
create.
Thence there grew upon him the passion of knowledge for its own sake. In
the splendid balance of his nature the Virgilian longing, _rerum
cognoscere causas_, could never indeed wholly silence the call to
exercise his active powers. But the powers he cared most to exercise
ceased by degree to be those of imaginative creation, and came to be
those of turning to practical human use the mastery which his studies
had taught him over the forces of nature. In science he was the first
among modern men to set himself most of those problems which unnumbered
searchers of later generations have laboured severally or in concert to
solve. Florence had had other sons of comprehensive genius, artistic and
mechanical, Leon Battista Alberti perhaps the chief. But the more the
range and character of Leonardo's studies becomes ascertained the more
his greatness dwarfs them all. A hundred years before Bacon, say those
who can judge best, he showed a firmer grasp of the principles of
experimental science than Bacon showed, fortified by a far wider range
of actual experiment and observation. Not in his actual conclusions,
though many of these point with surprising accuracy in the direction of
truths established by later generations, but in the soundness, the
wisdom, the tenacity of his methods lies his great title to glory. Had
the Catholic reaction not fatally discouraged the pursuit of the natural
sciences in Italy, had Leonardo even left behind him any one with zeal
and knowledge enough to extract from the mass of his MSS. some portion
of his labours in those sciences and give them to the world, an
incalculable impulse would have been given to all those enquiries by
which mankind has since been striving to understand the laws of its
being and control the conditions of its environment,--to mathematics and
astronomy, to mechanics, hydraulics, and physics generally, to geology,
geography, and cosmology, to anatomy and the sciences of life. As it
was, these studies of Leonardo--"studies intense of strong and stern
delight"--seemed to his trivial followers and biographers merely his
whims and fancies, _ghiribizzi_, things to be spoken of slightingly and
with apology. The MSS., with the single exception of some of those
relating to painting, lay unheeded and undivulged until the present
generation; and it is only now that the true range of Leonardo's powers
is beginning to be fully discerned.
So much for the intellectual side of Leonardo's character and career. As
a moral being we are less able to discern what he was like. The man who
carried in his brain so many images of subtle beauty, as well as so much
of the hidden science of the future, must have lived spiritually, in the
main, alone. Of things communicable he was at the same time, as we have
said, communicative--a genial companion, a generous and loyal friend,
ready and eloquent of discourse, impressing all with whom he was brought
in contact by the power and the charm of genius, and inspiring fervent
devotion and attachment in friends and pupils. We see him living on
terms of constant affection with his father, and in disputes with his
brothers not the aggressor but the sufferer from aggression. We see him
full of tenderness to animals, a virtue not common in Italy in spite of
the example of St Francis; open-handed in giving, not eager in
getting--"poor," he says, "is the man of many wants"; not prone to
resentment--"the best shield against injustice is to double the cloak of
long-suffering"; zealous in labour above all men--"as a day well spent
gives joyful sleep, so does a life well spent give joyful death." With
these instincts and maxims, and with his strength, granting it almost
more than human, spent ever tunnelling in abstruse mines of knowledge,
his moral experience is not likely to have been deeply troubled. In
religion, he regarded the faith of his age and country at least with
imaginative sympathy and intellectual acquiescence, if no more. On the
political storms which shook his country and drove him from one
employment to another, he seems to have looked not with the passionate
participation of a Dante or a Michelangelo but rather with the serene
detachment of a Goethe. In matters of the heart, if any consoling or any
disturbing passion played a great part in his life, we do not know it;
we know only (apart from a few passing shadows cast by calumny and envy)
of affectionate and dignified relations with friends, patrons and
pupils, of public and private regard mixed in the days of his youth with
dazzled admiration, and in those of his age with something of
reverential awe.
_The Drawings of Leonardo._--These are among the greatest treasures
ever given to the world by the human spirit expressing itself in pen
and pencil. Apart from the many hundreds of illustrative pen-sketches
scattered through his autobiographic and scientific MSS., the
principal collection is at Windsor Castle (partly derived from the
Arundel collection); others of importance are in the British Museum;
at Christ Church, Oxford; in the Louvre, at Chantilly, in the Uffizi,
the Venice Academy, the Royal Library at Turin, the Museum of
Budapest, and in the collections of M. Bonnat, Mrs Mond, and Captain
Holford. Leonardo's chief implements were pen, silver-point, and red
and black chalk (red chalk especially). In silver-point there are many
beautiful drawings of his earlier time, and some of his later; but of
the charming heads of women and young men in this material attributed
to him in various collections, comparatively few are his own work, the
majority being drawings in his spirit by his pupils Ambrogio Preda or
Boltraffio. Leonardo appears to have been left-handed. There is some
doubt on the point; but a contemporary and intimate friend, Luca
Pacioli, speaks of his "ineffable left hand"; all the best of his
drawings are shaded downward from left to right, which would be the
readiest way for a left-handed man; and his habitual eccentric
practice of writing from right to left is much more likely to have
been due to natural left-handedness than to any desire of mystery or
concealment. A full critical discussion and catalogue of the extant
drawings of Leonardo are to be found in Berenson's _Drawings of the
Florentine Painters_.
_The Writings of Leonardo._--The only printed book bearing Leonardo's
name until the recent issues of transcripts from his MSS. was the
celebrated _Treatise on Painting_ (_Trattato della pittura, Traité de
la peinture_). This consists of brief didactic chapters, or more
properly paragraphs, of practical direction or critical remark on all
the branches and conditions of a painter's practice. The original MS.
draft of Leonardo has been lost, though a great number of notes for it
are scattered through the various extant volumes of his MSS. The work
has been printed in two different forms; one of these is an abridged
version consisting of 365 sections; the first edition of it was
published in Paris in 1551, by Raphael Dufresne, from a MS. which he
found in the Barberini library; the last, translated into English by
J. F. Rigaud, in London, 1877. The other is a more extended version,
in 912 sections, divided into eight books; this was printed in 1817 by
Guglielmo Manzi at Rome, from two MSS. which he had discovered in the
Vatican library; a German translation from the same MS. has been
edited by G. H. Ludwig in Eitelberger's series of _Quellenschriften
für Kunstgeschichte_ (Vienna, 1882; Stuttgart, 1885). On the history
of the book in general see Max Jordan, _Das Malerbuch des Leonardo da
Vinci_ (Leipzig, 1873). The unknown compilers of the Vatican MSS. must
have had before them much more of Leonardo's original text than is now
extant. Only about a quarter of the total number of paragraphs are
identical with passages to be found in the master's existing autograph
note-books. It is indeed doubtful whether Leonardo himself ever
completed the MS. treatise (or treatises) on painting and kindred
subjects mentioned by Fra Luca Pacioli and by Vasari, and probable
that the form and order, and perhaps some of the substance, of the
_Trattato_ as we have it was due to compilers and not to the master
himself.
In recent years a whole body of scholars and editors have been engaged
in giving to the world the texts of Leonardo's existing MSS. The
history of these is too complicated to be told here in any detail.
Francesco Melzi (d. 1570) kept the greater part of his master's
bequest together as a sacred trust as long as he lived, though even in
his time some MSS. on the art of painting seem to have passed into
other hands. But his descendants suffered the treasure to be
recklessly dispersed. The chief agents in their dispersal were the
Doctor Orazio Melzi who possessed them in the last quarter of the 16th
century; the members of a Milanese family called Mazzenta, into whose
hands they passed in Orazio Melzi's lifetime; and the sculptor Pompeo
Leoni, who at one time entertained the design of procuring their
presentation to Philip II. of Spain, and who cut up a number of the
note-books to form the great miscellaneous single volume called the
_Codice Atlantico_, now at Milan. This volume, with a large proportion
of the total number of other Leonardo MSS. then existing, passed into
the hands of a Count Arconati, who presented them to the Ambrosian
library at Milan in 1636. In the meantime the earl of Arundel had made
a vain attempt to purchase one of these volumes (the _Codice
Atlantico_?) at a great price for the king of England. Some stray
parts of the collection, including the MSS. now at Windsor, did
evidently come into Lord Arundel's possession, and the history of some
other parts can be followed; while much, it is evident, was lost for
good. In 1796 Napoleon swept away to Paris, along with the other art
treasures of Italy, the whole of the Leonardo MSS. at the Ambrosiana:
only the _Codice Atlantico_ was afterwards restored, the other volumes
remaining the property of the Institut de France. These also have had
their adventures, two of them having been stolen by Count Libri and
passed temporarily into the collection of Lord Ashburnham, whence they
were in recent years made over again to the Institute. The first
important step towards a better knowledge of the MSS. was made by the
beginning, in 1880, of the great series of publications from the MSS.
of the Institut de France undertaken by C. Ravaisson-Mollien; the next
by the publication in 1883 of Dr J. P. Richter's _Literary Works of
Leonardo da Vinci_ (see Bibliography): this work included, besides a
history and analytical index of the MSS., facsimiles of a number of
selected pages containing matter of autobiographical, artistic, or
literary interest, with transcripts and translations of their MS.
contexts. Since then much progress has been made in the publication of
the complete MSS., scientific and other, whether with adequate
critical apparatus or in the form of mere facsimile without
transliteration or comment.
A brief statement follows of the present distribution of the several
MSS. and of the form in which they are severally published:--
England.--_Windsor_: Nine MSS., chiefly on anatomy, published entire
in simple facsimile by Rouveyre (Paris, 1901); partially, with
transliterations and introduction by Piumati and Sabachnikoff (Paris,
1898, foll.); _British Museum_: one MS., miscellaneous, unpublished;
_Victoria and Albert Museum_: ten note-books bound in 3 vols.;
facsimile by Rouveyre, _Holkham_ (collection of Lord Leicester), 1
vol., on hydraulics and the action of water; published in facsimile
with transliteration and notes by Gerolamo Calvi. France.--_Institut
de France_: seventeen MSS., all published with transliteration and
notes by C. Ravaisson-Mollien (6 vols., Paris, 1880-1891).
Italy.--_Milan_, _Ambrosiana_: the _Codice Atlantico_, the huge
miscellany, of vital importance for the study of the master, put
together by Pompeo Leoni; published in facsimile, with
transliteration, by the Accademia dei Lincei (1894, foll.); _Milan_:
collection of Count Trivulzio; 1 vol., miscellaneous; published and
edited by L. Beltrami (1892); _Rome_: collection of Count Marszolini;
_Treatise on the Flight of Birds_, published and edited by Piumati and
Sabachnikoff (Paris, 1492).
BIBLIOGRAPHY.--The principal authorities are:--"Il libro di Antonio
Billi," edited from MS. by G. de Fabriazy in _Archivio Storico Ital._
ser. v. vol. 7; "Breve vita di Leonardo da Vinci, scritto da un
adnonimo del 1500" (known as the Anonimo Gaddiano), printed by G.
Milanesi in _Archivio Storico Ital._ t. xvi. (1872), translated with
notes by H. P. Horne in series published by the Unicorn Library
(1903); Paolo Giovio, "Leonardi Vincii vita," in his _Elogia_, printed
in Tiraboschi, _Storia della Lett. Ital._ t. vii. pt. 4, and in
_Classici Italiani_, vol. 314; Vasari, in his celebrated _Lives of the
Painters_ (1st ed., Florence, 1550; 2nd ed. ibid. 1568; ed. Milanesi,
with notes and supplements, 1878-1885); Sabba da Castiglione,
_Ricordi_ (Venice, 1565); G. P. Lomazzo, _Trattato dell' arte della
pittura_, &c. (Milan, 1584-1585); _Id., Idea del tempio della pittura_
(Milan, 1591); Le Père Dan, _Le Trésor ... de Fontainebleau_ (1642);
J. B. Venturi, _Essai sur les ouvrages physico-mathématiques de L. da
V._ (Paris, 1797); C. Amoretti, _Memorie storiche sulla vita, &c. di
L. da V._ (Milan, 1804), a work which laid the foundation of all
future researches; Giuseppe Bossi, _Del Cenacolo di L. da V._ (Milan,
1810); C. Fumagalli, _Scuola di Leonardo da Vinci_ (1811); Gaye,
_Carteggia d'artisti_ (1839-1841); G. Uzielli, _Ricerche intorno a L.
da V._, series 1, 2 (Florence, 1872; Rome, 1884; series 1 revised,
Turin, 1896), documentary researches of the first importance for the
study; C. L. Calvi, _Notizie dei principali professori di belle arti_
(Milan, 1869); Arsène Houssaye, _Histoire de L. de V._ (Paris, 1869
and 1876, an agreeable literary biography of the pre-critical kind);
Mrs Heaton, _Life of L. da V._ (London, 1872), a work also made
obsolete by recent research; Hermann Grothe, _L. da V. als Ingenieur
und Philosoph_ (Berlin, 1874); A. Marks, the _S. Anne of L. da V._
(London, 1882); J. P. Richter, _The Literary Works of L. da V._ (2
vols., London, 1883), this is the very important and valuable history
of and selection from the texts mentioned above under MSS.; Ch.
Ravaisson-Mollien, _Les Écrits de L. da V._ (Paris, 1881); Paul Müller
Walde, _L. da V., Lebensskizze und Forschungen_ (Munich, 1889-1890);
_Id._, "Beiträge zur Kenntniss des L. da V.," _in Jahrbuch der k.
Preussischen Kunstsammlungen_ (1897-1899), the first immature and
incomplete, the second of high value: the whole life of this writer
has been devoted to the study of L. da V., but it is uncertain whether
the vast mass of material collected by him will ever take shape or see
the light; G. Gronau, _L. da V._ (London, 1902); Bernhard Berenson,
_The Drawings of the Florentine Painters_ (London, 1903); Edmondo
Solmi, _Studi sulla filosofia naturale di L. da V._ (Modena, 1898);
_Id., Leonardo_ (Florence, 1st ed. 1900, 2nd ed. 1907; this last
edition of Solmi's work is by far the most complete and satisfactory
critical biography of the master which yet exists); A. Rosenberg, _L.
da V._, in Knackfuss's series of art biographies (Leipzig, 1898);
Gabriel Séailles, _L. da V. l'artiste et le savant_ (1st ed. 1892, 2nd
ed. 1906), a lucid and careful general estimate of great value,
especially in reference to Leonardo's relations to modern science;
Edward McCurdy, _L. da V._, in Bell's "Great Masters" series (1904 and
1907), a very sound and trustworthy summary of the master's career as
an artist; _Id., L. da V.'s Note-Books_ (1908), a selection from the
passages of chief general interest in the master's MSS., very well
chosen, arranged, and translated, with a useful history of the MSS.
prefixed, _Le Vicende del Cenacolo di L. da V. nel secolo XIX._
(Milan, 1906), an official account of the later history and
vicissitudes of the "Last Supper" previous to its final repair; Luca
Beltrami, _Il Castello di Milano_ (1894); _Id., L. da V. et la Sala
dell' Asse_ (1902); Id., "Il Cenacolo di Leonardo," in _Raccolta
Vinciana_ (Milan, 1908), the official account of the successful work
of repair carried out by Signor Cavenaghi in the preceding years;
Woldemar von Seidlitz, _Leonardo da Vinci, der Wendepunkt der
Renaissance_ (2 vols., 1909), a comprehensive and careful work by an
accomplished and veteran critic, inclined to give perhaps an excessive
share in the reputed works of Leonardo to a single pupil, Ambrogio
Preda. It seems needless to give references to the voluminous
discussion in newspapers and periodicals concerning the authenticity
of a wax bust of Flora acquired in 1909 for the Berlin Museum and
unfortunately ascribed to Leonardo da Vinci, its real author having
been proved by external and internal evidence to be the Englishman
Richard Cockle Lucas, and its date 1846. (S. C.)
LEONARDO OF PISA (LEONARDUS PISANUS or FIBONACCI), Italian mathematician
of the 13th century. Of his personal history few particulars are known.
His father was called Bonaccio, most probably a nickname with the
ironical meaning of "a good, stupid fellow," while to Leonardo himself
another nickname, Bigollone (dunce, blockhead), seems to have been
given. The father was secretary in one of the numerous factories erected
on the southern and eastern coasts of the Mediterranean by the warlike
and enterprising merchants of Pisa. Leonardo was educated at Bugia, and
afterwards toured the Mediterranean. In 1202 he was again in Italy and
published his great work, _Liber abaci_, which probably procured him
access to the learned and refined court of the emperor Frederick II.
Leonardo certainly was in relation with some persons belonging to that
circle when he published in 1220 another more extensive work, _De
practica geometriae_, which he dedicated to the imperial astronomer
Dominicus Hispanus. Some years afterwards (perhaps in 1228) Leonardo
dedicated to the well-known astrologer Michael Scott the second edition
of his _Liber abaci_, which was printed with Leonardo's other works by
Prince Bald. Boncompagni (Rome, 1857-1862, 2 vols.). The other works
consist of the _Practica geometriae_ and some most striking papers of
the greatest scientific importance, amongst which the _Liber
quadratorum_ may be specially signalized. It bears the notice that the
author wrote it in 1225, and in the introduction Leonardo tells us the
occasion of its being written. Dominicus had presented Leonardo to
Frederick II. The presentation was accompanied by a kind of mathematical
performance, in which Leonardo solved several hard problems proposed to
him by John of Palermo, an imperial notary, whose name is met with in
several documents dated between 1221 and 1240. The methods which
Leonardo made use of in solving those problems fill the _Liber
quadratorum_, the _Flos_, and a _Letter to Magister Theodore_. All these
treatises seem to have been written nearly at the same period, and
certainly before the publication of the second edition of the _Liber
abaci_, in which the _Liber quadratorum_ is expressly mentioned. We know
nothing of Leonardo's fate after he issued that second edition.
Leonardo's works are mainly developments of the results obtained by
his predecessors; the influences of Greek, Arabian, and Indian
mathematicians may be clearly discerned in his methods. In his
_Practica geometriae_ plain traces of the use of the Roman
_agrimensores_ are met with; in his _Liber abaci_ old Egyptian
problems reveal their origin by the reappearance of the very numbers
in which the problem is given, though one cannot guess through what
channel they came to Leonardo's knowledge. Leonardo cannot be regarded
as the inventor of that very great variety of truths for which he
mentions no earlier source.
The _Liber abaci_, which fills 459 printed pages, contains the most
perfect methods of calculating with whole numbers and with fractions,
practice, extraction of the square and cube roots, proportion, chain
rule, finding of proportional parts, averages, progressions, even
compound interest, just as in the completest mercantile arithmetics of
our days. They teach further the solution of problems leading to
equations of the first and second degree, to determinate and
indeterminate equations, not by single and double position only, but
by real algebra, proved by means of geometric constructions, and
including the use of letters as symbols for known numbers, the unknown
quantity being called _res_ and its square _census_.
The second work of Leonardo, his _Practica geometriae_ (1220) requires
readers already acquainted with Euclid's planimetry, who are able to
follow rigorous demonstrations and feel the necessity for them. Among
the contents of this book we simply mention a trigonometrical chapter,
in which the words _sinus versus arcus_ occur, the approximate
extraction of cube roots shown more at large than in the _Liber
abaci_, and a very curious problem, which nobody would search for in a
geometrical work, viz.--To find a square number remaining so after the
addition of 5. This problem evidently suggested the first question,
viz.--To find a square number which remains a square after the
addition and subtraction of 5, put to our mathematician in presence of
the emperor by John of Palermo, who, perhaps, was quite enough
Leonardo's friend to set him such problems only as he had himself
asked for. Leonardo gave as solution the numbers 11(97/144),
16(97/144), and 6(97/144),--the squares of 3(5/12), 4(1/12) and
2(7/12); and the method of finding them is given in the _Liber
quadratorum_. We observe, however, that this kind of problem was not
new. Arabian authors already had found three square numbers of equal
difference, but the difference itself had not been assigned in
proposing the question. Leonardo's method, therefore, when the
difference was a fixed condition of the problem, was necessarily very
different from the Arabian, and, in all probability, was his own
discovery. The _Flos_ of Leonardo turns on the second question set by
John of Palermo, which required the solution of the cubic equation x³
+ 2x² + 10x = 20. Leonardo, making use of fractions of the sexagesimal
scale, gives x = 1^0 22^i 7^ii 42^iii 33^iv 4^v 40^vi, after having
demonstrated, by a discussion founded on the 10th book of Euclid, that
a solution by square roots is impossible. It is much to be deplored
that Leonardo does not give the least intimation how he found his
approximative value, outrunning by this result more than three
centuries. Genocchi believes Leonardo to have been in possession of a
certain method called _regula aurea_ by H. Cardan in the 16th century,
but this is a mere hypothesis without solid foundation. In the _Flos_
equations with negative values of the unknown quantity are also to be
met with, and Leonardo perfectly understands the meaning of these
negative solutions. In the _Letter to Magister Theodore_ indeterminate
problems are chiefly worked, and Leonardo hints at his being able to
solve by a general method any problem of this kind not exceeding the
first degree.
As for the influence he exercised on posterity, it is enough to say
that Luca Pacioli, about 1500, in his celebrated _Summa_, leans so
exclusively to Leonardo's works (at that time known in manuscript
only) that he frankly acknowledges his dependence on them, and states
that wherever no other author is quoted all belongs to Leonardus
Pisanus.
_Fibonacci's series_ is a sequence of numbers such that any term is
the sum of the two preceding terms; also known as _Lamé's series_.
(M. Ca.)
LEONCAVALLO, RUGGIERO (1858- ), Italian operatic composer, was born at
Naples and educated for music at the conservatoire. After some years
spent in teaching and in ineffectual attempts to obtain the production
of more than one opera, his _Pagliacci_ was performed at Milan in 1892
with immediate success; and next year his _Medici_ was also produced
there. But neither the latter nor _Chatterton_ (1896)--both early
works--obtained any favour; and it was not till _La Bohème_ was
performed in 1897 at Venice that his talent obtained public
confirmation. Subsequent operas by Leoncavallo were _Zaza_ (1900), and
_Der Roland_ (1904). In all these operas he was his own librettist.
LEONIDAS, king of Sparta, the seventeenth of the Agiad line. He
succeeded, probably in 489 or 488 B.C., his half-brother Cleomenes,
whose daughter Gorgo he married. In 480 he was sent with about 7000 men
to hold the pass of Thermopylae against the army of Xerxes. The
smallness of the force was, according to a current story, due to the
fact that he was deliberately going to his doom, an oracle having
foretold that Sparta could be saved only by the death of one of its
kings: in reality it seems rather that the ephors supported the scheme
half-heartedly, their policy being to concentrate the Greek forces at
the Isthmus. Leonidas repulsed the frontal attacks of the Persians, but
when the Malian Ephialtes led the Persian general Hydarnes by a mountain
track to the rear of the Greeks he divided his army, himself remaining
in the pass with 300 Spartiates, 700 Thespians and 400 Thebans. Perhaps
he hoped to surround Hydarnes' force: if so, the movement failed, and
the little Greek army, attacked from both sides, was cut down to a man
save the Thebans, who are said to have surrendered. Leonidas fell in the
thickest of the fight; his head was afterwards cut off by Xerxes' order
and his body crucified. Our knowledge of the circumstances is too slight
to enable us to judge of Leonidas's strategy, but his heroism and
devotion secured him an almost unique place in the imagination not only
of his own but also of succeeding times.
See Herodotus v. 39-41, vii. 202-225, 238, ix. 10; Diodorus xi. 4-11;
Plutarch, _Apophthegm. Lacon.; de malignitate Herodoti_, 28-33;
Pausanias i. 13, iii. 3, 4; Isocrates, _Paneg._ 92; Lycurgus, _c._
_Leocr._ 110, 111; Strabo i. 10, ix. 429; Aelian, _Var. hist._ iii.
25; Cicero, _Tusc. disput._ i. 42, 49; _de Finibus_, ii. 30; Cornelius
Nepos, _Themistocles_, 3; Valerius Maximus iii. 2; Justin ii. 11. For
modern criticism on the battle of Thermopylae see G. B. Grundy, _The
Great Persian War_ (1901); G. Grote, _History of Greece_, part ii., c.
40; E. Meyer, _Geschichte des Altertums_, iii., §§ 219, 220; G.
Busolt, _Griechische Geschichte_, 2nd ed., ii. 666-688; J. B. Bury,
"The Campaign of Artemisium and Thermopylae," in _British School
Annual_, ii. 83 seq.; J. A. R. Munro, "Some Observations on the
Persian Wars, II.," in _Journal of Hellenic Studies_, xxii. 294-332.
(M. N. T.)
LEONTIASIS OSSEA, a rare disease characterized by an overgrowth of the
facial and cranial bones. The common form is that in which one or other
maxilla is affected, its size progressively increasing both regularly
and irregularly, and thus encroaching on the cavities of the orbit, the
mouth, the nose and its accessory sinuses. Exophthalmos gradually
develops, going on later to a complete loss of sight due to compression
of the optic nerve by the overgrowth of bone. There may also be
interference with the nasal respiration and with the taking of food. In
the somewhat less common form of this rare disease the overgrowth of
bone affects all the cranial bones as well as those of the face, the
senses being lost one by one and death finally resulting from cerebral
pressure. There is no treatment other than exposing the overgrown bone,
and chipping away pieces, or excising entirely where possible.
LEONTINI (mod. _Lentini_), an ancient town in the south-east of Sicily,
22 m. N.N.W. of Syracuse direct, founded by Chalcidians from Naxos in
729 B.C. It is almost the only Greek settlement not on the coast, from
which it is 6 m. distant. The site, originally held by the Sicels, was
seized by the Greeks owing to its command of the fertile plain on the
north. It was reduced to subjection in 498 B.C. by Hippocrates of Gela,
and in 476 Hieron of Syracuse established here the inhabitants of Catana
and Naxos. Later on Leontini regained its independence, but in its
efforts to retain it, the intervention of Athens was more than once
invoked. It was mainly the eloquence of Gorgias (q.v.) of Leontini which
led to the abortive Athenian expedition of 427. In 422 Syracuse
supported the oligarchs against the people and received them as
citizens, Leontini itself being forsaken. This led to renewed Athenian
intervention, at first mainly diplomatic; but the exiles of Leontini
joined the envoys of Segesta in persuading Athens to undertake the great
expedition of 415. After its failure, Leontini became subject to
Syracuse once more (see Strabo vi. 272). Its independence was guaranteed
by the treaty of 405 between Dionysius and the Carthaginians, but it
very soon lost it again. It was finally stormed by M. Claudius Marcellus
in 214 B.C. In Roman times it seems to have been of small importance. It
was destroyed by the Saracens A.D. 848, and almost totally ruined by the
earthquake of 1698. The ancient city is described by Polybius (vii. 6)
as lying in a bottom between two hills, and facing north. On the western
side of this bottom ran a river with a row of houses on its western bank
under the hill. At each end was a gate, the northern leading to the
plain, the southern, at the upper end, to Syracuse. There was an
acropolis on each side of the valley, which lies between precipitous
hills with flat tops, over which buildings had extended. The eastern
hill[1] still has considerable remains of a strongly fortified medieval
castle, in which some writers are inclined (though wrongly) to recognize
portions of Greek masonry. See G. M. Columba, in _Archeologia di
Leontinoi_ (Palermo, 1891), reprinted from _Archivio Storico Siciliano_,
xi.; P. Orsi in _Römische Mitteilungen_ (1900), 61 seq. Excavations were
made in 1899 in one of the ravines in a Sicel necropolis of the third
period; explorations in the various Greek cemeteries resulted in the
discovery of some fine bronzes, notably a fine bronze _lebes_, now in
the Berlin museum. (T. As.)
FOOTNOTE:
[1] As a fact there are two flat valleys, up both of which the modern
Lentini extends; and hence there is difficulty in fitting Polybius's
account to the site.
LEONTIUS, theological writer, born at Byzantium, flourished during the
6th century. He is variously styled BYZANTINUS, HIEROSOLYMITANUS (as an
inmate of the monastery of St Saba near Jerusalem) and SCHOLASTICUS (the
first "schoolman," as the introducer of the Aristotelian definitions
into theology; according to others, he had been an advocate, a special
meaning of the word _scholasticus_). He himself states that in his early
years he belonged to a Nestorian community. Nothing else is known of his
life; he is frequently confused with others of the same name, and it is
uncertain which of the works bearing the name Leontius are really by
him. Most scholars regard as genuine the polemical treatises _Contra
Nestorianos et Eutychianos_, _Contra Nestorianos_, _Contra
Monophysitas_, _Contra Severum_ (patriarch of Antioch); and the [Greek:
Scholia], generally called _De Sectis_. An essay _Adversus fraudes
Apollinaristarum_ and two homilies are referred to other hands, the
homilies to a Leontius, presbyter of Constantinople.
Collected works in J. P. Migne, _Patrologia Graeca_, lxxxvi.; for the
various questions connected with Leontius see F. Loops, _Das Leben und
die polemischen Werke des Leontios von Byzanz_ (Leipzig, 1887); W.
Rügamer, _Leontius von Byzanz_ (1894); V. Ermoni, _De Leontio
Byzantino_ (Paris, 1895); C. Krumbacher, _Geschichte der
byzantinischen Litteratur_ (1897); J. P. Junglas, _Leontius von
Byzanz_ (1908). For other persons of the name see Fabricius,
_Bibliotheca Graeca_ (ed. Harles), viii. 323.
LEOPARD,[1] PARD or PANTHER (_Felis pardus_), the largest spotted true
cat of the Old World, with the exception of the snow-leopard, which is,
however, inferior in point of size to the largest leopard. (See
CARNIVORA and SNOW-LEOPARD.) Leopards, known in India as _cheeta_
(_chita_), are characterized by the rosette-like form of the black spots
on the greater part of the body, and the absence of a central spot from
each rosette. Towards the head and on the limbs the spots tend to become
solid, but there is great local variation in regard to their form and
arrangement. In the Indian leopard, the true _Felis pardus_, the spots
are large and rosette-like, and the same is the case with the
long-haired Persian leopard (_F. pardus tulliana_). On the other hand
the heavily built and thick-haired Manchurian _F. p. villosa_ has more
consolidated spots. African leopards, again, to one of which the name
_F. p. leopardus_ is applicable, show a decided tendency to a
breaking-up of the spots; West African animals being much
darker-coloured than those from the east side of the continent.
Both as regards structure and habits, the leopard may be reckoned as one
of the more typical representatives of the genus _Felis_, belonging to
that section in which the hyoid bone is loosely connected with the
skull, owing to imperfect ossification of its anterior arch, and the
pupil of the eye when contracted under the influence of light is
circular, not linear as in the smaller cats.
The size of leopards varies greatly, the head and body usually measuring
from 3½ to 4½ ft. in length, and the tail from 2½ to 3 ft., but some
specimens exceed these limits, while the Somali leopard (_F. p.
nanopardus_) falls considerably short of them. The ground-colour of the
fur varies from a pale fawn to a rufous buff, graduating in the Indian
race into pure white on the under-parts and inside of the limbs.
Generally speaking, the spots on the under parts and limbs are simple
and blacker than those on the other parts of the body. The bases of the
ears behind are black, the tips buff. The upper side of the tail is
buff, spotted with broken rings like the back, its under surface white
with simple spots. The hair of the cubs is longer than that of the
adults, its ground-colour less bright, and its spots less distinct.
Perfectly black leopards, which in certain lights show the
characteristic markings on the fur, are not uncommon, and are examples
of _melanism_, occurring as individual variations, sometimes in one cub
out of a litter of which the rest are normally coloured, and therefore
not indicating a distinct race, much less a species. These are met with
chiefly in southern Asia; melanism among African leopards taking the
form of an excessive breaking-up of the spots, which finally show a
tendency to coalesce.
[Illustration: The Leopard (_Felis pardus_).]
In habits the leopard resembles the other large cat-like animals,
yielding to none in the ferocity of its disposition. It is exceedingly
quick in its movements, but seizes its prey by waiting in ambush or
stealthily approaching to within springing distance, when it suddenly
rushes upon it and tears it to ground with its powerful claws and teeth.
It preys upon almost any animal it can overcome, such as antelopes,
deer, sheep, goats, monkeys, peafowl, and has a special liking for dogs.
It not unfrequently attacks human beings in India, chiefly children and
old women, but instances have been known of a leopard becoming a regular
"man-eater." When favourable opportunities occur, it often kills many
more victims than it can devour at once, either to gratify its
propensity for killing or for the sake of their fresh blood. It
generally inhabits woody districts, and can climb trees with facility
when hunted, but usually lives on or near the ground, among rocks,
bushes and roots and low branches of large trees.
The geographical range of the leopard embraces practically all Africa,
and Asia from Palestine to China and Manchuria, inclusive of Ceylon and
the great Malay Islands as far as Java. Fossil bones and teeth,
indistinguishable from those of existing leopards, have been found in
cave-deposits of Pleistocene age in Spain, France, Germany and England.
(R. L.*; W. H. F.)
FOOTNOTE:
[1] The name (Late Lat. _leopardus_, Late Gr. [Greek: leopardos]) was
given by the ancients to an animal supposed to have been a cross
between a lion (Lat. _leo_, Gr. [Greek: leôn]) and a pard (Gr.
[Greek: pardos], Pers. _pars_) or panther. Medieval heralds made no
distinction in shape between a lion and a leopard, but marked the
difference by drawing the leopard showing the full face (see
HERALDRY: § _Beasts and Birds_).
LEOPARDI, GIACOMO, COUNT (1798-1837), Italian poet, was born at Recanati
in the March of Ancona, on the 29th of June 1798. All the circumstances
of his parentage and education conspired to foster his precocious and
sensitive genius at the expense of his physical and mental health. His
family was ancient and patrician, but so deeply embarrassed as to be
only rescued from ruin by the energy of his mother, who had taken the
control of business matters entirely into her own hands, and whose
engrossing devotion to her undertaking seems to have almost dried up the
springs of maternal tenderness. Count Monaldo Leopardi, the father, a
mere nullity in his own household, secluded himself in his extensive
library, to which his nervous, sickly and deformed son had free access,
and which absorbed him exclusively in the absence of any intelligent
sympathy from his parents, any companionship except that of his brothers
and sister, or any recreation in the dullest of Italian towns. The lad
spent his days over grammars and dictionaries, learning Latin with
little assistance, and Greek and the principal modern languages with
none at all. Any ordinarily clever boy would have emerged from this
discipline a mere pedant and bookworm. Leopardi came forth a Hellene,
not merely a consummate Greek scholar, but penetrated with the classical
conception of life, and a master of antique form and style. At sixteen
he composed a Latin treatise on the Roman rhetoricians of the 2nd
century, a commentary on Porphyry's life of Plotinus and a history of
astronomy; at seventeen he wrote on the popular errors of the ancients,
citing more than four hundred authors. A little later he imposed upon
the first scholars of Italy by two odes in the manner of Anacreon. At
eighteen he produced a poem of considerable length, the _Appressamento
alla Morte_, which, after being lost for many years, was discovered and
published by Zanino Volta. It is a vision of the omnipotence of death,
modelled upon Petrarch, but more truly inspired by Dante, and in its
conception, machinery and general tone offering a remarkable resemblance
to Shelley's _Triumph of Life_ (1822), of which Leopardi probably never
heard. This juvenile work was succeeded (1819) by two lyrical
compositions which at once placed the author upon the height which he
maintained ever afterwards. The ode to Italy, and that on the monument
to Dante erected at Florence, gave voice to the dismay and affliction
with which Italy, aroused by the French Revolution from the torpor of
the 17th and 18th centuries, contemplated her forlorn and degraded
condition, her political impotence, her degeneracy in arts and arms and
the frivolity or stagnation of her intellectual life. They were the
outcry of a student who had found an ideal of national existence in his
books, and to whose disappointment everything in his own circumstances
lent additional poignancy. But there is nothing unmanly or morbid in the
expression of these sentiments, and the odes are surprisingly exempt
from the failings characteristic of young poets. They are remarkably
chaste in diction, close and nervous in style, sparing in fancy and
almost destitute of simile and metaphor, antique in spirit, yet pervaded
by modern ideas, combining Landor's dignity with a considerable infusion
of the passion of Byron. These qualities continued to characterize
Leopardi's poetical writings throughout his life. A third ode, on
Cardinal Mai's discoveries of ancient MSS., lamented in the same spirit
of indignant sorrow the decadence of Italian literature. The publication
of these pieces widened the breach between Leopardi and his father, a
well-meaning but apparently dull and apathetic man, who had lived into
the 19th century without imbibing any of its spirit, and who provoked
his son's contempt by a superstition unpardonable in a scholar of real
learning. Very probably from a mistaken idea of duty to his son, very
probably, too, from his own entire dependence in pecuniary matters upon
his wife, he for a long time obstinately refused Leopardi funds,
recreation, change of scene, everything that could have contributed to
combat the growing pessimism which eventually became nothing less than
monomaniacal. The affection of his brothers and sister afforded him some
consolation, and he found intellectual sympathy in the eminent scholar
and patriot Pietro Giordani, with whom he assiduously corresponded at
this period, partly on the ways and means of escaping from "this
hermitage, or rather seraglio, where the delights of civil society and
the advantages of solitary life are alike wanting." This forms the
keynote of numerous letters of complaint and lamentation, as touching
but as effeminate in their pathos as those of the banished Ovid. It must
be remembered in fairness that the weakness of Leopardi's eyesight
frequently deprived him for months together of the resource of study. At
length (1822) his father allowed him to repair to Rome, where, though
cheered by the encouragement of C. C. J. Bunsen and Niebuhr, he found
little satisfaction in the trifling pedantry that passed for philology
and archaeology, while his sceptical opinions prevented his taking
orders, the indispensable condition of public employment in the Papal
States. Dispirited and with exhausted means, he returned to Recanati,
where he spent three miserable years, brightened only by the production
of several lyrical masterpieces, which appeared in 1824. The most
remarkable is perhaps the _Bruto Minore_, the condensation of his
philosophy of despair. In 1825 he accepted an engagement to edit Cicero
and Petrarch for the publisher Stella at Milan, and took up his
residence at Bologna, where his life was for a time made almost
cheerful by the friendship of the countess Malvezzi. In 1827 appeared
the _Operette Morali_, consisting principally of dialogues and his
imaginary biography of Filippo Ottonieri, which have given Leopardi a
fame as a prose writer hardly inferior to his celebrity as a poet.
Modern literature has few productions so eminently classical in form and
spirit, so symmetrical in construction and faultless in style. Lucian is
evidently the model; but the wit and irony which were playthings to
Lucian are terribly earnest with Leopardi. Leopardi's invention is equal
to Lucian's and his only drawback in comparison with his exemplar is
that, while the latter's campaign against pretence and imposture
commands hearty sympathy, Leopardi's philosophical creed is a repulsive
hedonism in the disguise of austere stoicism. The chief interlocutors in
his dialogues all profess the same unmitigated pessimism, claim
emancipation from every illusion that renders life tolerable to the
vulgar, and assert or imply a vast moral and intellectual superiority
over unenlightened mankind. When, however, we come to inquire what
renders them miserable, we find it is nothing but the privation of
pleasurable sensation, fame, fortune or some other external thing which
a lofty code of ethics would deny to be either indefeasibly due to man
or essential to his felicity. A page of _Sartor Resartus_ scatters
Leopardi's sophistry to the winds, and leaves nothing of his dialogues
but the consummate literary skill that would render the least fragment
precious. As works of art they are a possession for ever, as
contributions to moral philosophy they are worthless, and apart from
their literary qualities can only escape condemnation if regarded as
lyrical expressions of emotion, the wail extorted from a diseased mind
by a diseased body. _Filippo Ottonieri_ is a portrait of an imaginary
philosopher, imitated from the biography of a real sage in Lucian's
_Demonax_. Lucian has shown us the philosopher he wished to copy,
Leopardi has truly depicted the philosopher he was. Nothing can be more
striking or more tragical than the picture of the man superior to his
fellows in every quality of head and heart, and yet condemned to
sterility and impotence because he has, as he imagines, gone a step too
far on the road to truth, and illusions exist for him no more. The
little tract is full of remarks on life and character of surprising
depth and justice, manifesting what powers of observation as well as
reflection were possessed by the sickly youth who had seen so little of
the world.
Want of means soon drove Leopardi back to Recanati, where, deaf,
half-blind, sleepless, tortured by incessant pain, at war with himself
and every one around him except his sister, he spent the two most
unhappy years of his unhappy life. In May 1831 he escaped to Florence,
where he formed the acquaintance of a young Swiss philologist, M. de
Sinner. To him he confided his unpublished philological writings, with a
view to their appearance in Germany. A selection appeared under the
title _Excerpta ex schedis criticis J. Leopardi_ (Bonn, 1834). The
remaining MSS. were purchased after Sinner's death by the Italian
government, and, together with Leopardi's correspondence with the Swiss
philologist, were partially edited by Aulard. In 1831 appeared a new
edition of Leopardi's poems, comprising several new pieces of the
highest merit. These are in general less austerely classical than his
earlier compositions, and evince a greater tendency to description, and
a keener interest in the works and ways of ordinary mankind. _The
Resurrection_, composed on occasion of his unexpected recovery, is a
model of concentrated energy of diction, and _The Song of the Wandering
Shepherd in Asia_ is one of the highest flights of modern lyric poetry.
The range of the author's ideas is still restricted, but his style and
melody are unsurpassable. Shortly after the publication of these pieces
(October 1831) Leopardi was driven from Florence to Rome by an unhappy
attachment. His feelings are powerfully expressed in two poems, _To
Himself_ and _Aspasia_, which seem to breathe wounded pride at least as
much as wounded love. In 1832 Leopardi returned to Florence, and there
formed acquaintance with a young Neapolitan, Antonio Ranieri, himself an
author of merit, and destined to enact towards him the part performed by
Severn towards Keats, an enviable title to renown if Ranieri had not in
his old age tarnished it by assuming the relation of Trelawny to the
dead Byron. Leopardi accompanied Ranieri and his sister to Naples, and
under their care enjoyed four years of comparative tranquillity. He made
the acquaintance of the German poet Platen, his sole modern rival in the
classical perfection of form, and composed _La Ginestra_, the most
consummate of all his lyrical masterpieces, strongly resembling
Shelley's _Mont Blanc_, but more perfect in expression. He also wrote at
Naples _The Sequel to the Battle of the Frogs and Mice_, a satire in
_ottava rima_ on the abortive Neapolitan revolution of 1820, clever and
humorous, but obscure from the local character of the allusions. The
more painful details of his Neapolitan residence may be found by those
who care to seek for them in the deplorable publication of Ranieri's
peevish old age (_Sette anni di sodalizio_). The decay of Leopardi's
constitution continued; he became dropsical; and a sudden crisis of his
malady, unanticipated by himself alone, put an end to his life-long
sufferings on the 15th of June 1837.
The poems which constitute Leopardi's principal title to immortality
are only forty-one in number, and some of these are merely
fragmentary. They may for the most part be described as odes,
meditative soliloquies, or impassioned addresses, generally couched in
a lyrical form, although a few are in magnificent blank verse. Some
idea of the style and spirit of the former might be obtained by
imagining the thoughts of the last book of Spenser's _Faerie Queene_
in the metre of his _Epithalamium_. They were first edited complete by
Ranieri at Florence in 1845, forming, along with the _Operette
Morali_, the first volume of an edition of Leopardi's works, which
does not, however, include _The Sequel to the Battle of the Frogs and
Mice_, first printed at Paris in 1842, nor the afterwards discovered
writings. Vols. ii.-iv. contain the philological essays and
translations, with some letters, and vols. v. and vi. the remainder of
the correspondence. Later editions are those of G. Chiarini and G.
Mestica. The juvenile essays preserved in his father's library at
Recanati were edited by Cugnoni (_Opere inedite_) in 1879, with the
consent of the family. See Cappelleti, _Bibliografia Leopardiana_
(Parma, 1882). Leopardi's biography is mainly in his letters
(_Epistolario_, 1st ed., 1849, 5th ed., 1892), to which his later
biographers (Brandes, Bouché-Leclercq, Rosa) have merely added
criticisms, excellent in their way, more particularly Brandes's, but
generally over-rating Leopardi's significance in the history of human
thought. W. E. Gladstone's essay (_Quart. Rev._, 1850), reprinted in
vol. ii. of the author's _Gleanings_, is too much pervaded by the
theological spirit, but is in the main a pattern of generous and
discriminating eulogy. There are excellent German translations of the
poems by Heyse and Brandes. An English translation of the essays and
dialogues by C. Edwards appeared in 1882, and most of the dialogues
were translated with extraordinary felicity by James Thomson, author
of _The City of Dreadful Night_, and originally published in the
_National Reformer_. (R. G.)
LEOPARDO, ALESSANDRO (d. c. 1512), Italian sculptor, was born and died
at Venice. His first known work is the imposing mausoleum of the doge
Andrea Vendramini, now in the church of San Giovanni e Paolo; in this he
had the co-operation of Tullio Lombardo, but the finest parts are
Leopardo's. Some of the figures have been taken away, and two in the
Berlin museum are considered to be certainly his work. He was exiled on
a charge of fraud in 1487, and recalled in 1490 by the senate to finish
Verrocchio's colossal statue of Bartolommeo Colleoni. He worked between
1503 and 1505 on the tomb of Cardinal Zeno at St Mark's, which was
finished in 1515 by Pietro Lombardo; and in 1505 he designed and cast
the bronze sockets for the three flagstaffs in the square of St Mark's,
the antique character of the decorations suggesting some Greek model.
(See VENICE.)
LEOPOLD (M.H. Ger. _Liupolt_, O.H. Ger. _Liupald_, from _liut_, Mod.
Ger. _Leute_, "people," and _pald_, "bold," i.e. "bold for the people"),
the name which has been that of several European sovereigns.
LEOPOLD I. (1640-1705), Roman emperor, the second son of the emperor
Ferdinand III. and his first wife Maria Anna, daughter of Philip III. of
Spain, was born on the 9th of June 1640. Intended for the Church, he
received a good education, but his prospects were changed by the death
of his elder brother, the German king Ferdinand IV., in July 1654, when
he became his father's heir. In 1655 he was chosen king of Hungary and
in 1656 king of Bohemia, and in July 1658, more than a year after his
father's death, he was elected emperor at Frankfort, in spite of the
intrigues of Cardinal Mazarin, who wished to place on the imperial
throne Ferdinand, elector of Bavaria, or some other prince whose
elevation would break the Habsburg succession. Mazarin, however,
obtained a promise from the new emperor that he would not send
assistance to Spain, then at war with France, and, by joining a
confederation of German princes, called the league of the Rhine, France
secured a certain influence in the internal affairs of Germany.
Leopold's long reign covers one of the most important periods of
European history; for nearly the whole of its forty-seven years he was
pitted against Louis XIV. of France, whose dominant personality
completely overshadowed Leopold. The emperor was a man of peace and
never led his troops in person; yet the greater part of his public life
was spent in arranging and directing wars. The first was with Sweden,
whose king Charles X. found a useful ally in the prince of Transylvania,
George II. Rakocky, a rebellious vassal of the Hungarian crown. This
war, a legacy of the last reign, was waged by Leopold as the ally of
Poland until peace was made at Oliva in 1660. A more dangerous foe next
entered the lists. The Turks interfered in the affairs of Transylvania,
always an unruly district, and this interference brought on a war with
the Empire, which after some desultory operations really began in 1663.
By a personal appeal to the diet at Regensburg Leopold induced the
princes to send assistance for the campaign; troops were also sent by
France, and in August 1664 the great imperialist general, Montecucculi,
gained a notable victory at St Gotthard. By the peace of Vasvar the
emperor made a twenty years' truce with the sultan, granting more
generous terms than his recent victory seemed to render necessary.
After a few years of peace began the first of three wars between France
and the Empire. The aggressive policy pursued by Louis XIV. towards
Holland had aroused the serious attention of Europe, and steps had been
taken to check it. Although the French king had sought the alliance of
several German princes and encouraged the Turks in their attacks on
Austria the emperor at first took no part in this movement. He was on
friendly terms with Louis, to whom he was closely related and with whom
he had already discussed the partition of the lands of the Spanish
monarchy; moreover, in 1671 he arranged with him a treaty of neutrality.
In 1672, however, he was forced to take action. He entered into an
alliance for the defence of Holland and war broke out; then, after this
league had collapsed owing to the defection of the elector of
Brandenburg, another and more durable alliance was formed for the same
purpose, including, besides the emperor, the king of Spain and several
German princes, and the war was renewed. At this time, twenty-five years
after the peace of Westphalia, the Empire was virtually a confederation
of independent princes, and it was very difficult for its head to
conduct any war with vigour and success, some of its members being in
alliance with the enemy and others being only lukewarm in their support
of the imperial interests. Thus this struggle, which lasted until the
end of 1678, was on the whole unfavourable to Germany, and the
advantages of the treaty of Nijmwegen (February 1679) were with France.
Almost immediately after the conclusion of peace Louis renewed his
aggressions on the German frontier. Engaged in a serious struggle with
Turkey, the emperor was again slow to move, and although he joined a
league against France in 1682 he was glad to make a truce at Regensburg
two years later. In 1686 the league of Augsburg was formed by the
emperor and the imperial princes, to preserve the terms of the treaties
of Westphalia and of Nijmwegen. The whole European position was now
bound up with events in England, and the tension lasted until 1688, when
William of Orange won the English crown and Louis invaded Germany. In
May 1689 the grand alliance was formed, including the emperor, the kings
of England, Spain and Denmark, the elector of Brandenburg and others,
and a fierce struggle against France was waged throughout almost the
whole of western Europe. In general the several campaigns were
favourable to the allies, and in September 1697 England and Holland made
peace with Louis at Ryswick. To this treaty Leopold refused to assent,
as he considered that his allies had somewhat neglected his interests,
but in the following month he came to terms and a number of places were
transferred from France to Germany. The peace with France lasted for
about four years and then Europe was involved in the War of the Spanish
Succession. The king of Spain, Charles II., was a Habsburg by descent
and was related by marriage to the Austrian branch, while a similar tie
bound him to the royal house of France. He was feeble and childless, and
attempts had been made by the European powers to arrange for a peaceable
division of his extensive kingdom. Leopold refused to consent to any
partition, and when in November 1700 Charles died, leaving his crown to
Philip, duke of Anjou, a grandson of Louis XIV., all hopes of a
peaceable settlement vanished. Under the guidance of William III. a
powerful league, the grand alliance, was formed against France; of this
the emperor was a prominent member, and in 1703 he transferred his claim
on the Spanish monarchy to his second son, the archduke Charles. The
early course of the war was not favourable to the imperialists, but the
tide of defeat had been rolled back by the great victory of Blenheim
before Leopold died on the 5th of May 1705.
In governing his own lands Leopold found his chief difficulties in
Hungary, where unrest was caused partly by his desire to crush
Protestantism. A rising was suppressed in 1671 and for some years
Hungary was treated with great severity. In 1681, after another rising,
some grievances were removed and a less repressive policy was adopted,
but this did not deter the Hungarians from revolting again. Espousing
the cause of the rebels the sultan sent an enormous army into Austria
early in 1683; this advanced almost unchecked to Vienna, which was
besieged from July to September, while Leopold took refuge at Passau.
Realizing the gravity of the situation somewhat tardily, some of the
German princes, among them the electors of Saxony and Bavaria, led their
contingents to the imperial army which was commanded by the emperor's
brother-in-law, Charles, duke of Lorraine, but the most redoubtable of
Leopold's allies was the king of Poland, John Sobieski, who was already
dreaded by the Turks. On the 12th of September 1683 the allied army fell
upon the enemy, who was completely routed, and Vienna was saved. The
imperialists, among whom Prince Eugene of Savoy was rapidly becoming
prominent, followed up the victory with others, notably one near Mohacz
in 1687 and another at Zenta in 1697, and in January 1699 the sultan
signed the treaty of Karlowitz by which he admitted the sovereign rights
of the house of Habsburg over nearly the whole of Hungary. Before the
conclusion of the war, however, Leopold had taken measures to strengthen
his hold upon this country. In 1687 at the diet of Pressburg the
constitution was changed, the right of the Habsburgs to succeed to the
throne without election was admitted and the emperor's elder son Joseph
was crowned hereditary king of Hungary.
During this reign some important changes were made in the constitution
of the Empire. In 1663 the imperial diet entered upon the last stage of
its existence, and became a body permanently in session at Regensburg;
in 1692 the duke of Hanover was raised to the rank of an elector,
becoming the ninth member of the electoral college; and in 1700 Leopold,
greatly in need of help for the impending war with France, granted the
title of king of Prussia to the elector of Brandenburg. The net result
of these and similar changes was to weaken the authority of the emperor
over the members of the Empire, and to compel him to rely more and more
upon his position as ruler of the Austrian archduchies and of Hungary
and Bohemia, and Leopold was the first who really appears to have
realized this altered state of affairs and to have acted in accordance
therewith.
The emperor was married three times. His first wife was Margaret Theresa
(d. 1673), daughter of Philip IV. of Spain; his second Claudia Felicitas
(d. 1676), the heiress of Tirol; and his third Eleanora, a princess of
the Palatinate. By his first two wives he had no sons, but his third
wife bore him two, Joseph and Charles, both of whom became emperors. He
had also four daughters.
Leopold was a man of industry and education, and during his later years
he showed some political ability. Extremely tenacious of his rights, and
regarding himself as an absolute sovereign, he was also very intolerant
and was greatly influenced by the Jesuits. In person he was short, but
strong and healthy. Although he had no inclination for a military life
he loved exercises in the open air, such as hunting and riding; he had
also a taste for music.
Leopold's letters to Marco d'Aviano from 1680 to 1699 were edited by
O. Klopp and published at Graz in 1888. Other letters are found in the
_Fontes rerum Austriacarum_, Bände 56 and 57 (Vienna, 1903-1904). See
also F. Krones, _Handbuch der Geschichte Österreichs_ (Berlin,
1876-1879); R. Baumstark, _Kaiser Leopold I._ (1873); and A. F.
Pribram, _Zur Wahl Leopolds I._ (Vienna, 1888). (A. W. H.*)
LEOPOLD II. (1747-1792), Roman emperor, and grand-duke of Tuscany, son
of the empress Maria Theresa and her husband, Francis I., was born in
Vienna on the 5th of May 1747. He was a third son, and was at first
educated for the priesthood, but the theological studies to which he was
forced to apply himself are believed to have influenced his mind in a
way unfavourable to the Church. On the death of his elder brother
Charles in 1761 it was decided that he should succeed to his father's
grand duchy of Tuscany, which was erected into a "secundogeniture" or
apanage for a second son. This settlement was the condition of his
marriage on the 5th of August 1764 with Maria Louisa, daughter of
Charles III. of Spain, and on the death of his father Francis I. (13th
August 1765) he succeeded to the grand duchy. For five years he
exercised little more than nominal authority under the supervision of
counsellors appointed by his mother. In 1770 he made a journey to Vienna
to secure the removal of this vexatious guardianship, and returned to
Florence with a free hand. During the twenty years which elapsed between
his return to Florence and the death of his eldest brother Joseph II. in
1790 he was employed in reforming the administration of his small state.
The reformation was carried out by the removal of the ruinous
restrictions on industry and personal freedom imposed by his
predecessors of the house of Medici, and left untouched during his
father's life; by the introduction of a rational system of taxation; and
by the execution of profitable public works, such as the drainage of the
Val di Chiana. As he had no army to maintain, and as he suppressed the
small naval force kept up by the Medici, the whole of his revenue was
left free for the improvement of his state. Leopold was never popular
with his Italian subjects. His disposition was cold and retiring. His
habits were simple to the verge of sordidness, though he could display
splendour on occasion, and he could not help offending those of his
subjects who had profited by the abuses of the Medicean régime. But his
steady, consistent and intelligent administration, which advanced step
by step, making the second only when the first had been justified by
results, brought the grand duchy to a high level of material prosperity.
His ecclesiastical policy, which disturbed the deeply rooted convictions
of his people, and brought him into collision with the pope, was not
successful. He was unable to secularize the property of the religious
houses, or to put the clergy entirely under the control of the lay
power.
During the last few years of his rule in Tuscany Leopold had begun to be
frightened by the increasing disorders in the German and Hungarian
dominions of his family, which were the direct result of his brother's
headlong methods. He and Joseph II. were tenderly attached to one
another, and met frequently both before and after the death of their
mother, while the portrait by Pompeo Baltoni in which they appear
together shows that they bore a strong personal resemblance to one
another. But it may be said of Leopold, as of Fontenelle, that his heart
was made of brains. He knew that he must succeed his childless eldest
brother in Austria, and he was unwilling to inherit his unpopularity.
When, therefore, in 1789 Joseph, who knew himself to be dying, asked him
to come to Vienna, and become co-regent, Leopold coldly evaded the
request. He was still in Florence when Joseph II. died at Vienna on the
20th of February 1790, and he did not leave his Italian capital till the
3rd of March. Leopold, during his government in Tuscany, had shown a
speculative tendency to grant his subjects a constitution. When he
succeeded to the Austrian lands he began by making large concessions to
the interests offended by his brother's innovations. He recognized the
Estates of his different dominions as "the pillars of the monarchy,"
pacified the Hungarians and divided the Belgian insurgents by
concessions. When these failed to restore order, he marched troops into
the country, and re-established at the same time his own authority, and
the historic franchises of the Flemings. Yet he did not surrender any
part that could be retained of what Maria Theresa and Joseph had done to
strengthen the hands of the state. He continued, for instance, to insist
that no papal bull could be published in his dominions without his
consent (_placetum regium_).
If Leopold's reign as emperor, and king of Hungary and Bohemia, had been
prolonged during years of peace, it is probable that he would have
repeated his successes as a reforming ruler in Tuscany on a far larger
scale. But he lived for barely two years, and during that period he was
hard pressed by peril from west and east alike. The growing
revolutionary disorders in France endangered the life of his sister
Marie Antoinette, the queen of Louis XVI., and also threatened his own
dominions with the spread of a subversive agitation. His sister sent him
passionate appeals for help, and he was pestered by the royalist
emigrants, who were intriguing both to bring about an armed intervention
in France, and against Louis XVI. From the east he was threatened by the
aggressive ambition of Catherine II. of Russia, and by the unscrupulous
policy of Prussia. Catherine would have been delighted to see Austria
and Prussia embark on a crusade in the cause of kings against the
Revolution. While they were busy beyond the Rhine, she would have
annexed what remained of Poland, and would have made conquests in
Turkey. Leopold II. had no difficulty in seeing through the rather
transparent cunning of the Russian empress, and he refused to be misled.
To his sister he gave good advice and promises of help if she and her
husband could escape from Paris. The emigrants who followed him
pertinaciously were refused audience, or when they forced themselves on
him were peremptorily denied all help. Leopold was too purely a
politician not to be secretly pleased at the destruction of the power of
France and of her influence in Europe by her internal disorders. Within
six weeks of his accession he displayed his contempt for her weakness by
practically tearing up the treaty of alliance made by Maria Theresa in
1756 and opening negotiations with England to impose a check on Russia
and Prussia. He was able to put pressure on England by threatening to
cede his part of the Low Countries to France, and then, when secure of
English support, he was in a position to baffle the intrigues of
Prussia. A personal appeal to Frederick William II. led to a conference
between them at Reichenbach in July 1790, and to an arrangement which
was in fact a defeat for Prussia. Leopold's coronation as king of
Hungary on the 15th of November 1790, was preceded by a settlement with
the diet in which he recognized the dominant position of the Magyars. He
had already made an eight months' truce with the Turks in September,
which prepared the way for the termination of the war begun by Joseph
II., the peace of Sistova being signed in August 1791. The pacification
of his eastern dominions left Leopold free to re-establish order in
Belgium and to confirm friendly relations with England and Holland.
During 1791 the emperor continued to be increasingly preoccupied with
the affairs of France. In January he had to dismiss the count of Artois,
afterwards Charles X., king of France, in a very peremptory way. His
good sense was revolted by the folly of the French emigrants, and he did
his utmost to avoid being entangled in the affairs of that country. The
insults inflicted on Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette, however, at the
time of their attempted flight to Varennes in June, stirred his
indignation, and he made a general appeal to the sovereigns of Europe to
take common measures in view of events which "immediately compromised
the honour of all sovereigns, and the security of all governments." Yet
he was most directly interested in the conference at Sistova, which in
June led to a final peace with Turkey. On the 25th of August he met the
king of Prussia at Pillnitz, near Dresden, and they drew up a
declaration of their readiness to intervene in France if and when their
assistance was called for by the other powers. The declaration was a
mere formality, for, as Leopold knew, neither Russia nor England was
prepared to act, and he endeavoured to guard against the use which he
foresaw the emigrants would endeavour to make of it. In face of the
agitation caused by the Pillnitz declaration in France, the intrigues of
the emigrants, and the attacks made by the French revolutionists on the
rights of the German princes in Alsace, Leopold continued to hope that
intervention might not be required. When Louis XVI. swore to observe the
constitution of September 1791, the emperor professed to think that a
settlement had been reached in France. The attacks on the rights of the
German princes on the left bank of the Rhine, and the increasing
violence of the parties in Paris which were agitating to bring about
war, soon showed, however, that this hope was vain. Leopold met the
threatening language of the revolutionists with dignity and temper. His
sudden death on the 1st of March 1792 was an irreparable loss to
Austria.
Leopold had sixteen children, the eldest of his eight sons being his
successor, the emperor Francis II. Some of his other sons were prominent
personages in their day. Among them were: Ferdinand III., grand duke of
Tuscany; the archduke Charles, a celebrated soldier; the archduke John,
also a soldier; the archduke Joseph, palatine of Hungary; and the
archduke Rainer, viceroy of Lombardy-Venetia.
Several volumes containing the emperor's correspondence have been
published. Among these are: _Joseph II. und Leopold von Toskana. Ihr
Briefwechsel 1781-1790_ (Vienna, 1872), and _Marie Antoinette, Joseph
II. und Leopold II. Ihr Briefwechsel_ (Vienna, 1866), both edited by
A. Ritter von Arneth; _Joseph II., Leopold II. und Kaunitz. Ihr
Briefwechsel_ (Vienna, 1873); and _Leopold II., Franz II. und
Catharina. Ihre Correspondenz nebst einer Einleitung: Zur Geschichte
der Politik Leopolds II._ (Leipzig, 1874), both edited by A. Beer; and
_Leopold II. und Marie Christine. Ihrand Briefwechsel 1781-1792_,
edited by A. Wolf (Vienna, 1867). See also H. von Sybel, _Über die
Regierung Kaiser Leopolds II._ (Munich, 1860); A. Schultze, _Kaiser
Leopold II. und die französische Revolution_ (Leipzig, 1899); and A.
Wolf and H. von Zwiedeneck-Südenhorst, _Österreich unter Maria
Theresa, Joseph II. und Leopold II._ (Berlin, 1882-1884).
LEOPOLD I. (1790-1865), king of the Belgians, fourth son of Francis,
duke of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, and uncle of Queen Victoria of England,
was born at Coburg on the 18th of December 1790. At the age of eighteen
he entered the military service of Russia, and accompanied the emperor
Alexander to Erfurt as a member of his staff. He was required by
Napoleon to quit the Russian army, and spent some years in travelling.
In 1813 he accepted from the emperor Alexander the post of a cavalry
general in the army of invasion, and he took part in the whole of the
campaign of that and the following year, distinguishing himself in the
battles of Leipzig, Lützen and Bautzen. He entered Paris with the allied
sovereigns, and accompanied them to England. He married in May 1816
Charlotte, only child of George, prince regent, afterwards George IV.,
heiress-presumptive to the British throne, and was created duke of
Kendal in the British peerage and given an annuity of £50,000. The death
of the princess in the following year was a heavy blow to his hopes, but
he continued to reside in England. In 1830 he declined the offer of the
crown of Greece, owing to the refusal of the powers to grant conditions
which he considered essential to the welfare of the new kingdom, but was
in the following year elected king of the Belgians (4th June 1831).
After some hesitation he accepted the crown, having previously
ascertained that he would have the support of the great powers on
entering upon his difficult task, and on the 12th of July he made his
entry into Brussels and took the oath to observe the constitution.
During the first eight years of his reign he was confronted with the
resolute hostility of King William I. of Holland, and it was not until
1839 that the differences between the two states, which until 1830 had
formed the kingdom of the Netherlands, were finally settled at the
conference of London by the treaty of the 24 Articles (see BELGIUM).
From this date until his death, King Leopold spent all his energies in
the wise administration of the affairs of the newly formed kingdom,
which may be said to owe in a large measure its first consolidation and
constant prosperity to the care and skill of his discreet and fatherly
government. In 1848 the throne of Belgium stood unshaken amidst the
revolutions which marked that year in almost every European country. On
the 8th of August 1832 Leopold married, as his second wife, Louise of
Orleans, daughter of Louis Philippe, king of the French. Queen Louise
endeared herself to the Belgian people, and her death in 1850 was felt
as a national loss. This union produced two sons and one daughter--(1)
Leopold, afterwards king of the Belgians; (2) Philip, count of Flanders;
(3) Marie Charlotte, who married Maximilian of Austria, the unfortunate
emperor of Mexico. Leopold I. died at Laeken on the 10th of December
1865. He was a most cultured man and a great reader, and did his utmost
during his reign to encourage art, science and education. His judgment
was universally respected by contemporary sovereigns and statesmen, and
he was frequently spoken of as "the Nestor of Europe" (see also
VICTORIA, QUEEN).
See Th. Juste, _Léopold I^er, roi des Belges d'après des doc. inéd.
1793-1865_ (2 vols., Brussels, 1868), and _Les Fondateurs de la
monarchie Belge_ (22 vols., Brussels, 1878-1880); J. J. Thonissen, _La
Belgique sous le règne de Léopold I^er_ (Louvain, 1862).
LEOPOLD II. [LEOPOLD LOUIS PHILIPPE MARIE VICTOR] (1835-1909), king of
the Belgians, son of the preceding, was born at Brussels on the 9th of
April 1835. In 1846 he was created duke of Brabant and appointed a
sub-lieutenant in the army, in which he served until his accession, by
which time he had reached the rank of lieutenant-general. On attaining
his majority he was made a member of the senate, in whose proceedings he
took a lively interest, especially in matters concerning the development
of Belgium and its trade. On the 22nd of August 1853 Leopold married
Marie Henriette (1836-1902), daughter of the archduke Joseph of Austria,
palatine of Hungary, by his wife Marie Dorothea, duchess of Württemberg.
This princess, who was a great-granddaughter of the empress Maria
Theresa, and a great-niece of Marie Antoinette, endeared herself to the
people by her elevated character and indefatigable benevolence, while
her beauty gained for her the sobriquet of "The Rose of Brabant"; she
was also an accomplished artist and musician, and a fine horsewoman.
Between the years 1854 and 1865 Leopold travelled much abroad, visiting
India and China as well as Egypt and the countries on the Mediterranean
coast of Africa. On the 10th of December 1865 he succeeded his father.
On the 28th of January 1869 he lost his only son, Leopold (b. 1859),
duke of Hainaut. The king's brother Philip, count of Flanders
(1837-1905), then became heir to the throne; and on his death his son
Albert (b. 1875) became heir-presumptive. During the Franco-Prussian War
(1870-1871) the king of the Belgians preserved neutrality in a period of
unusual difficulty and danger. But the most notable event in Leopold's
career was the foundation of the Congo Free State (q.v.). While still
duke of Brabant he had been the first to call the attention of the
Belgians to the need of enlarging their horizon beyond sea, and after
his accession to the throne he gave the first impulse towards the
development of this idea by founding in 1876 the _Association
Internationale Africaine_. He enlisted the services of H. M. Stanley,
who visited Brussels in 1878 after exploring the Congo river, and
returned in 1879 to the Congo as agent of the _Comité d'Études du Haut
Congo_, soon afterwards reorganized as the "International Association of
the Congo." This association was, in 1884-1885, recognized by the powers
as a sovereign state under the name of the _État Indépendant du Congo_.
Leopold's exploitation of this vast territory, which he administered
autocratically, and in which he associated himself personally with
various financial schemes, was understood to bring him an enormous
fortune; it was the subject of acutely hostile criticism, to a large
extent substantiated by the report of a commission of inquiry instituted
by the king himself in 1904, and followed in 1908 by the annexation of
the state to Belgium (see CONGO FREE STATE: _History_). In 1880 Leopold
sought an interview with General C. G. Gordon and obtained his promise,
subject to the approval of the British government, to enter the Belgian
service on the Congo. Three years later Leopold claimed fulfilment of
the promise, and Gordon was about to proceed to the Congo when the
British government required his services for the Sudan. On the 15th of
November 1902 King Leopold's life was attempted in Brussels by an
Italian anarchist named Rubino. Queen Marie Henriette died at Spa on the
19th of September of the same year. Besides the son already mentioned
she had borne to Leopold three daughters--Louise Marie Amélie (b. 1858),
who in 1875 married Philip of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, and was divorced in
1906; Stéphanie (b. 1864), who married Rudolph, crown prince of Austria,
in 1881, and after his death in 1889 married, against her father's
wishes, Elemer, Count Lonyay, in 1900; and Clémentine (b. 1872). At the
time of the queen's death an unseemly incident was occasioned by
Leopold's refusal to see his daughter Stéphanie, who in consequence was
not present at her mother's funeral. The disagreeable impression on the
public mind thus created was deepened by an unfortunate litigation,
lasting for two years (1904-1906), over the deceased queen's will, in
which the creditors of the princess Louise, together with princess
Stéphanie (Countess Lonyay), claimed that under the Belgian law the
queen's estate was entitled to half of her husband's property. This
claim was disallowed by the Belgian courts. The king died at Laeken,
near Brussels, on the 17th of December 1909. On the 23rd of that month
his nephew took the oath to observe the constitution, assuming the title
of Albert I. King Leopold was personally a man of considerable
attainments and much strength of character, but he was a notoriously
dissolute monarch, who even to the last offended decent opinion by his
indulgences at Paris and on the Riviera. The wealth he amassed from the
Congo he spent, no doubt, royally not only in this way but also on
public improvements in Belgium; but he had a hard heart towards the
natives of his distant possession.
LEOPOLD II. (1797-1870), of Habsburg-Lorraine, grand-duke of Tuscany,
was born on the 3rd of October 1797, the son of the grand-duke Ferdinand
III., whom he succeeded in 1824. During the first twenty years of his
reign he devoted himself to the internal development of the state. His
was the mildest and least reactionary of all the Italian despotisms of
the day, and although always subject to Austrian influence he refused to
adopt the Austrian methods of government, allowed a fair measure of
liberty to the press, and permitted many political exiles from other
states to dwell in Tuscany undisturbed. But when in the early 'forties a
feeling of unrest spread throughout Italy, even in Tuscany demands for a
constitution and other political reforms were advanced; in 1845-1846
riots broke out in various parts of the country, and Leopold granted a
number of administrative reforms. But Austrian influence prevented him
from going further, even had he wished to do so. The election of Pope
Pius IX. gave fresh impulse to the Liberal movement, and on the 4th of
September 1847 Leopold instituted the National Guard--a first step
towards the constitution; shortly after the marchese Cosimo Ridolfi was
appointed prime minister. The granting of the Neapolitan and Piedmontese
constitutions was followed (17th February 1848) by that of Tuscany,
drawn up by Gino Capponi. The revolution in Milan and Vienna aroused a
fever of patriotic enthusiasm in Tuscany, where war against Austria was
demanded; Leopold, giving way to popular pressure, sent a force of
regulars and volunteers to co-operate with Piedmont in the Lombard
campaign. His speech on their departure was uncompromisingly Italian and
Liberal. "Soldiers," he said, "the holy cause of Italian freedom is
being decided to-day on the fields of Lombardy. Already the citizens of
Milan have purchased their liberty with their blood and with a heroism
of which history offers few examples.... Honour to the arms of Italy!
Long live Italian independence!" The Tuscan contingent fought bravely,
if unsuccessfully, at Curtatone and Montanara. On the 26th of June the
first Tuscan parliament assembled, but the disturbances consequent on
the failure of the campaign in Lombardy led to the resignation of the
Ridolfi ministry, which was succeeded by that of Gino Capponi. The riots
continued, especially at Leghorn, which was a prey to actual civil war,
and the democratic party of which F. D. Guerrazzi and G. Montanelli were
leading lights became every day more influential. Capponi resigned, and
Leopold reluctantly agreed to a Montanelli-Guerrazzi ministry, which in
its turn had to fight against the extreme republican party. New
elections in the autumn of 1848 returned a constitutional majority, but
it ended by voting in favour of a constituent assembly. There was talk
of instituting a central Italian kingdom with Leopold as king, to form
part of a larger Italian federation, but in the meanwhile the
grand-duke, alarmed at the revolutionary and republican agitations in
Tuscany and encouraged by the success of the Austrian arms, was,
according to Montanelli, negotiating with Field-Marshal Radetzky and
with Pius IX., who had now abandoned his Liberal tendencies, and fled to
Gaeta. Leopold had left Florence for Siena, and eventually for Porto S.
Stefano, leaving a letter to Guerrazzi in which, on account of a protest
from the pope, he declared that he could not agree to the proposed
constituent assembly. The utmost confusion prevailed in Florence and
other parts of Tuscany. On the 9th of February 1849 the republic was
proclaimed, largely as a result of Mazzini's exhortations, and on the
18th Leopold sailed for Gaeta. A third parliament was elected and
Guerrazzi appointed dictator. But there was great discontent, and the
defeat of Charles Albert at Novara caused consternation among the
Liberals. The majority, while fearing an Austrian invasion, desired the
return of the grand-duke who had never been unpopular, and in April 1849
the municipal council usurped the powers of the assembly and invited him
to return, "to save us by means of the restoration of the constitutional
monarchy surrounded by popular institutions, from the shame and ruin of
a foreign invasion." Leopold accepted, although he said nothing about
the foreign invasion, and on the 1st of May sent Count Luigi Serristori
to Tuscany with full powers. But at the same time the Austrians occupied
Lucca and Leghorn, and although Leopold simulated surprise at their
action it has since been proved, as the Austrian general d'Aspre
declared at the time, that Austrian intervention was due to the request
of the grand-duke. On the 24th of May the latter appointed G.
Baldasseroni prime minister, on the 25th the Austrians entered Florence
and on the 28th of July Leopold himself returned. In April 1850 he
concluded a treaty with Austria sanctioning the continuation for an
indefinite period of the Austrian occupation with 10,000 men; in
September he dismissed parliament, and the following year established a
concordat with the Church of a very clerical character. He feebly asked
Austria if he might maintain the constitution, and the Austrian premier,
Prince Schwarzenberg, advised him to consult the pope, the king of
Naples and the dukes of Parma and Modena. On their advice he formally
revoked the constitution (1852). Political trials were held, Guerrazzi
and many others being condemned to long terms of imprisonment, and
although in 1855 the Austrian troops left Tuscany, Leopold's popularity
was gone. A part of the Liberals, however, still believed in the
possibility of a constitutional grand-duke who could be induced for a
second time to join Piedmont in a war against Austria, whereas the
popular party headed by F. Bartolommei and G. Dolfi realized that only
by the expulsion of Leopold could the national aspirations be realized.
When in 1859 France and Piedmont made war on Austria, Leopold's
government failed to prevent numbers of young Tuscan volunteers from
joining the Franco-Piedmontese forces. Finally an agreement was arrived
at between the aristocratic constitutionalists and the popular party, as
a result of which the grand-duke's participation in the war was formally
demanded. Leopold at first gave way, and entrusted Don Neri Corsini with
the formation of a ministry. The popular demands presented by Corsini
were for the abdication of Leopold in favour of his son, an alliance
with Piedmont and the reorganization of Tuscany in accordance with the
eventual and definite reorganization of Italy. Leopold hesitated and
finally rejected the proposals as derogatory to his dignity. On the 27th
of April there was great excitement in Florence, Italian colours
appeared everywhere, but order was maintained, and the grand-duke and
his family departed for Bologna undisturbed. Thus the revolution was
accomplished without a drop of blood being shed, and after a period of
provisional government Tuscany was incorporated in the kingdom of Italy.
On the 21st of July Leopold abdicated in favour of his son Ferdinand
IV., who never reigned, but issued a protest from Dresden (26th March
1860). He spent his last years in Austria, and died in Rome on the 29th
of January 1870.
Leopold of Tuscany was a well-meaning, not unkindly man, and fonder of
his subjects than were the other Italian despots, but he was weak, and
too closely bound by family ties and Habsburg traditions ever to become
a real Liberal. Had he not joined the conclave of autocrats at Gaeta,
and, above all, had he not summoned Austrian assistance while denying
that he had done so, in 1849, he might yet have preserved his throne,
and even changed the whole course of Italian history. At the same time
his rule, if not harsh, was enervating and demoralizing.
See G. Baldasseroni, _Leopoldo II._ (Florence, 1871), useful but
reactionary in tendency, the author having been Leopold's minister, G.
Montanelli, _Memorie sull' Italia_ (Turin, 1853); F. D. Guerrazzi,
_Memorie_ (Leghorn, 1848); Zobi, _Storia civile della Toscana_, vols.
iv.-v. (Florence, 1850-1852); A. von Reumont, _Geschichte Toscanas_ (2
vols., Gotha, 1876-1877); M. Bartolommei-Gioli, _Il Rivolgimento
Toscano e L'azione popolare_ (Florence, 1905); C. Tivaroni, _L' Italia
durante il dominio Austriaco_, vol. i. (Turin, 1892), and _L' Italia
degli Italiani_, vol. i. (Turin, 1895). See also RICASOLI;
BARTOLOMMEI; CAPPONI, GINO; &c. (L. V.*)
LEOPOLD II., a lake of Central Africa in the basin of the Kasai affluent
of the Congo, cut by 2° S. and 18° 10´ E. It has a length N. to S. of
about 75 m., is 30 m. across at its northern end, tapering towards its
southern end. Numerous bays and gulfs render its outline highly
irregular. Its shores are flat and marshy, the lake being (in all
probability) simply the lowest part of a vast lake which existed here
before the Kasai system breached the barrier--at Kwa mouth--separating
it from the Congo. The lake is fed by the Lokoro (about 300 m. long) and
smaller streams from the east. Its northern and western affluents are
comparatively unimportant. It discharges its waters (at its southern
end) into the Mfini, which is in reality the lower course of the
Lukenye. The lake is gradually diminishing in area; in the rainy season
it overflows its banks. The surrounding country is very flat and densely
wooded.
See KASAI; and articles and maps in _Le Mouvement géog._, specially
vol. xiv., No. 29 (1897) and vol. xxiv., No. 38 (1907).
LEOTYCHIDES, Spartan king, of the Eurypontid family, was descended from
Theopompus through his younger son Anaxandridas (Herod. viii. 131), and
in 491 B.C. succeeded Demaratus (q.v.), whose title to the throne he had
with Cleomenes' aid successfully challenged. He took part in Cleomenes'
second expedition to Aegina, on which ten hostages were seized and
handed over to the Athenians for safe custody: for this he narrowly
escaped being surrendered to the Aeginetans after Cleomenes' death. In
the spring of 479 we find him in command of the Greek fleet of 110
ships, first at Aegina and afterwards at Delos. In August he attacked
the Persian position at Mycale on the coast of Asia Minor opposite
Samos, inflicted a crushing defeat on the land-army, and annihilated the
fleet which was drawn up on the shore. Soon afterwards he sailed home
with the Peloponnesians, leaving the Athenians to prosecute the siege of
Sestos. In 476 he led an army to Thessaly to punish the Aleuadae of
Larisa for the aid they had rendered to the Persians and to strengthen
Spartan influence in northern Greece. After a series of successful
engagements he accepted a bribe from the enemy to withdraw. For this he
was brought to trial at Sparta, and to save his life fled to the temple
of Athena Alea at Tegea. Sentence of exile was passed, his house was
razed and his grandson Archidamus II. ascended the throne (Herod. vi.
65-87, ix. 90-114; Thucydides i. 89; Pausanias iii. 4. 3. 7. 9-10;
Plutarch, _De malignitate Herodoti_, 21, p. 859 D; Diodorus xi. 34-37).
According to Diodorus (xi. 48) Leotychides reigned twenty-two, his
successor Archidamus forty-two years. The total duration of the two
reigns, sixty-four years, we know to be correct, for Leotychides came
to the throne in 491 and Archidamus (q.v.) died in 427. On this basis,
then, Leotychides's exile would fall in 469 and the Thessalian
expedition in that or the preceding year (so E. Meyer, _Geschichte des
Altertums_, iii. § 287). But Diodorus is not consistent with himself;
he attributes (xi. 48) Leotychides's death to the year 476-475 and he
records (xii. 35) Archidamus's death in 434-433, though he introduces
him in the following years at the head of the Peloponnesian army (xii.
42, 47, 52). Further, he says expressly that Leotychides [Greek:
eteleutêsen arxas etê eikosi kai duo], i.e. he lived twenty-two years
after his accession. The twenty-two years, then, may include the time
which elapsed between his exile and his death. In that case
Leotychides died in 469, and 476-475 may be the year in which his
reign, though not his life, ended. This date seems, from what we know
of the political situation in general, to be more probable than the
later one for the Thessalian campaign.
G. Busolt, _Griech. Geschichte_, iii. 83, note; J. B. Bury, _History
of Greece_, p. 326; G. Grote, _History of Greece_, new edition 1888,
iv. 349, note; also abridged edition 1907, p. 273, note 3. Beloch's
view (_Griech. Geschichte_, i. 455, note 2) that the expedition took
place in 476, the trial and flight in 469, is not generally accepted.
(M. N. T.)
LEOVIGILD, or LÖWENHELD (d. 586), king of the Visigoths, became king in
568 after the short period of anarchy which followed the death of King
Athanagild, whose widow, Goisvintha, he married. At first he ruled that
part of the Visigothic kingdom which lay to the south of the Pyrenees,
his brother Liuva or Leova governing the small part to the north of
these mountains; but in 572 Liuva died and Leovigild became sole king.
At this time the Visigoths who settled in Spain early in the 5th century
were menaced by two powerful enemies, the Suevi who had a small kingdom
in the north-west of the peninsula, and the Byzantines who had answered
Athanagild's appeal for help by taking possession of a stretch of
country in the south-east. Their kingdom, too, was divided and weakened
by the fierce hostility between the orthodox Christians and those who
professed Arianism. Internal and external dangers alike, however, failed
to daunt Leovigild, who may fairly be called the restorer of the
Visigothic kingdom. He turned first against the Byzantines, who were
defeated several times; he took Cordova and chastised the Suevi; and
then by stern measures he destroyed the power of those unruly and
rebellious chieftains who had reduced former kings to the position of
ciphers. The chronicler tells how, having given peace to his people, he,
first of the Visigothic sovereigns, assumed the attire of a king and
made Toledo his capital. He strengthened the position of his family and
provided for the security of his kingdom by associating his two sons,
Recared and Hermenegild, with himself in the kingly office and placing
parts of the land under their rule. Leovigild himself was an Arian,
being the last of the Visigothic kings to hold that creed; but he was
not a bitter foe of the orthodox Christians, although he was obliged to
punish them when they conspired against him with his external enemies.
His son Hermenegild, however, was converted to the orthodox faith
through the influence of his Frankish wife, Ingundis, daughter of King
Sigebert I., and of Leander, metropolitan of Seville. Allying himself
with the Byzantines and other enemies of the Visigoths, and supported by
most of the orthodox Christians he headed a formidable insurrection. The
struggle was fierce; but at length, employing persuasion as well as
force, the old king triumphed. Hermenegild was captured; he refused to
give up his faith and in March or April 585 he was executed. He was
canonized at the request of Philip II., king of Spain, by Pope Sixtus V.
About this time Leovigild put an end to the kingdom of the Suevi. During
his last years he was engaged in a war with the Franks. He died at
Toledo on the 21st of April 586 and was succeeded by his son Recared.
LEPANTO,[1] BATTLE OF, fought on the 7th of October 1571. The conquest
of Cyprus by the Turks, and their aggressions on the Christian powers,
frightened the states of the Mediterranean into forming a holy league
for their common defence. The main promoter of the league was Pope Pius
V., but the bulk of the forces was supplied by the republic of Venice
and Philip II. of Spain, who was peculiarly interested in checking the
Turks both because of the Moorish element in the population of Spain,
and because he was also sovereign of Naples and Sicily. In compliment to
King Philip, the general command of the league's fleet was given to his
natural brother, Don John of Austria. It included, however, only
twenty-four Spanish ships. The great majority of the two hundred galleys
and eight galeasses, of which the fleet was composed, came from Venice,
under the command of the proveditore Barbarigo; from Genoa, which was in
close alliance with Spain, under Gianandrea Doria; and from the Pope
whose squadron was commanded by Marc Antonio Colonna. The Sicilian and
Neapolitan contingents were commanded by the marquess of Santa Cruz, and
Cardona, Spanish officers. Eight thousand Spanish soldiers were
embarked. The allied fleet was collected slowly at Messina, from whence
it advanced by the passage between Ithaca and Cephalonia to Cape
Marathia near Dragonera. The Turkish fleet which had come up from Cyprus
and Crete anchored in the Gulf of Patras. It consisted in all of 273
galleys which were of lighter build than the Christians', and less well
supplied with cannon or small arms. The Turks still relied mainly on the
bow and arrow. Ali, the capitan pasha, was commander-in-chief, and he
had with him Chulouk Bey of Alexandria, commonly called Scirocco, and
Uluch Ali, dey of Algiers. On the 7th of October the Christian fleet
advanced to the neighbourhood of Cape Scropha. It was formed in the
traditional order of the galleys--a long line abreast, subdivided into
the centre or "battle" commanded by Don John in person, the left wing
under the proveditore Barbarigo, and the right under Gianandrea Doria.
But a reserve squadron was placed behind the centre under the marquess
of Santa Cruz, and the eight lumbering galeasses were stationed at
intervals in front of the line to break the formation of the Turks. The
capitan pasha left his anchorage in the Gulf of Patras with his fleet in
a single line, without reserve or advance-guard. He was himself in the
centre, with Scirocco on his right and Uluch Ali on his left. The two
fleets met south of Cape Scropha, both drawn up from north to south, the
land being close to the left flank of the Christians, and the right of
the Turks. To the left of the Turks and the right of the Christians,
there was open sea. Ali Pasha's greater numbers enabled him to outflank
his enemy. The Turks charged through the intervals between the
galeasses, which proved to be of no value. On their right Scirocco
outflanked the Venetians of Barbarigo, but the better build of the
galleys of Saint Mark and the admirable discipline of their crews gave
them the victory. The Turks were almost all sunk or driven on shore.
Scirocco and Barbarigo both lost their lives. On the centre Don John and
the capitan pasha met prow to prow--the Christians reserving the fire of
their bow guns (called _di cursia_) till the moment of impact, and then
boarding. Ali Pasha was slain and his galley taken. Everywhere on the
centre the Christians gained the upper hand, but their victory was
almost turned into a defeat by the mistaken manoeuvres of Doria. In fear
lest he should be outflanked by Uluch Ali, he stood out to sea, leaving
a gap between himself and the centre. The dey of Algiers, who saw the
opening, reversed the order of his squadron, and fell on the right of
the centre. The galleys of the Order of Malta, which were stationed at
this point, suffered severely, and their flagship was taken with great
slaughter. A disaster was averted by the marquess of Santa Cruz, who
brought up the reserve. Uluch Ali then retreated with sail and oar,
bringing most of his division off in good order.
The loss of life in the battle was enormous, being put at 20,000 for the
Turks and 8000 for the Christians. The battle of Lepanto was of immense
political importance. It gave the naval power of the Turks a blow from
which it never recovered, and put a stop to their aggression in the
Eastern Mediterranean. Historically the battle is interesting because it
was the last example of an encounter on a great scale between fleets of
galleys and also because it was the last crusade. The Christian powers
of the Mediterranean did really combine to avert the ruin of
Christendom. Hardly a noble house of Spain or Italy was not represented
in the fleet, and the princes headed the boarders. Volunteers came from
all parts of Europe, and it is said that among them was Sir Richard
Grenville, afterwards famous for his fight in the "Revenge" off Flores
in the Azores. Cervantes was undoubtedly present, and had his left hand
shattered by a Turkish bullet.
For full accounts of the battle, with copious references to
authorities and to ancient controversies, mostly arising out of the
conduct of Doria, see Sir W. Stirling Maxwell, _Don John of Austria_
(1883); and Jurien de la Gravière, _La Guerre de Chypre et la bataille
de Lepanto_ (1888). (D. H.)
FOOTNOTE:
[1] For Lepanto see NAUPACTUS.
LE PAUTRE, JEAN (1618-1682), French designer and engraver. He was
apprenticed to a carpenter and builder and in addition to learning
mechanical and constructive work developed considerable facility with
the pencil. His designs, which were innumerable in quantity and
exuberant in fancy, consisted mainly of ceilings, friezes,
chimney-pieces, doorways and mural decorations; he also devised
fire-dogs, sideboards, cabinets, console tables, mirrors and other
pieces of furniture; he was long employed at the Gobelins. His work is
often excessively flamboyant and over-elaborate; he revelled in amorini
and swags, arabesques and cartouches. His chimney-pieces, however, were
frequently simple and elegant. His engraved plates, almost entirely
original, are something like 1500 in number and include a portrait of
himself. He became a member of the academy of Paris in 1677.
LEPCHA, the name of the aboriginal inhabitants of Sikkim (q.v.). A
peace-loving people, the Lepchas have been repeatedly conquered by
surrounding hill-tribes, and their ancient patriarchal customs are dying
out. The total number of speakers of Lepcha, or Rong, in all India in
1901, was only 19,291. Their rich and beautiful language has been
preserved from extinction by the efforts of General Mainwaring and
others; but their literature was almost entirely destroyed by the
Tibetans, and their traditions are being rapidly forgotten. Once free
and independent, they are now the poorest people in Sikkim, and it is
from them that the coolie class is drawn. They are above all things
woodmen, knowing the ways of beasts and birds, and possessing an
extensive zoological and botanical nomenclature of their own.
See Florence Donaldson, _Lepcha Land_ (1900).
LE PELETIER (or LEPELLETIER), DE SAINT-FARGEAU, LOUIS MICHEL
(1760-1793), French politician, was born on the 29th of May 1760 at
Paris. He belonged to a well-known family, his great-grandfather, Michel
Robert Le Peletier des Forts, count of Saint-Fargeau, having been
controller-general of finance. He inherited a great fortune, and soon
became president of the parlement of Paris and in 1789 he was a deputy
of the _noblesse_ to the States-General. At this time he shared the
conservative views of the majority of his class; but by slow degrees his
ideas changed and became very advanced. On the 13th of July 1789 he
demanded the recall of Necker, whose dismissal by the king had aroused
great excitement in Paris; and in the Constituent Assembly he had moved
the abolition of the penalty of death, of the galleys and of branding,
and the substitution of beheading for hanging. This attitude won him
great popularity, and on the 21st of June 1790 he was made president of
the Constituent Assembly. During the existence of the Legislative
Assembly, he was president of the general council for the department of
the Yonne, and was afterwards elected by this department as a deputy to
the Convention. Here he was in favour of the trial of Louis XVI. by the
assembly and voted for the death of the king. This vote, together with
his ideas in general, won him the hatred of the royalists, and on the
20th of January 1793, the eve of the execution of the king, he was
assassinated in the Palais Royal at Paris by a member of the king's
body-guard. The Convention honoured Le Peletier by a magnificent
funeral, and the painter J. L. David represented his death in a famous
picture, which was later destroyed by his daughter. Towards the end of
his life, Le Peletier had interested himself in the question of public
education; he left fragments of a plan, the ideas contained in which
were borrowed in later schemes. His assassin fled to Normandy, where, on
the point of being discovered, he blew out his brains. Le Peletier had a
brother, Félix (1769-1837), well known for his advanced ideas. His
daughter, Suzanne Louise, was "adopted" by the French nation.
See _Oeuvres de M. le Peletier de Saint-Fargeau_ (Brussels, 1826) with
a life by his brother Félix; E. Le Blant, "Le Peletier de St-Fargeau,
et son meurtrier," in the _Correspondant_ review (1874); F.
Clerembray, _Épisodes de la Révolution_ (Rouen, 1891); Brette, "La
Réforme de la législation universelle, et le plan de Lepelletier
Saint-Fargeau," in _La Révolution française_, xlii. (1902); and M.
Tourneux, _Bibliog. de l'hist. de Paris ..._ (vol. i., 1890, Nos.
3896-3910, and vol. iv., 1906, _s.v._ Lepeletier).
LEPIDOLITE, or LITHIA-MICA, a mineral of the mica group (see MICA). It
is a basic aluminium, potassium and lithium fluo-silicate, with the
approximate formula KLi [Al(OH, F)2] Al(SiO3)3. Lithia and fluorine are
each present to the extent of about 5%; rubidium and caesium are
sometimes present in small amounts. Distinctly developed monoclinic
crystals or cleavage sheets of large size are of rare occurrence, the
mineral being usually found as scaly aggregates, and on this account was
named lepidolite (from Gr. [Greek: lepis], scale) by M. H. Klaproth in
1792. It is usually of a lilac or peach-blossom colour, but is sometimes
greyish-white, and has a pearly lustre on the cleavage surfaces. The
hardness is 2½-4 and the sp. gr. 2.8-2.9, the optic axial angle measures
50°-70°. It is found in pegmatite-veins, often in association with pink
tourmaline (rubellite) and sometimes intergrown in parallel position
with muscovite. Scaly masses of considerable extent are found at Rozena
near Bystrzitz in Moravia and at Pala in San Diego county, California.
The material from Rozena has been known since 1791, and has sometimes
been cut and polished for ornamental purposes: it has a pretty colour
and spangled appearance and takes a good polish, but is rather soft. At
Pala it has been extensively mined for the preparation of lithium and
rubidium salts. Other localities for the mineral are the island of Utö
in Sweden, and Auburn and Paris in Maine, U.S.A.; at Alabashka near
Mursinka in the Urals large isolated crystals have been found, and from
Central Australia transparent cleavage sheets of a fine lilac colour are
known.
The lithium-iron mica _zinnwaldite_ or _lithionite_ is closely allied to
lepidolite, differing from it in containing some ferrous iron in
addition to the constituents mentioned above. It occurs as greyish
silvery scales with hexagonal outlines in the tin-bearing granites of
Zinnwald in the Erzgebirge, Bohemia and of Cornwall. (L. J. S.)
LEPIDOPTERA (Gr. [Greek: lepis], a scale or husk, and [Greek: pteron], a
wing), a term used in zoological classification for one of the largest
and best-known orders of the class Hexapoda (q.v.), in order that
comprises the insects popularly called butterflies and moths. The term
was first used by Linnaeus (1735) in the sense still accepted by modern
zoologists, and there are few groups of animals as to whose limits and
distinguishing characters less controversy has arisen.
[Illustration: After Edwards, Riley and Howard's _Insect Life_, vol. 3
(U.S. Dept. Agr.).
FIG. 1.--e, _Crytophasa unipuctata_, Donov., Australia. a, Larva; c,
pupa, natural size; b, 2nd and 3rd abdominal segments of larva; d,
cremaster of pupa, magnified.]
_Characters._--The name of the order indicates the fact that the wings
(and other parts of the body) are clothed with flattened cuticular
structures--the scales (fig. 7)--that may be regarded as modified
arthropodan "hairs." Such scales are not peculiar to the
Lepidoptera--they are found also on many of the Aptera, on the Psocidae,
a family of Corrodentia, on some Coleoptera (beetles) and on the gnats
(Culicidae), a family of Diptera. The most distinctive structural
features of the Lepidoptera are to be found in the jaws. The mandibles
are mere vestiges or entirely absent; the second maxillae are usually
reduced to a narrow transverse mentum which bears the scale-covered
labial palps, between which project the elongate first maxillae, grooved
on their inner faces, so as to form when apposed a tubular proboscis
adapted for sucking liquid food.
All Lepidoptera are hatched as the eruciform soft-bodied type of larva
(fig. 1, a) known as the caterpillar, with biting mandibles, three pairs
of thoracic legs and with a variable number (usually five pairs) of
abdominal prolegs, which carry complete or incomplete circles of
hooklets. The pupa in a single family only is free (i.e. with the
appendages free from the body), and mandibulate. In the vast majority of
the order it is more or less obtect (i.e. with the appendages fixed to
the cuticle of the body) and without mandibles (fig. 1, c).
[Illustration: From Riley and Howard, _Insect Life_, vol. 7 (U.S. Dept.
Agr.).
FIG. 2.--a, Feeler of Saturniid Moth (_Telea polyphemus_). b, c, Tips of
branches, highly magnified.]
[Illustration: After A. Walter (_Jen. Zeits. f. Naturw._ vol. 18).
FIG. 3.--A, Mandible, and B, 1st maxilla of _Micropteryx_
(_Eriocephala_). Magnified.
a, Palp.
b, Galea.
c, Lacinia.
d, Stipes.
e, Cardo of maxilla.]
_Structure._--The head in the Lepidoptera is sub-globular in shape
with the compound eyes exceedingly well developed, and with a pair of
ocelli or "simple eyes" often present on the vertex. It is connected
to the thorax by a relatively broad and membranous "neck." The feelers
are many-jointed, often they are complex, the segments bearing
processes arranged in a comb-like manner and furnished with numerous
sensory hairs (fig. 2). The complexity of the feelers is carried to
its highest development in certain male moths that have a wonderful
power of discovering their females by smell or some analogous sense.
Often the feelers are excessively complex in male moths whose maxillae
are so reduced that they take no food in the imaginal state. The
nature of the jaws has already been briefly described. Functional
mandibles of peculiar form (fig. 3, A) are present in the remarkable
small moths of the genus _Micropteryx_ (or _Eriocephala_), and there
are vestiges of these jaws in other moths of low type, but the minute
structures in the higher Lepidoptera that were formerly described as
mandibles are now believed to belong to the labrum, the true mandibles
being perhaps represented by rounded prominences, not articulated with
the head-capsule. Throughout the order, as a whole, the jaws are
adapted for sucking liquid food, and the suctorial proboscis (often
erroneously called a "tongue") is formed as was shown by J. C. Savigny
in 1816 by two elongated and flexible outgrowths of the first
maxillae, usually regarded as representing the outer lobes or galeae
(fig. 4, A, B, g). These structures are grooved along their inner
faces and by means of a series of interlocking hair-like bristles can
be joined together so as to form a tubular sucker (fig. 4, C). At
their extremities they are beset with club-like sense-organs, whose
apparent function is that of taste. The proboscis when in use is
stretched out in front of the head and inserted into the corolla of a
flower or elsewhere, for the absorption of liquid nourishment. When at
rest, the proboscis is rolled up into a close spiral beneath the head
and between the labial palps (fig. 4, A, p). Only in the genus
_Micropteryx_ mentioned above is the lacinia of the maxilla (as A.
Walter has shown) developed (fig. 3, B, c). The maxillary palp is
usually a mere vestige (fig. 4, B, p) though it is conspicuous in a
few families of small moths. A considerable number of Lepidoptera
take no food in the imaginal state; in these the maxillae are reduced
or altogether atrophied. The second maxillae are intimately fused
together to form the labium, which consists only of a reduced mentum,
bearing sometimes vestigial lobes and always a pair of palps. These
have two or three segments and are clothed with scales. The form and
direction of the terminal segment of the labial palp afford valuable
characters in classification.
[Illustration: FIG. 4.--Arrangement of the jaws in a typical Moth.
Somewhat diagrammatic and in part after E. Burgess and V. L. Kellogg
(_Amer. Nat._ xiv. xxix.).
A, Front view of head.
c, Clypeus.
e, Compound eye.
m, Vestigial mandible.
l, Labrum.
g, Galeae of 1st maxillae.
p, Labial palp. Magnified, B.
b, Base of first maxilla dissected out of the head.
p, Vestigial palp.
g, Galea. Further magnified.
C, Part transverse section showing how the channel (A) of the
proboscis is formed by the interlocking of the grooved inner
faces of the flexible maxillae.
t, Air-tube.
n, Nerve.
m, Muscle-fibres. Highly magnified.]
In the thorax of the Lepidoptera the foremost segment or prothorax is
very small, and not movable on the mesothorax. In many families it
carries a pair of small erectile plates--the patagia--which have been
regarded as serially homologous with the wings. The mesothorax is
extensive; its scutum forming most of the dorsal thoracic area and
small plates--tegulae--are often present at the base of the forewings,
as in Hymenoptera. The tegulae which are beset with long hair-like
scales are often conspicuous. The metathorax is smaller than the
mesothorax. The legs are of the typical hexapodan form with
five-segmented feet; the shins often bear terminal and median spurs
articulated at their bases and the entire limbs are clothed with
scales.
[Illustration: After A. S. Packard, _Mem. Nat. Acad. Sci._ vol. vii.
FIG. 5.--Wing-neuration of a Notodont Moth. 2, Sub-costal; 3, radial;
4, median; 5, cubital; 7, 8, anal nervures. a, Discoidal areolet or
"cell"; f, frenulum. Note that the forewing has five branches (1-5) of
the radial nervure, the hindwing one only. The first anal nervure (No.
6) is absent.]
The wings of the Lepidoptera may be said to dominate the structure of
the insect; only exceptionally, in certain female moths, are they
vestigial or absent (fig. 17). The forewing, with its prominent apex,
is longer than the hindwing, and the neuration in both (see figs. 5
and 6) is for the most part longitudinal, only a few transverse
nervures, which are, in fact, branches of the median trunk, marking
off a discoidal areolet or "cell" (fig. 5, a). The five branches of
the radial nervure (figs. 5, 6, 3) (see HEXAPODA) are usually present
in the forewing, but the hindwing, in most families, has only a single
radial nervure; its anal area is, however, often more strongly
developed than that of the forewing. The two wings of a side are
usually kept together during flight by a few stout bristles--the
frenulum--(fig. 5, f) projecting from the base of the costa of the
hindwing and fitting beneath a membranous fold or a few thickened
scales--the retinaculum--on the under surface of the forewing. In
butterflies there is no frenulum, but a costal outgrowth of the
hindwing subserves the same function. In the most primitive moths a
small lobate outgrowth--the jugum (fig. 6, j.)--from the dorsum of the
forewing is present, but it can be of little service in keeping the
two wings together. A jugum may be also present on the hindwing. The
legs, which are generally used for clinging rather than for walking,
have five-segmented feet and are covered with scales. In some families
the front pair are reduced and without tarsal segments.
[Illustration: After Packard, _Mem. Nat. Acad. Sci._ vol. vii.
FIG. 6.--Wing neuration of a Swift Moth (Hepialid). j, Jugum. Nervures
numbered as in fig. 5. Note that there are five branches to the radial
nervure (No. 3) in both fore- and hindwing, and that the median trunk
nervures (No. 4) traverse the discoidal areolet.]
Ten abdominal segments are recognizable in many Lepidoptera, but the
terminal segments are reduced or modified to form external organs of
reproduction. In the male, according to the interpretation of C.
Peytoureau, the lateral plates belonging to the ninth segment form
paired claspers beset with harpes, or series of ridges or teeth, while
the tergum of the tenth segment forms a dorsal hook--the uncus--and
its sternum a ventral process or scaphium. In the female the terminal
segments form, in some cases, a protrusible ovipositor, but the
typical hexapodan ovipositor with its three pairs of processes is
undeveloped in the Lepidoptera.
As already mentioned, the characteristic scales on the wings, legs and
body of the Lepidoptera are cuticular structures. A complete series of
transitional forms can be traced between the most elaborate flattened
scales (fig. 7, B) with numerous longitudinal striae and a simple
arthropod "hair." Either a "hair" or a scale owes its origin to a
special cell of the ectoderm (hypodermis), a process from which grows
through the general cuticle and forms around itself the substance of
the cuticular appendage. The scales on the wings are arranged in
regular rows (fig. 7, A), and the general cuticle is drawn out into a
narrow neck or collar around the base of each scale. The scales can be
easily rubbed from the surface of the wing, and the series of collars
in which the scales rest are then evident (fig. 7, A, c) on the
wing-membrane. On the wings of many male butterflies there are
specially modified scales--the androconia (fig. 7, C)--which are
formed by glandular cells and diffuse a scented secretion. In some
cases, the androconia are mixed among the ordinary scales; in others
they are associated into conspicuous "brands" (see fig. 66). The
admirable colours of the wings of the Lepidoptera are due partly to
pigment in the scales--as in the case of yellows, browns, reds and
blacks--partly to "interference" effects from the fine striae on the
scales--as with the blues, purples and greens.
[Illustration: FIG. 7.--A, Arrangement of scales in rows on wing of
Butterfly. n, Nervure; c, collar-like outgrowths of cuticle.
Magnified. B, single scale, and C, an androconium more highly
magnified.]
A few points of interest in the internal structure of the Lepidoptera
deserve mention. The mouth opens into a sub-globular, muscular pharynx
which is believed to suck the liquid food through the proboscis, and
force it along the slender gullet into a crop-like enlargement or
diverticulum of the fore-gut known as a "food-reservoir" or
"sucking-stomach." The true stomach is tubular, and beyond it lies the
intestine into which open the three pairs of excretory (Malpighian)
tubes. The terminal part of the intestine is of wide diameter, and in
some cases gives off a short caecum. The brain and the sub-oesophageal
ganglia are closely approximated; there are two or three thoracic and
four (rarely five) abdominal ganglia. In the female each ovary has
four ovarian tubes, in which the large egg-cells are enclosed in
follicles and associated with nutritive cells. There is a special
bursa which in the Hepialidae opens with the vagina on the eighth
abdominal sternum. In the Micropterygidae, Enocraniidae and the lower
Tineides, the duct of the bursa leads into the vagina, which still
opens on the eighth sternum. But in most Lepidoptera, the bursa opens
by a vestibule on the eighth sternum, distinct from the vagina, whose
opening shifts back to the ninth, the duct of the bursa being
connected with the vagina by a canal which opens opposite to the
spermatheca. In the male, the two testes are usually fused into a
single mass, and a pair of tubular accessory glands open into the vasa
deferentia or into the ejaculatory duct. In a few families--the
Hepialidae and Saturniidae for example--the testes retain the
primitive paired arrangement. These details have been worked out by
various students, among whom W. H. Jackson and W. Petersen deserve
special mention. Summing up the developmental history of the genital
ducts, Jackson remarks that there is "an Ephemeridal stage, which ends
towards the close of larval life, an Orthopteran stage, indicated
during the quiescent period preceding pupation, and a Lepidopteran
stage which begins with the commencement of pupal life."
[Illustration: FIG. 8 A.--_Cossus macmurtrei._ (MacMurtrie's Goat Moth.)
N. America.]
[Illustration: FIG. 8 B.--Larva of _Cossus cossus_. (Goat Moth.)
Europe.]
_Development._--Many observations have been made on the embryology of
the Lepidoptera; for some of the more important results of these see
HEXAPODA. The post-embryonic development of Lepidoptera is more
familiar, perhaps, than that of any other group of animals. The egg
shows great variation in its outward form, the outer envelope or chorion
being in some families globular, in others flattened, in others again
erect and sub-conical or cylindrical; while its surface often exhibits a
beautifully regular series of ribs and furrows. Throughout the order the
larva is of the form known as the caterpillar (fig. 1, a, b, fig. 8 B)
characterized by the presence of three pairs of jointed and clawed legs
on the thorax and a variable number of pairs of abdominal
"prolegs"--sub-cylindrical outgrowths of the abdominal segments,
provided with a complete or incomplete circle of hooklets at the
extremity.
[Illustration: FIG. 9.--Head of Goat Moth Caterpillar (_Cossus_) from
behind. Magnified. (From Miall and Denny after Lyonnet.)
At, Feeler.
Mn, Mandible.
Mx, First maxilla.
Lm, Second maxillae (Labium) with spinneret.]
There are ten abdominal segments--the ninth often small and concealed;
prolegs are usually present on the third, fourth, fifth, sixth and
tenth of these segments. The head of the caterpillar (fig. 9) is large
with firmly chitinized cuticle; it carries usually twelve simple eyes
or ocelli, a pair of short feelers (fig. 9 At) and a pair of strong
mandibles (fig. 9, Mn), for the caterpillar feeds by biting leaves or
other plant-tissues. The first maxillae, so highly developed in the
imago, are in the larva small and inconspicuous appendages, each
bearing two short jointed processes,--the galea and the palp (fig. 9,
Mx). The second maxillae form a plate-like labium on whose surface
projects the spinneret which is usually regarded as a modified
hypopharynx (fig. 9, Lm). The silk-glands whose ducts open on this
spinneret are paired convoluted tubes lying alongside the elongate
cylindrical stomach. In the common "silkworm" these glands are five
times as long as the body of the caterpillar. They are regarded as
modified salivary glands, though the correspondence has been doubted
by some students. The body of the caterpillar is usually cylindrical
and wormlike, with the segmentation well marked and the cuticle
feebly chitinized and flexible. Firm chitinous plates are, however,
not seldom present on the prothorax and on the hindmost abdominal
segment. The segments are mostly provided with bristle or
spine-bearing tubercles, whose arrangement has lately been shown by H.
G. Dyar to give partially trustworthy indications of relationship. On
either side of the median line we find two dorsal or trapezoidal
tubercles (Nos. 1 and 2), while around the spiracle are grouped (Nos.
3, 4 and 5) supra-, post-, and pre-spiracular tubercles; below are the
sub-spiraculars, of which there may be two (Nos. 6, 7). The last-named
is situated on the base of the abdominal proleg, and yet another
tubercle (No. 8) may be present on the inner aspect of the proleg. The
spiracles are very conspicuous on the body of a caterpillar, occurring
on the prothorax and on the first eight abdominal segments. Various
tubercles may become coalesced or aborted (fig. 10, B); often, in
conjunction with the spines that they bear, the tubercles serve as a
valuable protective armature for the caterpillar. Much discussion has
taken place as to whether the abdominal prolegs are or are not
developed directly from the embryonic abdominal appendages. In the
more lowly families of Lepidoptera, these organs are provided at the
extremity with a complete circle of hooklets, but in the more highly
organized families, only the inner half of this circle is retained.
[Illustration: B, after Grote, _Mitt. aus dem Roemer Museum_, No. 6.
FIG. 10.--Abdominal segments of Caterpillars, to show arrangement of
tubercles; the arrows point anteriorly. A, Generalized condition; B,
specialized condition in the Saturniidae. s, Spiracle; the numbering
of the tubercles is explained in the text. Note that in B No. 2 is
much reduced and disappears after the first moult. 4 and 5 are
coalesced, and 6 is absent.]
[Illustration: FIG. 11.--Pupa of a Butterfly (_Amathusia phidippus_).]
The typical Lepidopteran pupa, or "chrysalis," as shown in the higher
families, is an obtect pupa (fig. 11) with no trace of mandibles, the
appendages being glued to the body by an exudation, and motion being
possible only at three of the abdominal intersegmental regions, the
fifth and sixth abdominal segments at most being "free." A flattened
or pointed process--the cremaster--often prominent at the tail-end,
may carry one or several hooks (fig. 1, d) which serve to anchor the
pupa to its cocoon or to suspend butterfly-pupae from their pad of
silk (fig. 11). In the lower families the pupa (fig. 1, c) is only
incompletely obtect, and a greater number of abdominal segments can
move on one another. The seventh abdominal segment is, in all female
lepidopterous pupae, fused with those behind it; in the male
"incomplete" pupa this becomes "free" and so may the segments anterior
to it, in both sexes, forward to and including the third. The presence
of circles of spines on the abdominal segments enables the
"incomplete" pupa as a whole to work its way partly out of the cocoon
when the time for the emergence of the imago draws near. In the family
of the Eriocraniidae (often called the Micropterygidae) the pupa
resembles that of a caddis-fly (_Trichopteron_) being active before
the emergence of the imago and provided with strong mandibles by means
of which it bites its way out of the cocoon. The importance of the
pupa in the phylogeny and classification of the Lepidoptera has lately
been demonstrated by T. A. Chapman in a valuable series of papers.
Sometimes organs are present in the pupa which are undeveloped in the
imago, such as the maxillary palps of the Sesiidae (clearwing moths)
and the pectination on the feelers of female Saturniids. E. B. Poulton
has drawn attention to the ancestral value of such characters.
_Habits and Life-Relations._--The attractiveness of the Lepidoptera and
the conspicuous appearance of many of them have led to numerous
observations on their habits. The method of feeding of the imago by the
suction of liquids has already been mentioned in connexion with the
structure of the maxillae and the food-canal. Nectar from flowers is the
usual food of moths and butterflies, most of which alight on a blossom
before thrusting the proboscis into the corolla of the flower, while
others--the hawk moths (Sphingidae) for example--remain poised in the
air in front of the flower by means of excessively rapid vibration of
the wings, and quickly unrolling the proboscis sip the nectar. Certain
flowers with remarkably long tubular corollas seem to be specially
adapted for the visits of hawk moths. Some Lepidoptera have other
sources of food-supply. The juices of fruit are often sought for, and
certain moths can pierce the envelope of a succulent fruit with the
rough cuticular outgrowths at the tips of the maxillae, so as to reach
the soft tissue within. Animal juices attract other Lepidoptera, which
have been observed to suck blood from a wounded mammal; while putrid
meat is a familiar "lure" for the gorgeous "purple emperor" butterfly
(_Apatura iris_). The water of streams or the dew on leaves may be
frequently sought by Lepidoptera desirous of quenching their thirst,
possibly with fatal results, the insects being sometimes drowned in
rivers in large numbers. Members of several families of the
Lepidoptera--the Hepialidae, Lasiocampidae and Saturniidae, for
example--have the maxillae vestigial or aborted, and take no food at all
after attaining the winged condition. In such insects there is a
complete "division of labour" between the larval and the imaginal
instars, the former being entirely devoted to nutritive, the latter to
reproductive functions.
Of much interest is the variety displayed among the Lepidoptera in the
season and the duration of the various instars. The brightly coloured
vanessid butterflies, for example, emerge from the pupa in the late
summer and live through the winter in sheltered situations, reappearing
to lay their eggs in the succeeding spring. Many species, such as the
vapourer moths (_Orgyia_), lay eggs in the autumn, which remain
unhatched through the winter. The eggs of the well-known magpie moths
(_Abraxas_) hatch in autumn and the caterpillar hibernates while still
quite small, awaiting for its growth the abundant food-supply to be
afforded by the next year's foliage. The codlin moths (_Carpocapsa_)
pass the winter as resting full-grown larvae, which seek shelter and
spin cocoons in autumn, but do not pupate until the succeeding spring.
Lastly, many of the Lepidoptera hibernate in the pupal stage; the
death's head moth (_Acherontia_) and the cabbage-white butterflies
(_Pieris_) are familiar examples of such. The last-named insects afford
instances of the "double-brooded" condition, two complete life-cycles
being passed through in the year. The flour moth (_Ephestia kühniella_)
is said to have five successive generations in a twelvemonth. On the
other hand, certain species whose larvae feed in wood or on roots take
two or three years to reach the adult stage.
The rate of growth of the larva depends to a great extent on the nature
of its food, and the feeding-habits of caterpillars afford much of
interest and variety to the student. The contrast among the Lepidoptera
between the suctorial mouth of the imago and the biting jaws of the
caterpillar is very striking (cf. figs. 4 and 9), and the profound
transformation in structure which takes place is necessarily accompanied
by the change from solid to liquid food. The first meal of a young
caterpillar is well known to be often its empty egg-shell; from this it
turns to feed upon the leaves whereon its provident parent has laid her
eggs. But in a few cases hatching takes place in winter or early spring,
and the young larvae have then to find a temporary food until their own
special plant is available. For example, the caterpillars of some
species of _Xanthia_ and other noctuid moths feed at first upon
willow-catkins. On the other hand, the caterpillars of the pith moth
(_Blastodacna_) hatched at midsummer, feed on leaves when young, and
burrow into woody shoots in autumn. All who have tried to rear
caterpillars know that, while those of some species will feed only on
one particular species of plant, others will eat several species of the
same genus or family, while others again are still less particular, some
being able to feed on almost any green herb. It is curious to note how
certain species change their food in different localities, a caterpillar
confined to one plant in some localities being less particular
elsewhere. Individual aberrations in food are of special interest in
suggesting the starting-point for a change in the race. When we consider
the vast numbers of the Lepidoptera and the structural modifications
which they have undergone, their generally faithful adherence to a
vegetable diet is remarkable. The vast majority of caterpillars eat
leaves, usually devouring them openly, and, if of large size, quickly
reducing the amount of foliage on the plant. But many small caterpillars
keep, apparently for the sake of concealment, to the under surface of
the leaf, while others burrow into the green tissue, forming a
characteristic sinuous "mine" between the two leaf-skins. In several
families we find the habit of burrowing in woody stems,--the "goat"
(_Cossus_, fig. 8) and the clearwings (Sesiidae), for example, while
others, like the larvae of the swift moths (Hepialidae) live underground
devouring roots (fig. 12). The richer nutrition in the green food is
usually shown by the quicker growth of the numerous caterpillars that
feed on it, as compared with the slower development of the wood and
root-feeding species. Aquatic larvae are very rare among the
Lepidoptera. The caterpillars of the pyralid "china-mark" moths
(_Hydrocampa_, fig. 13), however, live under water, feeding on duckweed
(_Lemna_) and breathing atmospheric air, a film of which is enclosed in
a spun-up shelter beneath the leaves, while the larvae of _Paraponyx_,
which feed on _Stratiotes_, have closed spiracles and breathe dissolved
air by means of branchial filaments along the sides of the body.
[Illustration: FIG. 12.--Larva of _Hepialus humuli_ (ghost moth).]
[Illustration: FIG. 13.--_Hydrocampa aquatilis_ (water moth).]
We may now turn to instances of more anomalous modes of feeding. The
clothes moths (Tineids) have invaded our dwellings and found a congenial
food-stuff for their larvae in our garments. A few small species of the
same group are reared in meal and other human food-stores; so are the
caterpillars of some pyralid moths (_Ephestia_), while others (_Asopia_,
_Aglossa_) feed upon kitchen refuse. Two species of crambid moths
(_Aphomia sociella_ and _Galleria melonella_) find a home in bee-hives,
where their caterpillars feed upon the wax, while the waxy secretion
from the body of the great American lantern-fly (_Fulgora candelaria_)
serves both as shelter and food for the caterpillar of the moth
_Epipyrops anomala_. Very few caterpillars have developed a thoroughly
carnivorous habit. That of _Cosmia trapezina_ feeds on oak and other
leaves, but devours smaller caterpillars which happen to get in its way,
and if shaken from the tree, eats other larvae while climbing the trunk.
_Xylina ornithopus_ and a few other species are said to be always
carnivorous when opportunity offers; the small looping caterpillar of a
"pug" moth (_Eupithecia coronata_) has been observed to eat a larva
three times as big as itself. The caterpillars of _Orthosia pistacina_
live together in peace while their food is moist, but devour each other
when it dries up; this is true cannibalism--a term which should not be
applied to the habit of preying on another species. A few carnivorous
caterpillars do not attack other caterpillars, but prey upon insects of
another order; among these _Fenescia tarquinius_, which eats aphides,
and _Erastria scitula_, which feeds upon scale insects, must be reckoned
as benefactors to mankind. The life-history of the latter moth has been
worked out by H. Rouzaud. It inhabits the shores of the Mediterranean,
and its caterpillar devours the coccids upon various fruit-trees,
especially the black-scale (_Lecanium oleae_) of the olive. The moth,
which is a small noctuid, the white markings on whose wings give it the
appearance of a bird-dropping when at rest in the daytime, appears in
May, and lays her eggs, singly and far apart, upon the trees infested by
the coccids. when hatched, the young caterpillar selects a large female
coccid, eats its way through the scale, and devours the insect beneath;
having done this it makes its way to a fresh victim. As it increases in
size it forms a case for itself made of the scales of its victims,
excrement, &c., bound together by silk which it spins, and, protected by
this covering, which closely resembles the smut-covered bark of the
tree, it roams about during its later stages, devouring several coccids
every day. So nutritious is the food, that four or five successive
broods follow each other through the summer.
[Illustration: After Marlatt (after Riley), _Bull. 4, Div. Ent. U.S.
Dept. Agr._
FIG. 14.--Clothes Moth (_Tinea pellionella_), with larva in and out of
its case. Magnified.]
The habit just mentioned of forming some kind of protective covering out
of foreign substances spun together by silk is practised by caterpillars
of different families. The clothes moth larvae (_Tinea_, fig. 14), for
example, make a tubular dwelling out of the pellets of wool passed from
their own intestines, while the allied Tortricid caterpillars roll up
leaves and spin for themselves cylindrical shelters. The habit of
spinning over the food plant a protective mass of web, whereon the
caterpillars of a family can live together socially is not uncommon. In
the case of the small ermine moths (_Hyponomeuta_) the caterpillars
remain associated throughout their lives and pupate in cocoons on the
mass of web produced by their common labour. But the larger, spiny
caterpillars of the vanessid butterflies usually scatter away from the
nest of their infancy when they have attained a certain size.
[Illustration: FIG. 15.--Larva of _Orgyia gonostigma_. Europe.]
Spines and hairs seem to be often effective protections for
caterpillars; the experiments of E. B. Poulton and others tend to show
that hairy caterpillars (fig. 15) are distasteful to birds. Many
caterpillars are protected by the harmony of their general green
coloration with their surroundings. When the insect attains a large
size--as in the case of the hawk moth (Sphingid) caterpillars--the
extensive green surface becomes broken up by diagonal dark markings
(fig. 46b), thus simulating the effect of light and shade among the
foliage. A remarkable result of Poulton's experiments has been the
establishment of a reflex effect through the skin on the colour of a
caterpillar. Some species of "loopers" (Geometridae, fig. 43) for
example, if placed when young among surroundings of a certain colour,
become closely assimilated thereto--dark brown among dark twigs, green
among green leaves. These colour-reflexes in conjunction with the
elongate twig-like shape of the caterpillars and their habit of
stretching themselves straight out from a branch, afford some of the
best and most familiar examples of "protective resemblance." The
"terrifying attitude" of caterpillars, and the supposed resemblance
borne by some of them to serpents and other formidable vertebrates or
arthropods, are discussed in the article MIMICRY.
[Illustration: After Ratzeburg, _Insect Life_, vol. 2 (U.S. Dept. Agr.).
FIG. 16.--Pupa of Gypsy Moth (_Porthetria dispar_) sheltered in leaves
joined by silken threads. Below is the cast larval cuticle.]
The silk produced by a caterpillar is, as we have seen, often
advantageous in its own life-relations, but its great use is in
connexion with the pupal stage. In the life-history of many Lepidoptera,
the last act of the caterpillar is to spin a cocoon which may afford
protection to the pupa. In some cases this is formed entirely of the
silk produced by the spinning-glands, and may vary from the loose
meshwork that clothes the pupa of the diamond-back moth (_Plutella
cruciferarum_) to the densely woven cocoon of the silkworms (Bombycidae
and Saturniidae) or the hard shell-like covering of the eggars
(Lasiocampidae). Frequently foreign substances are worked up with the
silk and serve to strengthen the cocoon, such as hairs from the body of
the caterpillar itself, as among the "tigers" (Arctiidae) or chips of
wood, as with the timber-burrowing larva of the "goat" (_Cossus_). In
many families of Lepidoptera we can trace a degeneration of the cocoon.
Thus, the pupae of most owl moths (Noctuidae) and hawk moths
(Sphingidae) lie buried in an earthen cell. Among the butterflies we
find that the cocoon is reduced to a pad of silk which gives attachment
to the cremaster; in the Pieridae there is in addition a girdle of silk
around the waist-region of the pupa, but the pupae of the Nymphalidae
(figs. 11, 65) simply hang from the supporting pad by the tail-end.
Poulton has shown that the colours of some exposed pupae vary with the
nature of the surroundings of the larva during the final stage.
When the pupal stage is complete the insect has to make its way out of
the cocoon. In the lower families of moths it is the pupa which comes
out at least partially, working itself onwards by the spines on its
abdominal segments; the pupa of the primitive _Micropteryx_ has
functional mandibles with which it bites through the cocoon. In the
higher Lepidoptera the pupa is immovable, and the imago, after the
ecdysis of the pupal cuticle, must emerge. This emergence is in some
cases facilitated by the secretion of an acid or alkaline solvent
discharged from the mouth or from the hind-gut, which weakens the
cocoon--so that the delicate moth can break through without injury.
As might be expected, the conditions to which larva and pupa are
subjected have often a marked influence on the nature of the imago. An
indifferent food-supply for the larva leads to a dwarfing of the moth or
butterfly. Many converging lines of experiment and observation tend to
show that cool conditions during the pupal stage frequently induce
darkening of pigment in the imago, while a warm temperature brightens
the colours of the perfect insect. For example, in many species of
butterfly that are double-brooded, the spring brood emerging from the
wintering pupae are more darkly coloured than the summer brood, but if
the pupae producing the latter be subjected artificially to cold
conditions, the winter form of imago results. It is usually impossible,
however, to produce the summer form of the species from wintering pupae
by artificial heat. From this A. Weismann argued that the more stable
winter form must be regarded as representing the ancestral race of the
species. Further examples of this "seasonal dimorphism" are afforded by
many tropical butterflies which possess a darker "wet-season" and a
brighter "dry-season" generation. So different in appearance are often
these two seasonal forms that before their true relationship was worked
out they had been naturally regarded as independent species. The
darkening of wing-patterns in many species of Lepidoptera has been
carefully studied in our own British fauna. Melanic or melanochroic
varieties are specially characteristic of western and hilly regions, and
some remarkable dark races (fig. 43) of certain geometrid moths have
arisen and become perpetuated in the manufacturing districts of the
north of England. The production of these melanic forms is explained by
J. W. Tutt and others as largely due to the action of natural selection,
the damp and sooty conditions of the districts where they occur
rendering unusually dark the surfaces--such as rocks, tree-trunks and
palings--on which moths habitually rest and so favouring the survival of
dark, and the elimination of pale varieties, as the latter would be
conspicuous to their enemies. Breeding experiments have shown that these
melanic races are sometimes "dominant" to their parent-stock. An
evidently adaptive connexion can be frequently traced between the
resting situation and attitude of the insect and the colour and pattern
of its wings. Moths that rest with the hindwings concealed beneath the
forewings (fig. 34, f) often have the latter dull and mottled, while the
former are sometimes highly coloured. Butterflies whose normal resting
attitude is with the wings closed vertically over the back (fig. 63) so
that the under surface is exposed to view, often have this under surface
mottled and inconspicuous although the upper surface may be bright with
flashing colours. Various degrees of such "protective resemblance" can
be traced, culminating in the wonderful "imitation" of its surroundings
shown by the tropical "leaf-butterflies" (_Kallima_), the under surfaces
of whose wings, though varying greatly, yet form in every case a perfect
representation of a leaf in some stage or other of decay, the butterfly
at the same time disposing of the rest of its body so as to bear out the
deception. How this is effected is best told by A. R. Wallace, who was
the first to observe it, in his work _The Malay Archipelago_:--
"The habit of the species is always to rest on a twig and among dead
or dried leaves, and in this position, with the wings closely pressed
together, their outline is exactly that of a moderately sized leaf
slightly curved or shrivelled. The tail of the hindwings forms a
perfect stalk and touches the stick, while the insect is supported by
the middle pair of legs, which are not noticed among the twigs and
fibres that surround it. The head and antennae are drawn back between
the wings so as to be quite concealed, and there is a little notch
hollowed out at the very base of the wings, which allows the head to
be retracted sufficiently."
But the British Vanessids often rest on a bare patch of ground with the
brightly coloured upper surface of their wings fully exposed to view,
and even make themselves still more conspicuous by fanning their wings
up and down. Some genera and families of Lepidoptera, believed to
secrete noxious juices that render them distasteful, are adorned with
the staring contrasts of colour usually regarded as "warning," while
other genera, belonging to harmless families sought for as food by birds
and lizards, are believed to obtain complete or partial immunity by
their likeness to the conspicuous noxious groups. (See MIMICRY.)
[Illustration: FIG. 17.--Vapourer Moth (_Ocneria detrita_). S. Europe.
A, Male; B, Female.]
Sexual dimorphism is frequent among the Lepidoptera. In many families
this takes the form of more elaborate feelers in the male than in the
female moth. Such complex feelers (fig. 2) bear numerous sensory
(olfactory) nerve-endings and give to the males that possess them a
wonderful power of discovering their mates. A single captive female of
the Endromidae or Lasiocampidae often causes hundreds of males of her
species to "assemble" around her prison, and this character is made use
of by collectors who want to secure specimens. In many
butterflies--notably the "blues" (Lycaenidae)--the male is brilliant
while the female is dull, and in other groups (the Danainae for example)
he is provided with scent-producing glands believed to be "alluring" in
function. The apparent evidence given by the sexual differences among the
Lepidoptera in favour of C. Darwin's theory of sexual selection finds no
support from a study of their habits. The male indeed usually seeks the
female, but she appears to exercise no choice in pairing. In some cases
the female is attracted by the male, and here a modified form of sexual
selection appears to be operative. The ghost swift moth (_Hepialus
humuli_) affords a curious and interesting example of this condition, the
female showing the usual brown and buff coloration of her genus, while
the wings of the male are pure white, rendering him conspicuous in the
dusky evening when pairing takes place. But in the northernmost haunts
of the species, where there is no midsummer night, the male closely
resembles the female in wing patterns, the development of the conspicuous
white being needless. A very interesting sexual dimorphism is seen in the
wingless condition of several female moths--the winter moths (_Hybernia_
and _Cheimatobia_) among the Geometridae and the vapourers (_Orgyia_ and
_Ocneria_) among the Lymantriidae for example (fig. 17). It might be
thought that the loss of power of flight by the female would seriously
restrict the range of the species. In such insects, however, the
caterpillars are often active and travel far.
_Distribution and Migration._--The range of the Lepidoptera is
practically world-wide; they are absent from the most remote and
inhospitable of the arctic and antarctic lands, but even Kerguelen
possesses a few small indigenous moths. Many of the large and dominant
families have a range wide as that of the order, and certain species
that have attached themselves to man--like the meal moths and the
clothes moths--have become almost cosmopolitan. Interesting and
suggestive restrictions of range can, however, be often traced. Although
butterflies have been found in 82° N. latitude in Greenland, they are
unknown in Iceland, and only a few species of the group reach New
Zealand. Three large sections--the Ithomiinae, Heliconiinae and
Brassolinae--of the great butterfly family Nymphalidae are peculiar to
the Neotropical region, while the Morphinae, a characteristically South
American group, have a few Oriental genera in India and Indo-Malaya. The
Acraeinae, another section of the same family, have the vast majority of
their species in Ethiopian Africa, but are represented eastwards in the
Oriental and Australian regions and westwards in South America. A
comparison of the lepidopterous faunas of Ireland, Great Britain and the
European continent is very instructive, and suggests strongly that,
despite their power of flight the Lepidoptera are mostly dependent on
land-connexions for the extension of their range. For example, Ireland
has only forty of the seventy species of British butterflies. The range
of many Lepidoptera is of course determined by the distribution of the
plants on which their larvae feed.
Nevertheless certain species of powerful flight, and some that might be
thought feeble on the wing, often cross sea-channels and establish or
reinforce distant colonies. Caterpillars of the great death's head moth
(_Acherontia atropos_) are found every summer feeding in British and
Irish potato fields, but it is doubtful if any of the pupae resulting
from them survive the winter in our climate. It is believed by Tutt that
the species is only maintained by a fresh immigration of moths from the
South each summer. Hosts of white butterflies (_Pieris_) have been
frequently observed crossing the English Channel from France to Kent.
Migrating swarms of Lepidoptera have often been met by sailors in
mid-ocean; thus, Tutt records the presence around a sailing ship in the
Atlantic of such a swarm of the rather feeble moth _Deiopeia pulchella_,
nearly 1000 m. from its nearest known habitat. This migratory instinct
is connected with the gregarious habits of many Lepidoptera. For
example, H. W. Bates states that at one place in South America he
noticed eighty different species flying about in enormous numbers in the
sunshine, and these, with few exceptions, were males, the females
remaining within the forest shades. Darwin describes a "butterfly
shower," which he observed 10 m. off the South American coast, extending
as far as the eye could reach; "even by the aid of the telescope," he
adds, "it was not possible to see a space free from butterflies." Sir J.
Emerson Tennent, witnessed in Ceylon a mighty host of butterflies of
white or pale yellow hue, "apparently miles in breadth and of such
prodigious extension as to occupy hours and even days uninterruptedly in
their passage." Observations at Heligoland by H. Gätke have shown that
migrating moths "travel under the same conditions as migrating birds,
and for the most part in their company, in an east to west direction;
they fly in swarms, the numbers of which defy all attempts at
computation and can only be expressed by millions." The painted lady
butterfly (_Pyrameis cardui_) comes in repeated swarms from the
Mediterranean region into northern and western Europe, while in North
America companies of the monarch (_Anosia archippus_) invade Canada
every summer from the United States, and are believed to return
southwards in autumn. This latter species has, during the last
half-century, extended its range south-westwards across the Pacific and
reached the Austro-Malayan islands, while several specimens have
occurred in southern and western England, though it has not established
itself on this side of the Atlantic. It is noteworthy that the
introduction of its food-plant--_Asclepias_--into the Sandwich Islands
in 1850 apparently enabled it to spread across the Pacific.
_Fossil History._--Our knowledge of the geological history of the
Lepidoptera is but scanty. Certain Oolitic fossil insects from the
lithographic stone of Solenhofen, Bavaria, have been described as moths,
but it is only in Tertiary deposits that undoubted Lepidoptera occur,
and these, all referable to existing families, are very scarce. Most of
them come from the Oligocene beds of Florissant, Colorado, and have been
described by S. H. Scudder. The paucity of Lepidoptera among the fossils
is not surprising when we consider the delicacy of their structure, and
though their past history cannot be traced back beyond early Cainozoic
times, we can have little doubt from the geographical distribution of
some of the families that the order originated with the other higher
Endopterygota in the Mesozoic epoch.
_Classification._--The order Lepidoptera contains more than fifty
families, the discussion of whose mutual relationships has given rise to
much difference of opinion. The generally received distinction is
between butterflies or _Rhopalocera_ (Lepidoptera with clubbed feelers,
whose habit is to fly by day) and moths or _Heterocera_ (Lepidoptera
with variously shaped feelers, mostly crepuscular or nocturnal in
habit). This distinction is quite untenable as a zoological conception,
for the relationship of butterflies to some moths is closer than that of
many families of Heterocera to each other. Still more objectionable is
the division of the order into _Macrolepidoptera_ (including the
butterflies and large moths) and the _Microlepidoptera_ (comprising the
smaller moths). Most of the recent suggestions for the division of the
Lepidoptera into sub-orders depend upon some single character. Thus J.
H. Comstock has proposed to separate the three lowest families, which
have--like caddis-flies (Trichoptera)--a jugum on each forewing, as a
suborder _Jugatae_, distinct from all the rest of the Lepidoptera--the
_Frenatae_, mostly possessing a frenulum on the hindwing. A. S. Packard
places one family (Micropterygidae) with functional mandibles and a
lacinia in the first maxilla alone in a suborder _Laciniata_, all the
rest of the order forming the suborder _Haustellata_. T. A. Chapman
divides the families with free or incompletely obtect and mobile pupae
(_Incompletae_) from those with obtect pupae which never leave the
cocoon (_Obtectae_), and this is probably the most natural primary
division of the Lepidoptera that has as yet been suggested. Dyar puts
forward a classification founded entirely on the structure of the larva,
while Tutt divides the Lepidoptera into three great stirps characterized
by the shape of the chorion of the egg. The primitive form of the egg is
oval, globular, or flattened with the micropyle at one end; from this
has apparently been derived the upright form of egg with the micropyle
on top which characterizes the butterflies and the higher moths. These
schemes, though helpful in pointing out important differences, are
unnatural in that they lay stress on single, often adaptive, characters
to the exclusion of others equally important. Although it is perhaps
best to establish no division among the Lepidoptera between the order
and the family, an attempt has been made in the classification adopted
in this article to group the families into tribes or super-families
which may indicate their probable affinities. The systematic work of G.
F. Hampson, A. R. Grote and E. Meyrick has done much to place the
classification of the Lepidoptera on a sound basis, so far as the
characters of the imago are concerned, but attention must also be paid
to the preparatory stages if a truly natural system is to be reached.
_Jugatae._
Three families are included in this group having in common certain
primitive characters of the wings and neuration (see fig. 6), as well
as of the larva and pupa. There is a membranous lobe or jugum near the
base of the wing, and the neuration of the hindwing is closely like
that of the forewing, the radial nervure being five-branched in both.
The pupa has four or five movable segments, and the larval prolegs
have complete circles of hooklets.
The three families of the Jugatae are not very closely related to each
other. The _Micropterygidae_ (often known as _Eriocephalidae_),
comprising a few small moths with metallic wings, are the most
primitive of all Lepidoptera. They are provided with functional
mandibles, while the maxillae have distinct laciniae, well-developed
palps and galeae not modified for suction (see fig. 3). The larva is
remarkable on account of its long feelers, the presence of pairs of
jointed prolegs on the first eight abdominal segments, an anal sucker
beneath the last segment and bladder-like outgrowths on the cuticle.
These curious larvae feed on wet moss. The family has only a few
genera scattered widely over the earth's surface (Europe, America,
Australia, New Zealand).
The _Eriocraniidae_ resemble the Micropterygidae in appearance, but
the imago has no mandibles, and the maxillae, though short and
provided with conspicuous palps, have no laciniae and form a proboscis
as in Lepidoptera generally. The abdomen of the female carries a
serrate piercing process, and the eggs are laid in the leaves of
deciduous trees, the white larvae, with aborted legs, mining in the
leaf tissue. The fully-fed larva winters in an underground cocoon and
then changes into the most remarkable of all known lepidopterous
pupae, with relatively enormous toothed mandibles which bite a way out
of the cocoon in preparation for the final change. These pupal
mandibles of the Eriocraniidae, together with the nature of the
imaginal maxillae in the Micropterygidae (Eriocephalidae) and the
wing-neuration in both families, point strongly to a relationship
between the Lepidoptera and the Trichoptera.
The _Hepialidae_ or swift moths--the third family of the Jugatae--are
in some respects specialized. The moths are of large or moderate size
with the maxillae in a vestigial condition, no food being taken after
the attainment of the perfect state. The larvae (fig. 12) feed either
on roots or in the wood of trees and shrubs, not attaining their
growth in less than a year and some large exotic species living for
two or three. The family is world-wide in range, and Australia
possesses some almost gigantic and strangely coloured genera.
_Tineides._
A large assemblage of moths, mostly of small size, are included in
this group. The wings have no jugum, but there is a frenulum on the
hindwing, which has, as in all the groups above the Jugatae, only a
single radial nervure. Three anal nervures are present in the hindwing
in those families whose wings are well developed, but in several
families of small moths the wings of both pairs are very narrow and
pointed, and the neuration is consequently reduced. The sub-costal
nervure of the hindwing is usually present and distinct from the
radial nervure. The egg is flat except in the Cossidae and Castniidae
in which it is upright. The larval prolegs, with few exceptions, have
a complete circle of hooklets, and the larvae usually feed in some
concealed situation. The pupa is incompletely obtect, with three (in
some females only two) to five free abdominal segments, and emerges
partly from the cocoon before the moth appears. The cremaster serves
to anchor the pupa to its cocoon at the correct degree of emergence,
and thus facilitates the eclosion of the imago.
[Illustration: FIG. 18.--_Stygia australis._ S. Europe.]
[Illustration: FIG. 19.--_Zeuzera scalaris._ India.]
The _Cossidae_ are a small family of large moths (figs. 8, 18, 19)
belonging to this section, characterized by their heads with erect
rough scales or hairs, the pectinate feelers of the males, their
reduced maxillae so that no food is taken in the perfect state, and
their wings with the fifth radial nervure arising from the third, and
the main median nervure forking in the discoidal areolet. The larvae
feed in plant stems, often in the wood of trees, forming tunnels and
galleries, and usually taking a year or more to reach maturity. The
pupa which has three or four free segments in the male and four or
five in the female, rests in a cocoon within the food plant, often
strengthened by chips of wood, or in a subterranean cocoon. The family
is fairly well represented in the tropics; the British fauna possesses
only three species, of which the "goat" (_Cossus cossus_) and the
"leopard" (_Zeuzera pyrina_) are well known, the caterpillars of both
being often injurious to timber and fruit trees.
The _Tortricidae_ are a large family of small moths (see fig. 1),
nearly allied to the Cossidae. The fifth radial nervure does not
arise from the third, the maxillae are well developed, but their
palps are obsolete; the head is densely clothed with erect scales; the
terminal segment of the labial palp is short and obtuse. The female
pupa has three, the male four, free segments. All the larvae of these
moths have some method of concealing themselves while feeding. A
frequent plan is to roll up a leaf of the food-plant, fastening the
twisted portion with silken threads so as to make a tubular retreat;
this is the habit of the caterpillar of the green bell moth (_Tortrix
viridana_) which often ravages the foliage of oak plantations. The
larvae of the pine-shoot moths (_Retinia_) shelter in solidified
resinous exudations from their coniferous food-plants, while the
codlin-moth caterpillar (_Carpocapsa pomonella_) feeds in apples and
pears, growing with the growth of the fruit which affords them both
provender and home. The antics of "jumping-beans" are due to the
movements of tortricid caterpillars within the substance of the seed.
The _Psychidae_ are a small but widely-distributed family of moths
whose males have the head, densely clothed with rough hairs, bearing
complex, bipectinated feelers, but with the maxillae reduced and
useless. The larvae live in portable cases made of grass, pieces of
leaf or stick, with a silken lining, and these cases serve as cocoons
for the pupae which agree in structure with those of the Tortricidae.
But the most remarkable feature of the family is the extreme
degradation of the female, which, wingless, legless and without jaws
or feelers, never emerges from the cocoon.
[Illustration: FIG. 20.--_Castnia acraeoides._ Brazil.]
The _Castniidae_ are a small family of large, conspicuous, day-flying
exotic moths (fig. 20) whose clubbed feelers and bright colours give
them a resemblance to butterflies, although their wing-neuration is of
the primitive tineoid type; the smooth larvae feed on the stems or
roots of plants and the pupal structure agrees with that of the
Tortricidae and Psychidae. The distribution of the family is confined
to Tropical America and the Indo-Malayan and Australian regions.
[Illustration: FIG. 21.--_Neurosymploca concinna._ S. Africa.]
The _Zygaenidae_ (burnet moths) are a large family of day-flying moths
(fig. 21) adorned with brilliant metallic colours. The feelers are
long, stout in the middle and tapering, bearing numerous long or short
pectinations. The well-developed maxillae have vestigial palps. The
larvae--often very conspicuously coloured--are remarkable among the
Tineides in having incomplete circles of hooks on the prolegs, and
they feed exposed on the leaves of various plants. The pupa, enclosed
in a silken cocoon, has four or five free segments. The _Limacodidae_
are a small family of brownish nocturnal moths, allied to the
Zygaenidae and agreeing with them in the structure of the pupa. The
larva in this family also is an exposed feeder, but it is remarkable
in form, being flattened and slug-like, without prolegs and adorned
with curious spinous processes.
[Illustration: FIG. 22.--A, _Sesia asiliformis_ (Gad-fly Hawk Moth).
Europe. B, Larva.]
The _Sesiidae_ are a large family of small, narrow-winged moths, the
sub-costal nervure of the hindwing being absent and the wings being
for the most part destitute of scales (fig. 22). The maxillae are
developed but their palps are vestigial, while the terminal segment of
the labial palp is short and pointed. Many of these insects have their
bodies banded with black and yellow; this in conjunction with the
transparent wings makes some of them like wasps or hornets in
appearance. The larvae feed in the woody stems of various plants. The
pupa, with three or four free abdominal segments, remains within its
cocoon, formed with chips of wood, until the time for its final change
draws near; then it works itself partly out of the tree by means of
the spines on its abdominal segments.
The _Nepticulidae_ are the smallest of all the Lepidoptera, measuring
only 3-8 mm. across the outspread wings, which are all lanceolate and
pointed at the tip. The sucking portions of the maxillae are
vestigial, but the palps are long and jointed. The larvae, without
thoracic limbs or prolegs, but sometimes with paired rudimentary
processes on some of the segments, mine in the leaves of plants. The
pupa, with four free abdominal segments in the female and five in the
male, rests in a cocoon usually outside the mine.
[Illustration: FIG. 23.--_Adela degeerella._ Europe.]
[Illustration: FIG. 24.--_Euplocampus anthracinus._ Europe.]
[Illustration: FIG. 25.--_Tinea tapetzella_ (Clothes Moth). Europe.]
The _Adelidae_ are a family of delicate, but larger, moths with very
long feelers (fig. 23) especially in the males. The larvae feed, when
young, in flowers; later, protected by a flat case, they devour
leaves; the pupa resembles that of the Nepticulidae in structure. The
female has an ovipositor adapted for piercing plant tissues.
The _Tineidae_ are a large and important family of small moths (figs.
14, 24, 25) with rough-haired heads, and with the maxillae and their
palps usually well developed. Many of the genera have narrow pointed
wings with degraded neuration. The larvae differ in their habits,
some--_Gracilaria_ for example--mine in leaves, while others, like the
well-known caterpillars of the clothes moth (_Tinea_) surround
themselves with portable cases (fig. 14) formed by spinning together
their own excrement. The female pupa has three, the male four free
abdominal segments.
_Plutellides._
This group includes a few large families of small moths that are
linked by their imaginal and larval structure to the Tineidae (in
which they have often been included) and by their pupal structure to
the higher groups that have yet to be considered. The moths have
labial palps with slender pointed terminal segments, and narrow
pointed wings, but the neuration (except in the Elachistidae) is less
degenerate than in most Tineidae. The hairy covering of the head is
smooth, and the maxillary palps are usually vestigial. The egg is
flat, and the larval prolegs have complete circles of hooklets. The
pupa is obtect with only two free abdominal segments (fifth and sixth)
in both sexes and does not move out of the cocoon.
[Illustration: FIG. 26.--_Cerostoma asperella._ Europe.]
[Illustration: FIG. 27.--_Psecadia pusiella._]
Four families are included in this group. The _Plutellidae_ (fig. 26)
have the maxillary palps developed, in some genera, as slender
threadlike appendages directed straight forward. The larvae do not
usually mine in leaves, but feed openly, keeping to the underside for
protection (_Plutella_), or spinning by their united labour a mass of
web over the food-plant (_Hyponomeuta_). In the other three families
the maxillary palps are vestigial or obsolete. The _Elachistidae_ have
remarkably narrow, pointed wings and their larvae mine in leaves or
form portable cases and feed among seeds. In the _Oecophoridae_ (fig.
27) the sub-costal nervure of the hindwing is free and distinct
throughout its length, and the larvae usually feed among spun leaves
or seeds, or in decayed wood. The _Gelechiidae_ are a large family
with similar larval habits; the moths are distinguished by the sinuate
termen of the hindwing and the connexion of its sub-costal nervure
with the discoidal areolet.
_Pyralides._
[Illustration: FIG. 28.--_Pterophorus spilodactylus._ Europe.]
[Illustration: FIG. 29.--_Orneodes hexadactylus_ (24-plumed Moth).
Europe.]
This group includes a number of moths of delicate build with elongate
legs, the maxillae and their palps being usually well developed. The
forewings have two anal nervures, the hindwings three (fig. 30, h, i);
in the hindwing the sub-costal nervure bends towards and often
connects with the radial, and the frenulum is usually present. The egg
is flat. The larva has complete circles of hooklets on its five pairs
of prolegs, and the pupa (usually completely obtect) does not move at
all from its cocoon. This group includes the only Lepidoptera that
have aquatic larvae.
Of the families comprised in this division three deserve special
mention. The _Pterophoridae_ (plume moths, fig. 28) usually have the
wings deeply cleft--a single cleft in the forewing and two in the
hindwing. The hairy larvae feed openly on leaves, while the soft and
hairy pupa remains attached to its cocoon by the cremaster, although
it is incompletely obtect and has three or four free abdominal
segments. The _Orneodidae_ (multiplume moths) have all the wings
six-cleft. Our British species, _Orneodes hexadactyla_ (fig. 29), is
an exquisite little insect, whose larva feeds on the blossoms of
honeysuckle. The pupa is completely obtect, with only two free
abdominal segments. The _Pyralidae_ (figs. 13, 30), a large family
with numerous divisions, have entire wings, and their pupae are
obtect. The caterpillars feed in some kind of shelter, some spinning a
loose case among the leaves of their food-plant, others burrowing into
dry vegetable substances or eating the waxen cells of bees. Several
species of this group, such as the Mediterranean flour moth, _Ephestia
kühniella_ (fig. 30), become serious pests in storehouses and
granaries, their larvae devouring flour and similar food-stuffs.
[Illustration: After Riley and Howard, _Insect Life_, vol. 2 (U.S.
Dept. Agr.).
FIG. 30.--Flour Moth (_Ephestia kühniella_).
c, With wings spread.
f, At rest.
g, h, i, Marking and neuration of wings.
a, Larva.
b, Pupa.
d, Head and front body-segments of larva.
e, 2nd and 3rd abdominal segments.]
_Noctuides._
In this group may be included a number of families of moths with the
second median nervure of the forewing arising close to the third. This
feature of neuration characterizes also the Jugatae (see fig. 6),
Tineides, Plutellides and Pyralides. But the Noctuides differ from
these groups in having only two anal nervures in the hindwing. The
maxillary palps are absent or vestigial, and a frenulum is usually
present on the hindwing. The larva has usually ten prolegs, whose
hooklets are arranged only along the inner edge, while the immobile
pupa is always obtect with only two free abdominal segments (the fifth
and sixth). The Lasiocampidae and their allies have flat eggs, but in
the Noctuidae, Arctiidae and their allies the egg is upright.
[Illustration: FIG. 31.--_Claterna cydonia._ India.]
The _Lasiocampidae_, together with a few small families, differ from
the majority of this group in wanting a frenulum. The maxillae of the
Lasiocampidae are so reduced that no food is taken in the imaginal
state, and in correlation with this condition the feelers of the male
are strongly (those of the female more feebly) bipectinated. The moths
are stout, hairy insects, usually brown or yellow in the pattern of
their wings. The caterpillars are densely hairy and many species
hibernate in the larval stage. The pupa is enclosed in a hard, dense
cocoon, whence the name "eggars" is often applied to the family, which
has a wide distribution, but is absent from New Zealand. The
_Drepanulidae_ are an allied family, in which the frenulum is usually
present, while the hindmost pair of larval prolegs are absent, their
segment being prolonged into a pointed process which is raised up when
the caterpillar is at rest. The hook-tip moths represent this family
in the British fauna.
The _Lymantriidae_ resemble the Lasiocampidae in their hairy bodies
ana vestigial maxillae, but the frenulum is usually present on the
hindwing and the feelers are bipectinate only in the males. Some
females of this family--the vapourer moths (_Orgyia_ and allies, fig.
17), for example--are degenerate creatures with vestigial wings. The
larvae (fig. 15) are very hairy, and often carry dense tufts on some
of their segments; hence the name of "tussocks" frequently applied to
them. The pupae are also often hairy (fig. 16)--an exceptional
condition--and are protected by a cocoon of silk mixed with some of
the larval hairs, while the female sheds some hairs from her own
abdomen to cover the eggs. The family is widely distributed, its
headquarters being the eastern tropics. To that part of the world is
restricted the allied family of the _Hypsidae_, distinguished from the
"tussocks" by the slender upturned terminal segment of the labial
palps and by the development of the maxillae.
[Illustration: FIG. 32.--_Ophideres imperator._ Madagascar.]
[Illustration: FIG. 33.--_Cyligramma fluctuosa._ W. Africa.]
[Illustration: From Mally, _Bull._ 24, _Div. Ent. U.S. Dept. Agr._
FIG. 34.--e, f, _Heliothis armigera._ Europe, c, Larva; d, pupa in
cell. Natural size. a, b, Egg, highly magnified.]
The _Noctuidae_ are the largest and most dominant family of the
Lepidoptera, comprising some 10,000 known species. They are mostly
moths of dull coloration, flying at dusk or by night. The maxillae are
well developed, the hindwing has a frenulum, and its sub-costal
nervure touches the radial near the base. The larvae of the Noctuidae
(fig. 34, c) are rarely hairy and the pupa (fig. 34, d) usually rests
in an earthen cell, being often the wintering stage for the species;
sometimes the pupa is enclosed in a loose cocoon of silk and leaves.
In some Noctuidae (fig. 32) the hindwings are brightly coloured, but
these are concealed beneath the dull, inconspicuous forewings when the
insect rests (fig. 34, f). Nearly allied to the Noctuidae, but very
different in appearance, are the gaily-coloured _Agaristidae_, a
family of day-flying moths (figs. 35, 36), confined to the warmer
regions of the globe and distinguished by their thickened feelers,
those of the Noctuids being thread-like or slightly pectinate.
The _Arctiidae_ (tiger moths, footmen, &c.) are allied to the
Noctuidae, but their wing-neuration is more specialized, the
sub-costal nervure of the hindwing being confluent with the radial for
the basal part of its course. These moths (fig. 37) have gaily
coloured wings, and the caterpillars are often densely covered with
long smooth hairs. The pupae are enclosed in silken cocoons (fig. 38).
The highest specialization of structure in this group of the
Lepidoptera is reached by the _Syntomidae_, a family nearly allied to
the Arctiidae, but with the sub-costal nervure in the hindwing absent.
The Syntomidae have elongate narrow forewings and short hindwings,
usually dark in colour with clear spots and dashes destitute of scales
(fig. 40). The body, on the other hand, is often brilliantly adorned.
The family, abundant in the tropics of the Old World, has only two
European species.
[Illustration: FIG. 35.--_Rothia pales._ Madagascar.]
_Sphingides._
[Illustration: FIG. 36.--_Aegocera rectilinea._ Tropical Africa.]
[Illustration: FIG. 37.--_Haploa Lecontei._ N. America.]
[Illustration: After Lugger, Riley and Howard, _Insect Life_, vol. 2
(U.S. Dept. Agr.).
FIG. 38.--c, Tiger Moth (_Phragmatobia fuliginosa_, Linn.). Europe. a,
Caterpillar; b, cocoon with pupa. Slightly enlarged.]
This group includes a series of families which agree with the
Noctuides in most points, but are distinguished by the origin of the
second median nervure of the forewing close to the first, or from the
discocellular nervure midway between the first and third medians (see
fig. 5). These neurational characters may appear somewhat
insignificant, but such slight though constant distinctions in
structures of no adaptational value may be safely regarded as truly
significant of relationship. Several of the families in this group
have lost the frenulum. In larval and pupal characters the Sphingides
generally resemble the Noctuides, but in some families there is a
reduction in the number of the larval prolegs. The egg is spherical or
flat, upright only in the Notodontidae.
[Illustration: FIG. 39.--_Halias prasinana._ Europe.]
[Illustration: FIG. 40.--_Euchromia formosa._ S. Africa.]
The Notodontidae are stout, hairy moths (figs. 5, 41, 42 a) with
maxillae and frenulum developed. In the larva the prolegs on the
hindmost segment are sometimes modified into pointed outgrowths which
are carried erect when the caterpillar moves about. From these
structures whip-like, coloured processes are protruded by the
caterpillar (fig. 42 b) of the puss moth (_Cerura_) when alarmed;
these processes are believed to help in "terrifying" the caterpillar's
enemies. Allied to the Notodontidae are the _Cymatophoridae_--a family
of moths agreeing with the Noctuidae in appearance and habits--and the
large and important family of the _Geometridae_. The moths (fig. 43)
of this family are distinguished from the Notodontidae by their
delicate build and elongate feet, the caterpillars (fig. 43, c) by the
absence or vestigial condition of the three anterior pairs of prolegs.
The two hinder pairs of prolegs are therefore alone functional and the
larva progresses by "looping," i.e. bending the body so as to bring
these prolegs close up to the thoracic legs, and then, taking a fresh
grip on the twig whereon it walks, stretching the body straight out
again. Many of these larvae have a striking resemblance both in form
and colour to the twigs of their food-plant. In some of the species
the female has the wings reduced to useless vestiges. The family is
world-wide in its range. The tropical _Uraniidae_ are large handsome
moths (figs. 44, 45), often with exquisite wing-patterns, allied to
the Geometridae, but distinguished by the absence of a frenulum in the
moth and the presence of the normal ten prolegs in the larva.
[Illustration: FIG. 41.--_Notodonta ziczac_ (Pebble Prominent Moth).
Europe.]
[Illustration: FIG. 42 A.--_Cerura borealis._ N. America.]
[Illustration: FIG. 42 B.--Larva of _Cerura_ (Puss Moth).]
[Illustration: After Grote, _Natural Science_ (J. M. Dent & Co.).
FIG. 43.--Geometrid Moth (_Amphidasys betularia_, Linn.). Europe. a,
Large grey type; b, dark variety; c, caterpillar in looping attitude.]
[Illustration: FIG. 44.--_Urania boisduvalii._ Cuba.]
[Illustration: FIG. 45.--_Urania boisduvalii_ at rest, showing under
surface of wings.]
The _Sphingidae_ (hawk moths) are insects often of large size (figs.
46a, 47), with spindle-shaped feelers, elongate and powerful forewings
and the maxillae very well developed. The hindwing carries a frenulum
and has its sub-costal nervure connected with the radial by a short
bar. The caterpillars have the full number of prolegs, and, in many
genera, carry a prominent dorsal horn on the eighth abdominal segment
(fig. 46b). The pupa lies in an earthen cell. On account of their
powerful flight the moths of this family have a wide range; certain
species--like _Acherontia atropos_ and _Protoparce
convolvuli_--migrate into the British Islands in numbers almost every
summer.
[Illustration: FIG. 46 A.--_Chlaenogramma jasminearum_ (Jessamine
Sphinx). N. America.]
[Illustration: FIG. 46 B.--Larva.]
[Illustration: FIG. 47.--_Smerinthus ocellatus_ (Eyed Hawk moth).
Europe.]
A group of families in which the first maxillae are vestigial, the
feelers bipectinate and the pupa enclosed in a dense silken cocoon,
have been regarded as the most highly specialized of all the moths,
though according to other views the whole series of the Lepidoptera
culminates in the Syntomidae. Of these cocoon-spinning families may be
specially mentioned the _Eupterotidae_, large brown or yellow moths
inhabiting tropical Asia and Africa, and represented in Europe only by
the "processionary moth" (_Cnethocampa processionea_). In this family
the frenulum is present, and the larvae are protected with tufts of
long hair. The _Bombycidae_ have no frenulum, and the larvae are
smooth, with some of the segments humped and the eighth abdominal
often carrying a dorsal spine. The family is tropical in its
distribution, but the common silkworm (_Bombyx mori_, fig. 48) has
become acclimatized in southern Europe and is the source of most of
the silk used in manufacture and art. Of commercial value also is the
silk spun by the great moths of the family _Saturniidae_, well
represented in warm countries and contributing a single species
(_Saturnia pavonia-minor_) to the British fauna. These moths (fig. 49)
have but a single anal nervure in the hindwing and only three radial
nervures in the forewing. The wing-patterns are handsome and striking;
usually an unsealed "eyespot" is conspicuous at the end of each
discoidal areolet. The caterpillars are protected by remarkable
spine-bearing tubercles (fig. 10, B).
[Illustration: After C.V. Riley, _Bull._ 14, _Div. Ent. U.S. Dept.
Agr._
FIG. 48.--_Bombyx mori._ China. a, Caterpillar (the common silkworm);
b, cocoon; c, male moth.]
[Illustration: FIG. 49.--_Epiphora bouhiniae._ W. Africa.]
_Grypocera._
[Illustration: FIG. 50.--_Tagiades sabadius._ S. Africa.]
This group stands at the base of the series of families that are
usually distinguished as "butterflies." The feelers are recurved at
the tip, and thickened just before the extremity. The forewing has the
full number of radial nervures, distinct and evenly spaced, and two
anal nervures; the frenulum is usually absent. The larvae (fig. 51)
have prolegs with complete circles of hooklets, and often feed in
concealed situations, while the pupa is protected by a light cocoon.
The affinities of this group are clearly not with the higher groups of
moths just described, but with some of the lower families. According
to Meyrick they are most closely related to the Pyralidae, but Hampson
and most other students would derive them (through the Castniidae)
from a primitive Tineoid stock allied to the Cossidae and Zygaenidae.
Three families are included in the section. The North American
_Megathymidae_ and the Australian _Euschemonidae_ have a frenulum and
are usually reckoned among the "moths." The _Hesperiidae_ in which the
frenulum is wanting form the large family of the skipper butterflies,
represented in our own fauna by several species. They are insects with
broad head--the feelers being widely separated--usually brown or grey
wings (fig. 50) and a peculiar jerky flight. The family has an
extensive range but is unknown in Greenland, New Zealand, and in many
oceanic islands.
_Rhopalocera._
[Illustration: FIG. 51.--Chrysalis and Larva of _Nisoniadestages_
(dingy skipper). Europe.]
This group comprises the typical butterflies which are much more
highly specialized than the Grypocera, and may be readily
distinguished by the knobbed or clubbed feelers and by the absence of
a frenulum. Two or more of the radial nervures in the forewing arise
from a common stalk or are suppressed. The egg is "upright." The
larvae have hooklets only on the inner edges of the prolegs. The pupa
is very highly modified, only two free abdominal segments are ever
recognizable, and in some genera even these have become consolidated.
The cocoon is reduced to a pad of silk, to which the pupa is attached,
suspended by the cremastral hooks; in some families there is also a
silken girdle around the waist-region. In correlation with the exposed
condition of the pupa, we find the presence of a specially developed
"head-piece" or "nose-horn" to protect the head-region of the
contained imago. Their bright colours and conspicuous flight in the
sunshine has made the Rhopalocera the most admired of all insects by
the casual observer.
[Illustration: FIG. 52.--_Chrysophanus thoe._ N. America.]
A modification that has taken place in several families of butterflies
is the reduction of the first pair of legs. H. W. Bates arranged the
families in a series depending on this character, but neurational and
pupal features must be taken into account as well, and the sequence
followed here is modified from that proposed by A. R. Grote and J. W.
Tutt.
[Illustration: FIG. 53.--_Rathinda amor._ India.]
[Illustration: FIG. 54.--_Cheritra freja._ India.]
The _Lycaenidae_ are a large family including the small butterflies
(figs. 52, 53, 54) popularly known as blues, coppers and hairstreaks.
The forelegs in the female are normal, but in the male the tarsal
segments are shortened and the claws sometimes are absent. The
forewing has only three or four radial nervures (fig. 55), the last
two of which arise from a common stalk; the feelers are inserted close
together on the head. The larva is short and hairy, somewhat like a
woodlouse in shape, the broad sides concealing the legs and prolegs,
while the pupa, which is also hairy or bristly, is attached by the
cremaster to a silken pad and cinctured with a silken thread. The
upper surfaces of the wings of these insects are usually of a bright
metallic hue--blue or coppery--while beneath there are often numerous
dark centred "eye-spots." The family is widely distributed. Nearly
related are the _Lemoniidae_, a family abundantly represented in the
Neotropical Region, but scarce in the Old World and having only a
single European species (_Nemeobius lucinia_) which occurs also in
England. In the Lemoniidae (figs. 56, 57) the forelegs of the male are
reduced and useless for walking. The _Libytheidae_ may be recognized
by the elongate snout-like palps, the five-branched radial nervure of
the forewing, the cylindrical hairy larva, and the pupa attached only
by the cremaster.
[Illustration: After Grote, _Natural Science_, vol. 12 (J. M. Dent &
Co.).
FIG. 55.--Neuration of Wings in _Lycaena_.
2, Sub-costal.
3, Radial.
4, Median.
5, Cubital.
7, 8, Anal nervures.]
[Illustration: FIG. 56.--_Eurybia carolina._ Brazil.]
[Illustration: FIG. 57.--_Calephelis caenius._ N. America.]
[Illustration: FIG. 58.--_Papilio machaon_ (Swallow-tail.). Europe.]
[Illustration: FIG. 59.--_Parnassius apollo_ (Apollo). European Alps.]
The _Papilionidae_ are large butterflies with ample wings, and all six
legs fully developed in both sexes. The forewing has five radial and
two anal nervures, the second of the latter being free from the first
and running to the dorsum of the wing, while the hindwing has but a
single anal, and is frequently prolonged into a "tail" at the third
median nervure (fig. 58). The larva is cylindrical, never hairy but
often tuberculate and provided with a dorsal retractile tentacle
(osmaterium) on the prothorax. The pupa, which has a double
"nose-horn," is attached by the cremaster and a waist-girdle to the
food-plant in the Papilioninae (fig. 58), but lies in a web on the
ground among the Parnasiinae (figs. 59, 60). The latter sub-family
includes the well-known Apollo butterflies of the Alps. The former is
represented in the British fauna by the East Anglian swallow-tail
(_Papilio machaon_), and is very abundant in the warmer regions of the
world, including some of the most magnificent and brilliant of
insects.
[Illustration: FIG. 60.--_Thais medesicaste._ S. France.]
[Illustration: FIG. 61.--_Colias hyale_ (Pale clouded Yellow
Butterfly). Europe.]
Agreeing with the Papilionidae in the six perfect legs of both sexes
and the cincture-support of the pupa we find the _Pieridae_--the
family of the white and yellow butterflies (figs. 61, 62)--represented
by ten species in the British fauna and very widely spread over the
earth's surface. In the _Pieridae_ there are two anal nervures in the
hindwing, while the second anal nervure in the forewing runs into the
first; the larva is cylindrical and hairy without an osmaterium. The
pupa has a single "nose-horn," and in the more highly organized genera
there is no mobility whatever between its abdominal segments. The
wintering pupae of the common cabbage butterflies (_Pieris brassicae_
and _P. rapae_) are common objects attached to walls and fences and
their colour harmonizes, to a great extent, with that of their
surroundings.
[Illustration: FIG. 62.--_Appias nero_ (male). Malaya.]
[Illustration: FIG. 63.--_Dione moneta._ Brazil.]
[Illustration: FIG. 64.--Larva of _Argynnis paphia_ (Silver-washed
Fritillary). Europe.]
[Illustration: FIG. 65.--_Vanessa io_ (Peacock) and its pupa.]
[Illustration: FIG. 66.--_Euploea leucostictos_ (male). Malaya.]
[Illustration: After A. R. Grote, _Natural Science_, vol. 12 (J. M.
Dent & Co.).
FIG. 67.--Neuration of Wings in a Nymphaline Butterfly.
2, Sub-costal.
3, Radial.
4, Median.
5, Cubital.
6, 7, 8, Anal nervures.]
[Illustration: FIG. 68.--_Nymphalis jason._ W. Africa. Upper and under
surface.]
[Illustration: FIG. 69.--Larva and Pupa of _Apatura ilia_.]
[Illustration: FIG. 70.--_Callithea sapphira._ Brazil.]
The _Nymphalidae_ are by far the largest and most dominant family of
butterflies. In both sexes the forelegs are useless for walking (fig.
63), the tarsal segments being absent and the short shins clothed with
long hairs, whence the name of brush-footed butterflies is often
applied to the family. The neuration of the wings resembles that found
among the Pieridae, but in the Nymphalidae the pupa, which has a
double nose-horn (fig. 65)--as in _Papilio_--is suspended from the
cremaster only, no girdling thread being present, or it lies simply on
the ground. The egg is elongate and sub-conical in form and ornamented
with numerous ribs, while the larva is usually protected by numerous
spines (fig. 64) arising from the segmental tubercles. To this family
belong our common gaily-coloured butterflies--the tortoiseshells,
peacock (fig. 65), admirals, fritillaries and emperors. In most cases
the bright colouring is confined to the upper surface of the wings,
the under-side being mottled and often inconspicuous. Most members of
the group Vanessidi--the peacock and tortoiseshells (_Vanessa_) and
the red admiral (_Pyrameis_) for example--hibernate in the imaginal
state. This large family is divided into several sub-families whose
characters may be briefly given, as they are considered to be distinct
families by many entomologists. The _Danainae_ (or _Euploeinae_, fig.
66) have the anal nervures of the forewing arising from a common
stalk, the discoidal areolets in both wings closed, and the front feet
of the female thickened; their larvae are smooth with fleshy
processes. The danaine butterflies range over all the warmer parts of
the world, becoming most numerous in the eastern tropics, where
flourish the handsome purple _Euploeae_ whose males often have
"brands" on the wings; these insects are conspicuously marked and are
believed to be distasteful to birds and lizards. So are the South
American _Ithomiinae_, distinguished from the Danainae by the slender
feet of the females; the narrow winged, tawny _Acraeinae_, with simple
anal nervures, thick hairy palps and spiny larvae; and the
_Heliconiinae_ whose palps are compressed, scaly at the sides and
hairy in front. This last named sub-family is confined to the
Neotropical Region, while the Acraeinae are most numerous in the
Ethiopian. The _Nymphalinae_ include the British vanessids (fig. 65),
and a vast assemblage of exotic genera (figs. 68, 70), characterized
by the "open" discoidal areolets (fig. 67) owing to the absence of the
transverse "disco-cellular" nervules. In the _Morphinae_--including
some magnificent South American insects with deep or azure blue wings,
and a few rather dull-coloured Oriental genera--the areolets are
closed in the forewings and often in the hindwings. The larvae of the
Morphinae (fig. 71) are smooth or hairy with a curiously forked
tail-segment. A similar larva characterizes the South American
_Brassolinae_ or owl-butterflies--robust insects (figs. 72, 73) with
the areolets closed in both wings, which are adorned with large
"eye-spots" beneath. The _Satyrinae_, including our native browns and
the Alpine _Erebiae_, resemble the foregoing group in many respects of
structure, but the sub-costal nervure is greatly thickened at the base
(fig. 74). This sub-family is world-wide in its distribution. One
genus (_Oeneis_, fig. 75) is found in high northern latitudes, but
reappears in South America. The dark, spotted species of _Erebia_ are
familiar insects to travellers among the Alps; yet butterflies nearly
related to these Alpine insects occur in Patagonia, in South Africa
and in New Zealand. Such facts of distribution clearly show that
though the Nymphalidae have attained a high degree of specialization
among the Lepidoptera, some of their genera have a history which goes
back to a time when the distribution of land and water on the earth's
surface must have been very different from what it is to-day.
[Illustration: FIG. 71.--Larva of _Amathusia phidippus_.]
[Illustration: FIG. 72.--_Opsiphanes syme._ Brazil.]
[Illustration: FIG. 73.--_Brassolis astyra._ Brazil.]
[Illustration: After A. R. Grote, _Natural Science_, vol. 12 (J. M.
Dent & Co.).
FIG. 74.--Neuration of wings in _Pararge_, a satyrid butterfly.
2, Sub-costal.
3, Radial.
4, Median.
5, Cubital.
7, 8, Anal nervures.]
[Illustration: FIG. 75.--_Oeneis jutta._ Arctic Regions.]
[Illustration: FIG. 76.--_Bia actorion._ Brazil.]
BIBLIOGRAPHY.--The handsome Lepidoptera, with their interesting and
easily observed life-histories, have naturally attracted many
students, and the literature of the order is enormous. M. Malpighi's
treatise on the anatomy of the silkworm (_De Bombycibus_, London,
1669) and P. Lyonnet's memoir on the Goat-caterpillar, are among the
earliest and most famous of entomological writings. W. F. Kirby's
_Handbook to the Order Lepidoptera_ (5 vols., London, 1894-1897)
should be consulted for references to the older systematic writers
such as Linnaeus, J. C. Fabricius, J. Hübner, P. Cramer, E. Doubleday
and W. C. Hewitson. Kirby's _Catalogues_ are also invaluable for the
systematist. For the jaws of the Lepidoptera see F. Darwin, _Quart.
Journ. Mic. Sci._ xv. (1875); E. Burgess, _Amer. Nat._ xiv. (1880); A.
Walter, _Jen. Zeits. f. Naturw._ xviii. (1885); W. Breitenbach, Ib.
xv. (1882); V. L. Kellogg, _Amer. Nat._ xxix. (1895). The last-named
deals also with wing structure, which is further described by A.
Spuler, _Zeits. wiss. Zool._ liii. (1892) and _Zool. Jahrb. Anat._
viii. (1895); A. R. Grote, _Mitt. aus dem Roemer-Museum_ (Hildesheim,
1896-1897); G. Enderlein, _Zool. Jahrb. Anat._ xvi. (1903), and many
others. For scales see A. G. Mayer, _Bull. Mus. Comp. Zool. Harvard_,
xxix. (1896). For internal anatomy W. H. Jackson, _Trans. Linn. Soc.
Zool._ (2) v. (1891), and W. Petersen, _Mem. Acad. Imp. Sci. St
Petersburg_ (8) ix. (1900). The early stages and transformations of
Lepidoptera are described by J. Gonin, _Bull. Soc. Vaud. Sci. Nat._
xxx. (1894); E. B. Poulton, _Trans. Linn. Soc. Zool._ (2) v. (1891);
H. G. Dyar, _Ann. New York Acad. Sci._ viii. (1894); T. A. Chapman,
_Trans. Entom. Soc. Lond._ (1893), &c. For habits and life-relations
see A. Seitz, _Zool. Jahrb. Syst._ v., vii. (1890, 1894); A. Weismann,
_Studies in the Theory of Descent_ (London, 1882) and _Entomologist_,
xxix. (1896); F. Merrifield, _Trans. Entom. Soc. Lond._ (1890, 1893,
1905); M. Standfuss, _Handbuch der paläarktischen
Gross-schmetterlinge_ (Jena, 1896); R. Trimen, _Proc. Ent. Soc. Lond._
(1898); E. B. Poulton, _Colours of Animals_ (London, 1890); _Trans.
Entom. Soc._ (1892 and 1903), and _Journ. Linn. Soc. Zool._ xxvi.
(1898); F. E. Beddard, _Animal Coloration_ (London, 1892). For
distribution see H. J. Elwes, _Proc. Entom. Soc. Lond._ (1894); J. W.
Tutt, _Migration and Dispersal of Insects_ (London, 1902); Fossil
Lepidoptera, S. H. Scudder, _8th Rep. U.S. Geol. Survey_ (1889). Among
recent general works on the Lepidoptera, most of which contain
numerous references to the older literature, may be mentioned A. S.
Packard's unfinished work on the Bombycine Moths of N. America, _Mem.
Nat. Acad. Sci. Philadelphia_, vii. (1895), and _Mem. Acad. Sci.
Washington_, lx. (1905); D. Sharp's chapter in _Cambridge Nat. Hist._
vi. (London, 1898); G. F. Hampson, _Moths of India_ (4 vols., London,
1892-1896), and _Catalogue of the Lepidoptera Phalaenae_ (1895) and
onwards; S. H. Scudder, _Butterflies of New England_ (3 vols.,
Cambridge, Mass., 1888-1889); W. J. Holland, _Butterfly Book_ (New
York, 1899). Works on the British Lepidoptera are numerous, for
example, those of H. T. Stainton (1851), C. G. Barrett (1893-1907), E.
Meyrick (1895), and J. W. Tutt (1899 and onwards). For recent general
systematic works, the student should consult the catalogues mentioned
above and the _Zoological Record_. The writings of O. Staudinger, E.
Schatz, C. Oberthür, K. Jordan, C. Aurivillius and P. Mabille may be
specially mentioned. (G. H. C.)
LEPIDUS, the name of a Roman patrician family in the Aemilian gens.
1. MARCUS AEMILIUS LEPIDUS, one of the three ambassadors sent to Egypt
in 201 B.C. as guardians of the infant king Ptolemy V. He was consul in
187 and 175, censor 179, _pontifex maximus_ from 180 onwards, and was
six times chosen by the censors _princeps senatus_. He died in 152. He
distinguished himself in the war with Antiochus III. of Syria, and
against the Ligurians. He made the Via Aemilia from Ariminum to
Placentia, and led colonies to Mutina and Parma.
Livy xl. 42-46, _epit._ 48; Polybius xvi. 34.
2. MARCUS AEMILIUS LEPIDUS, surnamed PORCINA (probably from his personal
appearance), consul 137 B.C. Being sent to Spain to conduct the
Numantine war, he began against the will of the senate to attack the
Vaccaei. This enterprise was so unsuccessful that he was deprived of his
command in 136 and condemned to pay a fine. He was among the greatest of
the earlier Roman orators, and Cicero praises him for having introduced
the well-constructed sentence and even flow of language from Greek into
Roman oratory.
Cicero, _Brutus_, 25, 27, 86, 97; Vell. Pat. ii. 10; Appian, _Hisp._
80-83; Livy, _epit._ 56.
3. MARCUS AEMILIUS LEPIDUS, father of the triumvir. In 81 B.C. he was
praetor of Sicily, where he made himself detested by oppression and
extortion. In the civil wars he sided with Sulla and bought much of the
confiscated property of the Marian partisans. Afterwards he became
leader of the popular party, and with the help of Pompey was elected
consul for 78, in spite of the opposition of Sulla. When the dictator
died, Lepidus tried in vain to prevent the burial of his body in the
Campus Martius, and to alter the constitution established by him. His
colleague Lutatius Catulus found a tribune to place his veto on
Lepidus's proposals; and the quarrel between the two parties in the
state became so acute that the senate made the consuls swear not to take
up arms. Lepidus was then ordered by the senate to go to his province,
Transalpine Gaul; but he stopped in Etruria on his way from the city and
began to levy an army. He was declared a public enemy early in 77, and
forthwith marched against Rome. A battle took place in the Campus
Martius, Pompey and Catulus commanding the senatorial army, and Lepidus
was defeated. He sailed to Sardinia, in order to put himself into
connexion with Sertorius in Spain, but here also suffered a repulse, and
died shortly afterwards.
Plutarch, _Sulla_, 34, 38, _Pompey_, 15; Appian, _B.C._ i. 105, 107;
Livy, _epit._ 90; Florus iii. 23; Cicero, _Balbus_, 15.
4. MARCUS AEMILIUS LEPIDUS, the triumvir. He joined the party of Julius
Caesar in the civil wars, and was by the dictator thrice nominated
_magister equitum_ and raised to the consulship in 46 B.C. He was a man
of great wealth and influence, and it was probably more on this ground
than on account of his ability that Caesar raised him to such honours.
In the beginning of 44 B.C. he was sent to Gallia Narbonensis, but
before he had left the city with his army Caesar was murdered. Lepidus,
as commander of the only army near Rome, became a man of great
importance in the troubles which followed. Taking part with Marcus
Antonius (Mark Antony), he joined in the reconciliation which the latter
effected with the senatorial party, and afterwards sided with him when
open war broke out. Antony, after his defeat at Mutina, joined Lepidus
in Gaul, and in August 43 Octavian (afterwards the emperor Augustus),
who had forced the senate to make him consul, effected an arrangement
with Antony and Lepidus, and their triumvirate was organized at Bononia.
Antony and Octavian soon reduced Lepidus to an inferior position. His
province of Gaul and Spain was taken from him; and, though he was
included in the triumvirate when it was renewed in 37, his power was
only nominal. He made an effort in the following year to regain some
reality of power, conquered part of Sicily, and claimed the whole island
as his province, but Octavian found means to sap the fidelity of his
soldiers, and he was obliged to supplicate for his life. He was allowed
to retain his fortune and the office of _pontifex maximus_ to which he
had been appointed in 44, but had to retire into private life. According
to Suetonius (_Augustus_, 16) he died at Circeii in the year 13.
See ROME: _History_ ii., "The Republic," Period C, _ad fin._; Appian,
_Bell. Civ._ ii.-v.; Dio Cassius xli.-xlix.; Vell. Pat. ii. 64, 80;
Orelli's _Onomasticon_ to Cicero.
LE PLAY, PIERRE GUILLAUME FRÉDÉRIC (1806-1882), French engineer and
economist, was born at La Rivière-Saint-Sauveur (Calvados) on the 11th
of April 1806, the son of a custom-house official. He was educated at
the École Polytechnique, and from there passed into the State Department
of Mines. In 1834 he was appointed head of the permanent committee of
mining statistics, and in 1840 engineer-in-chief and professor of
metallurgy at the school of mines, where he became inspector in 1848.
For nearly a quarter of a century Le Play spent his vacations travelling
in the various countries of Europe, and collected a vast quantity of
material bearing upon the social condition of the working classes. In
1855 he published _Les Ouvriers européens_, which comprised a series of
thirty-six monographs on the budgets of typical families selected from
the most diverse industries. The Académie des Sciences conferred on him
the Montyon prize. Napoleon III., who held him in high esteem, entrusted
him with the organization of the Exhibition of 1855, and appointed him
counsellor of state, commissioner general of the Exhibition of 1867,
senator of the empire and grand officer of the Legion of Honour. He died
in Paris on the 5th of April 1882.
In 1856 Le Play founded the _Société internationale des études
pratiques d'Économie sociale_, which has devoted its energies
principally to forwarding social studies on the lines laid down by its
founder. The journal of the society, _La Réforme sociale_, founded in
1881, is published fortnightly. Other works of Le Play are _La Réforme
sociale_ (2 vols., 1864; 7th ed., 3 vols., 1887); _L'Organisation de
la famille_ (1871); _La Constitution de l'Angleterre_ (in
collaboration with M. Delaire, 1875). See article in _Harvard
Quarterly Journal of Economics_ (June 1890), by H. Higgs.
LEPROSY (_Lepra Arabum_, _Elephantiasis Graecorum_, _Aussatz_,
_Spedalskhed_), the greatest disease of medieval Christendom,
identified, on the one hand, with a disease endemic from the earliest
historical times (1500 B.C.) in the delta and valley of the Nile, and,
on the other hand, with a disease now common in Asia, Africa, South
America, the West Indies, and certain isolated localities of Europe. An
authentic representation of the leprosy of the middle ages exists in a
picture at Munich by Holbein, painted at Augsburg in 1516; St Elizabeth
gives bread and wine to a prostrate group of lepers, including a bearded
man whose face is covered with large round reddish knobs, an old woman
whose arm is covered with brown blotches, the leg swathed in bandages
through which matter oozes, the bare knee also marked with discoloured
spots, and on the head a white rag or plaster, and, thirdly, a young man
whose neck and face (especially round the somewhat hairless eyebrows)
are spotted with brown patches of various size. It is conjectured by
Virchow that the painter had made studies of lepers from the
leper-houses then existing at Augsburg. These external characters of
medieval leprosy agree with the descriptions of it by the ancients, and
with the pictures of modern leprosy given by Danielssen and Boeck for
Norway, by various authors for sporadic European cases, by Anderson for
Malacca, by Carter for India, by Wolff for Madeira and by Hillis for
British Guiana. There has been some confusion in the technical naming of
the disease; it is called _Elephantiasis_ (_Leontiasis_, _Satyriasis_)
by the Greek writers, and _Lepra_ by the Arabians.
Leprosy is now included among the parasitic diseases (see PARASITIC
DISEASES). The cause is believed to be infection by the bacillus leprae,
a specific microbe discovered by Armauer Hansen in 1871. It is worthy of
note that tuberculosis is very common among lepers, and especially
attacks the serous membranes. The essential character of leprosy is a
great multiplication of cells, resembling the "granulation cells" of
lupus and syphilis, in the tissues affected, which become infiltrated
and thickened, with degeneration and destruction of their normal
elements. The new cells vary in size from ordinary leucocytes to giant
cells three or four times larger. The bacilli are found in these cells,
sometimes in small numbers, sometimes in masses. The structures most
affected are the skin, nerves, mucous membranes and lymphatic glands.
The symptoms arise from the anatomical changes indicated, and they vary
according to the parts attacked. Three types of disease are usually
described--(1) nodular, (2) smooth or anaesthetic, (3) mixed. In the
first the skin is chiefly affected, in the second the nerves; the third
combines the features of both. It should be understood that this
classification is purely a matter of convenience, and is based on the
relative prominence of symptoms, which may be combined in all degrees.
The incubation period of leprosy--assuming it to be due to infection--is
unknown, but cases are on record which can only be explained on the
hypothesis that it may be many years. The invasion is usually slow and
intermittent. There are occasional feverish attacks, with the usual
constitutional disturbance and other slight premonitory signs, such as
changes in the colour of the skin and in its sensibility. Sometimes, but
rarely, the onset is acute and the characteristic symptoms develop
rapidly. These begin with an eruption which differs markedly according
to the type of disease. In the nodular form dark red or coppery patches
appear on the face, backs of the hands, and feet or on the body; they
are generally symmetrical, and vary from the size of a shilling upwards.
They come with one of the feverish attacks and fade away when it has
gone, but only to return. After a time infiltration and thickening of
the skin become noticeable, and the nodules appear. They are lumpy
excrescences, at first pink but changing to brown. Thickening of the
skin of the face produces a highly characteristic appearance, recalling
the aspect of a lion. The tissues of the eye undergo degenerative
changes; the mucous membrane of the nose and throat is thickened,
impairing the breathing and the voice; the eyebrows fall off; the ears
and nose become thickened and enlarged. As the disease progresses the
nodules tend to break down and ulcerate, leaving open sores. The
patient, whose condition is extremely wretched, gradually becomes
weaker, and eventually succumbs to exhaustion or is carried off by some
intercurrent disease, usually inflammation of the kidneys or
tuberculosis. A severe case may end fatally in two years, but, as a
rule, when patients are well cared for the illness lasts several years.
There is often temporary improvement, but complete recovery from this
form of leprosy rarely or never occurs. The smooth type is less severe
and more chronic. The eruption consists of patches of dry, slightly
discoloured skin, not elevated above the surface. These patches are the
result of morbid changes affecting the cutaneous nerves, and are
accompanied by diminished sensibility over the areas of skin affected.
At the same time certain nerve trunks in the arm and leg, and
particularly the ulnar nerve, are found to be thickened. In the further
stages the symptoms are those of increasing degeneration of the nerves.
Bullae form on the skin, and the discoloured patches become enlarged;
sensation is lost, muscular power diminished, with wasting, contraction
of tendons, and all the signs of impaired nutrition. The nails become
hard and clawed; perforating ulcers of the feet are common; portions of
the extremities, including whole fingers and toes, die and drop off.
Later, paralysis becomes more marked, affecting the muscles of the face
and limbs. The disease runs a very chronic course, and may last twenty
or thirty years. Recovery occasionally occurs. In the mixed form, which
is probably the most common, the symptoms described are combined in
varying degrees. Leprosy may be mistaken for syphilis, tuberculosis,
ainhum (an obscure disease affecting negroes, in which the little toe
drops off), and several affections of the skin. Diagnosis is established
by the presence of the bacillus leprae in the nodules or bullae, and by
the signs of nerve degeneration exhibited in the anaesthetic patches of
skin and the thickened nerve trunks.
In former times leprosy was often confounded with other skin diseases,
especially psoriasis and leucoderma; the white leprosy of the Old
Testament was probably a form of the latter. But there is no doubt that
true leprosy has existed from time immemorial. Prescriptions for
treating it have been found in Egypt, to which a date of about 4600 B.C.
is assigned. The disease is described by Aristotle and by later Greek
writers, but not by Hippocrates, though leprosy derives its name from
his "lepra" or "scaly" disease, which was no doubt psoriasis. In ancient
times it was widely prevalent throughout Asia as well as in Egypt, and
among the Greeks and Romans. In the middle ages it became extensively
diffused in Europe, and in some countries--France, England, Germany and
Spain--every considerable town had its leper-house, in which the
patients were segregated. The total number of such houses has been
reckoned at 19,000. The earliest one in England was established at
Canterbury in 1096, and the latest at Highgate in 1472. At one time
there were at least 95 religious hospitals for lepers in Great Britain
and 14 in Ireland (Sir James Simpson). During the 15th century the
disease underwent a remarkable diminution. It practically disappeared in
the civilized parts of Europe, and the leper-houses were given up. It is
a singular fact that this diminution was coincident with the great
extension of syphilis (see PROSTITUTION). The general disappearance of
leprosy at this time is the more unintelligible because it did not take
effect everywhere. In Scotland the disease lingered until the 19th
century, and in some other parts it has never died out at all. At the
present time it still exists in Norway, Iceland, along the shores of the
Baltic, in South Russia, Greece, Turkey, several Mediterranean islands,
the Riviera, Spain and Portugal. Isolated cases occasionally occur
elsewhere, but they are usually imported. The Teutonic races seem to be
especially free from the taint. Leper asylums are maintained in Norway
and at two or three places in the Baltic, San Remo, Cyprus,
Constantinople, Alicante and Lisbon. Except in Spain, where some
increase has taken place, the disease is dying out. The number of lepers
in Norway was 3000 in 1856, but has now dwindled to a few hundreds. They
are no longer numerous in any part of Europe. On the other hand, leprosy
prevails extensively throughout Asia, from the Mediterranean to Japan,
and from Arabia to Siberia. It is also found in nearly all parts of
Africa, particularly on the east and west coasts near the equator. In
South Africa it has greatly increased, and attacks the Dutch as well as
natives. Leper asylums have been established at Robben Island near Cape
Town, and in Tembuland. In Australia, where it was introduced by
Chinese, it has also spread to Europeans. In New Zealand the Maoris are
affected; but the amount of leprosy is not large in either country. A
much more remarkable case is that of the Hawaiian Islands, where the
disease is believed to have been imported by Chinese. It was unknown
before 1848, but in 1866 the number of lepers had risen to 230 and in
1882 to 4000 (Liveing). All attempts to stop it by segregating lepers in
the settlement of Molokai appear to have been fruitless. In the West
Indies and on the American continent, again, leprosy has a wide
distribution. It is found in nearly all parts of South and Central
America, and in certain parts of North America--namely, Louisiana,
California (among Chinese), Minnesota, Wisconsin and North and South
Dakota (Norwegians), New Brunswick (French Canadians).
It is difficult to find any explanation of the geographical distribution
and behaviour of leprosy. It seems to affect islands and the sea-coast
more than the interior, and to some extent this gives colour to the old
belief that it is caused or fostered by a fish diet, which has been
revived by Mr Jonathan Hutchinson, but is not generally accepted.
Leprosy is found in interiors where fish is not an article of diet.
Climate, again, has obviously little, if any, influence. The theory of
heredity is equally at fault, whether it be applied to account for the
spread of the disease by transmission or for its disappearance by the
elimination of susceptible persons. The latter is the manner in which
heredity might be expected to act, if at all, for lepers are remarkably
sterile. But we see the disease persisting among the Eastern races, who
have been continuously exposed to its selective influence from the
earliest times, while it has disappeared among the Europeans, who were
affected very much later. The opposite theory of hereditary transmission
from parents to offspring is also at variance with many observed facts.
Leprosy is very rarely congenital, and no cases have occurred among the
descendants to the third generation of 160 Norwegian lepers settled in
the United States. Again, if hereditary transmission were an effective
influence, the disease could hardly have died down so rapidly as it did
in Europe in the 15th century. Then we have the theory of contagion.
There is no doubt that human beings are inoculable with leprosy, and
that the disease may be communicated by close contact. Cases have been
recorded which prove it conclusively; for instance, that of a man who
had never been out of the British islands, but developed leprosy after
sharing for a time the bed and clothes of his brother, who had
contracted the disease in the West Indies. Some of the facts noted, such
as the extensive dissemination of the disease in Europe during the
middle ages, and its subsequent rapid decline, suggest the existence of
some unknown epidemic factor. Poverty and insanitation are said to go
with the prevalence of leprosy, but they go with every malady, and there
is nothing to show that they have any special influence. Vaccination has
been blamed for spreading it, and a few cases of communication by
arm-to-arm inoculation are recorded. The influence of this factor,
however, can only be trifling. Vaccination is a new thing, leprosy a
very old one; where there is most vaccination there is no leprosy, and
where there is most leprosy there is little or no vaccination. In India
78% of the lepers are unvaccinated, and in Canton since vaccination was
introduced leprosy has declined (Cantlie). On the whole we must conclude
that there is still much to be learnt about the conditions which govern
the prevalence of leprosy.
With regard to prevention, the isolation of patients is obviously
desirable, especially in the later stages, when open sores may
disseminate the bacilli; but complete segregation, which has been urged,
is regarded as impracticable by those who have had most experience in
leprous districts. Scrupulous cleanliness should be exercised by persons
attending on lepers or brought into close contact with them. In
treatment the most essential thing is general care of the health, with
good food and clothing. The tendency of modern therapeutics to attach
increasing importance to nutrition in various morbid states, and notably
in diseases of degeneration, such as tuberculosis and affections of the
nervous system, is borne out by experience in leprosy, which has
affinities to both; and this suggests the application to it of modern
methods for improving local as well as general nutrition by physical
means. A large number of internal remedies have been tried with varying
results; those most recommended are chaulmoogra oil, arsenic, salicylate
of soda, salol and chlorate of potash. Vergueira uses Collargol
intravenously and subcutaneously, and states that in all the cases
treated there was marked improvement, and hair that had been lost grew
again. Calmette's Anterenene injected subcutaneously has been followed
by good results. Deycke together with R. Bey isolated from a
non-ulcerated leprous nodule a streptothrix which they call S.
leproides. Its relation to the bacillus is uncertain. They found that
injections of this organism had marked curative effects, due to a
neutral fat which they named "Nastin." Injections of Nastin together
with Benzoyl Chloride directly act on the lepra bacilli. Some cases were
unaffected by this treatment, but with others the effect was marvellous.
Dr W. A. Pusey of Chicago uses applications of carbon dioxide snow with
good effect. In the later stages of the disease there is a wide field
for surgery, which is able to give much relief to sufferers.
LITERATURE.--For history and geographical distribution, see Hirsch,
_Handbuch der historisch-geographischen Pathologie_ (1st ed.,
Erlangen, 1860, with exhaustive literature). For pathology, Virchow,
_Die krankhaften Geschwülste_ (Berlin, 1863-1867), vol. ii. For
clinical histories, R. Liveing, _Elephantiasis Graecorum or True
Leprosy_ (London, 1873), ch. iv. For medieval leprosy--in Germany,
Virchow, in _Virchow's Archiv_, five articles, vols. xviii.-xx.
(1860-1861); in the Netherlands, Israëls, in _Nederl. Tijdschr. voor
Geneeskunde_, vol. i. (1857); in Britain, J. Y. Simpson, _Edin. Med.
and Surg. Journ._, three articles, vols. lxvi. and lxvii. (1846-1847).
Treatises on modern leprosy in particular localities: Danielssen and
Boeck (Norway), _Traité de la Spédalskhed_, with atlas of twenty-four
coloured plates (Paris, 1848); A. F. Anderson, _Leprosy as met with in
the Straits Settlements_, coloured photographs with explanatory notes
(London, 1872); H. Vandyke Carter (Bombay), _On Leprosy and
Elephantiasis_, with coloured plates (London, 1874); Hillis, _Leprosy
in British Guiana_, an account of West Indian leprosy, with twenty-two
coloured plates (London, 1882). See also the dermatological works of
Hebra, Erasmus Wilson, Bazin and Jonathan Hutchinson (also the
latter's letters to _The Times_ of the 11th of April and the 25th of
May 1903); _British Medical Journal_ (April 1, 1908); _American
Journal of Dermatology_ (Dec. 1907); _The Practitioner_ (February
1910). An important early work is that of P. G. Hensler, _Vom
abendländischen Aussatze im Mittelalter_ (Hamburg, 1790).
LEPSIUS, KARL RICHARD (1810-1884), German Egyptologist, was born at
Naumburg-am-Saale on the 23rd of December 1810, and in 1823 was sent to
the "Schulpforta" school near Naumburg, where he came under the
influence of Professor Lange. In 1829 he entered the university of
Leipzig, and one year later that of Göttingen, where, under the
influence of Otfried Müller, he finally decided to devote himself to the
archaeological side of philology. From Göttingen he proceeded to Berlin,
where he graduated in 1833 as doctor with the thesis _De tabulis
Eugubinis_. In the same year he proceeded to study in Paris, and was
commissioned by the duc de Luynes to collect material from the Greek and
Latin writers for his work on the weapons of the ancients. In 1834 he
took the Volney prize with his _Paläographie als Mittel der
Sprachforschung_. Befriended by Bunsen and Humboldt, Lepsius threw
himself with great ardour into Egyptological studies, which, since the
death of Champollion in 1832, had attracted no scholar of eminence and
weight. Here Lepsius found an ample field for his powers. After four
years spent in visiting the Egyptian collections of Italy, Holland and
England, he returned to Germany, where Humboldt and Bunsen united their
influence to make his projected visit to Egypt a scientific expedition
with royal support. For three years Lepsius and his party explored the
whole of the region in which monuments of ancient Egyptian and Ethiopian
occupation are found, from the Sudan above Khartum to the Syrian coast.
At the end of 1845 they returned home, and the results of the
expedition, consisting of casts, drawings and squeezes of inscriptions
and scenes, maps and plans collected with the utmost thoroughness, as
well as antiquities and papyri, far surpassed expectations. In 1846 he
married Elisabeth Klein, and his appointment to a professorship in
Berlin University in the following August afforded him the leisure
necessary for the completion of his work. In 1859 the twelve volumes of
his vast _Denkmäler aus Ägypten und Äthiopien_ were finished,
supplemented later by a text prepared from the note-books of the
expedition; they comprise its entire archaeological, palaeographical and
historical results. In 1866 Lepsius again went to Egypt, and discovered
the famous Decree of Tanis or Table of Canopus, an inscription of the
same character as the Rosetta Stone, in hieroglyphic, demotic and Greek.
In 1873 he was appointed keeper of the Royal Library, Berlin, which,
like the Berlin Museum, owes much to his care. About ten years later he
was appointed Geheimer Oberregierungsrath. He died at Berlin on the 10th
of July 1884. Besides the colossal _Denkmäler_ and other publications of
texts such as the _Todtenbuch der Ägypter_ (_Book of the Dead_, 1842)
his other works, amongst which may be specially named his _Königsbuch
der Ägypter_ (1858) and _Chronologie der Ägypter_ (1849), are
characterized by a quality of permanence that is very remarkable in a
subject of such rapid development as Egyptology. In spite of his
scientific training in philology Lepsius left behind few translations of
inscriptions or discussions of the meanings of words: by preference he
attacked historical and archaeological problems connected with the
ancient texts, the alphabet, the metrology, the names of metals and
minerals, the chronology, the royal names. On the other hand one of his
latest works, the _Nubische Grammatik_ (1880), is an elaborate grammar
of the then little-known Nubian language, preceded by a linguistic
sketch of the African continent. Throughout his life he profited by the
gift of attaching to himself the right men, whether as patrons or, like
Weidenbach and Stern, as assistants. Lepsius was a fine specimen of the
best type of German scholar.
See _Richard Lepsius_, by Georg Ebers (New York, 1887), and art.
EGYPT, section _Exploration and Research_.
LEPTINES, an Athenian orator, known as the proposer of a law that no
Athenian, whether citizen or resident alien (with the sole exception of
the descendants of Harmodius and Aristogeiton), should be exempt from
the public charges ([Greek: leitourgiai]) for the state festivals. The
object was to provide funds for the festivals and public spectacles at a
time when both the treasury and the citizens generally were short of
money. It was further asserted that many of the recipients of immunity
were really unworthy of it. Against this law Demosthenes delivered (354
B.C.) his well-known speech _Against Leptines_ in support of the
proposal of Ctesippus that all the cases of immunity should be carefully
investigated. Great stress is laid on the reputation for ingratitude and
breach of faith which the abolition of immunities would bring upon the
state. Besides, the law itself had been passed unconstitutionally, for
an existing law confirmed these privileges, and by the constitution of
Solon no law could be enacted until any existing law which it
contravened had been repealed. The law was probably condemned. Nothing
further is known of Leptines.
See the edition of the speech by J. E. Sandys (1890).
LEPTIS, the name of two towns in ancient Africa. The first, Leptis Magna
([Greek: Leptimagna]), the modern Lebda, was in Tripolitana between
Tripolis and Mesrata at the mouth of the Cinyps; the second, Leptis
Parva ([Greek: Leptis hê mikra]), known also as Leptiminus or Leptis
minor, the modern Lamta, was a small harbour of Byzacena between Ruspina
(Monastir) and Thapsus (Dimas).
1. LEPTIS MAGNA was one of the oldest and most flourishing of the
Phoenician emporia established on the coasts of the greater Syrtis, the
chief commercial entrepot for the interior of the African continent. It
was founded by the Sidonians (Sallust, _Jug._ 78) who were joined later
by people of Tyre (Pliny, _Hist. Nat._ v. 17). Herodotus enlarges on the
fertility of its territory (iv. 175, v. 42). It was tributary to
Carthage to which it paid a contribution of a talent a day (Livy xxxiv.
62). After the Second Punic War Massinissa made himself master of it
(Sallust, _Jug._ 78; Livy xxxiv. 62; Appian viii. 106). During the
Jugurthine War it appealed for protection to Rome (Sallust, _Jug._ 78).
Though captured and plundered by Juba, it maintained its allegiance to
Rome, supported the senatorial cause, received Cato the younger with the
remains of the Pompeian forces after Pharsalus 48 B.C. After his victory
Julius Caesar imposed upon it an annual contribution of 300,000 measures
of oil. Nevertheless, it preserved its position as a free city governed
by its own magistrates (_C.I.L._ viii. 7). It received the title of
_municipium_ (_C.I.L._ viii. 8), and was subsequently made a _colonia_
by Trajan (_C.I.L._ viii. 10). Septimius Severus, who was born there,
beautified the place and conferred upon it the _Ius Italicum_. Leptis
Magna was the limit of the Roman state, the last station of the _limes
Tripolitanus_; hence, especially during the last centuries of the
Empire, it suffered much from the Nomads of the desert, the Garamantes,
the Austuriani and the Levathae (Ammian. Marc. xxviii. 6; Procop. _De
Aedif._ vi. 4). Its commerce declined and its harbour silted up.
Justinian made a vain attempt to rebuild it (Procop. _ibid._; Ch. Diehl,
_L'Afrique byzantine_, p. 388). It was the seat of a bishopric, but no
mention is made of its bishops after 462.
Leptis Magna had a citadel which protected the commercial city which was
generally called Neapolis, the situation of which may be compared with
that of Carthage at the foot of Byrsa. Its ruins are still imposing;
remains of ramparts and docks, a theatre, a circus and various buildings
of the Roman period still exist. Inscriptions show that the current
pronunciation of the name was Lepcis, Lepcitana, instead of Leptis,
Leptitana (Tissot, _Géogr. comp. de la prov. d'Afrique_, ii. 219;
Clermont-Ganneau, _Recueil d'archéologie orientale_, vi. 41; _Comptes
rendus de l'Acad. des Inscr. et B.-Lettres_, 1903, p. 333; Cagnat, _C.R.
Acad._, 1905, p. 531). The coins of Leptis Magna, like the majority of
the emporia in the neighbourhood, present a series from the Punic
period. They are of bronze with the legend [Hebrew: lepqi] (_Lepqi_).
They have on one side the head of Bacchus, Hercules or Cybele, and on
the other various emblems of these deities. From the Roman period we
have also coins bearing the heads of Augustus, Livia and Tiberius, which
still have the name of the town in Neo-Punic script (Lud. Müller,
_Numism. de l'anc. Afrique_, ii. 3).
The ruins of Leptis Magna have been visited by numerous travellers
since the time of Frederick William and Henry William Beechey
(_Travels_, pp. 51 and 74) and Heinrich Barth (_Wanderungen_, pp. 306,
360); they are described by Ch. Tissot (_Géogr. comp._ ii. 219 et
seq.); Cl. Perroud, _De Syrticis emporiis_, p. 33 (Paris, 1881, in
8°); see also a description in the New York journal, _The Nation_
(1877), vol. xxvii. No. 683. M. Méhier de Mathuisieulx explored the
site afresh in 1901; his account is inserted in the _Nouvelles
Archives des missions_, x. 245-277; cf. vol. xii. See also J. Toutain,
"Le Limes Tripolitanus en Tripolitaine," in the _Bulletin
archéologique áu comité des travaux historiques_ (1905).
2. LEPTIS PARVA (Lamta), 7½ m. from Monastir, which is often confused by
modern writers with Leptis Magna in their interpretations of ancient
texts (Tissot, _Géogr. comp._ ii. 169), was, according to the _Tabula
Peutingeriana_, 18 m. south of Hadrumetum. Evidently Phoenician in
origin like Leptis Magna, it was in the Punic period of comparatively
slight importance. Nevertheless, it had fortifications, and the French
engineer, A. Daux, has discovered a probable line of ramparts. Like its
neighbour Hadrumetum, Leptis Parva declared for Rome after the last
Punic War. Also after the fall of Carthage in 146 it preserved its
autonomy and was declared a _civitas libera et immunis_ (Appian,
_Punica_, 94; _C.I.L._ i. 200; _De bell. Afric._ c. xii.). Julius Caesar
made it the base of his operations before the battle of Thapsus in 46
(Ch. Tissot, _Géogr. comp._ ii. 728). Under the Empire Leptis Parva
became extremely prosperous; its bishops appeared in the African
councils from 258 onwards. In Justinian's reorganization of Africa we
find that Leptis Parva was with Capsa one of the two residences of the
_Dux Byzacenae_ (Tissot, _op. cit._ p. 171). The town had coins under
Augustus and Tiberius. On the obverse is the imperial effigy with a
Latin legend, and on the reverse the Greek legend [Greek: LEPTIS] with
the bust of Mercury (Lud. Müller, _Numism. de l'anc. Afrique_, ii. 49).
The ruins extend along the sea-coast to the north-west of Lemta; the
remains of docks, the amphitheatre and the acropolis can be
distinguished; a Christian cemetery has furnished tombs adorned with
curious mosaics.
See _Comptes rendus de l'Acad. des Inscrip. et B.-Lettres_ (1883), p.
189; Cagnat and Saladin, "Notes d'archéol. tunisiennes," in the
_Bulletin monumental_ of 1884; _Archives des missions_, xii. 111;
Cagnat, _Explorations archéol. en Tunisie_, 3^me fasc. pp. 9-16, and
_Tour du monde_ (1881), i. 292; Saladin, _Rapport sur une mission en
Tunisie_ (1886), pp. 9-20; _Bulletin archéol. du comité de travaux
historiques_ (1895), pp. 69-71 (inscriptions of Lamta); _Bulletin de
la Soc. archéol. de Sousse_ (1905; plan of the ruins of Lamta).
(E. B.*)
LE PUY, or LE PUY EN VELAY, a town of south-eastern France, capital of
the department of Haute-Loire, 90 m. S.W. of Lyons on the Paris-Lyon
railway. Pop. (1906) town, 17,291; commune, 21,420. Le Puy rises in the
form of an amphitheatre from a height of 2050 ft. above sea-level upon
Mont Anis, a hill that divides the left bank of the Dolézon from the
right bank of the Borne (a rapid stream joining the Loire 3 m. below).
From the new town, which lies east and west in the valley of the
Dolézon, the traveller ascends the old feudal and ecclesiastical town
through narrow steep streets, paved with pebbles of lava, to the
cathedral commanded by the fantastic pinnacle of Mont Corneille. Mont
Corneille, which is 433 ft. above the Place de Breuil (in the lower
town), is a steep rock of volcanic breccia, surmounted by an iron statue
of the Virgin (53 ft. high) cast, after a model by Bonassieux, out of
guns taken at Sebastopol. Another statue, that of Msgr de Morlhon,
bishop of Le Puy, also sculptured by Bonassieux, faces that of the
Virgin. From the platform of Mont Corneille a magnificent panoramic view
is obtained of the town and of the volcanic mountains, which make this
region one of the most interesting parts of France.
The Romanesque cathedral (Notre-Dame), dating chiefly from the first
half of the 12th century, has a particoloured façade of white sandstone
and black volcanic breccia, which is reached by a flight of sixty steps,
and consists of three tiers, the lowest composed of three high arcades
opening into the porch, which extends beneath the first bays of the
nave; above are three windows lighting the nave; and these in turn are
surmounted by three gables, two of which, those to the right and the
left, are of open work. The staircase continues within the porch, where
it divides, leading on the left to the cloister, on the right into the
church. The doorway of the south transept is sheltered by a fine
Romanesque porch. The isolated bell-tower (184 ft.), which rises behind
the choir in seven storeys, is one of the most beautiful examples of the
Romanesque transition period. The bays of the nave are covered in by
octagonal cupolas, the central cupola forming a lantern. The choir and
transepts are barrel-vaulted. Much veneration is paid to a small image
of the Virgin on the high altar, a modern copy of the medieval image
destroyed at the Revolution. The cloister, to the north of the choir, is
striking, owing to its variously-coloured materials and elegant shafts.
Viollet-le-Duc considered one of its galleries to belong to the oldest
known type of cathedral cloister (8th or 9th century). Connected with
the cloister are remains of fortifications of the 13th century, by which
it was separated from the rest of the city. Near the cathedral the
baptistery of St John (11th century), built on the foundations of a
Roman building, is surrounded by walls and numerous remains of the
period, partly uncovered by excavations. The church of St Lawrence (14th
century) contains the tomb and statue of Bertrand du Guesclin, whose
ashes were afterwards carried to St Denis.
Le Puy possesses fragmentary remains of its old line of fortifications,
among them a machicolated tower, which has been restored, and a few
curious old houses dating from the 12th to the 17th century. In front of
the hospital there is a fine medieval porch under which a street passes.
Of the modern monuments the statue of Marie Joseph Paul, marquis of La
Fayette, and a fountain in the Place de Breuil, executed in marble,
bronze and syenite, may be specially mentioned. The museum, named after
Charles Crozatier, a native sculptor and metal-worker to whose
munificence it principally owes its existence, contains antiquities,
engravings, a collection of lace, and ethnographical and natural history
collections. Among the curiosities of Le Puy should be noted the church
of St Michel d'Aiguilhe, beside the gate of the town, perched on an
isolated rock like Mont Corneille, the top of which is reached by a
staircase of 271 steps. The church dates from the end of the 10th
century and its chancel is still older. The steeple is of the same type
as that of the cathedral. Three miles from Le Puy are the ruins of the
Château de Polignac, one of the most important feudal strongholds of
France.
Le Puy is the seat of a bishopric, a prefect and a court of assizes, and
has tribunals of first instance and of commerce, a board of trade
arbitration, a chamber of commerce, and a branch of the Bank of France.
Its educational institutions include ecclesiastical seminaries, lycées
and training colleges for both sexes and municipal industrial schools of
drawing, architecture and mathematics applied to arts and industries.
The principal manufacture is that of lace and guipure (in woollen,
linen, cotton, silk and gold and silver threads), and distilling,
leather-dressing, malting and the manufacture of chocolate and cloth are
carried on. Cattle, woollens, grain and vegetables are the chief
articles of trade.
It is not known whether Le Puy existed previously to the Roman
invasion. Towards the end of the 4th or beginning of the 5th century
it became the capital of the country of the Vellavi, at which period
the bishopric, originally at Revession, now St Paulien, was
transferred hither. Gregory of Tours speaks of it by the name of
Anicium, because a chapel "ad Deum" had been built on the mountain,
whence the name of Mont Adidon or Anis, which it still retains. In the
10th century it was called Podium Sanctae Mariae, whence Le Puy. In
the middle ages there was a double enclosure, one for the cloister,
the other for the town. The sanctuary of Nôtre Dame was much
frequented by pilgrims, and the city grew famous and populous.
Rivalries between the bishops who held directly of the see of Rome and
had the right of coining money, and the lords of Polignac, revolts of
the town against the royal authority, and the encroachments of the
feudal superiors on municipal prerogatives often disturbed the quiet
of the town. The Saracens in the 8th century, the Routiers in the
12th, the English in the 14th, the Burgundians in the 15th,
successively ravaged the neighbourhood. Le Puy sent the flower of its
chivalry to the Crusades in 1096, and Raymond d'Aiguille, called
d'Agiles, one of its sons, was their historian. Many councils and
various assemblies of the states of Languedoc met within its walls;
popes and sovereigns, among the latter Charlemagne and Francis I.,
visited its sanctuary. Pestilence and the religious wars put an end to
its prosperity. Long occupied by the Leaguers, it did not submit to
Henry IV. until many years after his accession.
LERDO DE TEJADA, SEBASTIAN (1825-1889), president of Mexico, was born at
Jalapa on the 25th of April 1825. He was educated as a lawyer and became
a member of the supreme court. He became known as a liberal leader and a
supporter of President Juarez. He was minister of foreign affairs for
three months in 1857, and became president of the Chamber of Deputies in
1861. During the French intervention and the reign of the emperor
Maximilian he continued loyal to the patriotic party, and had an active
share in conducting the national resistance. He was minister of foreign
affairs to President Juarez, and he showed an implacable resolution in
carrying out the execution of Maximilian at Querétaro. When Juarez died
in 1872 Lerdo succeeded him in office in the midst of a confused civil
war. He achieved some success in pacifying the country and began the
construction of railways. He was re-elected on the 24th of July 1876,
but was expelled in January of the following year by Porfirio Diaz. He
had made himself unpopular by the means he took to secure his
re-election and by his disposition to limit state rights in favour of a
strongly centralized government. He fled to the United States and died
in obscurity at New York in 1889.
See H. H. Bancroft, _Pacific States_, vol. 9 (San Francisco,
1882-1890).
LERICI, a village of Liguria, Italy, situated on the N.E. side of the
Gulf of Spezia, about 12 m. E.S.E. of Spezia, and 4 m. W.S.W. of Sarzana
by road, 17 ft. above sea-level. Pop. (1901) 9326. Its small harbour is
guarded by an old castle, said to have been built by Tancred; in the
middle ages it was the chief place on the gulf. S. Terenzo, a hamlet
belonging to Lerici, was the residence of Shelley during his last days.
Farther north-west is the Bay of Pertusola, with its large lead-smelting
works.
LÉRIDA, a province of northern Spain, formed in 1833 of districts
previously included in the ancient province of Catalonia, and bounded on
the N. by France and Andorra, E. by Gerona and Barcelona, S. by
Tarragona and W. by Saragossa and Huesca. Pop. (1900) 274,590; area 4690
sq. m. The northern half of Lérida belongs entirely to the Mediterranean
or eastern section of the Pyrenees, and comprises some of the finest
scenery in the whole chain, including the valleys of Aran and La
Cerdaña, and large tracts of forest. It is watered by many rivers, the
largest of which is the Segre, a left-hand tributary of the Ebro. South
of the point at which the Segre is joined on the right by the Noguera
Pallaresa, the character of the country completely alters. The Llaños de
Urgel, which comprise the greater part of southern Lérida, are extensive
plains forming part of the Ebro valley, but redeemed by an elaborate
system of canals from the sterility which characterizes so much of that
region in Aragon. Lérida is traversed by the main railway from Barcelona
to Saragossa, and by a line from Tarragona to the city of Lérida. In
1904 the Spanish government agreed with France to carry another line to
the mouth of an international tunnel through the Pyrenees. Industries
are in a more backward condition than in any other province of
Catalonia, despite the abundance of water-power. There are, however,
many saw-mills, flour-mills, and distilleries of alcohol and liqueurs,
besides a smaller number of cotton and linen factories, paper-mills,
soap-works, and oil and leather factories. Zinc, lignite and common salt
are mined, but the output is small and of slight value. There is a
thriving trade in wine, oil, wool, timber, cattle, mules, horses and
sheep, but agriculture is far less prosperous than in the maritime
provinces of Catalonia. Lérida (q.v.) is the capital (pop. 21,432), and
the only town with more than 5000 inhabitants. Séo de Urgel, near the
headwaters of the Segre, is a fortified city which has been an episcopal
see since 840, and has had a close historical connexion with Andorra
(q.v.). Solsona, on a small tributary of the Cardoner, which flows
through Barcelona to the Mediterranean, is the _Setelix_ of the Romans,
and contains in its parish church an image of the Virgin said to possess
miraculous powers, and visited every year by many hundreds of pilgrims.
Cervera, on a small river of the same name, contains the buildings of a
university which Philip V. established here in 1717. This university had
originally been founded at Barcelona in the 15th century, and was
reopened there in 1842. In character, and especially in their industry,
intelligence and keen local patriotism, the inhabitants of Lérida are
typical Catalans. (See CATALONIA.)
LÉRIDA, the capital of the Spanish province of Lérida, on the river
Segre and the Barcelona-Saragossa and Lérida-Tarragona railways. Pop.
(1900) 21,432. The older parts of the city, on the right bank of the
river, are a maze of narrow and crooked streets, surrounded by ruined
walls and a moat, and commanded by the ancient citadel, which stands on
a height overlooking the plains of Noguera on the north and of Urgel on
the south. On the left bank, connected with the older quarters by a fine
stone bridge and an iron railway bridge, are the suburbs, laid out
after 1880 in broad and regular avenues of modern houses. The old
cathedral, last used for public worship in 1707, is a very interesting
late Romanesque building, with Gothic and Mauresque additions; but the
interior was much defaced by its conversion into barracks after 1717. It
was founded in 1203 by Pedro II. of Aragon, and consecrated in 1278. The
fine octagonal belfry was built early in the 15th century. A second
cathedral, with a Corinthian façade, was completed in 1781. The church
of San Lorenzo (1270-1300) is noteworthy for the beautiful tracery of
its Gothic windows; its nave is said to have been a Roman temple,
converted by the Moors into a mosque and by Ramon Berenguer IV., last
count of Barcelona, into a church. Other interesting buildings are the
Romanesque town hall, founded in the 13th century but several times
restored, the bishop's palace and the military hospital, formerly a
convent. The museum contains a good collection of Roman and Romanesque
antiquities; and there are a school for teachers, a theological seminary
and academies of literature and science. Leather, paper, glass, silk,
linen and cloth are manufactured in the city, which has also some trade
in agricultural produce.
Lérida is the _Ilerda_ of the Romans, and was the capital of the people
whom they called _Ilerdenses_ (Pliny) or _Ilergetes_ (Ptolemy). By
situation the key of Catalonia and Aragon, it was from a very early
period an important military station. In the Punic wars it sided with
the Carthaginians and suffered much from the Roman arms. In its
immediate neighbourhood Hanno was defeated by Scipio in 216 B.C., and it
afterwards became famous as the scene of Caesar's arduous struggle with
Pompey's generals Afranius and Petreius in the first year of the civil
war (49 B.C.). It was already a _municipium_ in the time of Augustus,
and enjoyed great prosperity under later emperors. Under the Visigoths
it became an episcopal see, and at least one ecclesiastical council is
recorded to have met here (in 546). Under the Moors _Lareda_ became one
of the principal cities of the province of Saragossa; it became
tributary to the Franks in 793, but was reconquered in 797. In 1149 it
fell into the hands of Ramon Berenguer IV. In modern times it has come
through numerous sieges, having been taken by the French in November
1707 during the War of Succession, and again in 1810. In 1300 James II.
of Aragon founded a university at Lérida, which achieved some repute in
its day, but was suppressed in 1717, when the university of Cervera was
founded.
LERMA, FRANCISCO DE SANDOVAL Y ROJAS, DUKE OF (1552-1625), Spanish
minister, was born in 1552. At the age of thirteen he entered the royal
palace as a page. The family of Sandoval was ancient and powerful, but
under Philip II. (1556-1598) the nobles, with the exception of a few who
held viceroyalties or commanded armies abroad, had little share in the
government. The future duke of Lerma, who was by descent marquis of
Denia, passed his life as a courtier, and possessed no political power
till the accession of Philip III. in 1598. He had already made himself a
favourite with the prince, and was in fact one of the incapable men who,
as the dying king Philip II. foresaw, were likely to mislead the new
sovereign. The old king's fears were fully justified. No sooner was
Philip III. king than he entrusted all authority to his favourite, whom
he created duke of Lerma in 1599 and on whom he lavished an immense list
of offices and grants. The favour of Lerma lasted for twenty years, till
it was destroyed by a palace intrigue carried out by his own son. Philip
III. not only entrusted the entire direction of his government to Lerma,
but authorized him to affix the royal signature to documents, and to
take whatever presents were made to him. No royal favourite was ever
more amply trusted, or made a worse use of power. At a time when the
state was practically bankrupt, he encouraged the king in extravagance,
and accumulated for himself a fortune estimated by contemporaries at
forty-four millions of ducats. Lerma was pious withal, spending largely
on religious houses, and he carried out the ruinous measures for the
expulsion of the Moriscoes in 1610--a policy which secured him the
admiration of the clergy and was popular with the mass of the nation. He
persisted in costly and useless hostilities with England till, in 1604,
Spain was forced by exhaustion to make peace, and he used all his
influence against a recognition of the independence of the Low
Countries. The fleet was neglected, the army reduced to a remnant, and
the finances ruined beyond recovery. His only resources as a finance
minister were the debasing of the coinage, and foolish edicts against
luxury and the making of silver plate. Yet it is probable that he would
never have lost the confidence of Philip III., who divided his life
between festivals and prayers, but for the domestic treachery of his
son, the duke of Uceda, who combined with the king's confessor, Aliaga,
whom Lerma had introduced to the place, to turn him out. After a long
intrigue in which the king was all but entirely dumb and passive, Lerma
was at last compelled to leave the court, on the 4th of October 1618. As
a protection, and as a means of retaining some measure of power in case
he fell from favour, he had persuaded Pope Paul V. to create him
cardinal, in the year of his fall. He retired to the town of Lerma in
Old Castile, where he had built himself a splendid palace, and then to
Valladolid. Under the reign of Philip IV., which began in 1621 he was
despoiled of part of his wealth, and he died in 1625.
The history of Lerma's tenure of office is in vol. xv. of the
_Historia General de España_ of Modesto Lafuente (Madrid, 1855)--with
references to contemporary authorities.
LERMONTOV, MIKHAIL YUREVICH (1814-1841), Russian poet and novelist,
often styled the poet of the Caucasus, was born in Moscow, of Scottish
descent, but belonged to a respectable family of the Tula government,
and was brought up in the village of Tarkhanui (in the Penzensk
government), which now preserves his dust. By his grandmother--on whom
the whole care of his childhood was devolved by his mother's early death
and his father's military service--no cost nor pains was spared to give
him the best education she could think of. The intellectual atmosphere
which he breathed in his youth differed little from that in which
Pushkin had grown up, though the domination of French had begun to give
way before the fancy for English, and Lamartine shared his popularity
with Byron. From the academic gymnasium in Moscow Lermontov passed in
1830 to the university, but there his career came to an untimely close
through the part he took in some acts of insubordination to an obnoxious
teacher. From 1830 to 1834 he attended the school of cadets at St
Petersburg, and in due course he became an officer in the guards. To his
own and the nation's anger at the loss of Pushkin (1837) the young
soldier gave vent in a passionate poem addressed to the tsar, and the
very voice which proclaimed that, if Russia took no vengeance on the
assassin of her poet, no second poet would be given her, was itself an
intimation that a poet had come already. The tsar, however, seems to
have found more impertinence than inspiration in the address, for
Lermontov was forthwith sent off to the Caucasus as an officer of
dragoons. He had been in the Caucasus with his grandmother as a boy of
ten, and he found himself at home by yet deeper sympathies than those of
childish recollection. The stern and rocky virtues of the mountaineers
against whom he had to fight, no less than the scenery of the rocks and
mountains themselves, proved akin to his heart; the emperor had exiled
him to his native land. He was in St Petersburg in 1838 and 1839, and in
the latter year wrote the novel, _A Hero of Our Time_, which is said to
have been the occasion of the duel in which he lost his life in July
1841. In this contest he had purposely selected the edge of a precipice,
so that if either combatant was wounded so as to fall his fate should be
sealed.
Lermontov published only one small collection of poems in 1840. Three
volumes, much mutilated by the censorship, were issued in 1842 by
Glazounov; and there have been full editions of his works in 1860 and
1863. To Bodenstedt's German translation of his poems (_Michail
Lermontov's poetischer Nachlass_, Berlin, 1842, 2 vols.), which indeed
was the first satisfactory collection, he is indebted for a wide
reputation outside of Russia. His novel has found several translators
(August Boltz, Berlin, 1852, &c.). Among his best-known pieces are
"Ismail-Bey," "Hadji Abrek," "Walerik," "The Novice," and, remarkable
as an imitation of the old Russian ballad, "The song of the tsar Ivan
Vasilivitch, his young bodyguard, and the bold merchant Kalashnikov."
See Taillandier, "Le Poète du Caucase," in _Revue des deux mondes_
(February 1855), reprinted in _Allemagne et Russie_ (Paris, 1856);
Duduishkin's "Materials for the Biography of Lermontov," prefixed to
the 1863 edition of his works. _The Demon_, translated by Sir
Alexander Condie Stephen (1875), is an English version of one of his
longer poems. (W. R. S. R.)
LEROUX, PIERRE (1798-1871), French philosopher and economist, was born
at Bercy near Paris on the 7th of April 1798, the son of an artisan. His
education was interrupted by the death of his father, which compelled
him to support his mother and family. Having worked first as a mason and
then as a compositor, he joined P. Dubois in the foundation of _Le
Globe_ which became in 1831 the official organ of the Saint-Simonian
community, of which he became a prominent member. In November of the
same year, when Enfantin preached the enfranchisement of women and the
functions of the _couple-prêtre_, Leroux separated himself from the
sect. In 1838, with J. Regnaud, who had seceded with him, he founded the
_Encyclopédie nouvelle_ (eds. 1838-1841). Amongst the articles which he
inserted in it were _De l'égalité_ and _Réfutation de l'éclectisme_,
which afterwards appeared as separate works. In 1840 he published his
treatise _De l'humanité_ (2nd ed. 1845), which contains the fullest
exposition of his system, and was regarded as the philosophical
manifesto of the Humanitarians. In 1841 he established the _Revue
indépendante_, with the aid of George Sand, over whom he had great
influence. Her _Spiridion_, which was dedicated to him, _Sept cordes de
la lyre_, _Consuelo_, and _La Comtesse de Rudolstadt_, were written
under the Humanitarian inspiration. In 1843 he established at Boussac
(Creuse) a printing association organized according to his systematic
ideas, and founded the _Revue sociale_. After the outbreak of the
revolution of 1848 he was elected to the Constituent Assembly, and in
1849 to the Legislative Assembly, but his speeches on behalf of the
extreme socialist wing were of so abstract and mystical a character that
they had no effect. After the _coup d'état_ of 1851 he settled with his
family in Jersey, where he pursued agricultural experiments and wrote
his socialist poem _La Grève de Samarez_. On the definitive amnesty of
1869 he returned to Paris, where he died in April 1871, during the
Commune.
The writings of Leroux have no permanent significance in the history
of thought. He was the propagandist of sentiments and aspirations
rather than the expounder of a systematic theory. He has, indeed, a
system, but it is a singular medley of doctrines borrowed, not only
from Saint-Simonian, but from Pythagorean and Buddhistic sources. In
philosophy his fundamental principle is that of what he calls the
"triad"--a triplicity which he finds to pervade all things, which in
God is "power, intelligence and love," in man "sensation, sentiment
and knowledge." His religious doctrine is Pantheistic; and, rejecting
the belief in a future life as commonly conceived, he substitutes for
it a theory of metempsychosis. In social economy his views are very
vague; he preserves the family, country and property, but finds in all
three, as they now are, a despotism which must be eliminated. He
imagines certain combinations by which this triple tyranny can be
abolished, but his solution seems to require the creation of families
without heads, countries without governments and property without
rights of possession. In politics he advocates absolute equality--a
democracy pushed to anarchy.
See Raillard, _Pierre Leroux et ses oeuvres_ (Paris, 1899); Thomas,
_Pierre Leroux: sa vie, son oeuvre, sa doctrine_ (Paris, 1904); L.
Reybaud, _Études sur les réformateurs et socialistes modernes_;
article in R. H. Inglis Palgrave's _Dictionary of Pol. Econ._
LEROY-BEAULIEU, HENRI JEAN BAPTISTE ANATOLE (1842- ), French publicist,
was born at Lisieux, on the 12th of February 1842. In 1866 he published
_Une troupe de comédiens_, and afterwards _Essai sur la restauration de
nos monuments historiques devant l'art et devant le budget_, which deals
particularly with the restoration of the cathedral of Evreux. He visited
Russia in order to collect documents on the political and economic
organization of the Slav nations, and on his return published in the
_Revue des deux mondes_ (1882-1889) a series of articles, which appeared
shortly afterwards in book form under the title _L'Empire des tsars et
les Russes_ (4th ed., revised in 3 vols., 1897-1898). The work entitled
_Un empereur, un roi, un pape, une restauration_. published in 1879, was
an analysis and criticism of the politics of the Second Empire. _Un
homme d'état russe_ (1884) gave the history of the emancipation of the
serfs by Alexander II. Other works are _Les Catholiques libéraux,
l'église et le libéralisme_ (1890), _La Papauté, le socialisme et la
démocracie_ (1892), _Les Juifs et l'antisémitisme; Israël chez les
nations_ (1893), _Les Arméniens et la question arménienne_ (1896),
_L'Antisémitisme_ (1897), _Études russes et européennes_ (1897). These
writings, mainly collections of articles and lectures intended for the
general public, display enlightened views and wide information. In 1881
Leroy-Beaulieu was elected professor of contemporary history and eastern
affairs at the École Libre des Sciences Politiques, becoming director of
this institution on the death of Albert Sorel in 1906, and in 1887 he
became a member of the Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques.
Two of Leroy-Beaulieu's works have been translated into English: one
as the _Empire of the Tsars and the Russians_, by Z. A. Regozin (New
York, 1893-1896), and another as _Papacy, Socialism, Democracy_, by B.
L. O'Donnell (1892). See W. E. H. Lecky, _Historical and Political
Essays_ (1908).
LEROY-BEAULIEU, PIERRE PAUL (1843- ), French economist, brother of the
preceding, was born at Saumur on the 9th of December 1843, and educated
in Paris at the Lycée Bonaparte and the École de Droit. He afterwards
studied at Bonn and Berlin, and on his return to Paris began to write
for _Le Temps_, _Revue nationale_ and _Revue contemporaine_. In 1867 he
won a prize offered by the Academy of Moral Science with an essay
entitled "L'Influence de l'état moral et intellectuel des populations
ouvrières sur le taux des salaires." In 1870 he gained three prizes for
essays on "La Colonization chez les peuples modernes," "L'Administration
en France et en Angleterre," and "L'Impôt foncier et ses conséquences
économiques." In 1872 Leroy-Beaulieu became professor of finance at the
newly-founded École Libre des Sciences Politiques, and in 1880 he
succeeded his father-in-law, Michel Chevalier, in the chair of political
economy in the Collège de France. Several of his works have made their
mark beyond the borders of his own country. Among these may be mentioned
his _Recherches économiques, historiques et statistiques sur les guerres
contemporaines_, a series of studies published between 1863 and 1869, in
which he calculated the loss of men and capital caused by the great
European conflicts. Other works by him are--_La Question monnaie au
dix-neuvième siècle_ (1861), _Le Travail des femmes au dix-neuvième
siècle_ (1873), _Traité de la science des finances_ (1877), _Essai sur
la repartition des richesses_ (1882), _L'Algérie et la Tunisie_ (1888),
_Précis d'économie politique_ (1888), and _L'État moderne et ses
fonctions_ (1889). He also founded in 1873 the _Économiste français_, on
the model of the English _Economist_. Leroy-Beaulieu may be regarded as
the leading representative in France of orthodox political economy, and
the most pronounced opponent of protectionist and collectivist
doctrines.
LERWICK, a municipal and police burgh of Shetland, Scotland, the most
northerly town in the British Isles. Pop. (1901) 4281. It is situated on
Brassay Sound, a fine natural harbour, on the east coast of the island
called Mainland, 115 m. N.E. of Kirkwall, in Orkney, and 340 m. from
Leith by steamer. The town dates from the beginning of the 17th century,
and the older part consists of a flagged causeway called Commercial
Street, running for 1 m. parallel with the sea (in which the gable ends
of several of the quaint-looking houses stand), and so narrow in places
as not to allow of two vehicles passing each other. At right angles to
this street lanes ascend the hill-side to Hillhead, where the more
modern structures and villas have been built. At the north end stands
Fort Charlotte, erected by Cromwell, repaired in 1665 by Charles II. and
altered in 1781 by George III., after whose queen it was named. It is
now used as a depôt for the Naval Reserve, for whom a large drill hall
was added. The Anderson Institute, at the south end, was constructed as
a secondary school in 1862 by Arthur Anderson, a native, who also
presented the Widows' Asylum in the same quarter, an institution
intended by preference for widows of Shetland sailors. The town-hall,
built in 1881, contains several stained-glass windows, two of which were
the gift of citizens of Amsterdam and Hamburg, in gratitude for services
rendered by the islanders to fishermen and seamen of those ports.
Lerwick's main industries are connected with the fisheries, of which it
is an important centre. Docks, wharves, piers, curing stations and
warehouses have been provided or enlarged to cope with the growth of the
trade, and an esplanade has been constructed along the front. The town
is also the chief distributing agency for the islands, and carries on
some business in knitted woollen goods. One mile west of Lerwick is
Clickimin Loch, separated from the sea by a narrow strip of land. On an
islet in the lake stands a ruined "broch" or round tower.
LE SAGE, ALAIN RENÉ (1668-1747), French novelist and dramatist, was born
at Sarzeau in the peninsula of Rhuys, between the Morbihan and the sea,
on the 13th of December 1668. Rhuys was a legal district, and Claude le
Sage, the father of the novelist, held the united positions of advocate,
notary and registrar of its royal court. His wife's name was Jeanne
Brenugat. Both father and mother died when Le Sage was very young, and
his property was wasted or embezzled by his guardians. Little is known
of his youth except that he went to school with the Jesuits at Vannes
until he was eighteen. Conjecture has it that he continued his studies
at Paris, and it is certain that he was called to the bar at the capital
in 1692. In August 1694 he married the daughter of a joiner, Marie
Elizabeth Huyard. She was beautiful but had no fortune, and Le Sage had
little practice. About this time he met his old schoolfellow, the
dramatist Danchet, and is said to have been advised by him to betake
himself to literature. He began modestly as a translator, and published
in 1695 a French version of the _Epistles_ of Aristaenetus, which was
not successful. Shortly afterwards he found a valuable patron and
adviser in the abbé de Lyonne, who bestowed on him an annuity of 600
livres, and recommended him to exchange the classics for Spanish
literature, of which he was himself a student and collector.
Le Sage began by translating plays chiefly from Rojas and Lope de Vega.
_Le Traitre puni_ and _Le Point d'honneur_ from the former, _Don Félix
de Mendoce_ from the latter, were acted or published in the first two or
three years of the 18th century. In 1704 he translated the continuation
of _Don Quixote_ by Avellaneda, and soon afterwards adapted a play from
Calderon, _Don César Ursin_, which had a divided fate, being successful
at court and damned in the city. He was, however, nearly forty before he
obtained anything like decided success. But in 1707 his admirable farce
of _Crispin rival de son maître_ was acted with great applause, and _Le
Diable boiteux_ was published. This latter went through several editions
in the same year, and was frequently reprinted till 1725, when Le Sage
altered and improved it considerably, giving it its present form.
Notwithstanding the success of _Crispin_, the actors did not like Le
Sage, and refused a small piece of his called _Les Étrennes_ (1707). He
thereupon altered it into _Turcaret_, his theatrical masterpiece, and
one of the best comedies in French literature. This appeared in 1709.
Some years passed before he again attempted romance writing, and then
the first two parts of _Gil Blas de Santillane_ appeared in 1715.
Strange to say, it was not so popular as _Le Diable boiteux_. Le Sage
worked at it for a long time, and did not bring out the third part till
1724, nor the fourth till 1735. For this last he had been part paid to
the extent of a hundred pistoles some years before its appearance.
During these twenty years he was, however, continually busy.
Notwithstanding the great merit and success of _Turcaret_ and _Crispin_,
the Théâtre Français did not welcome him, and in the year of the
publication of _Gil Blas_ he began to write for the Théâtre de la
Foire--the comic opera held in booths at festival time. This, though not
a very dignified occupation, was followed by many writers of distinction
at this date, and by none more assiduously than by Le Sage. According to
one computation he produced, either alone or with others, about a
hundred pieces, varying from strings of songs with no regular dialogues,
to comediettas only distinguished from regular plays by the introduction
of music. He was also industrious in prose fiction. Besides finishing
_Gil Blas_ he translated the _Orlando innamorato_ (1721), rearranged
_Guzman d'Alfarache_ (1732), published two more or less original novels,
_Le Bachelier de Salamanque_ and _Estévanille Gonzales_, and in 1733
produced the _Vie et aventures de M. de Beauchesne_, which is curiously
like certain works of Defoe. Besides all this, Le Sage was also the
author of _La Valise trouvée_, a collection of imaginary letters, and of
some minor pieces, of which _Une journée des parques_ is the most
remarkable. This laborious life he continued until 1740, when he was
more than seventy years of age. His eldest son had become an actor, and
Le Sage had disowned him, but the second was a canon at Boulogne in
comfortable circumstances. In the year just mentioned his father and
mother went to live with him. At Boulogne Le Sage spent the last seven
years of his life, dying on the 17th of November 1747. His last work,
_Mélange amusant de saillies d'esprit et de traits historiques les plus
frappants_, had appeared in 1743.
Not much is known of Le Sage's life and personality, and the foregoing
paragraph contains not only the most important but almost the only facts
available for it. The few anecdotes which we have of him represent him
as a man of very independent temper, declining to accept the
condescending patronage which in the earlier part of the century was
still the portion of men of letters. Thus it is said that, on being
remonstrated with, as he thought impolitely, for an unavoidable delay in
appearing at the duchess of Bouillon's house to read _Turcaret_, he at
once put the play in his pocket and retired, refusing absolutely to
return. It may, however, be said that as in time so in position he
occupies a place apart from most of the great writers of the 17th and
18th centuries respectively. He was not the object of royal patronage
like the first, nor the pet of _salons_ and coteries like the second.
Indeed, he seems all his life to have been purely domestic in his
habits, and purely literary in his interests.
The importance of Le Sage in French and in European literature is not
entirely the same, and he has the rare distinction of being more
important in the latter than in the former. His literary work may be
divided into three parts. The first contains his Théâtre de la Foire and
his few miscellaneous writings, the second his two remarkable plays
_Crispin_ and _Turcaret_, the third his prose fictions. In the first two
he swims within the general literary current in France; he can be and
must be compared with others of his own nation. But in the third he
emerges altogether from merely national comparison. It is not with
Frenchmen that he is to be measured. He formed no school in France; he
followed no French models. His work, admirable as it is from the mere
point of view of style and form, is a parenthesis in the general
development of the French novel. That product works its way from Madame
de la Fayette through Marivaux and Prévost, not through Le Sage. His
literary ancestors are Spaniards, his literary contemporaries and
successors are Englishmen. The position is almost unique; it is
certainly interesting and remarkable in the highest degree.
Of Le Sage's miscellaneous work, including his numerous farce-operettas,
there is not much to be said except that they are the very best kind of
literary hack-work. The pure and original style of the author, his
abundant wit, his cool, humoristic attitude towards human life, which
wanted only greater earnestness and a wider conception of that life to
turn it into true humour, are discernible throughout. But this portion
of his work is practically forgotten, and its examination is incumbent
only on the critic. _Crispin_ and _Turcaret_ show a stronger and more
deeply marked genius, which, but for the ill-will of the actors, might
have gone far in this direction. But Le Sage's peculiar unwillingness to
attempt anything absolutely new discovered itself here. Even when he had
devoted himself to the Foire theatre, it seems that he was unwilling to
attempt, when occasion called for it, the absolute innovation of a piece
with only one actor, a crux which Alexis Piron, a lesser but a bolder
genius, accepted and carried through. _Crispin_ and _Turcaret_ are
unquestionably Molièresque, though they are perhaps more original in
their following of Molière than any other plays that can be named. For
this also was part of Le Sage's idiosyncrasy that, while he was
apparently unable or unwilling to strike out an entirely novel line for
himself, he had no sooner entered upon the beaten path than he left it
to follow his own devices. _Crispin rival de son maître_ is a farce in
one act and many scenes, after the earlier manner of motion. Its plot
is somewhat extravagant, inasmuch as it lies in the effort of a knavish
valet, not as usual to further his master's interests, but to supplant
that master in love and gain. But the charm of the piece consists first
in the lively bustling action of the short scenes which take each other
up so promptly and smartly that the spectator has not time to cavil at
the improbability of the action, and secondly in the abundant wit of the
dialogue. _Turcaret_ is a far more important piece of work and ranks
high among comedies dealing with the actual society of their time. The
only thing which prevents it from holding the very highest place is a
certain want of unity in the plot. This want, however, is compensated in
_Turcaret_ by the most masterly profusion of character-drawing in the
separate parts. Turcaret, the ruthless, dishonest and dissolute
financier, his vulgar wife as dissolute as himself, the harebrained
marquis, the knavish chevalier, the baroness (a coquette with the finer
edge taken off her fine-ladyhood, yet by no means unlovable), are each
and all finished portraits of the best comic type, while almost as much
may be said of the minor characters. The style and dialogue are also
worthy of the highest praise; the wit never degenerates into mere
"wit-combats."
It is, however, as a novelist that the world has agreed to remember Le
Sage. A great deal of unnecessary labour has been spent on the
discussion of his claims to originality. What has been already said will
give a sufficient clue through this thorny ground. In mere form Le Sage
is not original. He does little more than adopt that of the Spanish
picaroon romance of the 16th and 17th century. Often, too, he prefers
merely to rearrange and adapt existing work, and still oftener to give
himself a kind of start by adopting the work of a preceding writer as a
basis. But it may be laid down as a positive truth that he never, in any
work that pretends to originality at all, is guilty of anything that can
fairly be called plagiarism. Indeed we may go further, and say that he
is very fond of asserting or suggesting his indebtedness when he is
really dealing with his own funds. Thus the _Diable boiteux_ borrows the
title, and for a chapter or two the plan and almost the words, of the
_Diablo Cojuelo_ of Luis Velez de Guevara. But after a few pages Le Sage
leaves his predecessor alone. Even the plan of the Spanish original is
entirely discarded, and the incidents, the episodes, the style, are as
independent as if such a book as the _Diablo Cojuelo_ had never existed.
The case of _Gil Blas_ is still more remarkable. It was at first alleged
that Le Sage had borrowed it from the _Marcos de Obregon_ of Vincent
Espinel, a curiously rash assertion, inasmuch as that work exists and is
easily accessible, and as the slightest consultation of it proves that,
though it furnished Le Sage with separate incidents and hints for more
than one of his books, _Gil Blas_ as a whole is not in the least
indebted to it. Afterwards Father Isla asserted that _Gil Blas_ was a
mere translation from an actual Spanish book--an assertion at once
incapable of proof and disproof, inasmuch as there is no trace whatever
of any such book. A third hypothesis is that there was some manuscript
original which Le Sage may have worked up in his usual way, in the same
way, for instance, as he professes himself to have worked up the
_Bachelor of Salamanca_. This also is in the nature of it incapable of
refutation, though the argument from the _Bachelor_ is strong against
it, for there could be no reason why Le Sage should be more reticent of
his obligations in the one case than in the other. Except, however, for
historical reasons, the controversy is one which may be safely
neglected, nor is there very much importance in the more impartial
indication of sources--chiefly works on the history of Olivares--which
has sometimes been attempted. That Le Sage knew Spanish literature well
is of course obvious; but there is as little doubt (with the limitations
already laid down) of his real originality as of that of any great
writer in the world. _Gil Blas_ then remains his property, and it is
admittedly the capital example of its own style. For Le Sage has not
only the characteristic, which Homer and Shakespeare have, of absolute
truth to human nature as distinguished from truth to this or that
national character, but he has what has been called the quality of
detachment, which they also have. He never takes sides with his
characters as Fielding (whose master, with Cervantes, he certainly was)
sometimes does. Asmodeus and Don Cleofas, Gil Blas and the Archbishop
and Doctor Sangrado, are produced by him with exactly the same
impartiality of attitude. Except that he brought into novel writing this
highest quality of artistic truth, it perhaps cannot be said that he did
much to advance prose fiction in itself. He invented, as has been said,
no new _genre_; he did not, as Marivaux and Prévost did, help on the
novel as distinguished from the romance. In form his books are
undistinguishable, not merely from the Spanish romances which are, as
has been said, their direct originals, but from the medieval _romans
d'aventures_ and the Greek prose romances. But in individual excellence
they have few rivals. Nor should it be forgotten, as it sometimes is,
that Le Sage was a great master of French style, the greatest
unquestionably between the classics of the 17th century and the classics
of the 18th. He is perhaps the last great writer before the decadence
(for since the time of Paul Louis Courier it has not been denied that
the _philosophe_ period is in point of style a period of decadence). His
style is perfectly easy at the same time that it is often admirably
epigrammatic. It has plenty of colour, plenty of flexibility, and may be
said to be exceptionally well fitted for general literary work.
The dates of the original editions of Le Sage's most important works
have already been given. He published during his life a collection of
his regular dramatic works, and also one of his pieces for the Foire,
but the latter is far from exhaustive; nor is there any edition which
can be called so, though the _Oeuvres choisies_ of 1782 and 1818 are
useful, and there are so-called _Oeuvres complètes_ of 1821 and 1840.
Besides critical articles by the chief literary critics and
historians, the work of Eugène Lintilhac, in the Grands _écrivains
français_ (1893), should be consulted. The _Diable boiteux_ and _Gil
Blas_ have been reprinted and translated numberless times. Both will
be found conveniently printed, together with _Estévanille Gonzales_
and _Guzman d'Alfarache_, the best of the minor novels, in four
volumes of Garnier's _Bibliothèque amusante_ (Paris, 1865). _Turcaret_
and _Crispin_ are to be found in all collected editions of the French
drama. There is a useful edition of them, with ample specimens of Le
Sage's work for the Foire, in two volumes (Paris, 1821). (G. Sa.)
LES ANDELYS, a town of northern France, capital of an arrondissement in
the department of Eure about 30 m. S.E. of Rouen by rail. Pop. (1906)
3955. Les Andelys is formed by the union of Le Grand Andely and Le Petit
Andely, the latter situated on the right bank of the Seine, the former
about half a mile from the river. Grand Andely, founded, according to
tradition, in the 6th century, has a church (13th, 14th and 15th
centuries) parts of which are of fine late Gothic and Renaissance
architecture. The works of art in the interior include beautiful stained
glass of the latter period. Other interesting buildings are the hôtel du
Grand Cerf dating from the first half of the 16th century, and the
chapel of Sainte-Clotilde, close by a spring which, owing to its
supposed healing powers, is the object of a pilgrimage. Grand Andely has
a statue of Nicolas Poussin, a native of the place. Petit Andely sprang
up at the foot of the eminence on which stands the château Gaillard, now
in ruins, but formerly one of the strongest fortresses in France (see
FORTIFICATION AND SIEGECRAFT and CASTLE). It was built by Richard Coeur
de Lion at the end of the 12th century to protect the Norman frontier,
was captured by the French in 1204 and passed finally into their
possession in 1449. The church of St Sauveur at Petit Andely also dates
from the end of the 12th century. Les Andelys is the seat of a
sub-prefect and of a tribunal of first instance, has a preparatory
infantry school; it carries on silk milling, and the manufacture of
leather, organs and sugar. It has trade in cattle, grain, flour, &c.
LES BAUX, a village of south-eastern France, in the department of
Bouches-du-Rhône, 11 m. N.E. of Arles by road. Pop. (1906) 111. Les
Baux, which in the middle ages was a flourishing town, is now almost
deserted. Apart from a few inhabited dwellings, it consists of an
assemblage of ruined towers, fallen walls and other débris, which cover
the slope of a hill crowned by the remains of a huge château, once the
seat of a celebrated "court of love." The ramparts, a medieval church,
the château, parts of which date to the 11th century, and many of the
dwellings are, in great part, hollowed out of the white friable
limestone on which they stand. Here and there may be found houses
preserving carved façades of Renaissance workmanship. Les Baux has given
its name to the reddish rock (bauxite) which is plentiful in the
neighbourhood and from which aluminium is obtained. In the middle ages
Les Baux was the seat of a powerful family which owned the Terre
Baussenques, extensive domains in Provence and Dauphiné. The influence
of the seigneurs de Baux in Provence declined before the power of the
house of Anjou, to which they abandoned many of their possessions. In
1632 the château and the ramparts were dismantled.
LESBONAX, of Mytilene, Greek sophist and rhetorician, flourished in the
time of Augustus. According to Photius (_cod._ 74) he was the author of
sixteen political speeches, of which two are extant, a hortatory speech
after the style of Thucydides, and a speech on the Corinthian War. In
the first he exhorts the Athenians against the Spartans, in the second
(the title of which is misleading) against the Thebans (edition by F.
Kiehr, _Lesbonactis quae supersunt_, Leipzig, 1907). Some erotic letters
are also attributed to him.
The Lesbonax described in Suidas as the author of a large number of
philosophical works is probably of much earlier date; on the other
hand, the author of a small treatise [Greek: Peri Schêmatôn] on
grammatical figures (ed. Rudolf Müller, Leipzig, 1900), is probably
later.
LESBOS (Mytilene, Turk. _Midullu_), an island in the Aegean sea, off the
coast of Mysia, N. of the entrance of the Gulf of Smyrna, forming the
main part of a sanjak in the archipelago vilayet of European Turkey. It
is divided into three districts, Mytilene or Kastro in the E., Molyvo in
the N., and Calloni in the W. Since the middle ages it has been known as
Mytilene, from the name of its principal town. Strabo estimated the
circumference of the island at 1100 stadia, or about 138 m., and Scylax
reckoned it seventh in size of the islands of the Mediterranean. The
width of the channel between it and the mainland varies from 7 to 10 m.
The island is roughly triangular in shape; the three points are Argennum
on the N.E., Sigrium (Sigri) on the W., and Malea (Maria) on the S.E.
The Euripus Pyrrhaeus (Calloni) is a deep gulf on the west between
Sigrium and Malea. The country though mountainous is very fertile,
Lesbos being celebrated in ancient times for its wine, oil and grain.
Homer refers to its wealth. Its chief produce now is olives, which also
form its principal export. Soap, skins and valonea are also exported,
and mules and cattle are extensively bred. The sardine fishery is an
important trade, and antimony, marble and coal are found on the island.
The surface is rugged and mountainous, the highest point, Mount Olympus
(Hagios Elias) being 3080 ft. The island has suffered from periodical
earthquakes. The roads were remade in 1889, and there is telegraphic
communication on the island, and to the mainland by cable. The ports are
Sigri and Mytilene. The Gulf of Calloni and Hiera or Olivieri can only
be entered by vessels of small draught.
The chief town, called Mytilene, is built in amphitheatre shape round a
small hill crowned by remains of an ancient fortress. There are now 14
mosques and 7 churches, including a cathedral. It was originally built
on an island close to the eastern coast of Lesbos, and afterwards when
the town became too large for the island, it was joined to Lesbos by a
causeway, and the city spread along the coast. There was a harbour on
each side of the small island. Maloeis, by some surmised to be the
northern of these, was not far away. Besides the five cities which gave
the island the name of Pentapolis (Mytilene, Methymna, Antissa, Eresus,
Pyrrha), there was a town called Arisba, destroyed by an earthquake in
the time of Herodotus. Professor Conze thinks that this is the site now
called Palaikastro, N.E. of Calloni. Pyrrha lay S.E. of Calloni, and is
now also called Palaikastro. Antissa was on the N. coast near Sigri. It
was destroyed by the Romans in 168 B.C. Eresus was also near Sigri on
the S. coast. Methymna was on the N. coast, on the site of Molyvo, still
the second city of the island. The name Methymna is derived from the
wine (Gr. [Greek: methy]) for which it was famous. Considerable remains
of town walls and other buildings are to be seen on all these sites.
(E. Gr.)
_History._--Although the position of Lesbos near the old-established
trade-route to the Hellespont marks it out as an important site even in
pre-historic days, no evidence on the early condition of the island is
as yet obtainable, beyond the Greek tradition which represented it at
the time of the Trojan war as inhabited by an original stock of Pelasgi
and an immigrant population of Ionians. In historic times it was peopled
by an "Aeolian" race who reckoned Boeotia as their motherland and
claimed to have migrated about 1050 B.C.; its principal nobles traced
their pedigree to Orestes, son of Agamemnon. Lesbos was the most
prominent of Aeolian settlements, and indeed played a large part in the
early development of Greek life. Its commercial activity is attested by
several colonies in Thrace and the Troad, and by the participation of
its traders in the settlement of Naucratis in Egypt; hence also the town
of Mytilene, by virtue of its good harbour, became the political capital
of the island. The climax of its prosperity was reached about 600 B.C.,
when a citizen named Pittacus was appointed as _aesymnetes_ (dictator)
to adjust the balance between the governing nobility and the insurgent
commons and by his wise administration and legislation won a place among
the Seven Sages of Greece. These years also constitute the golden age of
Lesbian culture. The lyric poetry of Greece, which owed much to two
Lesbians of the 7th century, the musician Terpander and the dithyrambist
Arion, attained the standard of classical excellence under Pittacus'
contemporaries Alcaeus and Sappho. In the 6th century the importance of
the island declined, partly through a protracted and unsuccessful
struggle with Athens for the possession of Sigeum near the Hellespont,
partly through a crushing naval defeat inflicted by Polycrates of Samos
(about 550). The Lesbians readily submitted to Persia after the fall of
Croesus of Lydia, and although hatred of their tyrant Coës, a Persian
protégé, drove them to take part in the Ionic revolt (499-493), they
made little use of their large navy and displayed poor spirit at the
decisive battle of Lade. In the 5th century Lesbos for a long time
remained a privileged member of the Delian League (q.v.), with full
rights of self-administration, and under the sole obligation of
assisting Athens with naval contingents. Nevertheless at the beginning
of the Peloponnesian War the ruling oligarchy of Mytilene forced on a
revolt, which was ended after a two years' siege of that town (429-427).
The Athenians, who had intended to punish the rebels by a wholesale
execution, contented themselves with killing the ringleaders,
confiscating the land and establishing a garrison. In the later years of
the war Lesbos was repeatedly attacked by the Peloponnesians, and in 405
the harbour of Mytilene was the scene of a battle between the admirals
Callicratidas and Conon. In 389 most of the island was recovered for the
Athenians by Thrasybulus; in 377 it joined the Second Delian League, and
remained throughout a loyal member, although in the second half of the
century the dominant democracy was for a while supplanted by a tyranny.
In 334 Lesbos served as a base for the Persian admiral Memnon against
Alexander the Great. During the Third Macedonian war the Lesbians sided
with Perseus against Rome; similarly in 88 they became eager allies of
Mithradates VI. of Pontus, and Mytilene stood a protracted siege on his
behalf. This town, nevertheless, was raised by Pompey to the status of a
free community, thanks no doubt to his confidant Theophanes, a native of
Mytilene.
Of the other towns on the island, Antissa, Eresus and Pyrrha possess no
separate history. Methymna in the 5th and 4th centuries sometimes
figures as a rival of Mytilene, with an independent policy. Among the
distinguished Lesbians, in addition to those cited, may be mentioned the
cyclic poet Lesches, the historian Hellanicus and the philosophers
Theophrastus and Cratippus.
During the Byzantine age the island, which now assumes the name of
Mytilene, continued to flourish. In 1091 it fell for a while into the
hands of the Seljuks, and in the following century was repeatedly
occupied by the Venetians. In 1224 it was recovered by the Byzantine
emperors, who in 1354 gave it as a dowry to the Genoese family
Gattilusio. After prospering under their administration Mytilene passed
in 1462 under Turkish control, and has since had an uneventful history.
The present population is about 130,000 of whom 13,000 are Turks and
Moslems and 117,000 Greeks.
See Strabo xiii. pp. 617-619; Herodotus ii. 178, iii. 39, vi. 8, 14;
Thucydides iii. 2-50; Xenophon, _Hellenica_, i., ii.; S. Plehn,
_Lesbiacorum Liber_ (Berlin, 1828); C. T. Newton, _Travels and
Discoveries in the Levant_ (London, 1865); B. V. Head, _Historia
Numorum_ (Oxford, 1887), pp. 487-488; E. L. Hicks and G. F. Hill,
_Greek Historical Inscriptions_ (Oxford, 1901), Nos. 61, 94, 101, 139,
164; Conze, _Reise auf der Insel Lesbos_ (1865); Koldewey, _Antike
Baureste auf Lesbos_ (Berlin, 1890). (M. O. B. C.)
LESCHES (Lescheos in Pausanias x. 25. 5), the reputed author of the
_Little Iliad_ ([Greek: Ilias mikra]), one of the "cyclic" poems.
According to the usually accepted tradition, he was a native of Pyrrha
in Lesbos, and flourished about 660 B.C. (others place him about 50
years earlier). The _Little Iliad_ took up the story of the Homeric
_Iliad_, and, beginning with the contest between Ajax and Odysseus for
the arms of Achilles, carried it down to the fall of Troy (Aristotle,
_Poetics_, 23). According to the epitome in the _Chrestomathy_ of
Proclus, it ended with the admission of the wooden horse within the
walls of the city. Some ancient authorities ascribe the work to a
Lacedaemonian named Cinaethon, and even to Homer.
See F. G. Welcker, _Der epische Cyclus_ (1865-1882); Müller and
Donaldson, _Hist. of Greek Literature_, i. ch. 6; G. H. Bode,
_Geschichte der hellenischen Dichtkunst_, i.
LESCURE, LOUIS MARIE JOSEPH, MARQUIS DE (1766-1793), French soldier and
anti-revolutionary, was born near Bressuire. He was educated at the
École Militaire, which he left at the age of sixteen. He was in command
of a company of cavalry in the Régiment de Royal-Piémont, but being
opposed to the ideas of the Revolution he emigrated in 1791; he soon,
however, returned to France, and on the 10th of August 1792 took part in
the defence of the Tuileries against the mob of Paris. The day after, he
was forced to leave Paris, and took refuge in the château of Clisson
near Bressuire. On the outbreak of the revolt of Vendée against the
Republic, he was arrested and imprisoned with all his family, as one of
the promoters of the rising. He was set at liberty by the Royalists, and
became one of their leaders, fighting at Thouars, taking Fontenay and
Saumur (May-June 1793), and, after an unsuccessful attack on Nantes,
joining H. du Verger de la Rochejaquelein, another famous Vendean
leader. Their peasant troops, opposed to the republican general F. J.
Westermann, sustained various defeats, but finally gained a victory
between Tiffauges and Cholet on the 19th of September 1793. The struggle
was then concentrated round Chatillon, which was time after time taken
and lost by the Republicans. Lescure was killed on the 15th of October
1793 near the château of La Tremblaye between Einée and Fougères.
See Marquise de la Rochejaquelein (Lescure's widow, who afterwards
married La Rochejaquelein), _Mémoires_ (Paris, 1817); Jullien de
Courcelles, _Dictionnaire des généraux français_, tome vii. (1823); T.
Muret, _Histoire des guerres de l'ouest_ (Paris, 1848); and J. A. M.
Crétineau-Joly, _Guerres de Vendée_ (1834).
LESDIGUIÈRES, FRANÇOIS DE BONNE, DUC DE (1543-1626), constable of
France, was born at Saint-Bonnet de Champsaur on the 1st of April 1543,
of a family of notaries with pretensions to nobility. He was educated at
Avignon under a Protestant tutor, and had begun the study of law in
Paris when he enlisted as an archer. He served under the
lieutenant-general of his native province of Dauphiné, Bertrand de
Simiane, baron de Gordes, but when the Huguenots raised troops in
Dauphiné Lesdiguières threw in his lot with them, and under his kinsman
Antoine Rambaud de Furmeyer, whom he succeeded in 1570, distinguished
himself in the mountain warfare that followed by his bold yet prudent
handling of troops. He fought at Jarnac and Moncontour, and was a guest
at the wedding of Henry IV. of Navarre. Warned of the impending massacre
he retired hastily to Dauphiné, where he secretly equipped and drilled a
determined body of Huguenots, and in 1575, after the execution of
Montbrun, became the acknowledged leader of the Huguenot resistance in
the district with the title of commandant general, confirmed in 1577 by
Marshal Damville, by Condé in 1580, and by Henry of Navarre in 1582. He
seized Gap by a lucky night attack on the 3rd of January 1577,
re-established the reformed religion there, and fortified the town. He
refused to acquiesce in the treaty of Poitiers (1578) which involved the
surrender of Gap, and after two years of fighting secured better terms
for the province. Nevertheless in 1580 he was compelled to hand the
place over to Mayenne and to see the fortifications dismantled. He took
up arms for Henry IV. in 1585, capturing Chorges, Embrun, Châteauroux
and other places, and after the truce of 1588-1589 secured the complete
submission of Dauphiné. In 1590 he beat down the resistance of Grenoble,
and was now able to threaten the leaguers and to support the governor of
Provence against the raids of Charles Emmanuel I. of Savoy. He defeated
the Savoyards at Esparron in April 1591, and in 1592 began the
reconquest of the marquessate of Saluzzo which had been seized by
Charles Emmanuel. After his defeat of the Spanish allies of Savoy at
Salebertrano in June 1593 there was a truce, during which Lesdiguières
was occupied in maintaining the royal authority against Éperon in
Provence. The war with Savoy proceeded intermittently until 1601, when
Henry IV. concluded peace, much to the dissatisfaction of Lesdiguières.
The king regarded his lieutenant's domination in Dauphiné with some
distrust, although he was counted among the best of his captains.
Nevertheless he made him a marshal of France in 1609, and ensured the
succession to the lieutenant-generalship of Dauphiné, vested in
Lesdiguières since 1597, to his son-in-law Charles de Créquy. Sincerely
devoted to the throne, Lesdiguières took no part in the intrigues which
disturbed the minority of Louis XIII., and he moderated the political
claims made by his co-religionists under the terms of the Edict of
Nantes. After the death of his first wife, Claudine de Bérenger, he
married the widow of Ennemond Matel, a Grenoble shopkeeper, who was
murdered in 1617. Lesdiguières was then 73, and this lady, Marie Vignon,
had long been his mistress. He had two daughters, one of whom,
Françoise, married Charles de Créquy. In 1622 he formally abjured the
Protestant faith, his conversion being partly due to the influence of
Marie Vignon. He was already a duke and peer of France; he now became
constable of France, and received the order of the Saint Esprit. He had
long since lost the confidence of the Huguenots, but he nevertheless
helped the Vaudois against the duke of Savoy. Lesdiguières had the
qualities of a great general, but circumstances limited him to the
mountain warfare of Dauphiné, Provence and Savoy. He had almost
unvarying success through sixty years of fighting. His last campaign,
fought in alliance with Savoy to drive the Spaniards from the
Valtelline, was the least successful of his enterprises. He died of
fever at Valence on the 21st of September 1626.
The life of the Huguenot captain has been written in detail by Ch.
Dufuyard, _Le Connétable de Lesdiguières_ (Paris, 1892). His first
biographer was his secretary Louis Videl, _Histoire de la vie du
connestable de Lesdiguières_ (Paris, 1638). Much of his official
correspondence, with an admirable sketch of his life, is contained in
_Actes et correspondance du connétable de Lesdiguières_, edited by
Comte Douglas and J. Roman in _Documents historiques inédits pour
servir à l'histoire de Dauphiné_ (Grenoble, 1878). Other letters are
in the _Lettres et mémoires_ (Paris, 1647) of Duplessis-Mornay.
LESGHIANS, or LESGHIS (from the Persian _Leksi_, called Leki by the
Grusians or Georgians, Armenians and Ossetes), the collective name for a
number of tribes of the eastern Caucasus, who, with their kinsfolk the
Chechenzes, have inhabited Daghestan from time immemorial. They spread
southward into the Transcaucasian circles Kuba, Shemakha, Nukha and
Sakataly. They are mentioned as [Greek: Lêchai] by Strabo and Plutarch
along with the [Greek: Gêlai] (perhaps the modern Galgai, a Chechenzian
tribe), and their name occurs frequently in the chronicles of the
Georgians, whose territory was exposed to their raids for centuries,
until, on the surrender (1859) to Russia of the Chechenzian chieftain
Shamyl, they became Russian subjects. Moses of Chorene mentions a battle
in the reign of the Armenian king Baba (A.D. 370-377), in which Shagir,
king of the Lekians, was slain. The most important of the Lesghian
tribes are the Avars (q.v.), the Kasimukhians or Lakians, the Darghis
and the Kurins or Lesghians proper. Komarov[1] gives the total number
of the tribes as twenty-seven, all speaking distinct dialects. Despite
this, the Lesghian peoples, with the exception of the Udi and Kubatschi,
are held to be ethnically identical. The Lesghians are not usually so
good-looking as the Circassians or the Chechenzes. They are tall,
powerfully built, and their hybrid descent is suggested by the range of
colouring, some of the tribes exhibiting quite fair, others quite dark,
individuals. Among some there is an obvious mongoloid strain. In
disposition they are intelligent, bold and persistent, and capable of
reckless bravery, as was proved in their struggle to maintain their
independence. They are capable of enduring great physical fatigue. They
live a semi-savage life on their mountain slopes, for the most part
living by hunting and stock-breeding. Little agriculture is possible.
Their industries are mainly restricted to smith-work and cutlery and the
making of felt cloaks, and the women weave excellent shawls. They are
for the most part fanatical Mahommedans.
See Moritz Wagner, _Schamyl_ (Leipzig, 1854); von Seidlitz,
"Ethnographie des Kaukasus," in _Petermann's Mitteilungen_ (1880);
Ernest Chantre, _Recherches anthropologiques dans le Caucase_ (Lyon,
1885-1887); J. de Morgan, _Recherches sur les origines des peuples du
Caucase_ (Paris, 1889).
FOOTNOTE:
[1] _Ethnological Map of Daghestan._
LESINA (Serbo-Croatian, _Hvar_), an island in the Adriatic Sea, forming
part of Dalmatia, Austria. Lesina lies between the islands of Brazza on
the north and Curzola on the south; and is divided from the peninsula of
Sabbioncello by the Narenta channel. Its length is 41 m.; its greatest
breadth less than 4 m. It has a steep rocky coast with a chain of thinly
wooded limestone hills. The climate is mild, and not only the grape and
olive, but dates, figs and the carob or locust-bean flourish. The
cultivation of these fruits, boat-building, fishing and the preparation
of rosemary essence and liqueurs are the principal resources of the
islanders. Lesina (_Hvar_) and Cittavecchia (_Starigrad_) are the
principal towns and seaports, having respectively 2138 and 3120
inhabitants. Lesina, the capital, contains an arsenal, an observatory
and some interesting old buildings of the 16th century. It is a Roman
Catholic bishopric, and the centre of an administrative district, which
includes Cittavecchia, Lissa, and some small neighbouring islands. Pop.
(1900) of island 18,091, of district 27,928.
To the primitive "Illyrian" race, whose stone cists and bronze
implements have been disinterred from barrows near the capital, may
perhaps be attributed the "Cyclopean" walls at Cittavecchia. About 385
B.C., a Greek colony from Paros built a city on the site of the present
Lesina, naming it _Paros_ or _Pharos_. The forms _Phara_, _Pharia_
(common among Latin writers), and _Pityeia_, also occur. In 229 B.C. the
island was betrayed to the Romans by Demetrius, lieutenant of the
Illyrian queen Teuta; but in 219, as Demetrius proved false to Rome
also, his capital was razed by Lucius Aemilius Paullus. _Neos Pharos_,
now Cittavecchia, took its place, and flourished until the 6th century,
when the island was laid waste by barbarian invaders. Constantine
Porphyrogenitus mentions Lesina as a colony of pagan Slavs, in the 10th
century. Throughout the middle ages it remained a purely Slavonic
community; and its name, which appears in old documents as _Lisna_,
_Lesna_ or _Lyesena_, "wooded" is almost certainly derived from the
Slavonic _lyés_, "forest," not from the Italian _lesina_, "an awl." But
the old form Pharia persisted, as _Far_ or _Hvar_, with the curious
result that the modern Serbo-Croatian name is Greek, and the modern
Italian name Slavonic in origin. Lesina became a bishopric in 1145, and
received a charter from Venice in 1331. It was sacked by the enemies of
Venice in 1354 and 1358; ceded to Hungary in the same year; held by
Ragusa from 1413 to 1416; and incorporated in the Venetian dominions in
1420. During the 16th century Lesina city had a considerable maritime
trade, and, though sacked and partly burned by the Turks in 1571, it
remained the chief naval station of Venice, in these waters, until 1776,
when it was superseded by Curzola. Passing to Austria in 1797, and to
France in 1805, it withstood a Russian attack in 1807, but was
surrendered by the French in 1813, and finally annexed to Austria in
1815.
LESION (through Fr. from Lat. _laesio_, injury, _laedere_, to hurt), an
injury, hurt, damage. In Scots law the term is used of damage suffered
by a party in a contract sufficient to enable him to bring an action for
setting it aside. In pathology, the chief use, the word is applied to
any morbid change in the structure of an organ, whether shown by visible
changes or by disturbance of function.
LESKOVATS (LESKOVATZ or LESKOVAC), a town in Servia, between Nish and
Vranya, on the railway line from Nish to Salonica. Pop. (1901) 13,707.
It is the headquarters of the Servian hemp industry, the extensive plain
in which the town lies growing the best flax and hemp in all the Balkan
peninsula. The plain is not only the most fertile portion of Servia, but
also the best cultivated. Besides flax and hemp, excellent tobacco is
grown. Five valleys converge on the plain from different directions, and
the inhabitants of the villages in these valleys are all occupied in
growing flax and hemp, which they send to Leskovats to be stored or
manufactured into ropes. After Belgrade and Nish, Leskovats is the most
prosperous town in Servia.
LESLEY, JOHN (1527-1596), Scottish bishop and historian, was born in
1527. His father was Gavin Lesley, rector of Kingussie. He was educated
at the university of Aberdeen, where he took the degree of M.A. In 1538
he obtained a dispensation permitting him to hold a benefice,
notwithstanding his being a natural son, and in June 1546 he was made an
acolyte in the cathedral church of Aberdeen, of which he was afterwards
appointed a canon and prebendary. He also studied at Poitiers, at
Toulouse and at Paris, where he was made doctor of laws in 1553. In 1558
he took orders and was appointed Official of Aberdeen, and inducted into
the parsonage and prebend of Oyne. At the Reformation Lesley became a
champion of Catholicism. He was present at the disputation held in
Edinburgh in 1561, when Knox and Willox were his antagonists. He was one
of the commissioners sent the same year to bring over the young Queen
Mary to take the government of Scotland. He returned in her train, and
was appointed a privy councillor and professor of canon law in King's
College, Aberdeen, and in 1565 one of the senators of the college of
justice. Shortly afterwards he was made abbot of Lindores, and in 1565
bishop of Ross, the election to the see being confirmed in the following
year. He was one of the sixteen commissioners appointed to revise the
laws of Scotland, and the volume of the _Actis and Constitutionis of the
Realme of Scotland_ known as the Black Acts was, chiefly owing to his
care, printed in 1566.
The bishop was one of the most steadfast friends of Queen Mary. After
the failure of the royal cause, and whilst Mary was a captive in
England, Lesley (who had gone to her at Bolton) continued to exert
himself on her behalf. He was one of the commissioners at the conference
at York in 1568. He appeared as her ambassador at the court of Elizabeth
to complain of the injustice done to her, and when he found he was not
listened to, he laid plans for her escape. He also projected a marriage
for her with the duke of Norfolk, which ended in the execution of that
nobleman. For this he was put under the charge of the bishop of London,
and then of the bishop of Ely (in Holborn), and afterwards imprisoned in
the Tower of London. During his confinement he collected materials for
his history of Scotland, by which his name is now chiefly known. In 1571
he presented the latter portion of this work, written in Scots, to Queen
Mary to amuse her in her captivity. He also wrote for her use his _Piae
Consolationes_, and the queen devoted some of the hours of her captivity
to translating a portion of it into French verse.
In 1573 he was liberated from prison, but was banished from England. For
two years he attempted unsuccessfully to obtain the assistance of
Continental princes in favour of Queen Mary. While at Rome in 1578 he
published his Latin history _De Origine, Moribus, et Rebus Gestis
Scotorum_. In 1579 he went to France, and was made suffragan and
vicar-general of the archbishopric of Rouen. Whilst visiting his
diocese, however, he was thrown into prison, and had to pay 3000
pistoles to prevent his being given up to Elizabeth. During the
remainder of the reign of Henry III. he lived unmolested, but on the
accession of the Protestant Henry IV. he again fell into trouble. In
1590 he was thrown into prison, and had to purchase his freedom at the
same expense as before. In 1593 he was made bishop of Coutances in
Normandy, and had licence to hold the bishopric of Ross till he should
obtain peaceable possession of the former see. He retired to an
Augustinian monastery near Brussels, where he died on the 31st of May
1596.
The chief works of Lesley are as follows: _A Defence of the Honour of
... Marie, Queene of Scotland, by Eusebius Dicaeophile_ (London,
1569), reprinted, with alterations, at Liége in 1571, under the title,
_A Treatise concerning the Defence of the Honour of Marie, Queene of
Scotland, made by Morgan Philippes, Bachelar of Divinitie, Piae
afflicti animi consolationes, ad Mariam Scot. Reg._ (Paris, 1574); _De
origine, moribus et rebus gestis Scotorum libri decem_ (Rome, 1578;
re-issued 1675); _De illustrium feminarum in republica administranda
authoritate libellus_ (Reims, 1580; a Latin version of a tract on "The
Lawfulness of the Regiment of Women": cf. Knox's pamphlet); _De titulo
et jure Mariae Scot. Reg., quo regni Angliae successionem sibi juste
vindicat_ (Reims, 1580; translated in 1584). The history of Scotland
from 1436 to 1561 owes much, in its earlier chapters, to the accounts
of Hector Boece (q.v.) and John Major (q.v.), though no small portion
of the topographical matter is first-hand. In the later sections he
gives an independent account (from the Catholic point of view) which
is a valuable supplement and a corrective in many details, to the
works of Buchanan and Knox. A Scots version of the history was written
in 1596 by James Dalrymple of the Scottish Cloister at Regensburg. It
has been printed for the Scottish Text Society (2 vols., 1888-1895)
under the editorship of the Rev. E. G. Cody, O.S.B. A slight sketch by
Lesley of Scottish history from 1562 to 1571 has been translated by
Forbes-Leith in his _Narrative of Scottish Catholics_ (1885), from the
original MS. now in the Vatican.
LESLEY, J. PETER (1819-1903), American geologist, was born in
Philadelphia on the 17th of September 1819. It is recorded by Sir A.
Geikie that "He was christened Peter after his father and grandfather,
and at first wrote his name 'Peter Lesley, Jr.,' but disliking the
Christian appellation that had been given to him, he eventually
transformed his signature by putting the J. of 'Junior' at the
beginning." He was educated for the ministry at the university of
Pennsylvania, where he graduated in 1838; but the effects of close study
having told upon his health, he served for a time as sub-assistant on
the first geological survey of Pennsylvania under Professor H. D.
Rogers, and was afterwards engaged in a special examination of the coal
regions. On the termination of the survey in 1841 he entered Princeton
seminary and renewed his theological studies, at the same time giving
his leisure time to assist Professor Rogers in preparing the final
report and map of Pennsylvania. He was licensed to preach in 1844; he
then paid a visit to Europe and entered on a short course of study at
the university of Halle. Returning to America he worked during two years
for the American Tract Society, and at the close of 1847 he joined
Professor Rogers again in preparing geological maps and sections at
Boston. He then accepted the pastorate of the Congregational church at
Milton, a suburb of Boston, where he remained until 1851, when, his
views having become Unitarian, he abandoned the ministry and entered
into practice as a consulting geologist. In the course of his work he
made elaborate surveys of the Cape Breton coalfield, and of other coal
and iron regions. From 1855 to 1859 he was secretary of the American
Iron Association; for twenty-seven years (1858-1885) he was secretary
and librarian of the American Philosophical Society; from 1872 to 1878
he was professor of geology and dean of the faculty of science in the
university of Pennsylvania, and from 1874-1893 he was in charge of the
second geological survey of the state. He then retired to Milton, Mass.,
where he died on the 1st of June 1903. He published _Manual of Coal and
its Topography_ (1856); _The Iron Manufacturer's Guide to the Furnaces,
Forges and Rolling Mills of the United States_ (1859).
See Memoir by Sir A. Geikie in _Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc._ (May 1904);
and Memoir (with portrait) by B. S. Lyman, printed in advance with
portrait, and afterwards in abstract only in _Trans. Amer. Inst.
Mining Engineers_, xxxiv. (1904) p. 726.
LESLIE, CHARLES (1650-1722), Anglican nonjuring divine, son of John
Leslie (1571-1671), bishop of Raphoe and afterwards of Clogher, was born
in July 1650 in Dublin, and was educated at Enniskillen school and
Trinity College, Dublin. Going to England he read law for a time, but
soon turned his attention to theology, and took orders in 1680. In 1687
he became chancellor of the cathedral of Connor and a justice of the
peace, and began a long career of public controversy by responding in
public disputation at Monaghan to the challenge of the Roman Catholic
bishop of Clogher. Although a vigorous opponent of Roman Catholicism,
Leslie was a firm supporter of the Stuart dynasty, and, having declined
at the Revolution to take the oath to William and Mary, he was on this
account deprived of his benefice. In 1689 the growing troubles in
Ireland induced him to withdraw to England, where he employed himself
for the next twenty years in writing various controversial pamphlets in
favour of the nonjuring cause, and in numerous polemics against the
Quakers, Jews, Socinians and Roman Catholics, and especially in that
against the Deists with which his name is now most commonly associated.
He had the keenest scent for every form of heresy and was especially
zealous in his defence of the sacraments. A warrant having been issued
against him in 1710 for his pamphlet _The Good Old Cause, or Lying in
Truth_, he resolved to quit England and to accept an offer made by the
Pretender (with whom he had previously been in frequent correspondence)
that he should reside with him at Bar-le-Duc. After the failure of the
Stuart cause in 1715, Leslie accompanied his patron into Italy, where he
remained until 1721, in which year, having found his sojourn amongst
Roman Catholics extremely unpleasant, he sought and obtained permission
to return to his native country. He died at Glaslough, Monaghan, on the
13th of April 1722.
The _Theological Works_ of Leslie were collected and published by
himself in 2 vols. folio in 1721; a later edition, slightly enlarged,
appeared at Oxford in 1832 (7 vols. 8vo). Though marred by persistent
arguing in a circle they are written in lively style and show
considerable erudition. He had the somewhat rare distinction of making
several converts by his reasonings, and Johnson declared that "Leslie
was a reasoner, and a reasoner who was not to be reasoned against." An
historical interest in all that now attaches to his subjects and his
methods, as may be seen when the promise given in the title of his
best-known work is contrasted with the actual performance. The book
professes to be _A Short and Easy Method with the Deists, wherein the
certainty of the Christian Religion is Demonstrated by Infallible
Proof from Four Rules, which are incompatible to any imposture that
ever yet has been, or that can possibly be_ (1697). The four rules
which, according to Leslie, have only to be rigorously applied in
order to establish not the probability merely but the absolute
certainty of the truth of Christianity are simply these: (1) that the
matter of fact be such as that men's outward senses, their eyes and
ears, may be judges of it; (2) that it be done publicly, in the face
of the world; (3) that not only public monuments be kept up in memory
of it, but some outward actions be performed; (4) that such monuments
and such actions or observances be instituted and do commence from the
time that the matter of fact was done. Other publications of Leslie
are _The Snake in the Grass_ (1696), against the Quakers; _A Short
Method with the Jews_ (1689); _Gallienus Redivivus_ (an attack on
William III., 1695); _The Socinian Controversy Discussed_ (1697); _The
True Notion of the Catholic Church_ (1703); and _The Case Stated
between the Church of Rome and the Church of England_ (1713).
LESLIE, CHARLES ROBERT (1794-1859), English genre-painter, was born in
London on the 19th of October 1794. His parents were American, and when
he was five years of age he returned with them to their native country.
They settled in Philadelphia, where their son was educated and
afterwards apprenticed to a bookseller. He was, however, mainly
interested in painting and the drama, and when George Frederick Cooke
visited the city he executed a portrait of the actor, from recollection
of him on the stage, which was considered a work of such promise that a
fund was raised to enable the young artist to study in Europe. He left
for London in 1811, bearing introductions which procured for him the
friendship of West, Beechey, Allston, Coleridge and Washington Irving,
and was admitted as a student of the Royal Academy, where he carried off
two silver medals. At first, influenced by West and Fuseli, he essayed
"high art," and his earliest important subject depicted Saul and the
Witch of Endor; but he soon discovered his true aptitude and became a
painter of cabinet-pictures, dealing, not like those of Wilkie, with the
contemporary life that surrounded him, but with scenes from the great
masters of fiction, from Shakespeare and Cervantes, Addison and Molière,
Swift, Sterne, Fielding and Smollett. Of individual paintings we may
specify "Sir Roger de Coverley going to Church" (1819); "May-day in the
Time of Queen Elizabeth" (1821); "Sancho Panza and the Duchess" (1824);
"Uncle Toby and the Widow Wadman" (1831); _La Malade Imaginaire_, act
iii. sc. 6 (1843); and the "Duke's Chaplain Enraged leaving the Table,"
from _Don Quixote_ (1849). Many of his more important subjects exist in
varying replicas. He possessed a sympathetic imagination, which enabled
him to enter freely into the spirit of the author whom he illustrated, a
delicate perception for female beauty, an unfailing eye for character
and its outward manifestation in face and figure, and a genial and sunny
sense of humour, guided by an instinctive refinement which prevented it
from overstepping the bounds of good taste. In 1821 Leslie was elected
A.R.A., and five years later full academician. In 1833 he left for
America to become teacher of drawing in the military academy at West
Point, but the post proved an irksome one, and in some six months he
returned to England. He died on the 5th of May 1859.
In addition to his skill as an artist, Leslie was a ready and pleasant
writer. His _Life_ of his friend Constable, the landscape painter,
appeared in 1843, and his _Handbook for Young Painters_, a volume
embodying the substance of his lectures as professor of painting to
the Royal Academy, in 1855. In 1860 Tom Taylor edited his
_Autobiography and Letters_, which contain interesting reminiscences
of his distinguished friends and contemporaries.
LESLIE, FRED [FREDERICK HOBSON] (1855-1892), English actor, was born at
Woolwich on the 1st of April 1855. He made his first stage appearance in
London as Colonel Hardy in _Paul Pry_ in 1878. He had a good voice, and
in 1882 made a great hit as Rip Van Winkle in Planquette's opera of that
name at the Comedy. In 1885 he appeared at the Gaiety as Jonathan Wild
in H. P. Stephens and W. Yardley's burlesque _Little Jack Sheppard_. His
extraordinary success in this part determined his subsequent career, and
for some years he and Nelly Farren, with whom he played in perfect
association, were the pillars of Gaiety burlesque. Leslie's "Don Caesar
de Bazan" in _Ruy Blas, or the Blasé Roué_, was perhaps the most popular
of his later parts. In all of them it was his own versatility and
entertaining personality which formed the attraction; whether he sang,
danced, whistled or "gagged," his performance was an unending flow of
high spirits and ludicrous charm. Under the pseudonym of "A. C. Torr" he
was acknowledged on the programmes as part-author of these burlesques,
and while on occasion he acted in more serious comedy, for which he had
undoubted capacity, his fame rests on his connexion with them. In 1881
and 1883 he played in America. He died on the 7th of December 1892.
See W. T. Vincent, _Recollections of Fred Leslie_ (1894).
LESLIE, SIR JOHN (1766-1832), Scottish mathematician and physicist, was
born of humble parentage at Largo, Fifeshire, on the 16th of April 1766,
and received his early education there and at Leven. In his thirteenth
year, encouraged by friends who had even then remarked his aptitude for
mathematical and physical science, he entered the university of St
Andrews. On the completion of his arts course, he nominally studied
divinity at Edinburgh until 1787; in 1788-1789 he spent rather more than
a year as private tutor in a Virginian family, and from 1790 till the
close of 1792 he held a similar appointment at Etruria in Staffordshire,
with the family of Josiah Wedgwood, employing his spare time in
experimental research and in preparing a translation of Buffon's
_Natural History of Birds_, which was published in nine 8vo vols. in
1793, and brought him some money. For the next twelve years (passed
chiefly in London or at Largo, with an occasional visit to the continent
of Europe) he continued his physical studies, which resulted in numerous
papers contributed by him to Nicholson's _Philosophical Journal_, and in
the publication (1804) of the _Experimental Inquiry into the Nature and
Properties of Heat_, a work which gained him the Rumford Medal of the
Royal Society of London. In 1805 he was elected to succeed John
Playfair in the chair of mathematics at Edinburgh, not, however, without
violent though unsuccessful opposition on the part of a narrow-minded
clerical party who accused him of heresy in something he had said as to
the "unsophisticated notions of mankind" about the relation of cause and
effect. During his tenure of this chair he published two volumes of a
_Course of Mathematics_--the first, entitled _Elements of Geometry,
Geometrical Analysis and Plane Trigonometry_, in 1809, and the second,
_Geometry of Curve Lines_, in 1813; the third volume, on _Descriptive
Geometry and the Theory of Solids_ was never completed. With reference
to his invention (in 1810) of a process of artificial congelation, he
published in 1813 _A Short Account of Experiments and Instruments
depending on the relations of Air to Heat and Moisture_; and in 1818 a
paper by him "On certain impressions of cold transmitted from the higher
atmosphere, with an instrument (the aethrioscope) adapted to measure
them," appeared in the _Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh_.
In 1819, on the death of Playfair, he was promoted to the more congenial
chair of natural philosophy, which he continued to hold until his death,
and in 1823 he published, chiefly for the use of his class, the first
volume of his never-completed _Elements of Natural Philosophy_. Leslie's
main contributions to physics were made by the help of the "differential
thermometer," an instrument whose invention was contested with him by
Count Rumford. By adapting to this instrument various ingenious devices
he was enabled to employ it in a great variety of investigations,
connected especially with photometry, hygroscopy and the temperature of
space. In 1820 he was elected a corresponding member of the Institute of
France, the only distinction of the kind which he valued, and early in
1832 he was created a knight. He died at Coates, a small property which
he had acquired near Largo, on the 3rd of November 1832.
LESLIE, THOMAS EDWARD CLIFFE (1827-1882), English economist, was born in
the county of Wexford in (as is believed) the year 1827. He was the
second son of the Rev. Edward Leslie, prebendary of Dromore, and rector
of Annahilt, in the county of Down. His family was of Scottish descent,
but had been connected with Ireland since the reign of Charles I.
Amongst his ancestors were that accomplished prelate, John Leslie
(1571-1671), bishop first of Raphoe and afterwards of Clogher, who, when
holding the former see, offered so stubborn a resistance to the
Cromwellian forces, and the bishop's son Charles (see above), the
nonjuror. Cliffe Leslie received his elementary education from his
father, who resided in England, though holding church preferment as well
as possessing some landed property in Ireland; by him he was taught
Latin, Greek and Hebrew, at an unusually early age; he was afterwards
for a short time under the care of a clergyman at Clapham, and was then
sent to King William's College, in the Isle of Man, where he remained
until, in 1842, being then only fifteen years of age, he entered Trinity
College, Dublin. He was a distinguished student there, obtaining,
besides other honours, a classical scholarship in 1845, and a senior
moderatorship (gold medal) in mental and moral philosophy at his degree
examination in 1846. He became a law student at Lincoln's Inn, was for
two years a pupil in a conveyancer's chambers in London, and was called
to the English bar. But his attention was soon turned from the pursuit
of legal practice, for which he seems never to have had much
inclination, by his appointment, in 1853, to the professorship of
jurisprudence and political economy in Queen's College, Belfast. The
duties of this chair requiring only short visits to Ireland in certain
terms of each year, he continued to reside and prosecute his studies in
London, and became a frequent writer on economic and social questions in
the principal reviews and other periodicals. In 1870 he collected a
number of his essays, adding several new ones, into a volume entitled
_Land Systems and Industrial Economy of Ireland, England and Continental
Countries_. J. S. Mill gave a full account of the contents of this work
in a paper in the _Fortnightly Review_, in which he pronounced Leslie to
be "one of the best living writers on applied political economy." Mill
had sought his acquaintance on reading his first article in
_Macmillan's Magazine_; he admired his talents and took pleasure in his
society, and treated him with a respect and kindness which Leslie always
gratefully acknowledged.
In the frequent visits which Leslie made to the continent, especially to
Belgium and some of the less-known districts of France and Germany, he
occupied himself much in economic and social observation, studying the
effects of the institutions and system of life which prevailed in each
region, on the material and moral condition of its inhabitants. In this
way he gained an extensive and accurate acquaintance with continental
rural economy, of which he made excellent use in studying parallel
phenomena at home. The accounts he gave of the results of his
observations were among his happiest efforts; "no one," said Mill, "was
able to write narratives of foreign visits at once so instructive and so
interesting." In these excursions he made the acquaintance of several
distinguished persons, amongst others of M. Léonce de Lavergne and M.
Émile de Laveleye. To the memory of the former of these he afterwards
paid a graceful tribute in a biographical sketch (_Fortnightly Review_,
February 1881); and to the close of his life there existed between him
and M. de Laveleye relations of mutual esteem and cordial intimacy.
Two essays of Leslie's appeared in volumes published under the auspices
of the Cobden Club, one on the "Land System of France" (2nd ed., 1870),
containing an earnest defence of _la petite culture_ and still more of
_la petite propriété_; the other on "Financial Reform" (1871), in which
he exhibited in detail the impediments to production and commerce
arising from indirect taxation. Many other articles were contributed by
him to reviews between 1875 and 1879, including several discussions of
the history of prices and the movements of wages in Europe, and a sketch
of life in Auvergne in his best manner; the most important of them,
however, related to the philosophical method of political economy,
notably a memorable one which appeared in the Dublin University
periodical, _Hermathena_. In 1879 the provost and senior fellows of
Trinity College published for him a volume in which a number of these
articles were collected under the title of _Essays in Political and
Moral Philosophy_. These and some later essays, together with the
earlier volume on _Land Systems_, form the essential contribution of
Leslie to economic literature. He had long contemplated, and had in part
written, a work on English economic and legal history, which would have
been his _magnum opus_--a more substantial fruit of his genius and his
labours than anything he has left. But the MS. of this treatise, after
much pains had already been spent on it, was unaccountably lost at Nancy
in 1872; and, though he hoped to be able speedily to reproduce the
missing portion and finish the work, no material was left in a state fit
for publication. What the nature of it would have been may be gathered
from an essay on the "History and Future of Profit" in the _Fortnightly
Review_ for November 1881, which is believed to have been in substance
an extract from it.
That he was able to do so much may well be a subject of wonder when it
is known that his labours had long been impeded by a painful and
depressing malady, from which he suffered severely at intervals, whilst
he never felt secure from its recurring attacks. To this disease he in
the end succumbed at Belfast, on the 27th of January 1882.
Leslie's work may be distributed under two heads, that of applied
political economy and that of discussion on the philosophical method
of the science. The _Land Systems_ belonged principally to the former
division. The author perceived the great and growing importance for
the social welfare of both Ireland and England of what is called "the
land question," and treated it in this volume at once with breadth of
view and with a rich variety of illustrative detail. His general
purpose was to show that the territorial systems of both countries
were so encumbered with elements of feudal origin as to be altogether
unfitted to serve the purposes of a modern industrial society. The
policy he recommended is summed up in the following list of
requirements, "a simple jurisprudence relating to land, a law of equal
intestate succession, a prohibition of entail, a legal security for
tenants' improvements, an open registration of title and transfer and
a considerable number of peasant properties." The volume is full of
practical good sense, and exhibits a thorough knowledge of home and
foreign agricultural economy; and in the handling of the subject is
everywhere shown the special power which its author possessed of
making what he wrote interesting as well as instructive. The way in
which sagacious observation and shrewd comment are constantly
intermingled in the discussion not seldom reminds us of Adam Smith,
whose manner was more congenial to Leslie than the abstract and arid
style of Ricardo.
But what, more than anything else, marks him as an original thinker
and gives him a place apart among contemporary economists, is his
exposition and defence of the historical method in political economy.
Both at home and abroad there has for some time existed a profound and
growing dissatisfaction with the method and many of the doctrines of
the hitherto dominant school, which, it is alleged, under a
"fictitious completeness, symmetry and exactness" disguises a real
hollowness and discordance with fact. It is urged that the attempt to
deduce the economic phenomena of a society from the so-called
universal principle of "the desire of wealth" is illusory, and that
they cannot be fruitfully studied apart from the general social
conditions and historic development of which they are the outcome. Of
this movement of thought Leslie was the principal representative, if
not the originator, in England. There is no doubt, for he has himself
placed it on record, that the first influence which impelled him in
the direction of the historical method was that of Sir Henry Maine, by
whose personal teaching of jurisprudence, as well as by the example of
his writings, he was led "to look at the present economic structure
and state of society as the result of a long evolution." The study of
those German economists who represent similar tendencies doubtless
confirmed him in the new line of thought on which he had entered,
though he does not seem to have been further indebted to any of them
except, perhaps, in some small degree to Roscher. And the writings of
Comte, whose "prodigious genius," as exhibited in the _Philosophie
Positive_, he admired and proclaimed, though he did not accept his
system as a whole, must have powerfully co-operated to form in him the
habit of regarding economic science as only a single branch of
sociology, which should always be kept in close relation to the
others. The earliest writing in which Leslie's revolt against the
so-called "orthodox school" distinctly appears is his _Essay on
Wages_, which was first published in 1868 and was reproduced as an
appendix to the volume on _Land Tenures_. In this, after exposing the
inanity of the theory of the wage-fund, and showing the utter want of
agreement between its results and the observed phenomena, he concludes
by declaring that "political economy must be content to take rank as
an inductive, instead of a purely deductive science," and that, by
this change of character, "it will gain in utility, interest and real
truth far more than a full compensation for the forfeiture of a
fictitious title to mathematical exactness and certainty." But it is
in the essays collected in the volume of 1879 that his attitude in
relation to the question of method is most decisively marked. In one
of these, on "the political economy of Adam Smith," he exhibits in a
very interesting way the co-existence in the _Wealth of Nations_ of
historical-inductive investigation in the manner of Montesquieu with a
priori speculation founded on theologico-metaphysical bases, and
points out the error of ignoring the former element, which is the
really characteristic feature of Smith's social philosophy, and places
him in strong contrast with his _soi-disant_ followers of the school
of Ricardo. The essay, however, which contains the most brilliant
polemic against the "orthodox school," as well as the most luminous
account and the most powerful vindication of the new direction, was
that of which we have above spoken as having first appeared in
_Hermathena_. It may be recommended as supplying the best extant
presentation of one of the two contending views of economic method. On
this essay mainly rests the claim of Leslie to be regarded as the
founder and first head of the English historical school of political
economy. Those who share his views on the philosophical constitution
of the science regard the work he did, notwithstanding its
unsystematic character, as in reality the most important done by any
English economists in the latter half of the 19th century. But even
the warmest partisans of the older school acknowledge that he did
excellent service by insisting on a kind of inquiry, previously too
much neglected, which was of the highest interest and value, in
whatever relation it might be supposed to stand to the establishment
of economic truth. The members of both groups alike recognized his
great learning, his patient and conscientious habits of investigation
and the large social spirit in which he treated the problems of his
science. (J. K. I.)
LESLIE, a police burgh of Fifeshire, Scotland. Pop. (1901) 3587. It lies
on the Leven, the vale of which is overlooked by the town, 4 m. W. of
Markinch by the North British railway. The industries include
paper-making, flax-spinning, bleaching and linen-weaving. The old church
claims to be the "Christ's Kirk on the Green" of the ancient ballads of
that name. A stone on the Green, called the Bull Stone, is said to have
been used when bull-baiting was a popular pastime. Leslie House, the
seat of the earl of Rothes, designed by Sir William Bruce, rivalled
Holyrood in magnificence. It was noted for its tapestry and its gallery
of family portraits and other pictures, including a portrait of
Rembrandt by himself. Daniel Defoe considered its park the glory of the
kingdom. The mansion sustained serious damage from fire in 1763. Norman
Leslie, master of Rothes, was concerned in the killing of Cardinal
Beaton (1546), and the dagger with which John Leslie, Norman's uncle,
struck the fatal blow is preserved in Leslie House.
MARKINCH (pop. 1499), a police burgh situated between Conland Burn and
the Leven, 7¼ m. N. by E. of Kirkcaldy by the North British railway, is
a place of great antiquity. A cell of the Culdees was established here
by one of the last of the Celtic bishops, the site of which may possibly
be marked by the ancient cross of Balgonie. Markinch is also believed to
have been a residence of the earlier kings, where prior to the 11th
century they occasionally administered justice; and in the reign of
William the Lion (d. 1214) the warrantors of goods alleged to have been
stolen were required to appear here. Its industries comprise bleaching,
flax-spinning, paper-making, distilling and coal-mining. Balgonie
Castle, close by, the keep of which is 80 ft. high, was a residence of
Alexander Leslie, the first earl of Leven, and at Balfour Castle were
born Cardinal Beaton and his uncle and nephew the archbishops of
Glasgow.
LESPINASSE, JEANNE JULIE ÉLÉONORE DE (1732-1776), French author, was
born at Lyons on the 9th of November 1732. A natural child of the
comtesse d'Albon, she was brought up as the daughter of Claude
Lespinasse of Lyons. On leaving her convent school she became governess
in the house of her mother's legitimate daughter, Mme de Vichy, who had
married the brother of the marquise du Deffand. Here Mme du Deffand made
her acquaintance, and, recognizing her extraordinary gifts, persuaded
her to come to Paris as her companion. The alliance lasted ten years
(1754-1764) until Mme du Deffand became jealous of the younger woman's
increasing influence, when a violent quarrel ensued. Mlle de Lespinasse
set up a salon of her own which was joined by many of the most brilliant
members of Mme du Deffand's circle. D'Alembert was one of the most
assiduous of her friends and eventually came to live under the same
roof. There was no scandal attached to this arrangement, which ensured
d'Alembert's comfort and lent influence to Mlle de Lespinasse's salon.
Although she had neither beauty nor rank, her ability as a hostess made
her reunions the most popular in Paris. She owes her distinction,
however, not to her social success, but to circumstances which remained
a secret during her lifetime from her closest friends. Two volumes of
_Lettres_ published in 1809 displayed her as the victim of a passion of
a rare intensity. In virtue of this ardent, intense quality Sainte Beuve
and other of her critics place her letters in the limited category to
which belong the Latin letters of Héloïse and those of the Portuguese
Nun. Her first passion, a reasonable and serious one, was for the
marquis de Mora, son of the Spanish ambassador in Paris. De Mora had
come to Paris in 1765, and with some intervals remained there until 1772
when he was ordered to Spain for his health. On the way to Paris in 1774
to fulfil promises exchanged with Mlle de Lespinasse, he died at
Bordeaux. But her letters to the comte de Guibert, the worthless object
of her fatal infatuation, begin from 1773. From the struggle between her
affection for de Mora and her blind passion for her new lover they go on
to describe her partial disenchantment on Guibert's marriage and her
final despair. Mlle de Lespinasse died on the 23rd of May 1776, her
death being apparently hastened by the agitation and misery to which she
had been for the last three years of her life a prey. In addition to the
_Lettres_ she was the author of two chapters intended as a kind of
sequel to Sterne's _Sentimental Journey_.
Her _Lettres_ ... were published by Mme de Guibert in 1809 and a
spurious additional collection appeared in 1820. Among modern editions
may be mentioned that of Eugène Asse (1876-1877). _Lettres inédites de
Mademoiselle de Lespinasse à Condorcet, à D'Alembert, à Guibert, au
comte de Crillon_, edited by M. Charles Henry (1887), contains copies
of the documents available for her biography. Mrs Humphry Ward's
novel, _Lady Rose's Daughter_, owes something to the character of Mlle
de Lespinasse.
LES SABLES D'OLONNE, a seaport of western France, capital of an
arrondissement of the department of Vendée, on an inlet of the Atlantic
seaboard, 23 m. S.W. of La Roche-sur-Yon by rail. Pop. (1906) 11,847.
The town stands between the sea on the south and the port on the north,
while on the west it is separated by a channel from the suburb of La
Chaume, built at the foot of a range of dunes 65 ft. high, which
terminates southwards in the rocky peninsula of L'Aiguille. The
beautiful smoothly sloping beach, 1 m. in length, is much frequented by
bathers. To the north of Sables extend salt-marshes and oyster-parks,
yielding 6,000,000 to 8,000,000 oysters per annum. Sables has a church
built in the Late Gothic style towards the middle of the 17th century.
The port, consisting of a tidal basin and a wet-dock, is accessible to
vessels of 2000 tons, but is dangerous when the winds are from the
south-west. The lighthouse of Barges, a mile out at sea to the west, is
visible for 17 to 18 nautical miles. The inhabitants are employed
largely in sardine and tunny fishing; there are imports of coal, wood,
petroleum and phosphates. Boat-building and sardine-preserving are
carried on. The town has a sub-prefecture and a tribunal of first
instance.
Founded by Basque or Spanish sailors, Sables was the first place in
Poitou invaded by the Normans in 817. Louis XI., who went there in 1472,
granted the inhabitants various privileges, improved the harbour, and
fortified the entrance. Captured and recaptured during the Wars of
Religion, the town afterwards became a nursery of hardy sailors and
privateers, who harassed the Spaniards and afterwards the English. In
1696 Sables was bombarded by the combined fleets of England and Holland.
In the middle of the 18th century hurricanes caused grievous damage to
town and harbour.
LES SAINTES-MARIES, a coast village of south-eastern France in the
department of Boûches-du-Rhône, 24 m. S.S.W. of Arles by rail. Pop.
(1906) 544. Saintes-Maries is situated in the plain of the Camargue, 1½
m. E. of the mouth of the Petit-Rhône. It is the object of an ancient
and famous pilgrimage due to the tradition that Mary, sister of the
Virgin, and Mary, mother of James and John, together with their black
servant Sara, Lazarus, Martha, Mary Magdalen and St Maximin fled thither
to escape persecution in Judaea. The relics of the two Maries, who are
said to have been buried at Saintes-Maries, are bestowed in the upper
storey of the apse of the fortress-church, a remarkable building of the
12th century with crenelated and machicolated walls. Two festivals are
held in the town, a less important one in October, the other, on the
24th and 25th of May, unique for its gathering of gipsies who come in
large numbers to do honour to the tomb of their patroness Sara,
contained in the crypt below the apse.
LESSE, one of the most romantic of the smaller rivers of Belgium. It
rises at Ochamps in the Ardennes, and flowing in a north-westerly course
reaches the Meuse at Anseremme, a few miles above Dinant. The river is
only 49 m. long, but its meandering course may be judged by the fact
that it is no more than 29 m. from Ochamps to Anseremme in a straight
line. There is a good deal of pretty scenery along this river, as, for
instance, at Ciergnon, but the most striking part of the valley is
contained in the last 12 m. from Houyet to Anseremme. In this section
the river is confined between opposing walls of cliff ranging from 300
to 500 ft. above the river. Here were discovered in the caves near
Walzin the bones of prehistoric men, and other evidence of the primitive
occupants of this globe at a period practically beyond computation.
Another curious natural feature of the Lesse is that on reaching the
hill of Han it disappears underground, reappearing about 1 m. farther on
at the village of that name. Here are the curious and interesting Han
grottoes. The Lesse receives altogether in its short course the water of
thirteen tributaries.
LESSEPS, FERDINAND DE (1805-1894). French diplomatist and maker of the
Suez Canal, was born at Versailles on the 19th of November 1805. The
origin of his family has been traced back as far as the end of the 14th
century. His ancestors, it is believed, came from Scotland, and settled
at Bayonne when that region was occupied by the English. One of his
great-grandfathers was town clerk and at the same time secretary to
Queen Anne of Neuberg, widow of Charles II. of Spain, exiled to Bayonne
after the accession of Philip V. From the middle of the 18th century
the ancestors of Ferdinand de Lesseps followed the diplomatic career,
and he himself occupied with real distinction several posts in the same
calling from 1825 to 1849. His uncle was ennobled by King Louis XVI.,
and his father was made a count by Napoleon I. His father, Mathieu de
Lesseps (1774-1832), was in the consular service; his mother, Catherine
de Grivégnée, was Spanish, and aunt of the countess of Montijo, mother
of the empress Eugénie. His first years were spent in Italy, where his
father was occupied with his consular duties. He was educated at the
College of Henry IV. in Paris. From the age of 18 years to 20 he was
employed in the commissary department of the army. From 1825 to 1827 he
acted as assistant vice-consul at Lisbon, where his uncle, Barthélemy de
Lesseps, was the French chargé d'affaires. This uncle was an old
companion of La Pérouse and a survivor of the expedition in which that
navigator perished. In 1828 Ferdinand was sent as an assistant
vice-consul to Tunis, where his father was consul-general. He
courageously aided the escape of Youssouff, pursued by the soldiers of
the bey, of whom he was one of the officers, for violation of the
seraglio law. Youssouff acknowledged this protection given by a
Frenchman by distinguishing himself in the ranks of the French army at
the time of the conquest of Algeria. Ferdinand de Lesseps was also
entrusted by his father with missions to Marshal Count Clausel,
general-in-chief of the army of occupation in Algeria. The marshal wrote
to Mathieu de Lesseps on the 18th of December 1830: "I have had the
pleasure of meeting your son, who gives promise of sustaining with great
credit the name he bears." In 1832 Ferdinand de Lesseps was appointed
vice-consul at Alexandria. To the placing in quarantine of the vessel
which took him to Egypt is due the origin of his great conception of a
canal across the isthmus of Suez. In order to help him to while away the
time at the lazaretto, M. Mimaut, consul-general of France at
Alexandria, sent him several books, among which was the memoir written
upon the Suez Canal, according to Bonaparte's instructions, by the civil
engineer Lapère, one of the scientific members of the French expedition.
This work struck de Lesseps's imagination, and gave him the idea of
piercing the African isthmus. This idea, moreover, was conceived in
circumstances that were to prepare the way for its realization. Mehemet
Ali, who was the viceroy of Egypt, owed his position, to a certain
extent, to the recommendations made in his behalf to the French
government by Mathieu de Lesseps, who was consul-general in Egypt when
Mehemet Ali was a simple colonel. The viceroy therefore welcomed
Ferdinand affectionately, while Said Pacha, Mehemet's son, began those
friendly relations that he did not forget later, when he gave him the
concession for making the Suez Canal. In 1833 Ferdinand de Lesseps was
sent as consul to Cairo, and soon afterwards given the management of the
consulate-general at Alexandria, a post that he held until 1837. While
he was there a terrible epidemic of the plague broke out and lasted for
two years, carrying off more than a third of the inhabitants of Cairo
and Alexandria. During this time he went from one city to the other,
according as the danger was more pressing, and constantly displayed an
admirable zeal and an imperturbable energy. Towards the close of the
year 1837 he returned to France, and on the 21st of December married
Mlle Agathe Delamalle, daughter of the government prosecuting attorney
at the court of Angers. By this marriage M. de Lesseps became the father
of five sons. In 1839 he was appointed consul at Rotterdam, and in the
following year transferred to Malaga, the place of origin of his
mother's family. In 1842 he was sent to Barcelona, and soon afterwards
promoted to the grade of consul-general. In the course of a bloody
insurrection in Catalonia, which ended in the bombardment of Barcelona,
Ferdinand de Lesseps showed the most persistent bravery, rescuing from
death, without distinction, the men belonging to the rival factions, and
protecting and sending away not only the Frenchmen who were in danger,
but foreigners of all nationalities. From 1848 to 1849 he was minister
of France at Madrid. In the latter year the government of the French
Republic confided to him a mission to Rome at the moment when it was a
question whether the expelled pope would return to the Vatican with or
without bloodshed. Following his interpretation of the instructions he
had received, de Lesseps began negotiations with the existing government
at Rome, according to which Pius IX. should peacefully re-enter the
Vatican and the independence of the Romans be assured at the same time.
But while he was negotiating, the elections in France had caused a
change in the foreign policy of the government. His course was
disapproved; he was recalled and brought before the council of state,
which blamed his conduct without giving him a chance to justify himself.
Rome, attacked by the French army, was taken by assault after a month's
sanguinary siege. M. de Lesseps then retired from the diplomatic
service, and never afterwards occupied any public office. In 1853 he
lost his wife and daughter at a few days' interval. Perhaps his energy
would not have been sufficient to sustain him against these repeated
blows of destiny if, in 1854, the accession to the viceroyalty of Egypt
of his old friend, Said Pacha, had not given a new impulse to the ideas
that had haunted him for the last twenty-two years concerning the Suez
Canal. Said Pacha invited M. de Lesseps to pay him a visit, and on the
7th of November 1854 he landed at Alexandria; on the 30th of the same
month Said Pacha signed the concession authorizing M. de Lesseps to
pierce the isthmus of Suez.
A first scheme, indicated by him, was immediately drawn out by two
French engineers who were in the Egyptian service, MM. Linant Bey and
Mougel Bey. This project, differing from others that had been previously
presented or that were in opposition to it, provided for a direct
communication between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea. After being
slightly modified, the plan was adopted in 1856 by an international
commission of civil engineers to which it had been submitted. Encouraged
by this approval, de Lesseps no longer allowed anything to stop him. He
listened to no adverse criticism and receded before no obstacle. Neither
the opposition of Lord Palmerston, who considered the projected
disturbance as too radical not to endanger the commercial position of
Great Britain, nor the opinions entertained, in France as well as in
England, that the sea in front of Port Said was full of mud which would
obstruct the entrance to the canal, that the sands from the desert would
fill the trenches--no adverse argument, in a word, could dishearten
Ferdinand de Lesseps. His faith made him believe that his adversaries
were in the wrong; but how great must have been this faith, which
permitted him to undertake the work at a time when mechanical appliances
for the execution of such an undertaking did not exist, and when for the
utilization of the proposed canal there was as yet no steam mercantile
marine! Impelled by his convictions and talent, supported by the emperor
Napoleon III. and the empress Eugénie, he succeeded in rousing the
patriotism of the French and obtaining by their subscriptions more than
half of the capital of two hundred millions of francs which he needed in
order to form a company. The Egyptian government subscribed for eighty
millions' worth of shares. The company was organized at the end of 1858.
On the 25th of April 1859 the first blow of the pickaxe was given by
Lesseps at Port Said, and on the 17th of November 1869 the canal was
officially opened by the Khedive, Ismail Pacha (see SUEZ CANAL). While
in the interests of his canal Lesseps had resisted the opposition of
British diplomacy to an enterprise which threatened to give to France
control of the shortest route to India, he acted loyally towards Great
Britain after Lord Beaconsfield had acquired the Suez shares belonging
to the Khedive, by frankly admitting to the board of directors of the
company three representatives of the British government. The
consolidation of interests which resulted, and which has been developed
by the addition in 1884 of seven other British directors, chosen from
among shipping merchants and business men, has augmented, for the
benefit of all concerned, the commercial character of the enterprise.
Ferdinand de Lesseps steadily endeavoured to keep out of politics. If in
1869 he appeared to deviate from this principle by being a candidate at
Marseilles for the Corps Législatif, it was because he yielded to the
entreaties of the Imperial government in order to strengthen its
goodwill for the Suez Canal. Once this goodwill had been shown, he bore
no malice towards those who rendered him his liberty by preferring
Gambetta. He afterwards declined the other candidatures that were
offered him: for the Senate in 1876, and for the Chamber in 1877. In
1873 he became interested in a project for uniting Europe and Asia by a
railway to Bombay, with a branch to Peking. He subsequently encouraged
Major Roudaire, who wished to transform the Sahara desert into an inland
sea. The king of the Belgians having formed an International African
Society, de Lesseps accepted the presidency of the French committee,
facilitated M. de Brazza's explorations, and acquired stations that he
subsequently abandoned to the French government. These stations were the
starting-point of French Congo. In 1879 a congress assembled in the
rooms of the Geographical Society at Paris, under the presidency of
Admiral de la Roncière le Noury, and voted in favour of the making of
the Panama Canal. Public opinion, it may be declared, designated
Ferdinand de Lesseps as the head of the enterprise. It was upon that
occasion that Gambetta bestowed upon him the title of _Le Grand
Français_. He was not a man to shirk responsibility, and notwithstanding
that he had reached the age of 74, he undertook to carry out the Panama
Canal project (see PANAMA CANAL and FRANCE: _History_). Politics, which
de Lesseps had always avoided, was his greatest enemy in this matter.
The winding-up of the Panama Company having been declared in the month
of December 1888, the adversaries of the French Republic, seeking for a
scandal that would imperil the government, hoped to bring about the
prosecution of the directors of the Panama Company. Their attacks were
so vigorously made that the government was obliged, in self-defence, to
have judicial proceedings taken against Ferdinand de Lesseps, his son
Charles (b. 1849) and his co-workers Fontane and Cottu. Charles de
Lesseps, a victim offered to the fury of the politicians, tried to
divert the storm upon his head and prevent it from reaching his father.
He managed to draw down upon himself alone the burden of the
condemnations pronounced. One of the consequences of the persecutions of
which he was the object was to oblige him to spend three years, from
1896 to 1899, in England, where his participation in the management of
the Suez Canal had won for him some strong friendships, and where he was
able to see the great respect in which the memory and name of his father
were held by Englishmen.
Ferdinand de Lesseps died at La Chenaie on the 7th of December 1894. He
had contracted a second marriage in 1869 with Mlle Autard de Bragard,
daughter of a former magistrate of Mauritius; and eleven out of twelve
children of this marriage survived him. M. de Lesseps was a member of
the French Academy, of the Academy of Sciences, of numerous scientific
societies, Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour and of the Star of India,
and had received the freedom of the City of London. According to some
accounts he was unconscious of the disastrous events that took place
during the closing months of his life. Others report that, feeling
himself powerless to scatter the gathered clouds, and aware of his
physical feebleness, he had had the moral courage to pass in the eyes of
his family, which he did not wish to afflict, as the dupe of the efforts
they employed to conceal the truth from him. This last version would not
be surprising if we relied upon the following portrait, sketched by a
person who knew him intimately:--"Simple in his tastes, never thinking
of himself, constantly preoccupied about others, supremely kind, he did
not and would not recognize such a thing as evil. Of a confiding nature,
he was inclined to judge others by himself. This naturally affectionate
abandonment that every one felt in him had procured him profound
attachments and rare devotions. He showed, while making the Suez Canal,
what a gift he possessed for levying the pacific armies he conducted. He
set duty above everything, had in the highest degree a reverence for
honour, and placed his indomitable courage at the service of everything
that was beneficial with an abnegation that nothing could tire. His
marvellous physical and moral equilibrium gave him an evenness of temper
which always rendered his society charming. Whatever his cares, his
work or his troubles, I have never noticed in him aught but generous
impulses and a love of humanity carried even to those heroic imprudences
of which they alone are capable who devote themselves to the
amelioration of humanity." No doubt this eulogy requires some
reservations. The striking and universal success which crowned his work
on the Suez Canal gave him an absoluteness of thought which brooked no
contradiction, a despotic temper before which every one must bow, and
against which, when he had once taken a resolution, nothing could
prevail, not even the most authoritative opposition or the most
legitimate entreaties. He had resolved to construct the Panama Canal
without locks, to make it an uninterrupted navigable way. All attempts
to dissuade him from this resolution failed before his tenacious will.
At his advanced age he went with his youngest child to Panama to see
with his own eyes the field of his new enterprise. He there beheld the
Culebra and the Chagres; he saw the mountain and the stream, those two
greatest obstacles of nature that sought to bar his route. He paid no
heed to them, but began the struggle against the Culebra and the
Chagres. It was against them that was broken his invincible will,
sweeping away in the defeat the work of Panama, his own fortune, his
fame and almost an atom of his honour. But this atom, only grazed by
calumny, has already been restored to him by posterity, for he died
poor, having been the first to suffer by the disaster to his illusions.
Political agitators, in order to sap the power of the Opportunist party,
did not hesitate to drag in the mud one of the greatest citizens of
France. But when the Panama "scandal" has been forgotten, for centuries
to come the traveller in saluting the statue of Ferdinand de Lesseps at
the entrance of the Suez Canal will pay homage to one of the most
powerful embodiments of the creative genius of the 19th century.
See G. Barnett Smith, _The Life and Enterprises of Ferdinand de
Lesseps_ (London, 1893); and _Souvenirs de quarante ans_, by Ferdinand
de Lesseps (trans. by C. B. Pitman). (de B.)
LESSING, GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM (1729-1781), German critic and dramatist, was
born at Kamenz in Upper Lusatia (Oberlausitz), Saxony, on the 22nd of
January 1729. His father, Johann Gottfried Lessing, was a clergyman,
and, a few years after his son's birth, became _pastor primarius_ or
chief pastor of Kamenz. After attending the Latin school of his native
town, Gotthold was sent in 1741 to the famous school of St Afra at
Meissen, where he made such rapid progress, especially in classics and
mathematics, that, towards the end of his school career, he was
described by the rector as "a steed that needed double fodder." In 1746
he entered the university of Leipzig as a theological student. The
philological lectures of Johann Friedrich Christ (1700-1756) and Johann
August Ernesti (1707-1781) proved, however, more attractive than those
on theology, and he attended the philosophical disputations presided
over by his friend A. G. Kästner, professor of mathematics and also an
epigrammatist of repute. Among Lessing's chief friends in Leipzig were
C. F. Weisse (1726-1804) the dramatist, and Christlob Mylius
(1722-1754), who had made some name for himself as a journalist. He was
particularly attracted by the theatre then directed by the talented
actress Karoline Neuber (1697-1760), who had assisted Gottsched in his
efforts to bring the German stage into touch with literature. Frau
Neuber even accepted for performance Lessing's first comedy, _Der junge
Gelehrte_ (1748), which he had begun at school. His father naturally did
not approve of these new interests and acquaintances, and summoned him
home. He was only allowed to return to Leipzig on the condition that he
would devote himself to the study of medicine. Some medical lectures he
did attend, but as long as Frau Neuber's company kept together the
theatre had an irresistible fascination for him.
In 1748, however, the company broke up, and Lessing, who had allowed
himself to become surety for some of the actors' debts, was obliged to
leave Leipzig too, in order to escape their creditors. He went to
Wittenberg, and afterwards, towards the end of the year, to Berlin,
where his friend Mylius had established himself as a journalist. In
Berlin Lessing now spent three years, maintaining himself chiefly by
literary work. He translated three volumes of Charles Rollin's _Histoire
ancienne_, wrote several plays--_Der Misogyn_, _Der Freigeist_, _Die
Juden_--and in association with Mylius, began the _Beiträge zur Historie
und Aufnahine des Theaters_ (1750), a periodical--which soon came to an
end--for the discussion of matters connected with the drama. Early in
1751 he became literary critic to the _Vossische Zeitung_, and in this
position laid the foundation for his reputation as a reviewer of
learning, judgment and wit. At the end of 1751 he was in Wittenberg
again, where he spent about a year engaged in unremitting study and
research. He then returned to Berlin with a view to making literature
his profession; and the next three years were among the busiest of his
life. Besides translating for the booksellers, he issued several numbers
of the _Theatralische Bibliothek_, a periodical similar to that which he
had begun with Mylius; he also continued his work as critic to the
_Vossische Zeitung_. In 1754 he gave a particularly brilliant proof of
his critical powers in his _Vademecum für Herrn S. G. Lange_; as a
retort to that writer's overbearing criticism, Lessing exposed with
scathing satire Lange's errors in his popular translation of Horace.
By 1753 Lessing felt that his position was sufficiently assured to allow
of him issuing an edition of his collected writings (_Schriften_, 6
vols., 1753-1755). They included his lyrics and epigrams, most of which
had already appeared during his first residence in Berlin in a volume of
_Kleinigkeiten_, published anonymously. Much more important were the
papers entitled _Rettungen_, in which he undertook to vindicate the
character of various writers--Horace and writers of the Reformation
period, such as Cochlaeus and Cardanus--who had been misunderstood or
falsely judged by preceding generations. The _Schriften_ also contained
Lessing's early plays, and one new one, _Miss Sara Sampson_ (1755).
Hitherto Lessing had, as a dramatist, followed the methods of
contemporary French comedy as cultivated in Leipzig; _Miss Sara
Sampson_, however, marks the beginning of a new period in the history of
the German drama. This play, based more or less on Lille's _Merchant of
London_, and influenced in its character-drawing by the novels of
Richardson, is the first _bürgerliches Trauerspiel_, or "tragedy of
common life" in German. It was performed for the first time at
Frankfort-on-Oder in the summer of 1755, and received with great favour.
Among Lessing's chief friends during his second residence in Berlin were
the philosopher Moses Mendelssohn (1729-1786), in association with whom
he wrote in 1755 an admirable treatise, _Pope ein Metaphysiker!_ tracing
sharply the lines which separate the poet from the philosopher. He was
also on intimate terms with C. F. Nicolai (1733-1811), a Berlin
bookseller and rationalistic writer, and with the "German Horace" K. W.
Ramler (1725-1798); he had also made the acquaintance of J. W. L. Gleim
(1719-1803), the Halberstadt poet, and E. C. von Kleist (1715-1759), a
Prussian officer, whose fine poem. _Der Frühling_, had won for him
Lessing's warm esteem.
In October 1755 Lessing settled in Leipzig with a view to devoting
himself more exclusively to the drama. In 1756 he accepted the
invitation of Gottfried Winkler, a wealthy young merchant, to accompany
him on a foreign tour for three years. They did not, however, get beyond
Amsterdam, for the outbreak of the Seven Years' War made it necessary
for Winkler to return home without loss of time. A disagreement with his
patron shortly after resulted in Lessing's sudden dismissal; he demanded
compensation and, although in the end the court decided in his favour,
it was not until the case had dragged on for about six years. At this
time Lessing began the study of medieval literature to which attention
had been drawn by the Swiss critics, Bodmer and Breitinger, and wrote
occasional criticisms for Nicolai's _Bibliothek der schönen
Wissenschaften_. In Leipzig Lessing had also an opportunity of
developing his friendship with Kleist who happened to be stationed
there. The two men were mutually attracted, and a warm affection sprang
up between them. In 1758 Kleist's regiment being ordered to new
quarters, Lessing decided not to remain behind him and returned again to
Berlin. Kleist was mortally wounded in the following year at the battle
of Kunersdorf.
Lessing's third residence in Berlin was made memorable by the _Briefe,
die neueste Literatur betreffend_ (1759-1765), a series of critical
essays--written in the form of letters to a wounded officer--on the
principal books that had appeared since the beginning of the Seven
Years' War. The scheme was suggested by Nicolai, by whom the _Letters_
were published. In Lessing's share in this publication, his critical
powers and methods are to be seen at their best. He insisted especially
on the necessity of truth to nature in the imaginative presentation of
the facts of life, and in one letter he boldly proclaimed the
superiority of Shakespeare to Corneille, Racine and Voltaire. At the
same time he marked the immutable conditions to which even genius must
submit if it is to succeed in its appeal to our sympathies. While in
Berlin at this time, he edited with Ramler a selection from the writings
of F. von Logau, an epigrammatist of the 17th century, and introduced to
the German public the _Lieder eines preussischen Grenadiers_, by J. W.
L. Gleim. In 1759 he published _Philotas_, a prose tragedy in one act,
and also a complete collection of his fables, preceded by an essay on
the nature of the fable. The latter is one of his best essays on
criticism, defining with perfect lucidity what is meant by "action" in
works of the imagination, and distinguishing the action of the fable
from that of the epic and the drama.
In 1760, feeling the need of some change of scene and work, Lessing went
to Breslau, where he obtained the post of secretary to General
Tauentzien, to whom Kleist had introduced him in Leipzig. Tauentzien was
not only a general in the Prussian army, but governor of Breslau, and
director of the mint. During the four years which Lessing spent in
Breslau, he associated chiefly with Prussian officers, went much into
society, and developed a dangerous fondness for the gaming table. He did
not, however, lose sight of his true goal; he collected a large library,
and, after the conclusion of the Seven Years' War, in 1763, he resumed
more enthusiastically than ever the studies which had been partially
interrupted. He investigated the early history of Christianity and
penetrated more deeply than any contemporary thinker into the
significance of Spinoza's philosophy. He also found time for the studies
which were ultimately to appear in the volume entitled _Laokoon_, and in
fresh spring mornings he sketched in a garden the plan of _Minna von
Barnhelm_.
After resigning his Breslau appointment in 1765, he hoped for a time to
obtain a congenial appointment in Dresden, but nothing came of this and
he was again compelled, much against his will, to return to Berlin. His
friends there exerted themselves to obtain for him the office of keeper
of the royal library, but Frederick had not forgotten Lessing's quarrel
with Voltaire, and declined to consider his claims. During the two years
which Lessing now spent in the Prussian capital, he was restless and
unhappy, yet it was during this period that he published two of his
greatest works, _Laokoon, oder über die Grenzen der Malerei und Poesie_
(1766) and _Minna von Barnhelm_ (1767). The aim of Laokoon, which ranks
as a classic, not only in German but in European literature, is to
define by analysis the limitations of poetry and the plastic arts. Many
of his conclusions have been corrected and extended by later criticism;
but he indicated more decisively than any of his predecessors the
fruitful principle that each art is subject to definite conditions, and
that it can accomplish great results only by limiting itself to its
special function. The most valuable parts of the work are those which
relate to poetry, of which he had a much more intimate knowledge than of
sculpture and painting. His exposition of the methods of Homer and
Sophocles is especially suggestive, and he may be said to have marked an
epoch in the appreciation of these writers, and of Greek literature
generally. The power of _Minna von Barnhelm_, Lessing's greatest drama,
was also immediately recognized. Tellheim, the hero of the comedy, is an
admirable study of a manly and sensitive soldier, with somewhat
exaggerated ideas of conventional honour; and Minna, the heroine, is one
of the brightest and most attractive figures in German comedy. The
subordinate characters are conceived with even more force and vividness;
and the plot, which reflects precisely the struggles and aspirations of
the period that immediately followed the Seven Years' War, is simply and
naturally unfolded.
In 1767 Lessing settled in Hamburg, where he had been invited to take
part in the establishment of a national theatre. The scheme promised
well, and, as he associated himself with Johann Joachim Christoph Bode
(1730-1793), a literary man whom he respected, in starting a printing
establishment, he hoped that he might at last look forward to a peaceful
and prosperous career. The theatre, however, was soon closed, and the
printing establishment failed, leaving behind it a heavy burden of debt.
In despair, Lessing determined towards the end of his residence in
Hamburg to quit Germany, believing that in Italy he might find congenial
labour that would suffice for his wants. The _Hamburgische Dramaturgie_
(1767-1768), Lessing's commentary on the performances of the National
Theatre, is the first modern handbook of the dramatist's art. By his
original interpretation of Aristotle's theory of tragedy, he delivered
German dramatists from the yoke of the classic tragedy of France, and
directed them to the Greek dramatists and to Shakespeare. Another result
of Lessing's labours in Hamburg was the _Antiquarische Briefe_ (1768), a
series of masterly letters in answer to Christian Adolf Klotz
(1738-1771), a professor of the university of Halle, who, after
flattering Lessing, had attacked him, and sought to establish a kind of
intellectual despotism by means of critical journals which he directly
or indirectly controlled. In connexion with this controversy Lessing
wrote his brilliant little treatise, _Wie die Alten den Tod gebildet_
(1769), contrasting the medieval representation of death as a skeleton
with the Greek conception of death as the twin-brother of sleep.
Instead of settling in Italy, as he intended, Lessing accepted in 1770
the office of librarian at Wolfenbüttel, a post which was offered to him
by the hereditary prince of Brunswick. In this position he passed his
remaining years. For a time he was not unhappy, but the debts which he
had contracted in Hamburg weighed heavily on him, and he missed the
society of his friends; his health, too, which had hitherto been
excellent, gradually gave way. In 1775 he travelled for nine months in
Italy with Prince Leopold of Brunswick, and in the following year he
married Eva König, the widow of a Hamburg merchant, with whom he had
been on terms of intimate friendship. But their happiness lasted only
for a brief period; in 1778 she died in childbed.
Soon after settling in Wolfenbüttel, Lessing found in the library the
manuscript of a treatise by Berengarius of Tours on transubstantiation
in reply to Lanfranc. This was the occasion of Lessing's powerful essay
on Berengarius, in which he vindicated the latter's character as a
serious and consistent thinker. In 1771 he published his _Zerstreute
Anmerkungen über das Epigramm, und einige der vornehmsten
Epigrammatisten_--a work which Herder described as "itself an epigram."
Lessing's theory of the origin of the epigram is somewhat fanciful, but
no other critic has offered so many pregnant hints as to the laws of
epigrammatic verse, or defended with so much force and ingenuity the
character of Martial. In 1772 he published _Emilia Galotti_, a tragedy
which he had begun many years before in Leipzig. The subject was
suggested by the Roman legend of Virginia, but the scene is laid in an
Italian court, and the whole play is conceived in the spirit of the
"tragedy of common life." Its defect is that its tragic conclusion does
not seem absolutely inevitable, but the characters--especially those of
the Gräfin Orsina and Marinelli, the prince of Guastalla's chamberlain
who weaves the intrigue from which Emilia escapes by death, are
powerfully drawn. Having completed _Emilia Galotti_, which the younger
generation of playwrights at once accepted as a model, Lessing occupied
himself for some years almost exclusively with the treasures of the
Wolfenbüttel library. The results of these researches he embodied in a
series of volumes, _Zur Geschichte und Literatur_, the first being
issued in 1773, the last in the year of his death.
The last period of Lessing's life was devoted chiefly to theological
controversy. H. S. Reimarus (1694-1768), professor of oriental
languages in Hamburg, who commanded general respect as a scholar and
thinker, wrote a book entitled _Apologie oder Schutzschrift für die
vernünftigen Verehrer Gottes_. His standpoint was that of the English
deists, and he investigated, without hesitation, the evidence for the
miracles recorded in the Bible. The manuscript of this work was, after
the author's death, entrusted by his daughter to Lessing, who published
extracts from it in his _Zur Geschichte und Literatur_ in 1774-1778.
These extracts, the authorship of which was not publicly avowed, were
known as the _Wolfenbütteler Fragmente_. They created profound
excitement among orthodox theologians, and evoked many replies, in which
Lessing was bitterly condemned for having published writings of so
dangerous a tendency. His most formidable assailant was Johann Melchior
Goeze (1717-1786), the chief pastor of Hamburg, a sincere and earnest
theologian, but utterly unscrupulous in his choice of weapons against an
opponent. To him, therefore, Lessing addressed in 1778 his most
elaborate answers--_Eine Parabel_, _Axiomata_, eleven letters with the
title _Anti-Goeze_, and two pamphlets in reply to an inquiry by Goeze as
to what Lessing meant by Christianity. These papers are not only full of
thought and learning; they are written with a grace, vivacity and energy
that make them hardly less interesting to-day than they were to
Lessing's contemporaries. He does not undertake to defend the
conclusions of Reimarus; his immediate object is to claim the right of
free criticism in regard even to the highest subjects of human thought.
The argument on which he chiefly relies is that the Bible cannot be
considered necessary to a belief in Christianity, since Christianity was
a living and conquering power before the New Testament in its present
form was recognized by the church. The true evidence for what is
essential in Christianity, he contends, is its adaptation to the wants
of human nature; hence the religious spirit is undisturbed by the
speculations of the boldest thinkers. The effect of this controversy was
to secure wider freedom for writers on theology, and to suggest new
problems regarding the growth of Christianity, the formation of the
canon and the essence of religion. The Brunswick government having, in
deference to the consistory, confiscated the _Fragments_ and ordered
Lessing to discontinue the controversy, he resolved, as he wrote to
Elise Reimarus, to try "whether they would let him preach undisturbed
from his old pulpit, the stage." In _Nathan der Weise_, written in the
winter of 1778-1779, he gave poetic form to the ideas which he had
already developed in prose. Its governing conception is that noble
character may be associated with the most diverse creeds, and that there
can, therefore, be no good reason why the holders of one sect of
religious principles should not tolerate those who maintain wholly
different doctrines. The play, which is written in blank verse, is too
obviously a continuation of Lessing's theological controversy to rank
high as poetry, but the representatives of the three religions--the
Mahommedan Saladin, the Jew Nathan and the Christian Knight Templar--are
finely conceived, and show that Lessing's dramatic instinct had, in
spite of other interests, not deserted him. In 1780 appeared _Die
Erziehung des Menschengeschlechts_, the first half of which he had
published in 1777 with one of the _Fragments_. This work, composed a
hundred brief paragraphs, was the last, and is one of the most
suggestive of Lessing's writings. The doctrine on which its argument is
based is that no dogmatic creed can be regarded as final, but that every
historical religion had its share in the development of the spiritual
life of mankind. Lessing also maintains that history reveals a definite
law of progress, and that occasional retrogression may be necessary for
the advance of the world towards its ultimate goal. These ideas formed a
striking contrast to the principles both of orthodox and of sceptical
writers in Lessing's day, and gave a wholly new direction to religious
philosophy. Another work of Lessing's last years, _Ernst und Falk_ (a
series of five dialogues, of which the first three were published in
1777, the last two in 1780), also set forth many new points of view. Its
nominal subject is freemasonry, but its real aim is to plead for a
humane and charitable spirit in opposition to a narrow patriotism, an
extravagant respect for rank, and exclusive devotion to any particular
church.
Lessing's theological opinions exposed him to much petty persecution,
and he was in almost constant straits for money. Nothing, however, broke
his manly and generous spirit. To the end he was always ready to help
those who appealed to him for aid, and he devoted himself with growing
ardour to the search for truth. He formed many new plans of work, but in
the course of 1780 it became evident to his friends that he would not be
able much longer to continue his labours. His health had been undermined
by excessive work and anxiety, and after a short illness he died at
Brunswick on the 15th of February 1781. "We lose much in him," wrote
Goethe after Lessing's death, "more than we think." It may be questioned
whether there is any other writer to whom the Germans owe a deeper debt
of gratitude. He was succeeded by poets and philosophers who gave
Germany for a time the first place in the intellectual life of the
world, and it was Lessing, as they themselves acknowledged, who prepared
the way for their achievements. Without attaching himself to any
particular system of philosophical doctrine, he fought error
incessantly, and in regard to art, poetry and the drama and religion,
suggested ideas which kindled the enthusiasm of aspiring minds, and
stimulated their highest energies.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.--The first edition of Lessing's collected works, edited
by his brother Karl Gotthelf Lessing (1740-1812), J. J. Eschenburg and
F. Nicolai, appeared in 26 vols. between 1791 and 1794, as a
continuation of the _Vermischte Schriften_, edited by Lessing himself
in 4 vols. (1771-1785); the _Sämtliche Schriften_, edited by Karl
Lachmann, were published in 13 vols. (1825-1828), this edition being
subsequently re-edited by W. von Maltzahn (1853-1857) and by F.
Muncker (21 vols., 1886 ff.), the last mentioned being the standard
edition of Lessing's works. Other editions are _Lessings Werke_,
published by Hempel, under the editorship of various scholars (23
vols., 1868-1877); an illustrated edition published by Grote in 8
vols. (1875, new ed., 1882); _Lessings Werke_, edited by R. Boxberger
and H. Blümner, in Kürschner's _Deutsche Nationalliteratur_, vols.
58-71 (1883-1890). There are also many popular editions. Lessing's
correspondence is included in the Lachmann editions and in that of
Hempel (edited by C. C. Redlich, 1879; _Nachträge und Berichtigungen_,
1886); his correspondence with his wife was published as early as 1789
(2 vols., new edition by A. Schöne, 1885). The chief biographies of
Lessing are by K. G. Lessing (his brother), (1793-1795, a reprint in
Reclam's _Universalbibliothek_); by J. F. Schink (1825); T. W. Danzel
and G. E. Guhrauer (1850-1853, 2nd ed. by W. von Maltzahn and R.
Boxberger, 2 vols., 1880-1881); A. Stahr (2 vols., 1859, 9th ed.,
1887); J. Sime, _Lessing, his Life and Works_ (2 vols., 1877); H.
Zimmern, _Lessing's Life and Works_ (1878); H. Düntzer, _Lessings
Leben_ (1882); E. Schmidt, _Lessing, Geschichte seines Lebens und
seiner Schriften_ (2 vols., 1884-1892, 3rd ed., 1910)--this is the
most complete biography; T. W. Rolleston, _Lessing_ (in "Great
Writers," 1889); K. Borinski, _Lessing_ (2 vols., 1900). Cf. also C.
Hebler, _Lessing-Studien_ (1862); A. Lehmann, _Forschungen über
Lessings Sprache_ (1875); W. Cosack, _Materialien zu Lessings
Hamburgischer Dramaturgie_ (1876, 2nd ed., 1891); H. Blümner,
_Lessings Laokoon_ (1876, 2nd ed., 1880); H. Blümner,
_Laokoon-Studien_ (2 vols., 1881-1882); K. Fischer, _Lessing als
Reformator der deutschen Literatur dargestellt_ (2 vols., 1881, 2nd
ed., 1888); B. A. Wagner, _Lessing-Forschungen_ (1881); J. W. Braun,
_Lessing im Urteile seiner Zeitgenossen_ (2 vols., 1884); P. Albrecht,
_Lessings Plagiate_ (6 vols., 1890 ff.); K. Werder, _Vorlesungen über
Lessings Nathan_ (1892); G. Kettner, _Lessings Dramen im Lichte ihrer
und unsrer Zeit_ (1904). Translations of Lessing's _Dramatic Works_ (2
vols., 1878), edited by E. Bell, and of _Laokoon, Dramatic Notes and
the Representation of Death by the Ancients_, by E. C. Beasley and H.
Zimmern (1 vol., 1879), will be found in Bohn's "Standard Library."
(J. Si.; J. G. R.)
LESSON (through Fr. _leçon_ from Lat. _lectio_, reading; _legere_, to
read), properly a certain portion of a book appointed to be read aloud,
or learnt for repetition, hence anything learnt or studied, a course of
instruction or study. A specific meaning of the word is that of a
portion of Scripture or other religious writings appointed to be read at
divine service, in accordance with a table known as a "lectionary." In
the Church of England the lectionary is so ordered that most of the Old
Testament is read through during the year as the First Lesson at Morning
and Evening Prayer, and as the Second Lesson the whole of the New
Testament, except Revelation, of which only portions are read. (See
LECTION and LECTIONARY.)
LESTE, a desert wind, similar to the Leveche (q.v.), observed in
Madeira. It blows from an easterly direction in autumn, winter and
spring, rarely in summer, and is of intense dryness, sometimes reducing
the relative humidity at Funchal to below 20%. The Leste is commonly
accompanied by clouds of fine red sand.
L'ESTRANGE, SIR ROGER (1616-1704), English pamphleteer on the royalist
and court side during the Restoration epoch, but principally remarkable
as the first English man of letters of any distinction who made
journalism a profession, was born at Hunstanton in Norfolk on the 17th
of December 1616. In 1644, during the civil war, he headed a conspiracy
to seize the town of Lynn for the king, under circumstances which led to
his being condemned to death as a spy. The sentence, however, was not
executed, and after four years' imprisonment in Newgate he escaped to
the Continent. He was excluded from the Act of Indemnity, but in 1653
was pardoned by Cromwell upon his personal solicitation, and lived
quietly until the Restoration, when after some delay his services and
sufferings were acknowledged by his appointment as licenser of the
press. This office was administered by him in the spirit which might be
expected from a zealous cavalier. He made himself notorious, not merely
by the severity of his literary censorship, but by his vigilance in the
suppression of clandestine printing. In 1663 (see NEWSPAPERS) he
commenced the publication of the _Public Intelligencer_ and the _News_,
from which eventually developed the famous official paper the _London
Gazette_ in 1665. In 1679 he again became prominent with the
_Observator_, a journal specially designed to vindicate the court from
the charge of a secret inclination to popery. He discredited the Popish
Plot, and the suspicion he thus incurred was increased by the conversion
of his daughter to Roman Catholicism, but there seems no reason to
question the sincerity of his own attachment to the Church of England.
In 1687 he gave a further proof of independence by discontinuing the
_Observator_ from his unwillingness to advocate James II.'s Edict of
Toleration, although he had previously gone all lengths in support of
the measures of the court. The Revolution cost him his office as
licenser, and the remainder of his life was spent in obscurity. He died
in 1704. It is to L'Estrange's credit that among the agitations of a
busy political life he should have found time for much purely literary
work as a translator of Josephus, Cicero, Seneca, Quevedo and other
standard authors.
LESUEUR, DANIEL, the pseudonym of JEANNE LAPANZE, _née_ Loiseau (1860-
), French poet and novelist, who was born in Paris in 1860. She
published a volume of poems, _Fleurs d'avril_ (1882), which was crowned
by the Academy. She also wrote some powerful novels dealing with
contemporary life: _Le Mariage de Gabrielle_ (1882); _Un Mystérieux
Amour_ (1892), with a series of philosophical sonnets; _L'Amant de
Geneviève_ (1883); _Marcelle_ (1885); _Une Vie tragique_ (1890);
_Justice de femme_ (1893); _Comédienne Haine d'amour_ (1894); _Honneur
d'une femme_ (1901); _La Force du passé_ (1905). Her poems were
collected in 1895. She published in 1905 a book on the economic status
of women, _L'Évolution féminine_; and in 1891-1893 a translation (2
vols.) of the works of Lord Byron, which was awarded a prize by the
Academy. Her _Masque d'amour_, a five-act play based on her novel (1904)
of the same name, was produced at the Théâtre Sarah Bernhardt in 1905.
She received the ribbon of the Legion of Honour in 1900, and the prix
Vitet from the French Academy in 1905. She married in 1904 Henry Lapanze
(b. 1867), a well-known writer on art.
LE SUEUR, EUSTACHE (1617-1655), one of the founders of the French
Academy of painting, was born on the 19th of November 1617 at Paris,
where he passed his whole life, and where he died on the 30th of April
1655. His early death and retired habits have combined to give an air of
romance to his simple history, which has been decorated with as many
fables as that of Claude. We are told that, persecuted by Le Brun, who
was jealous of his ability, he became the intimate friend and
correspondent of Poussin, and it is added that, broken-hearted at the
death of his wife, Le Sueur retired to the monastery of the Chartreux
and died in the arms of the prior. All this, however, is pure fiction.
The facts of Le Sueur's life are these. He was the son of Cathelin Le
Sueur, a turner and sculptor in wood, who placed his son with Vouet, in
whose studio he rapidly distinguished himself. Admitted at an early age
into the guild of master-painters, he left them to take part in
establishing the academy of painting and sculpture, and was one of the
first twelve professors of that body. Some paintings, illustrative of
the Hypnerotomachia Polyphili, which were reproduced in tapestry,
brought him into notice, and his reputation was further enhanced by a
series of decorations (Louvre) in the mansion of Lambert de Thorigny,
which he left uncompleted, for their execution was frequently
interrupted by other commissions. Amongst these were several pictures
for the apartments of the king and queen in the Louvre, which are now
missing, although they were entered in Bailly's inventory (1710); but
several works produced for minor patrons have come down to us. In the
gallery of the Louvre are the "Angel and Hagar," from the mansion of De
Tonnay Charente; "Tobias and Tobit," from the Fieubet collection;
several pictures executed for the church of Saint Gervais; the
"Martyrdom of St Lawrence," from Saint Germain de l'Auxerrois; two very
fine works from the destroyed abbey of Marmoutiers; "St Paul preaching
at Ephesus," one of Le Sueur's most complete and thorough performances,
painted for the goldsmith's corporation in 1649; and his famous series
of the "Life of St Bruno," executed in the cloister of the Chartreux.
These last have more personal character than anything else which Le
Sueur produced, and much of their original beauty survives in spite of
injuries and restorations and removal from the wall to canvas. The
Louvre also possesses many fine drawings (reproduced by Braun), of which
Le Sueur left an incredible quantity, chiefly executed in black and
white chalk His pupils, who aided him much in his work, were his wife's
brother, Th. Goussé, and three brothers of his own, as well as Claude
Lefebvre and Patel the landscape painter.
Most of his works have been engraved, chiefly by Picart, B. Audran,
Seb. Leclerc, Drevet, Chauveau, Poilly and Desplaces. Le Sueur's work
lent itself readily to the engraver's art, for he was a charming
draughtsman; he had a truly delicate perception of varied shades of
grave and elevated sentiment, and possessed the power to render them.
His graceful facility in composition was always restrained by a very
fine taste, but his works often fail to please completely, because,
producing so much, he had too frequent recourse to conventional types,
and partly because he rarely saw colour except with the cold and
clayey quality proper to the school of Vouet; yet his "St Paul at
Ephesus" and one or two other works show that he was not naturally
deficient in this sense, and whenever we get direct reference to
nature--as in the monks of the St Bruno series--we recognize his
admirable power to read and render physiognomy of varied and serious
type.
See Guillet de St Georges, _Mém. inéd._; C. Blanc, _Histoire des
peintres_; Vitet, _Catalogue des tableaux du Louvre_; d'Argenville,
_Vies des peintres._
LESUEUR, JEAN FRANÇOIS (1760 or 1763-1837), French musical composer, was
born on the 15th of January 1760 (or 1763) at Drucat-Plessiel, near
Abbeville. He was a choir boy in the cathedral of Amiens, and then
became musical director at various churches. In 1786 he obtained by open
competition the musical directorship of the cathedral of Notre-Dame in
Paris, where he gave successful performances of sacred music with a full
orchestra. This place he resigned in 1787; and, after a retirement of
five years in a friend's country house, he produced _La Caverne_ and two
other operas at the Théâtre Feydeau in Paris. At the foundation of the
Paris Conservatoire (1795) Lesueur was appointed one of its inspectors
of studies, but was dismissed in 1802, owing to his disagreements with
Méhul. Lesueur succeeded G. Paisiello as _Maestro di cappella_ to
Napoleon, and produced (1804) his _Ossian_ at the Opéra. He also
composed for the emperor's coronation a mass and a Te Deum. Louis
XVIII., who had retained Lesueur in his court, appointed him (1818)
professor of composition at the Conservatoire; and at this institution
he had, among many other pupils, Hector Berlioz, Ambroise Thomas, Louis
Désiré, Besozzi and Charles Gounod. He died on the 6th of October 1837.
Lesueur composed eight operas and several masses, and other sacred
music. All his works are written in a style of rigorous simplicity.
See Raoul Rochette, _Les Ouvrages de M. Lesueur_ (Paris, 1839).
LE TELLIER, MICHEL (1603-1685), French statesman, was born in Paris on
the 19th of April 1603. Having entered the public service he became
maître des requêtes and in 1640 intendant of Piedmont; in 1643, owing to
his friendship with Mazarin, he became secretary of state for military
affairs, being an efficient administrator. In 1677 he was made
chancellor of France and he was one of those who influenced Louis XIV.
to revoke the Edict of Nantes. He died on the 30th of October 1685, a
few days after the revocation had been signed. Le Tellier, who amassed
great wealth, left two sons, one the famous statesman Louvois and
another who became archbishop of Reims. His correspondence is in the
Bibliothèque nationale in Paris.
See L. Caron, _Michel Le Tellier, intendant d'armée au Piémont_
(Paris, 1881).
Another MICHEL LE TELLIER (1643-1719) Was confessor of the French king
Louis XIV. Born at Vire on the 16th of December 1643 he entered the
Society of Jesus and later became prominent in consequence of his
violent attacks on the Jansenists. He was appointed provincial of his
order in France, but it was not until 1709 that he became the king's
confessor. In this capacity all his influence was directed towards
urging Louis to further persecutions of the Protestants. He was exiled
by the regent Orleans, but he had returned to France when he died at La
Flèche on the 2nd of September 1719.
LETHAL (Lat. _lethalis_, for _letalis_, deadly, from _letum_, death; the
spelling is due to a confusion with Gr. [Greek: lêthê], forgetfulness),
an adjective meaning "deadly," "fatal," especially as applied to
weapons, drugs, &c. A "lethal chamber" is a room or receptacle in which
animals may be put to death painlessly, by the admission of poisonous
gases.
LETHARGY (Gr. [Greek: lêthargia], from [Greek: lêthê], forgetfulness),
drowsiness, torpor. In pathology the term is used of a morbid condition
of deep and lasting sleep from which the sufferer can be with difficulty
and only temporarily aroused. The term Negro or African lethargy was
formerly applied to the disease now generally known as "sleeping
sickness" (q.v.).
LETHE ("Oblivion"), in Greek mythology, the daughter of Eris (Hesiod,
_Theog._ 227) and the personification of forgetfulness. It is also the
name of a river in the infernal regions. Those initiated in the
mysteries were taught to distinguish two streams in the lower world, one
of memory and one of oblivion. Directions for this purpose, written on a
gold plate, have been found in a tomb at Petilia, and near Lebadeia, at
the oracle of Trophonius, which was counted an entrance to the lower
world, the two springs Mnemosyne and Lethe were shown (Pausanias ix. 39.
8). This thought begins to appear in literature in the end of the 5th
century B.C., when Aristophanes (_Frogs_, 186) speaks of the plain of
Lethe. Plato (_Rep._ x.) embodies the idea in one of his finest myths.
LE TRÉPORT, a maritime town of northern France in the department of
Seine-Inférieure, on the English Channel, at the mouth of the Bresle,
114 m. N.N.W. of Paris on the Northern railway. Pop. (1906) 4619. Owing
to its nearness to the capital, Le Tréport is a favourite watering-place
of the Parisians. A good view is obtained from Mont Huon, which rises to
the south-west of the town. The mouth of the Bresle forms a small port,
comprising an outer tidal harbour and an inner dock accessible to
vessels drawing from 13 to 16 ft. The fisheries and oyster parks with
their dependent industries, shipbuilding and glass manufacture, furnish
the chief occupations of the inhabitants. Coal, timber, ice and jute are
imported; _articles de Paris_, sugar, &c., are exported. The chief
buildings are the church of St Jacques (16th century), which has finely
carved vaulting and good modern stained glass, and the casino erected
1896-1897. About 1 m. north-east of Le Tréport is the small bathing
resort of Mers. The Eu-Tréport canal, uniting the two towns, has a
length of about 3 m., and is navigable by vessels drawing 14 ft. Le
Tréport (the ancient _Ulterior Portus_) was a port of some note in the
middle ages and suffered from the English invasions. Louis Philippe
twice received Queen Victoria here.
LETRONNE, JEAN ANTOINE (1787-1848), French archaeologist, was born at
Paris on the 25th of January 1787. His father, a poor engraver, sent him
to study art under the painter David, but his own tastes were literary,
and he became a student in the Collège de France, where it is said he
used to exercise his already strongly developed critical faculty by
correcting for his own amusement old and bad texts of Greek authors,
afterwards comparing the results with the latest and most approved
editions. From 1810 to 1812 he travelled in France, Switzerland and
Italy, and on his return to Paris published an _Essai critique sur la
topographie de Syracuse_ (1812), designed to elucidate Thucydides. Two
years later appeared his _Recherches géographiques et critiques on the
De Mensura Orbis Terrae_ of Dicuil. In 1815 he was commissioned by
government to complete the translation of Strabo which had been begun by
Laporte-Dutheil, and in March 1816 he was one of those who were admitted
to the Academy of Inscriptions by royal ordinance, having previously
contributed a _Mémoire_, "On the Metrical System of the Egyptians,"
which had been crowned. Further promotion came rapidly; in 1817 he was
appointed director of the École des Chartes, in 1819 inspector-general
of the university, and in 1831 professor of history in the Collège de
France. This chair he exchanged in 1838 for that of archaeology, and in
1840 he succeeded Pierre C. François Daunou (1761-1840) as keeper of the
national archives. Meanwhile he had published, among other works,
_Considérations générales sur l'évaluation des monnaies grecques et
romaines et sur la valeur de l'or et de l'argent avant la découverte de
l'Amérique_ (1817), _Recherches pour servir à l'histoire d'Égypte
pendant la domination des Grecs et des Romains_ (1823), and _Sur
l'origine grecque des zodiaques prétendus égyptiens_ (1837). By the
last-named he finally exploded a fallacy which had up to that time
vitiated the chronology of contemporary Egyptologists. His _Diplômes et
Chartres de l'époque Mérovingienne sur papyrus et sur vélin_ were
published in 1844. The most important work of Letronne is the _Recueil
des inscriptions grecques et latines de l'Égypte_, of which the first
volume appeared in 1842, and the second in 1848. He died at Paris on the
14th of December 1848.
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 16, Slice 4 - "Lefebvre, Tanneguy" to "Letronne, Jean Antoine"" ***
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