FOOTNOTE:

[1] Apollinaire Antoine Maurice, comte d'Argout (1782-1858),

afterwards reconciled to the July monarchy, and a member of the

Laffitte Casimir-Périer and Thiers cabinets.

LAFFITTE, PIERRE (1823-1903), French Positivist, was born on the 21st of

February 1823 at Béguey (Gironde). Residing at Paris as a teacher of

mathematics, he became a disciple of Comte, who appointed him his

literary executor. On the schism of the Positivist body which followed

Comte's death, he was recognized as head of the section which accepted

the full Comtian doctrine; the other section adhering to Littré, who

rejected the religion of humanity as inconsistent with the materialism

of Comte's earlier period. From 1853 Laffitte delivered Positivist

lectures in the room formerly occupied by Comte in the rue Monsieur le

Prince. He published _Les Grands Types de l'humanité_ (1875) and _Cours

de philosophie première_ (1889). In 1893 he was appointed to the new

chair founded at the Collège de France for the exposition of the general

history of science, and it was largely due to his inspiration that a

statue to Comte was erected in the Place de la Sorbonne in 1902. He died

on the 4th of January 1903.

LA FLÈCHE, a town of western France, capital of an arrondissement in the

department of Sarthe on the Loire, 31 m. S.S.W. of Le Mans by rail. Pop.

(1906) town 7800; commune 10,663. The chief interest of the town lies in

the Prytanée, a famous school for the sons of officers, originally a

college founded for the Jesuits in 1607 by Henry IV. The buildings,

including a fine chapel, were erected from 1620 to 1653 and are

surrounded by a park. A bronze statue of Henry IV. stands in the

marketplace. La Flèche is the seat of a sub-prefect and of a tribunal of

first instance, and carries on tanning, flour-milling, and the

manufacture of paper, starch, wooden shoes and gloves. It is an

agricultural market.

The lords of La Flèche became counts of Maine about 1100, but the

lordship became separate from the county and passed in the 16th century

to the family of Bourbon and thus to Henry IV.

LAFONT, PIERRE CHÉRI (1797-1873), French actor, was born at Bordeaux on

the 15th of May 1797. Abandoning his profession as assistant ship's

doctor in the navy, he went to Paris to study singing and acting. He had

some experience at a small theatre, and was preparing to appear at the

Opéra Comique when the director of the Vaudeville offered him an

engagement. Here he made his _début_ in 1821 in _La Somnambule_, and his

good looks and excellent voice soon brought him into public favour.

After several years at the Nouveautés and the Vaudeville, on the burning

of the latter in 1838 he went to England, and married, at Gretna Green,

Jenny Colon, from whom he was soon divorced. On his return to Paris he

joined the Variétés, where he acted for fifteen years in such plays as

_Le Chevalier de Saint Georges_, _Le Lion empaillé_, _Une dernière

conquête_, &c. Another engagement at the Vaudeville followed, and one at

the Gaiété, and he ended his brilliant career at the Gymnase in the part

of the noble father in such plays as Les _Vieux Garçons_ and _Nos bons

villageois_. He died in Paris on the 19th of April 1873.

LA FONTAINE, JEAN DE (1621-1695), French poet, was born at Château

Thierry in Champagne, probably on the 8th of July 1621. His father was

Charles de La Fontaine, "maître des eaux et forêts"--a kind of

deputy-ranger--of the duchy of Château Thierry; his mother was Françoise

Pidoux. On both sides his family was of the highest provincial middle

class, but was not noble; his father was also fairly wealthy. Jean, the

eldest child, was educated at the _collège_ (grammar-school) of Reims,

and at the end of his school days he entered the Oratory in May 1641,

and the seminary of Saint-Magloire in October of the same year; but a

very short sojourn proved to him that he had mistaken his vocation. He

then apparently studied law, and is said to have been admitted as

_avocat_, though there does not seem to be actual proof of this. He was,

however, settled in life, or at least might have been so, somewhat

early. In 1647 his father resigned his rangership in his favour, and

arranged a marriage for him with Marie Héricart, a girl of sixteen, who

brought him twenty thousand livres, and expectations. She seems to have

been both handsome and intelligent, but the two did not get on well

together. There appears to be absolutely no ground for the vague scandal

as to her conduct, which was, for the most part long afterwards, raised

by gossips or personal enemies of La Fontaine. All that is positively

said against her is that she was a negligent housewife and an inveterate

novel reader; La Fontaine himself was constantly away from home, was

certainly not strict in point of conjugal fidelity, and was so bad a man

of business that his affairs became involved in hopeless difficulty, and

a _séparation de biens_ had to take place in 1658. This was a perfectly

amicable transaction for the benefit of the family; by degrees, however,

the pair, still without any actual quarrel, ceased to live together, and

for the greater part of the last forty years of La Fontaine's life he

lived in Paris while his wife dwelt at Château Thierry, which, however,

he frequently visited. One son was born to them in 1653, and was

educated and taken care of wholly by his mother.

Even in the earlier years of his marriage La Fontaine seems to have been

much at Paris, but it was not till about 1656 that he became a regular

visitor to the capital. The duties of his office, which were only

occasional, were compatible with this non-residence. It was not till he

was past thirty that his literary career began. The reading of Malherbe,

it is said, first awoke poetical fancies in him, but for some time he

attempted nothing but trifles in the fashion of the time--epigrams,

ballades, rondeaux, &c. His first serious work was a translation or

adaptation of the _Eunuchus of Terence_ (1654). At this time the

Maecenas of French letters was the Superintendant Fouquet, to whom La

Fontaine was introduced by Jacques Jannart, a connexion of his wife's.

Few people who paid their court to Fouquet went away empty-handed, and

La Fontaine soon received a pension of 1000 livres (1659), on the easy

terms of a copy of verses for each quarter's receipt. He began too a

medley of prose and poetry, entitled _Le Songe de Vaux_, on Fouquet's

famous country house. It was about this time that his wife's property

had to be separately secured to her, and he seems by degrees to have had

to sell everything of his own; but, as he never lacked powerful and

generous patrons, this was of small importance to him. In the same year

he wrote a ballad, _Les Rieurs du Beau-Richard_, and this was followed

by many small pieces of occasional poetry addressed to various

personages from the king downwards. Fouquet soon incurred the royal

displeasure, but La Fontaine, like most of his literary protégés, was

not unfaithful to him, the well-known elegy _Pleurez, nymphes de Vaux_,

being by no means the only proof of his devotion. Indeed it is thought

not improbable that a journey to Limoges in 1663 in company with

Jannart, and of which we have an account written to his wife, was not

wholly spontaneous, as it certainly was not on Jannart's part. Just at

this time his affairs did not look promising. His father and himself had

assumed the title of esquire, to which they were not strictly entitled,

and, some old edicts on the subject having been put in force, an

informer procured a sentence against the poet fining him 2000 livres. He

found, however, a new protector in the duke and still more in the

duchess of Bouillon, his feudal superiors at Château Thierry, and

nothing more is heard of the fine. Some of La Fontaine's liveliest

verses are addressed to the duchess, Anne Mancini, the youngest of

Mazarin's nieces, and it is even probable that the taste of the duke and

duchess for Ariosto had something to do with the writing of his first

work of real importance, the first book of the _Contes_, which appeared

in 1664. He was then forty-three years old, and his previous printed

productions had been comparatively trivial, though much of his work was

handed about in manuscript long before it was regularly published. It

was about this time that the quartette of the Rue du Vieux Colombier, so

famous in French literary history, was formed. It consisted of La

Fontaine, Racine, Boileau and Molière, the last of whom was almost of

the same age as La Fontaine, the other two considerably younger.

Chapelle was also a kind of outsider in the coterie. There are many

anecdotes, some pretty obviously apocryphal, about these meetings. The

most characteristic is perhaps that which asserts that a copy of

Chapelain's unlucky _Pucelle_ always lay on the table, a certain number

of lines of which was the appointed punishment for offences against the

company. The coterie furnished under feigned names the personages of La

Fontaine's version of the Cupid and Psyche story, which, however, with

_Adonis_, was not printed till 1669. Meanwhile the poet continued to

find friends. In 1664 he was regularly commissioned and sworn in as

gentleman to the duchess dowager of Orleans, and was installed in the

Luxembourg. He still retained his rangership, and in 1666 we have

something like a reprimand from Colbert suggesting that he should look

into some malpractices at Château Thierry. In the same year appeared the

second book of the _Contes_, and in 1668 the first six books of the

_Fables_, with more of both kinds in 1671. In this latter year a curious

instance of the docility with which the poet lent himself to any

influence was afforded by his officiating, at the instance of the

Port-Royalists, as editor of a volume of sacred poetry dedicated to the

prince de Conti. A year afterwards his situation, which had for some

time been decidedly flourishing, showed signs of changing very much for

the worse. The duchess of Orleans died, and he apparently had to give up

his rangership, probably selling it to pay debts. But there was always a

providence for La Fontaine. Madame de la Sablière, a woman of great

beauty, of considerable intellectual power and of high character,

invited him to make his home in her house, where he lived for some

twenty years. He seems to have had no trouble whatever about his affairs

thenceforward; and could devote himself to his two different lines of

poetry, as well as to that of theatrical composition.

In 1682 he was, at more than sixty years of age, recognized as one of

the first men of letters of France. Madame de Sévigné, one of the

soundest literary critics of the time, and by no means given to praise

mere novelties, had spoken of his second collection of _Fables_

published in the winter of 1678 as divine; and it is pretty certain that

this was the general opinion. It was not unreasonable, therefore, that

he should present himself to the Academy, and, though the subjects of

his _Contes_ were scarcely calculated to propitiate that decorous

assembly, while his attachment to Fouquet and to more than one

representative of the old Frondeur party made him suspect to Colbert and

the king, most of the members were his personal friends. He was first

proposed in 1682, but was rejected for Dangeau. The next year Colbert

died and La Fontaine was again nominated. Boileau was also a candidate,

but the first ballot gave the fabulist sixteen votes against seven only

for the critic. The king, whose assent was necessary, not merely for

election but for a second ballot in case of the failure of an absolute

majority, was ill-pleased, and the election was left pending. Another

vacancy occurred, however, some months later, and to this Boileau was

elected. The king hastened to approve the choice effusively, adding,

"Vous pouvez incessamment recevoir La Fontaine, il a promis d'être

sage." His admission was indirectly the cause of the only serious

literary quarrel of his life. A dispute took place between the Academy

and one of its members, Antoine Furetière, on the subject of the

latter's French dictionary, which was decided to be a breach of the

Academy's corporate privileges. Furetière, a man of no small ability,

bitterly assailed those whom he considered to be his enemies, and among

them La Fontaine, whose unlucky _Contes_ made him peculiarly vulnerable,

his second collection of these tales having been the subject of a police

condemnation. The death of the author of the _Roman Bourgeois_, however,

put an end to this quarrel. Shortly afterwards La Fontaine had a share

in a still more famous affair, the celebrated Ancient-and-Modern

squabble in which Boileau and Perrault were the chiefs, and in which La

Fontaine (though he had been specially singled out by Perrault for

favourable comparison with Aesop and Phaedrus) took the Ancient side.

About the same time (1685-1687) he made the acquaintance of the last of

his many hosts and protectors, Monsieur and Madame d'Hervart, and fell

in love with a certain Madame Ulrich, a lady of some position but of

doubtful character. This acquaintance was accompanied by a great

familiarity with Vendôme, Chaulieu and the rest of the libertine coterie

of the Temple; but, though Madame de la Sablière had long given herself

up almost entirely to good works and religious exercises, La Fontaine

continued an inmate of her house until her death in 1693. What followed

is told in one of the best known of the many stories bearing on his

childlike nature. Hervart on hearing of the death, had set out at once

to find La Fontaine. He met him in the street in great sorrow, and

begged him to make his home at his house. "J'y allais" was La Fontaine's

answer. He had already undergone the process of conversion during a

severe illness the year before. An energetic young priest, M. Poucet,

had brought him, not indeed to understand, but to acknowledge the

impropriety of the _Contes_, and it is said that the destruction of a

new play of some merit was demanded and submitted to as a proof of

repentance. A pleasant story is told of the young duke of Burgundy,

Fénelon's pupil, who was then only eleven years old, sending 50 louis to

La Fontaine as a present of his own motion. But, though La Fontaine

recovered for the time, he was broken by age and infirmity, and his new

hosts had to nurse rather than to entertain him, which they did very

carefully and kindly. He did a little more work, completing his _Fables_

among other things; but he did not survive Madame de la Sablière much

more than two years, dying on the 13th of April 1695, at the age of

seventy-three. He was buried in the cemetery of the Holy Innocents. His

wife survived him nearly fifteen years.

The curious personal character of La Fontaine, like that of some other

men of letters, has been enshrined in a kind of legend by literary

tradition. At an early age his absence of mind and indifference to

business gave a subject to Tallemant des Réaux. His later contemporaries

helped to swell the tale, and the 18th century finally accepted it,

including the anecdotes of his meeting his son, being told who he was,

and remarking, "Ah, yes, I thought I had seen him somewhere!" of his

insisting on fighting a duel with a supposed admirer of his wife, and

then imploring him to visit at his house just as before; of his going

into company with his stockings wrong side out, &c., with, for a

contrast, those of his awkwardness and silence, if not positive

rudeness, in company. It ought to be remembered, as a comment on the

unfavourable description by La Bruyère, that La Fontaine was a special

friend and ally of Benserade, La Bruyère's chief literary enemy. But

after all deductions much will remain, especially when it is remembered

that one of the chief authorities for these anecdotes is Louis Racine, a

man who possessed intelligence and moral worth, and who received them

from his father, La Fontaine's attached friend for more than thirty

years. Perhaps the best worth recording of all these stories is one of

the Vieux Colombier quartette, which tells how Molière, while Racine and

Boileau were exercising their wits upon "le bonhomme" or "le bon" (by

both which titles La Fontaine was familiarly known), remarked to a

bystander, "Nos beaux esprits ont beau faire, ils n'effaceront pas le

bonhomme." They have not.

The works of La Fontaine, the total bulk of which is considerable,

fall no less naturally than traditionally into three divisions, the

_Fables_, the _Contes_ and the miscellaneous works. Of these the first

may be said to be known universally, the second to be known to all

lovers of French literature, the third to be with a few exceptions

practically forgotten. This distribution of the judgment of posterity

is as usual just in the main, but not wholly. There are excellent

things in the _Oeuvres Diverses_, but their excellence is only

occasional, and it is not at the best equal to that of the _Fables_ or

the _Contes_. It was thought by contemporary judges who were both

competent and friendly that La Fontaine attempted too many styles, and

there is something in the criticism. His dramatic efforts are

especially weak. The best pieces usually published under his

name--_Ragotin_, _Le Florentin_, _La Coupe enchantée_, were originally

fathered not by him but by Champmeslé, the husband of the famous

actress who captivated Racine and Charles de Sévigné. His avowed work

was chiefly in the form of opera, a form of no great value at its

best. _Psyche_ has all the advantages of its charming story and of La

Fontaine's style, but it is perhaps principally interesting nowadays

because of the framework of personal conversation already alluded to.

The mingled prose and verse of the _Songe de Vaux_ is not

uninteresting, but its best things, such as the description of night--

"Laissant tomber les fleurs et ne les semant pas,"

which has enchanted French critics, are little more than conceits,

though as in this case sometimes very beautiful conceits. The elegies,

the epistles, the epigrams, the ballades, contain many things which

would be very creditable to a minor poet or a writer of vers de

société, but even if they be taken according to the wise rule of

modern criticism, each in its kind, and judged simply according to

their rank in that kind, they fall far below the merits of the two

great collections of verse narratives which have assured La Fontaine's

immortality.

Between the actual literary merits of the two there is not much to

choose, but the change of manners and the altered standard of literary

decency have thrown the _Contes_ into the shade. These tales are

identical in general character with those which amused Europe from the

days of the early _fabliau_ writers. Light love, the misfortunes of

husbands, the cunning of wives, the breach of their vows by

ecclesiastics, constitute the staple of their subject. In some

respects La Fontaine is the best of such tale-tellers, while he is

certainly the latest who deserves such excuse as may be claimed by a

writer who does not choose indecent subjects from a deliberate

knowledge that they are considered indecent, and with a deliberate

desire to pander to a vicious taste. No one who followed him in the

style can claim this excuse; he can, and the way in which

contemporaries of stainless virtue such as Madame de Sévigné speak of

his work shows that, though the new public opinion was growing up, it

was not finally accepted. In the _Contes_ La Fontaine for the most

part attempts little originality of theme. He takes his stories

(varying them, it is true, in detail not a little) from Boccaccio,

from Marguerite, from the _Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles_, &c. He applies

to them his marvellous power of easy sparkling narration, and his

hardly less marvellous faculty of saying more or less outrageous

things in the most polite and gentlemanly manner. These _Contes_ have

indeed certain drawbacks. They are not penetrated by the half pagan

ardour for physical beauty and the delights of sense which animates

and excuses the early Italian Renaissance. They have not the subtle

mixture of passion and sensuality, of poetry and appetite, which

distinguishes the work of Marguerite and of the Pléiade. They are

emphatically _contes pour rire_, a genuine expression of the _esprit

gaulois_ of the fabliau writers and of Rabelais, destitute of the

grossness of envelope which had formerly covered that spirit. A

comparison of "La Fiancée du roi de Garbe" with its original in

Boccaccio (especially if the reader takes M. Émile Montégut's

admirable essay as a commentary) will illustrate better than anything

else what they have and what they have not. Some writers have pleaded

hard for the admission of actual passion of the poetical sort in such

pieces as "La Courtisane amoureuse," but as a whole it must be

admitted to be absent.

The _Fables_, with hardly less animation and narrative art than the

_Contes_, are free from disadvantages (according to modern notions) of

subject, and exhibit the versatility and fecundity of the author's

talent perhaps even more fully. La Fontaine had many predecessors in

the fable and especially in the beast fable. In his first issue,

comprising what are now called the first six books, he adhered to the

path of these predecessors with some closeness; but in the later

collections he allowed himself far more liberty, and it is in these

parts that his genius is most fully manifested. The boldness of the

politics is as much to be considered as the ingenuity of the

moralizing, as the intimate knowledge of human nature displayed in the

substance of the narratives, or as the artistic mastery shown in

their form. It has sometimes been objected that the view of human

character which La Fontaine expresses is unduly dark, and resembles

too much that of La Rochefoucauld, for whom the poet certainly had a

profound admiration. The discussion of this point would lead us too

far here. It may only be said that satire (and La Fontaine is

eminently a satirist) necessarily concerns itself with the darker

rather than with the lighter shades. Indeed the objection has become

pretty nearly obsolete with the obsolescence of what may be called the

sentimental-ethicalschool of criticism. Its last overt expression was

made by Lamartine, excellently answered by Sainte-Beuve. Exception has

also been taken to the _Fables_ on more purely literary, but hardly

less purely arbitrary grounds by Lessing. Perhaps the best criticism

ever passed upon La Fontaine's _Fables_ is that of Silvestre de Sacy,

to the effect that they supply three several delights to three several

ages: the child rejoices in the freshness and vividness of the story,

the eager student of literature in the consummate art with which it is

told, the experienced man of the world in the subtle reflections on

character and life which it conveys. Nor has any one, with the

exception of a few paradoxers like Rousseau and a few sentimentalists

like Lamartine, denied that the moral tone of the whole is as fresh

and healthy as its literary interest is vivid. The book has therefore

naturally become the standard reading book of French both at home and

abroad, a position which it shares in verse with the _Télémaque_ of

Fénelon in prose. It is no small testimony to its merit that not even

this use or misuse has interfered with its popularity.

The general literary character of La Fontaine is, with allowance made

for the difference of subject, visible equally in the _Fables_ and in

the _Contes_. Perhaps one of the hardest sayings in French literature

for an English student is the dictum of Joubert to the effect that

"_Il y a dans La Fontaine une plénitude de poésie qu'on ne trouve

nulle part dans les autres auteurs français._" The difficulty arises

from the ambiguity of the terms. For inventiveness of fancy and for

diligent observation of the rules of art La Fontaine deserves, if not

the first, almost the first place among French poets. In his hands the

oldest story becomes novel, the most hackneyed moral piquant, the most

commonplace details fresh and appropriate. As to the second point

there has not been such unanimous agreement. It used to be considered

that La Fontaine's ceaseless diversity of metre, his archaisms, his

licences in rhyme and orthography, were merely ingenious devices for

the sake of easy writing, intended to evade the trammels of the

stately couplet and _rimes difficiles_ enjoined by Boileau. Lamartine

in the attack already mentioned affects contempt of the "vers boiteux,

disloqués, inégaux, sans symmétrie ni dans l'oreille ni sur la page."

This opinion may be said to have been finally exploded by the most

accurate metrical critic and one of the most skilful metrical

practitioners that France has ever had, Théodore de Banville; and it

is only surprising that it should ever have been entertained by any

professional maker of verse. La Fontaine's irregularities are strictly

regulated, his cadences carefully arranged, and the whole effect may

be said to be (though, of course, in a light and tripping measure

instead of a stately one) similar to that of the stanzas of the

English pindaric ode in the hands of Dryden or Collins. There is

therefore nothing against La Fontaine on the score of invention and

nothing on the score of art. But something more, at least according to

English standards, is wanted to make up a "plenitude of poesy," and

this something more La Fontaine seldom or never exhibits. In words

used by Joubert himself elsewhere, he never "transports." The faculty

of transporting is possessed and used in very different manners by

different poets. In some it takes the form of passion, in some of half

mystical enthusiasm for nature, in some of commanding eloquence, in

some of moral fervour. La Fontaine has none of these things: he is

always amusing, always sensible, always clever, sometimes even

affecting, but at the same time always more or less prosaic, were it

not for his admirable versification. He is not a great poet, perhaps

not even a great humorist; but he is the most admirable teller of

light tales in verse that has ever existed in any time or country; and

he has established in his verse-tale a model which is never likely to

be surpassed.

La Fontaine did not during his life issue any complete edition of his

works, nor even of the two greatest and most important divisions of

them. The most remarkable of his separate publications have already

been noticed. Others were the _Poëme de la captivité de St Malc_

(1673), one of the pieces inspired by the Port-Royalists, the _Poëme

du Quinquina_ (1692), a piece of task work also, though of a very

different kind, and a number of pieces published either in small

pamphlets or with the works of other men. Among the latter may be

singled out the pieces published by the poet with the works of his

friend Maucroix (1685). The year after his death some posthumous works

appeared, and some years after his son's death the scattered poems,

letters, &c., with the addition of some unpublished work bought from

the family in manuscript, were carefully edited and published as

_Oeuvres diverses_ (1729). During the 18th century two of the most

magnificent illustrated editions ever published of any poet reproduced

the two chief works of La Fontaine. The _Fables_ were illustrated by

Oudry (1755-1759), the _Contes_ by Eisen (1762). This latter under the

title of "Edition des Fermiers-Généraux" fetches a high price. During

the first thirty years of the 19th century Walckenaer, a great student

of French 17th-century classics, published for the house of Didot

three successive editions of La Fontaine, the last (1826-1827) being

perhaps entitled to the rank of the standard edition, as his _Histoire

de la vie et des ouvrages de La Fontaine_ is the standard biography

and bibliography. The later editions of M. Marty-Laveaux in the

_Bibliothèque elzévirienne_, A. Pauly in the _Collection des

classiques françaises_ of M. Lemerre and L. Moland in that of M.

Garnier supply in different forms all that can be wished. The second

is the handsomest, the third, which is complete, perhaps the most

generally useful. Editions, selections, translations, &c., of the

_Fables_, especially for school use, are innumerable; but an

illustrated edition published by the _Librairie des Bibliophiles_

(1874) deserves to be mentioned as not unworthy of its 18th-century

predecessors. The works of M. Grouchy, _Documents inédits sur La

Fontaine_ (1893); of G. Lafenestre, _Jean de La Fontaine_ (1895); and

of Émile Faguet, _Jean de La Fontaine_ (1900), should be mentioned.

(G. Sa.)

LAFONTAINE, SIR LOUIS HIPPOLYTE, BART. (1807-1864), Canadian statesman

and judge, third son of Antoine Ménard LaFontaine (1772-1813) and

Marie-J-Fontaine Bienvenue, was born at Boucherville in the province of

Quebec on the 4th of October 1807. LaFontaine was educated at the

Collège de Montréal under the direction of the Sulpicians, and was

called to the bar of the province of Lower Canada on the 18th of August

1829. He married firstly Adèle, daughter of A. Berthelot of Quebec; and,

secondly, Jane, daughter of Charles Morrison, of Berthier, by whom he

had two sons. In 1830 he was elected a member of the House of Assembly

for the county of Terrebonne, and became an ardent supporter of Louis

Joseph Papineau in opposing the administration of the governor-in-chief,

which led to the rebellion of 1837. LaFontaine, however, did not approve

the violent methods of his leader, and after the hostilities at Saint

Denis he presented a petition to Lord Gosford requesting him to summon

the assembly and to adopt measures to stem the revolutionary course of

events in Lower Canada. The rebellion broke out afresh in the autumn of

1838; the constitution of 1791 was suspended; LaFontaine was imprisoned

for a brief period; and Papineau, who favoured annexation by the United

States, was in exile. At this crisis in Lower Canada the French

Canadians turned to LaFontaine as their leader, and under his direction

maintained their opposition to the special council, composed of nominees

of the crown. In 1839 Lord Sydenham, the governor-general, offered the

solicitor generalship to LaFontaine, which he refused; and after the

Union of 1841 LaFontaine was defeated in the county of Terrebonne

through the governor's influence. During the next year he obtained a

seat in the assembly of the province of Canada, and on the death of

Sydenham he was called by Sir Charles Bagot to form an administration

with Robert Baldwin. The ministry resigned in November 1843, as a

protest against the actions of Lord Metcalfe, who had succeeded Bagot.

In 1848 LaFontaine formed a new administration with Baldwin, and

remained in office until 1851, when he retired from public life. It was

during the ministry of LaFontaine-Baldwin that the Amnesty Bill was

passed, which occasioned grave riots in Montreal, personal violence to

Lord Elgin and the destruction of the parliament buildings. After the

death of Sir James Stuart in 1853 LaFontaine was appointed chief justice

of Lower Canada and president of the seigneurial court, which settled

the vexed question of land tenure in Canada; and in 1854 he was created

a baronet. He died at Montreal on the 26th of February 1864.

LaFontaine was well versed in constitutional history and French law;

he reasoned closely and presented his conclusions with directness. He

was upright in his conduct, sincerely attached to the traditions of

his race, and laboured conscientiously to establish responsible

government in Canada. His principal works are: _L'Analyse de

l'ordonnance du conseil spécial sur les bureaux d'hypothèques_

(Montreal, 1842); _Observations sur les questions seigneuriales_

(Montreal, 1854); see _LaFontaine_, by A. DeCelles (Toronto, 1906).

(A. G. D.)

LAFOSSE, CHARLES DE (1640-1716), French painter, was born in Paris. He

was one of the most noted and least servile pupils of Le Brun, under

whose direction he shared in the chief of the great decorative works

undertaken in the reign of Louis XIV. Leaving France in 1662, he spent

two years in Rome and three in Venice, and the influence of his

prolonged studies of Veronese is evident in his "Finding of Moses"

(Louvre), and in his "Rape of Proserpine" (Louvre), which he presented

to the Royal Academy as his diploma picture in 1673. He was at once

named assistant professor, and in 1674 the full responsibilities of the

office devolved on him, but his engagements did not prevent his

accepting in 1689 the invitation of Lord Montagu to decorate Montagu

House. He visited London twice, remaining on the second

occasion--together with Rousseau and Monnoyer--more than two years.

William III. vainly strove to detain him in England by the proposal that

he should decorate Hampton Court, for Le Brun was dead, and Mansart

pressed Lafosse to return to Paris to take in hand the cupola of the

Invalides. The decorations of Montagu House are destroyed, those of

Versailles are restored, and the dome of the Invalides (engraved, Picart

and Cochin) is now the only work existing which gives a full measure of

his talent. During his latter years Lafosse executed many other

important decorations in public buildings and private houses, notably in

that of Crozat, under whose roof he died on the 13th of December 1716.

LAGARDE, PAUL ANTON DE (1827-1891), German biblical scholar and

orientalist, was born at Berlin on the 2nd of November 1827. His real

name was Bötticher, Lagarde being his mother's name. At Berlin

(1844-1846) and Halle (1846-1847) he studied theology, philosophy and

oriental languages. In 1852 his studies took him to London and Paris. In

1854 he became a teacher at a Berlin public school, but this did not

interrupt his biblical studies. He edited the _Didascalia apostolorum

syriace_ (1854), and other Syriac texts collected in the British Museum

and in Paris. In 1866 he received three years' leave of absence to

collect fresh materials, and in 1869 succeeded Heinrich Ewald as

professor of oriental languages at Göttingen. Like Ewald, Lagarde was an

active worker in a variety of subjects and languages; but his chief aim,

the elucidation of the Bible, was almost always kept in view. He edited

the Aramaic translation (known as the Targum) of the Prophets according

to the Codex Reuchlinianus preserved at Carlsruhe, _Prophetae chaldaice_

(1872), the _Hagiographa chaldaice_ (1874), an Arabic translation of the

Gospels, _Die vier Evangelien, arabisch aus der Wiener Handschrift

herausgegeben_ (1864), a Syriac translation of the Old Testament

Apocrypha, _Libri V. T. apocryphi syriace_ (1861), a Coptic translation

of the Pentateuch, _Der Pentateuch koptisch_ (1867), and a part of the

Lucianic text of the Septuagint, which he was able to reconstruct from

manuscripts for nearly half the Old Testament. He devoted himself

ardently to oriental scholarship, and published _Zur Urgeschichte der

Armenier_ (1854) and _Armenische Studien_ (1877). He was also a student

of Persian, publishing _Isaias persice_ (1883) and _Persische Studien_

(1884). He followed up his Coptic studies with _Aegyptiaca_ (1883), and

published many minor contributions to the study of oriental languages in

_Gesammelte Abhandlungen_ (1866), _Symmicta_ (i. 1877, ii. 1880),

_Semitica_ (i. 1878, ii. 1879), _Orientalia_ (1879-1880) and

_Mittheilungen_ (1884). Mention should also be made of the valuable

_Onomastica sacra_ (1870; 2nd ed., 1887). Lagarde also took some part in

politics. He belonged to the Prussian Conservative party, and was a

violent anti-Semite. The bitterness which he felt appeared in his

writings. He died at Göttingen on the 22nd of December 1891.

See the article in Herzog-Hauck, _Realencyklopädie_; and cf. Anna de

Lagarde, _Paul de Lagarde_ (1894).

LAGASH, or SIRPURLA, one of the oldest centres of Sumerian civilization

in Babylonia. It is represented by a rather low, long line of ruin

mounds, along the dry bed of an ancient canal, some 3 m. E. of the

Shatt-el-Hai and a little less than 10 m. N. of the modern Turkish town

of Shatra. These ruins were discovered in 1877 by Ernest de Sarzec, at

that time French consul at Basra, who was allowed, by the Montefich

chief, Nasir Pasha, the first Wali-Pasha, or governor-general, of Basra,

to excavate at his pleasure in the territories subject to that official.

At the outset on his own account, and later as a representative of the

French government, under a Turkish firman, de Sarzec continued

excavations at this site, with various intermissions, until his death in

1901, after which the work was continued under the supervision of the

Commandant Cros. The principal excavations were made in two larger

mounds, one of which proved to be the site of the temple, E-Ninnu, the

shrine of the patron god of Lagash, Nin-girsu or Ninib. This temple had

been razed and a fortress built upon its ruins, in the Greek or Seleucid

period, some of the bricks found bearing the inscription in Aramaic and

Greek of a certain Hadad-nadin-akhe, king of a small Babylonian kingdom.

It was beneath this fortress that the numerous statues of Gudea were

found, which constitute the gem of the Babylonian collections at the

Louvre. These had been decapitated and otherwise mutilated, and thrown

into the foundations of the new fortress. From this stratum came also

various fragments of bas reliefs of high artistic excellence. The

excavations in the other larger mound resulted in the discovery of the

remains of buildings containing objects of all sorts in bronze and

stone, dating from the earliest Sumerian period onward, and enabling us

to trace the art history of Babylonia to a date some hundreds of years

before the time of Gudea. Apparently this mound had been occupied

largely by store houses, in which were stored not only grain, figs, &c.,

but also vessels, weapons, sculptures and every possible object

connected with the use and administration of palace and temple. In a

small outlying mound de Sarzec discovered the archives of the temple,

about 30,000 inscribed clay tablets, containing the business records,

and revealing with extraordinary minuteness the administration of an

ancient Babylonian temple, the character of its property, the method of

farming its lands, herding its flocks, and its commercial and industrial

dealings and enterprises; for an ancient Babylonian temple was a great

industrial, commercial, agricultural and stock-raising establishment.

Unfortunately, before these archives could be removed, the galleries

containing them were rifled by the Arabs, and large numbers of the

tablets were sold to antiquity dealers, by whom they have been scattered

all over Europe and America. From the inscriptions found at Tello, it

appears that Lagash was a city of great importance in the Sumerian

period, some time probably in the 4th millennium B.C. It was at that

time ruled by independent kings, Ur-Nina and his successors, who were

engaged in contests with the Elamites on the east and the kings of Kengi

and Kish on the north. With the Semitic conquest it lost its

independence, its rulers becoming _patesis_, dependent rulers, under

Sargon and his successors; but it still remained Sumerian and continued

to be a city of much importance, and, above all, a centre of artistic

development. Indeed, it was in this period and under the immediately

succeeding supremacy of the kings of Ur, Ur-Gur and Dungi, that it

reached its highest artistic development. At this period, also, under

its _patesis_, Ur-bau and Gudea, Lagash had extensive commercial

communications with distant realms. According to his own records, Gudea

brought cedars from the Amanus and Lebanon mountains in Syria, diorite

or dolorite from eastern Arabia, copper and gold from central and

southern Arabia and from Sinai, while his armies, presumably under his

overlord, Ur-Gur, were engaged in battles in Elam on the east. His was

especially the era of artistic development. Some of the earlier works of

Ur-Nina, En-anna-tum, Entemena and others, before the Semitic conquest,

are also extremely interesting, especially the famous stele of the

vultures and a great silver vase ornamented with what may be called the

coat of arms of Lagash, a lion-headed eagle with wings outspread,

grasping a lion in each talon. After the time of Gudea, Lagash seems to

have lost its importance; at least we know nothing more about it until

the construction of the Seleucid fortress mentioned, when it seems to

have become part of the Greek kingdom of Characene. The objects found at

Tello are the most valuable art treasures up to this time discovered in

Babylonia.

See E. de Sarzec, _Découvertes en Chaldée_ (1887 foll.).

(J. P. Pe.)

LAGHMAN, a district of Afghanistan, in the province of Jalalabad,

between Jalalabad and Kabul, on the northern side of the Peshawar road,

one of the richest and most fertile tracts in Afghanistan. It is the

valley of the Kabul river between the Tagao and the Kunar and merges on

the north into Kafiristan. The inhabitants, Ghilzais and Tajiks, are

supposed to be the cleverest business people in the country. Sugar,

cotton and rice are exported to Kabul. The Laghman route between Kabul

and India crossing the Kunar river into the Mohmand country is the

route followed by Alexander the Great and Baber; but it has now been

supplanted by the Khyber.

LAGOON (Fr. _lagune_, Lat. _lacuna_, a pool), a term applied to (1) a

sheet of salt or brackish water near the sea, (2) a sheet of fresh water

of no great depth or extent, (3) the expanse of smooth water enclosed by

an atoll. Sea lagoons are formed only where the shores are low and

protected from wave action. Under these conditions a bar may be raised

above sea-level or a spit may grow until its end touches the land. The

enclosed shallow water is then isolated in a wide stretch, the seaward

banks broaden, and the lagoon becomes a permanent area of still shallow

water with peculiar faunal features. In the old lake plains of Australia

there are occasional wide and shallow depressions where water collects

permanently. Large numbers of aquatic birds, black swans, wild duck,

teal, migrant spoon-bills or pelicans, resort to these fresh-water

lagoons.

LAGOS, the western province of Southern Nigeria, a British colony and

protectorate in West Africa. The province consists of three divisions:

(1) the coast region, including Lagos Island, being the former colony of

Lagos; (2) small native states adjacent to the colony; and (3) the

Yoruba country, farther inland. The total area is some 27,000 sq. m., or

about the size of Scotland. The province is bounded S. by the Gulf of

Guinea, (from 2° 46´ 55´´ to 4° 30´ E.); W. by the French colony of

Dahomey; N. and E. by other provinces of Nigeria.

_Physical Features._--The coast is low, marshy and malarious, and all

along the shore the great Atlantic billows cause a dangerous surf.

Behind the coast-line stretches a series of lagoons, in which are

small islands, that of Lagos having an area of 3¾ sq. m. Beyond the

lagoons and mangrove swamps is a broad zone of dense primeval

forest--"the bush"--which completely separates the arable lands from

the coast lagoons. The water-parting of the streams flowing north to

the Niger, and south to the Gulf of Guinea, is the main physical

feature. The general level of Yorubaland is under 2000 ft. But towards

the east, about the upper course of the river Oshun, the elevation is

higher. Southward from the divide the land, which is intersected by

the nearly parallel courses of the rivers Ogun, Omi, Oshun, Oni and

Oluwa, falls in continuous undulations to the coast, the open

cultivated ground gradually giving place to forest tracts, where the

most characteristic tree is the oil-palm. Flowering trees, certain

kinds of rubber vines, and shrubs are plentiful. In the northern

regions the shea-butter tree is found. The fauna resembles that of the

other regions of the Guinea coast, but large game is becoming scarce.

Leopards, antelopes and monkeys are common, and alligators infest the

rivers.

The lagoons, lying between the outer surf-beaten beach and the inner

shore line, form a navigable highway of still waters, many miles in

extent. They are almost entirely free from rock, though they are often

shallow, with numerous mud banks. The most extensive are Lekki in the

east, and Ikoradu (Lagos) in the west. At its N.W. extremity the Lagos

lagoon receives the Ogun, the largest river in Yorubaland, whose

current is strong enough to keep the seaward channel open throughout

the year. Hence the importance of the port of Lagos, which lies in

smooth water at the northern end of this channel. The outer entrance

is obstructed by a dangerous sand bar.

_Climate and Health._--The climate is unhealthy, especially for

Europeans. The rainfall has not been ascertained in the interior. In

the northern districts it is probably considerably less than at Lagos,

where it is about 70 in. a year. The variation is, however, very

great. In 1901 the rainfall was 112 in., in 1902 but 47, these figures

being respectively the highest and lowest recorded in a period of

seventeen years. The mean temperature at Lagos is 82.5° F., the range

being from 68° to 91°. At certain seasons sudden heavy squalls of wind

and rain that last for a few hours are common. The hurricane and

typhoon are unknown. The principal diseases are malarial fever,

smallpox, rheumatism, peripheral neuritis, dysentery, chest diseases

and guinea-worm. Fever not unfrequently assumes the dangerous form

known as "black-water fever." The frequency of smallpox is being much

diminished outside the larger towns in the interior, in which

vaccination is neglected. The absence of plague, yellow fever,

cholera, typhoid fever and scarlatina is noteworthy. A mild form of

yaws is endemic.

_Inhabitants._--The population is estimated at 1,750,000. The Yoruba

people, a Negro race divided into many tribes, form the majority of the

inhabitants. Notwithstanding their political feuds and their proved

capacity as fighting men, the Yoruba are distinguished above all the

surrounding races for their generally peaceful disposition, industry,

friendliness, courtesy and hospitality towards strangers. They are also

intensely patriotic. Physically they resemble closely their Ewe and

Dahomey neighbours, but are of somewhat lighter complexion, taller and

of less pronounced Negro features. They exhibit high administrative

ability, possess a marked capacity for trade, and have made remarkable

progress in the industrial arts. The different tribes are distinguished

by tattoo markings, usually some simple pattern of two or more parallel

lines, disposed horizontally or vertically on the cheeks or other parts

of the face. The feeling for religion is deeply implanted among the

Yoruba. The majority are pagans, or dominated by pagan beliefs, but

Islam has made great progress since the cessation of the Fula wars,

while Protestant and Roman Catholic missions have been at work since

1848 at Abeokuta, Oyo, Ibadan and other large towns. Samuel Crowther,

the first Negro bishop in the Anglican church, who was distinguished as

an explorer, geographer and linguist, was a native of Yorubaland,

rescued (1822) by the English from slavery and educated at Sierra Leone

(see YORUBAS).

_Towns._--Besides Lagos (q.v.), pop. about 50,000, the chief towns in

the colony proper are Epe, pop. 16,000, on the northern side of the

lagoons, and Badagry (a notorious place during the slave-trade period)

and Lekki, both on the coast. Inland the chief towns are Abeokuta

(q.v.), pop. about 60,000, and Ibadan (q.v.), pop. estimated at 150,000.

_Agriculture and Trade._--The chief wealth of the country consists in

forest produce, the staple industries being the collection of

palm-kernels and palm oil. Besides the oil-palm forests large areas are

covered with timber trees, the wood chiefly cut for commercial purposes

being a kind of mahogany. The destruction of immature trees and the

fluctuations in price render this a very uncertain trade. The rubber

industry was started in 1894, and in 1896 the rubber exported was valued

at £347,000. In 1899, owing to reckless methods of tapping the vines,

75% of the rubber plants died. Precautions were then taken to preserve

the remainder and allow young plants to grow. The collection of rubber

recommenced in 1904 and the industry again became one of importance. A

considerable area is devoted to cocoa plantations, all owned by native

cultivators. Coffee and tobacco of good quality are cultivated and

shea-butter is largely used as an illuminant. The Yoruba country is the

greatest agricultural centre in West Africa. For home consumption the

Yoruba grow yams, maize and millet, the chief articles of food, cassava,

sweet potatoes, sesame and beans. Model farms have been established for

experimental culture and for the tuition of the natives. A palatable

wine is obtained from the _Raphia vinifera_ and native beers are also

brewed. Imported spirits are largely consumed. There are no manufactures

on a large scale save the making of "country cloths" (from cotton grown,

spun and woven in the country) and mats. Pottery and agricultural

implements are made, and tanning, dyeing and forging practised in the

towns, and along the rivers and lagoons boats and canoes are built.

Fishing is extensively engaged in, the fish being dried and sent up

country. Except iron there are no valuable minerals in the country.

The cotton plant from which the "country cloths" are made is native to

the country, the soil of which is capable of producing the very finest

grades of cotton. The Egba branch of the Yoruba have always grown the

plant. In 1869 the cotton exported was valued at £76,957, but owing to

low prices the natives ceased to grow cotton for export, so that in 1879

the value of exported cotton was only £526. In 1902 planting for export

was recommenced by the Egba on scientific lines, and was started in the

Abeokuta district with encouraging results.

The Yoruba profess to be unable to alienate land in perpetuity, but

native custom does not preclude leasing, and land concessions have been

taken up by Europeans on long leases. Some concessions are only for

cutting and removing timber; others permit of cultivation. The northern

parts of the protectorate are specially suitable for stock raising and

poultry culture.

The chief exports are palm-kernels, palm-oil, timber, rubber and cocoa.

Palm-kernels alone constitute more than a half in value of the total

exports, and with palm-oil over three-fourths. The trade in these

products is practically confined to Great Britain and Germany, the share

of the first-named being 25% to Germany's 75%. Minor exports are coffee,

"country cloths," maize, shea-butter and ivory.

Cotton goods are the most important of the imports, spirits coming next,

followed by building material, haberdashery and hardware and tobacco.

Over 90% of the cotton goods are imported from Great Britain, whilst

nearly the same proportion of the spirit imports come from Germany.

Nearly all the liquors consist of "Trade Spirits," chiefly gin, rum and

a concoction called "alcohol," introduced (1901) to meet the growing

taste of the people for stronger liquor. This stuff contained 90% of

pure alcohol and sometimes over 4% of fusel oil. To hinder the sale of

this noxious compound legislation was passed in 1903 prohibiting the

import of liquor containing more than ½% of fusel oil, whilst the states

of Abeokuta and Ibadan prohibited the importation of liquor stronger

than proof. The total trade of the country in 1905 was valued at

£2,224,754, the imports slightly exceeding the exports. There is a large

transit trade with Dahomey.

_Communications._--Lagos is well supplied with means of communication.

A 3 ft. 6 in. gauge railway starts from Iddo Island, and extends past

Abeokuta, 64 m. from Lagos, Ibadan (123 m.), Oshogbo (175 m.), to

Illorin (247 m.) in Northern Nigeria, whence the line is continued to

Jebba and Zunguru (see NIGERIA). Abeokuta is served by a branch line,

1½ m. long, from Aro on the main line. Railway bridges connect Iddo

Island both with the mainland and with Lagos Island (see Lagos, town).

This line was begun in 1896 and opened to Ibadan in 1901. In 1905 the

building of the section Ibadan-Illorin was undertaken. The railway was

built by the government and cost about £7000 per mile. The lagoons

offer convenient channels for numerous small craft, which, with the

exception of steam-launches, are almost entirely native-built canoes.

Branch steamers run between the Forcados mouth of the Niger and Lagos,

and also between Lagos and Porto Novo, in French territory, and do a

large transit trade. Various roads through the bush have been made by

the government. There is telegraphic communication with Europe,

Northern Nigeria and South Africa, and steamships ply regularly

between Lagos and Liverpool, and Lagos and Hamburg (see LAGOS, town).

_Administration, Justice, Education, &c._--The small part of the

province which constitutes "the colony of Southern Nigeria" is

governed as a crown colony. Elsewhere the native governments are

retained, the chiefs and councils of elders receiving the advice and

support of British commissioners. There is also an advisory native

central council which meets at Lagos. The great majority of the civil

servants are natives of the country, some of whom have been educated

in England. The legal status of slavery is not recognized by the law

courts and dealing in slaves is suppressed. As an institution slavery

is dying out, and only exists in a domestic form.

The cost of administration is met, mainly, by customs, largely derived

from the duties on imported spirits. From the railways, a government

monopoly, a considerable net profit is earned. Expenditure is mainly

under the heads of railway administration, other public works,

military and police, health, and education. The revenue increased in

the ten years 1895-1905 from £142,049 to £410,250. In the same period

the expenditure rose from £144,484 to £354,254.

The defence of the province is entrusted to the Lagos battalion of the

West African Frontier Force, a body under the control of the Colonial

Office in London and composed of Hausa (four-fifths) and Yoruba. It is

officered from the British army.

The judicial system in the colony proper is based on that of England.

The colonial supreme court, by agreement with the rulers of Abeokuta,

Ibadan and other states in the protectorate, tries, with the aid of

native assessors, all cases of importance in those countries. Other

cases are tried by mixed courts, or, where Yoruba alone are concerned,

by native courts.

There is a government board of education which maintains a few schools

and supervises those voluntarily established. These are chiefly those

of various missionary societies, who, besides primary schools, have a

few secondary schools. The Mahommedans have their own schools. Grants

from public funds are made to the voluntary schools. Considerable

attention is paid to manual training, the laws of health and the

teaching of English, which is spoken by about one-fourth of the native

population.

_History._--Lagos Island was so named by the Portuguese explorers of the

15th century, because of the numerous lagoons or lakes on this part of

the coast. The Portuguese, and after them the French, had settlements

here at various points. In the 18th century Lagos Lagoon became the

chief resort of slavers frequenting the Bight of Benin, this portion of

the Gulf of Guinea becoming known pre-eminently as the Slave Coast.

British traders established themselves at Badagry, 40 m. W. of Lagos,

where in 1851 they were attacked by Kosoko, the Yoruba king of Lagos

Island. As a result a British naval force seized Lagos after a sharp

fight and deposed the king, placing his cousin, Akitoye, on the throne.

A treaty was concluded under which Akitoye bound himself to put down the

slave trade. This treaty was not adhered to, and in 1861 Akitoye's son

and successor, King Docemo, was induced to give up his territorial

jurisdiction and accept a pension of 1200 bags of cowries, afterwards

commuted to £1000 a year, which pension he drew until his death in 1885.

Immediately after the proclamation of the British annexation, a steady

current of immigration from the mainland set in, and a flourishing town

arose on Lagos Island. Iddo Island was acquired at the same time as

Lagos Island, and from 1862 to 1894 various additions by purchase or

cession were made to the colony. In 1879 the small kingdom of Kotonu was

placed under British protection. Kotonu lies south and east of the

Denham Lagoon (see DAHOMEY). In 1889 it was exchanged with the French

for the kingdom of Pokra which is to the north of Badagry. In the early

years of the colony Sir John Glover, R.N., who was twice governor

(1864-1866 and 1871-1872), did much pioneer work and earned the

confidence of the natives to a remarkable degree. Later Sir C. A.

Moloney (governor 1886-1890) opened up relations with the Yoruba and

other tribes in the hinterland. He despatched two commissioners whose

duty it was to conclude commercial treaties and use British influence to

put a stop to inter-tribal fighting and the closing of the trade routes.

In 1892 the Jebu, who acted as middlemen between the colony and the

Yoruba, closed several trade routes. An expedition sent against them

resulted in their subjugation and the annexation of part of their

country. An order in council issued in 1899 extended the protectorate

over Yorubaland. The tribes of the hinterland have largely welcomed the

British protectorate and military expeditions have been few and

unimportant. (For the history of the Yoruba states see YORUBAS.)

Lagos was made a separate government in 1863; in 1866 it was placed in

political dependence upon Sierra Leone; in 1874 it became (politically)

an integral part of the Gold Coast Colony, whilst in 1886 it was again

made a separate government, administered as a crown colony. In Sir

William Macgregor, M.D., formerly administrator of British New Guinea,

governor 1899-1904, the colony found an enlightened ruler. He

inaugurated the railway system, and drew much closer the friendly ties

between the British and the tribes of the protectorate. Meantime, since

1884, the whole of the Niger delta, lying immediately east of Lagos, as

well as the Hausa states and Bornu, had been acquired by Great Britain.

Unification of the British possessions in Nigeria being desirable, the

delta regions and Lagos were formed in 1906 into one government (see

NIGERIA).

See C. P. Lucas, _Historical Geography of the British Colonies_, vol.

iii. _West Africa_ (Oxford, 1896); the annual _Reports_ issued by the

Colonial Office, London; A. B. Ellis, _The Yoruba-speaking Peoples_

(London, 1894); Lady Glover, _The Life of Sir John Hawley Glover_

(London, 1897). Consult also the works cited under NIGERIA and

DAHOMEY.

LAGOS, a seaport of West Africa, capital of the British colony and

protectorate of Southern Nigeria, in 6° 26´ N., 3° 23´ E. on an island

in a lagoon named Lagos also. Between Lagos and the mainland is Iddo

Island. An iron bridge for road and railway traffic 2600 ft. long

connects Lagos and Iddo Islands, and another iron bridge, 917 ft. long,

joins Iddo Island to the mainland. The town lies but a foot or two above

sea-level. The principal buildings are a large government house, the law

courts, the memorial hall erected to commemorate the services of Sir

John Glover, used for public meetings and entertainments, an elaborate

club-house provided from public funds, and the police quarters. There

are many substantial villas that serve as quarters for the officers of

the civil service, as well as numerous solidly-built handsome private

buildings. The streets are well kept; the town is supplied with electric

light, and there is a good water service. The chief stores and depôts

for goods are all on the banks of the lagoon. The swamps of which

originally Lagos Island entirely consisted have been reclaimed. In

connexion with this work a canal, 25 ft. wide, has been cut right

through the island and a sea-wall built round its western half. There is

a commodious public hospital, of the cottage type, on a good site. There

is a racecourse, which also serves as a general public recreation

ground. Shifting banks of sand form a bar at the sea entrance of the

lagoon. Extensive works were undertaken in 1908 with a view to making

Lagos an open port. A mole has been built at the eastern entrance to the

harbour and dredgers are at work on the bar, which can be crossed by

vessels drawing 13 ft. Large ocean-going steamers anchor not less than 2

m. from land, and goods and passengers are there transhipped into

smaller steamers for Lagos. Heavy cargo is carried by the large steamers

to Forcados, 200 m. farther down the coast, transhipped there into

branch boats, and taken via the lagoons to Lagos. The port is 4279 m.

from Liverpool, 1203 from Freetown, Sierra Leone (the nearest safe port

westward), and 315 from Cape Coast.

The inhabitants, about 50,000, include, besides the native tribes,

Sierra Leonis, Fanti, Krumen and the descendants of some 6000 Brazilian

_emancipados_ who were settled here in the early days of British rule.

The Europeans number about 400. Rather more than half the populace are

Moslems.

LAGOS, a seaport of southern Portugal, in the district of Faro (formerly

the province of Algarve); on the Atlantic Ocean, and on the estuary of

the small river Lagos, here spanned by a fine stone bridge. Pop. (1900)

8291. The city is defended by fortifications erected in the 17th

century. It is supplied with water by an aqueduct 800 yds. long. The

harbour is deep, capacious, and completely sheltered on the north and

west; it is frequently visited by the British Channel fleet. Vines and

figs are extensively cultivated in the neighbourhood, and Lagos is the

centre of important sardine and tunny fisheries. Its trade is chiefly

carried on by small coasting vessels, as there is no railway. Lagos is

on or near the site of the Roman _Lacobriga_. Since the 15th century it

has held the formal rank and title of city. Cape St Vincent, the ancient

_Promontorium Sacrum_, and the south-western extremity of the kingdom,

is 22 m. W. It is famous for its connexion with Prince Henry (q.v.), the

Navigator, who here founded the town of Sagres in 1421; and for several

British naval victories, the most celebrated of which was won in 1797 by

Admiral Jervis (afterwards Earl St Vincent) over a larger Spanish

squadron. In 1759 Admiral Boscawen defeated a French fleet off Lagos.

The great earthquake of 1755 destroyed a large part of the city.

LA GRÂCE, or LES GRÂCES, a game invented in France during the first

quarter of the 19th century and called there _le jeu des Grâces_. It is

played with two light sticks about 16 in. long and a wicker ring, which

is projected into the air by placing it over the sticks crossed and then

separating them rapidly. The ring is caught upon the stick of another

player and thrown back, the object being to prevent it from falling to

the ground.

LA GRAND' COMBE, a town of southern France, in the department of Gard on

the Gardon, 39 m. N.N.W. of Nîmes by rail. Pop. (1906) town, 6406;

commune, 11,292. There are extensive coal mines in the vicinity.

LAGRANGE, JOSEPH LOUIS (1736-1813), French mathematician, was born at

Turin, on the 25th of January 1736. He was of French extraction, his

great grandfather, a cavalry captain, having passed from the service of

France to that of Sardinia, and settled in Turin under Emmanuel II. His

father, Joseph Louis Lagrange, married Maria Theresa Gros, only daughter

of a rich physician at Cambiano, and had by her eleven children, of whom

only the eldest (the subject of this notice) and the youngest survived

infancy. His emoluments as treasurer at war, together with his wife's

fortune, provided him with ample means, which he lost by rash

speculations, a circumstance regarded by his son as the prelude to his

own good fortune; for had he been rich, he used to say, he might never

have known mathematics.

The genius of Lagrange did not at once take its true bent. His earliest

tastes were literary rather than scientific, and he learned the

rudiments of geometry during his first year at the college of Turin,

without difficulty, but without distinction. The perusal of a tract by

Halley (_Phil. Trans._ xviii. 960) roused his enthusiasm for the

analytical method, of which he was destined to develop the utmost

capabilities. He now entered, unaided save by his own unerring tact and

vivid apprehension, upon a course of study which, in two years, placed

him on a level with the greatest of his contemporaries. At the age of

nineteen he communicated to Leonhard Euler his idea of a general method

of dealing with "isoperimetrical" problems, known later as the Calculus

of Variations. It was eagerly welcomed by the Berlin mathematician, who

had the generosity to withhold from publication his own further

researches on the subject, until his youthful correspondent should have

had time to complete and opportunity to claim the invention. This

prosperous opening gave the key-note to Lagrange's career. Appointed, in

1754, professor of geometry in the royal school of artillery, he formed

with some of his pupils--for the most part his seniors--friendships

based on community of scientific ardour. With the aid of the marquis de

Saluces and the anatomist G. F. Cigna, he founded in 1758 a society

which became the Turin Academy of Sciences. The first volume of its

memoirs, published in the following year, contained a paper by Lagrange

entitled _Recherches sur la nature et la propagation du son_, in which

the power of his analysis and his address in its application were

equally conspicuous. He made his first appearance in public as the

critic of Newton, and the arbiter between d'Alembert and Euler. By

considering only the particles of air found in a right line, he reduced

the problem of the propagation of sound to the solution of the same

partial differential equations that include the motions of vibrating

strings, and demonstrated the insufficiency of the methods employed by

both his great contemporaries in dealing with the latter subject. He

further treated in a masterly manner of echoes and the mixture of

sounds, and explained the phenomenon of grave harmonics as due to the

occurrence of beats so rapid as to generate a musical note. This was

followed, in the second volume of the _Miscellanea Taurinensia_ (1762)

by his "Essai d'une nouvelle méthode pour déterminer les maxima et les

minima des formules intégrales indéfinies," together with the

application of this important development of analysis to the solution of

several dynamical problems, as well as to the demonstration of the

mechanical principle of "least action." The essential point in his

advance on Euler's mode of investigating curves of maximum or minimum

consisted in his purely analytical conception of the subject. He not

only freed it from all trammels of geometrical construction, but by the

introduction of the symbol [delta] gave it the efficacy of a new

calculus. He is thus justly regarded as the inventor of the "method of

variations"--a name supplied by Euler in 1766.

By these performances Lagrange found himself, at the age of twenty-six,

on the summit of European fame. Such a height had not been reached

without cost. Intense application during early youth had weakened a

constitution never robust, and led to accesses of feverish exaltation

culminating, in the spring of 1761, in an attack of bilious

hypochondria, which permanently lowered the tone of his nervous system.

Rest and exercise, however, temporarily restored his health, and he gave

proof of the undiminished vigour of his powers by carrying off, in 1764,

the prize offered by the Paris Academy of Sciences for the best essay on

the libration of the moon. His treatise was remarkable, not only as

offering a satisfactory explanation of the coincidence between the lunar

periods of rotation and revolution, but as containing the first

employment of his radical formula of mechanics, obtained by combining

with the principle of d'Alembert that of virtual velocities. His success

encouraged the Academy to propose, in 1766, as a theme for competition,

the hitherto unattempted theory of the Jovian system. The prize was

again awarded to Lagrange; and he earned the same distinction with

essays on the problem of three bodies in 1772, on the secular equation

of the moon in 1774, and in 1778 on the theory of cometary

perturbations.

He had in the meantime gratified a long felt desire by a visit to Paris,

where he enjoyed the stimulating delight of conversing with such

mathematicians as A. C. Clairault, d'Alembert, Condorcet and the Abbé

Marie. Illness prevented him from visiting London. The post of director

of the mathematical department of the Berlin Academy (of which he had

been a member since 1759) becoming vacant by the removal of Euler to St

Petersburg, the latter and d'Alembert united to recommend Lagrange as

his successor. Euler's eulogium was enhanced by his desire to quit

Berlin, d'Alembert's by his dread of a royal command to repair thither;

and the result was that an invitation, conveying the wish of the

"greatest king in Europe" to have the "greatest mathematician" at his

court, was sent to Turin. On the 6th of November 1766, Lagrange was

installed in his new position, with a salary of 6000 francs, ample

leisure for scientific research, and royal favour sufficient to secure

him respect without exciting envy. The national jealousy of foreigners,

was at first a source of annoyance to him; but such prejudices were

gradually disarmed by the inoffensiveness of his demeanour. We are told

that the universal example of his colleagues, rather than any desire for

female society, impelled him to matrimony; his choice being a lady of

the Conti family, who, by his request, joined him at Berlin. Soon after

marriage his wife was attacked by a lingering illness, to which she

succumbed, Lagrange devoting all his time, and a considerable store of

medical knowledge, to her care.

The long series of memoirs--some of them complete treatises of great

moment in the history of science--communicated by Lagrange to the Berlin

Academy between the years 1767 and 1787 were not the only fruits of his

exile. His _Mécanique analytique_, in which his genius most fully

displayed itself, was produced during the same period. This great work

was the perfect realization of a design conceived by the author almost

in boyhood, and clearly sketched in his first published essay.[1] Its

scope may be briefly described as the reduction of the theory of

mechanics to certain general formulae, from the simple development of

which should be derived the equations necessary for the solution of each

separate problem.[2] From the fundamental principle of virtual

velocities, which thus acquired a new significance, Lagrange deduced,

with the aid of the calculus of variations, the whole system of

mechanical truths, by processes so elegant, lucid and harmonious as to

constitute, in Sir William Hamilton's words, "a kind of scientific

poem." This unification of method was one of matter also. By his mode of

regarding a liquid as a material system characterized by the unshackled

mobility of its minutest parts, the separation between the mechanics of

matter in different forms of aggregation finally disappeared, and the

fundamental equation of forces was for the first time extended to

hydrostatics and hydrodynamics.[3] Thus a universal science of matter

and motion was derived, by an unbroken sequence of deduction, from one

radical principle; and analytical mechanics assumed the clear and

complete form of logical perfection which it now wears.

A publisher having with some difficulty been found, the book appeared at

Paris in 1788 under the supervision of A. M. Legendre. But before that

time Lagrange himself was on the spot. After the death of Frederick the

Great, his presence was competed for by the courts of France, Spain and

Naples, and a residence in Berlin having ceased to possess any

attraction for him, he removed to Paris in 1787. Marie Antoinette warmly

patronized him. He was lodged in the Louvre, received the grant of an

income equal to that he had hitherto enjoyed, and, with the title of

"veteran pensioner" in lieu of that of "foreign associate" (conferred in

1772), the right of voting at the deliberations of the Academy. In the

midst of these distinctions, a profound melancholy seized upon him. His

mathematical enthusiasm was for the time completely quenched, and during

two years the printed volume of his _Mécanique_, which he had seen only

in manuscript, lay unopened beside him. He relieved his dejection with

miscellaneous studies, especially with that of chemistry, which, in the

new form given to it by Lavoisier, he found "aisée comme l'algèbre." The

Revolution roused him once more to activity and cheerfulness. Curiosity

impelled him to remain and watch the progress of such a novel

phenomenon; but curiosity was changed into dismay as the terrific

character of the phenomenon unfolded itself. He now bitterly regretted

his temerity in braving the danger. "Tu l'as voulu" he would repeat

self-reproachfully. Even from revolutionary tribunals, however, the name

of Lagrange uniformly commanded respect. His pension was continued by

the National Assembly, and he was partially indemnified for the

depreciation of the currency by remunerative appointments. Nominated

president of the Academical commission for the reform of weights and

measures, his services were retained when its "purification" by the

Jacobins removed his most distinguished colleagues. He again sat on the

commission of 1799 for the construction of the metric system, and by his

zealous advocacy of the decimal principle largely contributed to its

adoption.

Meanwhile, on the 31st of May 1792 he married Mademoiselle Lemonnier,

daughter of the astronomer of that name, a young and beautiful girl,

whose devotion ignored disparity of years, and formed the one tie with

life which Lagrange found it hard to break. He had no children by either

marriage. Although specially exempted from the operation of the decree

of October 1793, imposing banishment on foreign residents, he took alarm

at the fate of J. S. Bailly and A. L. Lavoisier, and prepared to resume

his former situation in Berlin. His design was frustrated by the

establishment of and his official connexion with the École Normale, and

the École Polytechnique. The former institution had an ephemeral

existence; but amongst the benefits derived from the foundation of the

École Polytechnique one of the greatest, it has been observed,[4] was

the restoration of Lagrange to mathematics. The remembrance of his

teachings was long treasured by such of his auditors--amongst whom were

J. B. J. Delambre and S. F. Lacroix--as were capable of appreciating

them. In expounding the principles of the differential calculus, he

started, as it were, from the level of his pupils, and ascended with

them by almost insensible gradations from elementary to abstruse

conceptions. He seemed, not a professor amongst students, but a learner

amongst learners; pauses for thought alternated with luminous

exposition; invention accompanied demonstration; and thus originated his

_Théorie des fonctions analytiques_ (Paris, 1797). The leading idea of

this work was contained in a paper published in the _Berlin Memoirs_ for

1772.[5] Its object was the elimination of the, to some minds,

unsatisfactory conception of the infinite from the metaphysics of the

higher mathematics, and the substitution for the differential and

integral calculus of an analogous method depending wholly on the serial

development of algebraical functions. By means of this "calculus of

derived functions" Lagrange hoped to give to the solution of all

analytical problems the utmost "rigour of the demonstrations of the

ancients";[6] but it cannot be said that the attempt was successful. The

validity of his fundamental position was impaired by the absence of a

well-constituted theory of series; the notation employed was

inconvenient, and was abandoned by its inventor in the second edition of

his _Mécanique_; while his scruples as to the admission into analytical

investigations of the idea of limits or vanishing ratios have long since

been laid aside as idle. Nowhere, however, were the keenness and

clearness of his intellect more conspicuous than in this brilliant

effort, which, if it failed in its immediate object, was highly

effective in secondary results. His purely abstract mode of regarding

functions, apart from any mechanical or geometrical considerations, led

the way to a new and sharply characterized development of the higher

analysis in the hands of A. Cauchy, C. G. Jacobi, and others.[7] The

_Théorie des fonctions_ is divided into three parts, of which the first

explains the general doctrine of functions, the second deals with its

application to geometry, and the third with its bearings on mechanics.

On the establishment of the Institute, Lagrange was placed at the head

of the section of geometry; he was one of the first members of the

Bureau des Longitudes; and his name appeared in 1791 on the list of

foreign members of the Royal Society. On the annexation of Piedmont to

France in 1796, a touching compliment was paid to him in the person of

his aged father. By direction of Talleyrand, then minister for foreign

affairs, the French commissary repaired in state to the old man's

residence in Turin, to congratulate him on the merits of his son, whom

they declared "to have done honour to mankind by his genius, and whom

Piedmont was proud to have produced, and France to possess." Bonaparte,

who styled him "la haute pyramide des sciences mathématiques," loaded

him with personal favours and official distinctions. He became a

senator, a count of the empire, a grand officer of the legion of honour,

and just before his death received the grand cross of the order of

réunion.

The preparation of a new edition of his _Mécanique_ exhausted his

already falling powers. Frequent fainting fits gave presage of a speedy

end, and on the 8th of April 1813 he had a final interview with his

friends B. Lacépède, G. Monge and J. A. Chaptal. He spoke with the

utmost calm of his approaching death; "c'est une dernière fonction," he

said, "qui n'est ni pénible ni désagréable." He nevertheless looked

forward to a future meeting, when he promised to complete the

autobiographical details which weakness obliged him to interrupt. They

remained untold, for he died two days later on the 10th of April, and

was buried in the Pantheon, the funeral oration being pronounced by

Laplace and Lacépède.

Amongst the brilliant group of mathematicians whose magnanimous

rivalry contributed to accomplish the task of generalization and

deduction reserved for the 18th century, Lagrange occupies an eminent

place. It is indeed by no means easy to distinguish and apportion the

respective merits of the competitors. This is especially the case

between Lagrange and Euler on the one side, and between Lagrange and

Laplace on the other. The calculus of variations lay undeveloped in

Euler's mode of treating isoperimetrical problems. The fruitful

method, again, of the variation of elements was introduced by Euler,

but adopted and perfected by Lagrange, who first recognized its

supreme importance to the analytical investigation of the planetary

movements. Finally, of the grand series of researches by which the

stability of the solar system was ascertained, the glory must be

almost equally divided between Lagrange and Laplace. In analytical

invention, and mastery over the calculus, the Turin mathematician was

admittedly unrivalled. Laplace owned that he had despaired of

effecting the integration of the differential equations relative to

secular inequalities until Lagrange showed him the way. But Laplace

unquestionably surpassed his rival in practical sagacity and the

intuition of physical truth. Lagrange saw in the problems of nature so

many occasions for analytical triumphs; Laplace regarded analytical

triumphs as the means of solving the problems of nature. One mind

seemed the complement of the other; and both, united in honourable

rivalry, formed an instrument of unexampled perfection for the

investigation of the celestial machinery. What may be called

Lagrange's first period of research into planetary perturbations

extended from 1774 to 1784 (see ASTRONOMY: _History_). The notable

group of treatises communicated, 1781-1784, to the Berlin Academy was

designed, but did not prove to be his final contribution to the theory

of the planets. After an interval of twenty-four years the subject,

re-opened by S. D. Poisson in a paper read on the 20th of June 1808,

was once more attacked by Lagrange with all his pristine vigour and

fertility of invention. Resuming the inquiry into the invariability of

mean motions, Poisson carried the approximation, with Lagrange's

formulae, as far as the squares of the disturbing forces, hitherto

neglected, with the same result as to the stability of the system. He

had not attempted to include in his calculations the orbital

variations of the disturbing bodies; but Lagrange, by the happy

artifice of transferring the origin of coordinates from the centre of

the sun to the centre of gravity of the sun and planets, obtained a

simplification of the formulae, by which the same analysis was

rendered equally applicable to each of the planets severally. It

deserves to be recorded as one of the numerous coincidences of

discovery that Laplace, on being made acquainted by Lagrange with his

new method, produced analogous expressions, to which his independent

researches had led him. The final achievement of Lagrange in this

direction was the extension of the method of the variation of

arbitrary constants, successfully used by him in the investigation of

periodical as well as of secular inequalities, to any system whatever

of mutually interacting bodies.[8] "Not without astonishment," even

to himself, regard being had to the great generality of the

differential equations, he reached a result so wide as to include, as

a particular case, the solution of the planetary problem recently

obtained by him. He proposed to apply the same principles to the

calculation of the disturbances produced in the rotation of the

planets by external action on their equatorial protuberances, but was

anticipated by Poisson, who gave formulae for the variation of the

elements of rotation strictly corresponding with those found by

Lagrange for the variation of the elements of revolution. The revision

of the _Mécanique analytique_ was undertaken mainly for the purpose of

embodying in it these new methods and final results, but was

interrupted, when two-thirds completed, by the death of its author.

In the advancement of almost every branch of pure mathematics Lagrange

took a conspicuous part. The calculus of variations is indissolubly

associated with his name. In the theory of numbers he furnished

solutions of many of P. Fermat's theorems, and added some of his own.

In algebra he discovered the method of approximating to the real roots

of an equation by means of continued fractions, and imagined a general

process of solving algebraical equations of every degree. The method

indeed fails for equations of an order above the fourth, because it

then involves the solution of an equation of higher dimensions than

they proposed. Yet it possesses the great and characteristic merit of

generalizing the solutions of his predecessors, exhibiting them all as

modifications of one principle. To Lagrange, perhaps more than to any

other, the theory of differential equations is indebted for its

position as a science, rather than a collection of ingenious artifices

for the solution of particular problems. To the calculus of finite

differences he contributed the beautiful formula of interpolation

which bears his name; although substantially the same result seems to

have been previously obtained by Euler. But it was in the application

to mechanical questions of the instrument which he thus helped to form

that his singular merit lay. It was his just boast to have transformed

mechanics (defined by him as a "geometry of four dimensions") into a

branch of analysis, and to have exhibited the so-called mechanical

"principles" as simple results of the calculus. The method of

"generalized coordinates," as it is now called, by which he attained

this result, is the most brilliant achievement of the analytical

method. Instead of following the motion of each individual part of a

material system, he showed that, if we determine its configuration by

a sufficient number of variables, whose number is that of the degrees

of freedom to move (there being as many equations as the system has

degrees of freedom), the kinetic and potential energies of the system

can be expressed in terms of these, and the differential equations of

motion thence deduced by simple differentiation. Besides this most

important contribution to the general fabric of dynamical science, we

owe to Lagrange several minor theorems of great elegance,--among which

may be mentioned his theorem that the kinetic energy imparted by given

impulses to a material system under given constraints is a maximum. To

this entire branch of knowledge, in short, he successfully imparted

that character of generality and completeness towards which his

labours invariably tended.

His share in the gigantic task of verifying the Newtonian theory would

alone suffice to immortalize his name. His co-operation was indeed

more indispensable than at first sight appears. Much as was done _by_

him, what was done _through_ him was still more important. Some of his

brilliant rival's most conspicuous discoveries were implicitly

contained in his writings, and wanted but one step for completion. But

that one step, from the abstract to the concrete, was precisely that

which the character of Lagrange's mind indisposed him to make. As

notable instances may be mentioned Laplace's discoveries relating to

the velocity of sound and the secular acceleration of the moon, both

of which were led close up to by Lagrange's analytical demonstrations.

In the _Berlin Memoirs_ for 1778 and 1783 Lagrange gave the first

direct and theoretically perfect method of determining cometary

orbits. It has not indeed proved practically available; but his system

of calculating cometary perturbations by means of "mechanical

quadratures" has formed the starting-point of all subsequent

researches on the subject. His determination[9] of maximum and minimum

values for the slowly varying planetary eccentricities was the

earliest attempt to deal with the problem. Without a more accurate

knowledge of the masses of the planets than was then possessed a

satisfactory solution was impossible; but the upper limits assigned by

him agreed closely with those obtained later by U. J. J.

Leverrier.[10] As a mathematical writer Lagrange has perhaps never

been surpassed. His treatises are not only storehouses of ingenious

methods, but models of symmetrical form. The clearness, elegance and

originality of his mode of presentation give lucidity to what is

obscure, novelty to what is familiar, and simplicity to what is

abstruse. His genius was one of generalization and abstraction; and

the aspirations of the time towards unity and perfection received, by

his serene labours, an embodiment denied to them in the troubled world

of politics.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.--Lagrange's numerous scattered memoirs have been

collected and published in seven 4to volumes, under the title

_Oeuvres de Lagrange, publiées sous les soins de M. J. A. Serret_

(Paris, 1867-1877). The first, second and third sections of this

publication comprise respectively the papers communicated by him to

the Academies of Sciences of Turin, Berlin and Paris; the fourth

includes his miscellaneous contributions to other scientific

collections, together with his additions to Euler's _Algebra_, and his

_Leçons élémentaires_ at the École Normale in 1795. Delambre's notice

of his life, extracted from the _Mém. de l'Institut_, 1812, is

prefixed to the first volume. Besides the separate works already named

are _Résolution des équations numériques_ (1798, 2nd ed., 1808, 3rd

ed., 1826), and _Leçons sur le calcul des fonctions_ (1805, 2nd ed.,

1806), designed as a commentary and supplement to the first part of

the _Théorie des fonctions_. The first volume of the enlarged edition

of the _Mécanique_ appeared in 1811, the second, of which the revision

was completed by MM Prony and Binet, in 1815. A third edition, in 2

vols., 4to, was issued in 1853-1855, and a second of the _Théorie des

fonctions_ in 1813.

See also J. J. Virey and Potel, _Précis historique_ (1813); Th.

Thomson's _Annals of Philosophy_ (1813-1820), vols. ii. and iv.; H.

Suter, _Geschichte der math. Wiss._ (1873); E. Dühring, _Kritische

Gesch. der allgemeinen Principien der Mechanik_ (1877, 2nd ed.); A.

Gautier, _Essai historique sur le problème des trois corps_ (1817); R.

Grant, _History of Physical Astronomy_, &c.; Pietro Cossali, _Éloge_

(Padua, 1813); L. Martini, _Cenni biográfici_ (1840); _Moniteur du 26

Février_ (1814); W. Whewell, _Hist. of the Inductive Sciences_, ii.

_passim_; J. Clerk Maxwell, _Electricity and Magnetism_, ii. 184; A.

Berry, _Short Hist. of Astr._, p. 313; J. S. Bailly, _Hist. de l'astr.

moderne_, iii. 156, 185, 232; J. C. Poggendorff, _Biog. Lit.

Handwörterbuch_. (A. M. C.)