[1] Watters's _Yuan Chwang_, edited by Rhys Davids and Bushell, i.
210, 356, 271.
[2] Published with facsimile and translation and notes in the
_Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society_ for 1879-1880, vol. xii.
[3] This statement representing the substantial and historical
position, is retained, in spite of the crises of March 1910, when the
Dalai Lama took refuge from the Chinese in India, and of 1904, when
the British expedition occupied Lhasa and the Dalai Lama fled to
China (see TIBET).
LAMALOU-LES-BAINS, a watering-place of southern France in the department
of Hérault, 53½ m. W. of Montpellier by rail, in a valley of the
southern Cévennes. Pop. (1906) 720. The waters, which are both hot and
cold, are used in cases of rheumatism, sciatica, locomotor ataxy and
nervous maladies.
LAMA-MIAO, or DOLON-NOR, a city of the province of Chih-li, China, 150
m. N. of Peking, in a barren sandy plain watered by the Urtingol, a
tributary of the Shang-tu-ko. The town proper, almost exclusively
occupied by Chinese, is about a mile in length by half a mile in
breadth, has narrow and dirty streets, and contains a population of
about 26,000. Unlike the ordinary Chinese town of the same rank, it is
not walled. A busy trade is carried on between the Chinese and the
Mongolians, who bring in their cattle, sheep, camels, hides and wool to
barter for tea, tobacco, cotton and silk. At some distance from the
Chinese town lies the Mongolian quarter, with two groups of lama temples
and villages occupied by about 2300 priests. Dr Williamson (_Journeys in
North China_, 1870) described the chief temple as a huge oblong building
with an interior not unlike a Gothic church. Lama-miao is the seat of a
manufactory of bronze idols and other articles of ritual, which find
their way to all parts of Mongolia and Tibet. The craftsmen work in
their own houses.
LAMAR, LUCIUS QUINTUS CINCINNATUS (1825-1893), American statesman and
judge, was born at the old "Lamar Homestead," in Putnam county, Georgia,
on the 17th of September 1825. His father, Lucius Q. C. Lamar
(1797-1834), was an able lawyer, a judge of the superior court of
Georgia, and the compiler of the _Laws of Georgia from 1810 to 1819_
(1821). In 1845 young Lamar graduated from Emory College (Oxford, Ga.),
and in 1847 was admitted to the bar. In 1849 he removed to Oxford,
Mississippi, and in 1850-1852 was adjunct professor of mathematics in
the state university. In 1852 he removed to Covington, Ga., to practise
law, and in 1853 was elected a member of the Georgia House of
Representatives. In 1855 he returned to Mississippi, and two years later
became a member of the National House of Representatives, where he
served until December 1860, when he withdrew to become a candidate for
election to the "secession" convention of Mississippi. He was elected to
the convention, and drafted for it the Mississippi ordinance of
secession. In the summer of 1860 he had accepted an appointment to the
chair of ethics and metaphysics in the university of Mississippi, but,
having been appointed a lieutenant-colonel in the Confederate Army in
the spring of 1861, he resigned his professorship. The colonel of his
regiment (Nineteenth Mississippi) was killed early in the battle of
Williamsburg, on the 5th of May 1862, and the command then fell to
Lamar, but in October he resigned from the army. In November 1862 he was
appointed by President Jefferson Davis special commissioner of the
Confederacy to Russia; but he did not proceed farther than Paris, and
his mission was soon terminated by the refusal of the Confederate Senate
to confirm his appointment. In 1866 he was again appointed to the chair
of ethics and metaphysics in the university of Mississippi, and in the
next year was transferred to the chair of law, but in 1870, Republicans
having become trustees of the university upon the readmission of the
state into the Union, he resigned. From 1873 to 1877 he was again a
Democratic representative in Congress; from 1877 to 1885 he was a United
States senator; from 1885 to January 1888 he was secretary of the
interior; and from 1888 until his death at Macon, Ga., on the 23rd of
January 1893, he was an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the
United States. In Congress Lamar fought the silver and greenback craze
and argued forcibly against the protective tariff; in the department of
the interior he introduced various reforms; and on the Supreme Court
bench his dissenting opinion in the _Neagle Case_ (based upon a denial
that certain powers belonging to Congress, but not exercised, were by
implication vested in the department of justice) is famous. But he is
perhaps best known for the part he took after the Civil War in helping
to effect a reconciliation between the North and the South. During the
early secession movement he strove to arouse the white people of the
South from their indifference, declaring that secession alone could save
them from a doom similar to that of the former whites of San Domingo. He
probably never changed his convictions as to the righteousness of the
"lost cause"; but he accepted the result of the war as a final
settlement of the differences leading to it, and strove to restore the
South in the Union, and to effect the reunion of the nation in feeling
as well as in government. This is in part seen from such speeches as his
eulogy on Charles Sumner (27th of April 1874), his leadership in
reorganizing the Democratic party of his own state, and his counsels of
peace in the disputed presidential election of 1876.
See Edward Mayes, _Lucius Q. C. Lamar: His Life, Times and Speeches_
(Nashville, Tenn., 1896).
LAMARCK, JEAN BAPTISTE PIERRE ANTOINE DE MONET, CHEVALIER DE
(1744-1829), French naturalist, was born on the 1st of August 1744, at
Bazantin, a village of Picardy. He was an eleventh child; and his
father, lord of the manor and of old family, but of limited means,
having placed three sons in the army, destined this one for the church,
and sent him to the Jesuits at Amiens, where he continued till his
father's death. After this he would remain with the Jesuits no longer,
and, not yet seventeen years of age, started for the seat of war at
Bergen-op-Zoom, before which place one of his brothers had already been
killed. Mounted on an old horse, with a boy from the village as
attendant, and furnished by a lady with a letter of introduction to a
colonel, he reached his destination on the evening before a battle. Next
morning the colonel found that the new and very diminutive volunteer had
posted himself in the front rank of a body of grenadiers, and could not
be induced to quit the position. In the battle, the company which he had
joined became exposed to the fire of the enemy's artillery, and in the
confusion of retreat was forgotten. All the officers and subalterns were
killed, and not more than fourteen men were left, when the oldest
grenadiers seeing there were no more French in sight proposed to the
young volunteer so soon become commandant to withdraw his men. This he
refused to do without orders. These at last arrived; and for his bravery
he was made an officer on the spot, and soon after was named to a
lieutenancy.
After the peace, the regiment was sent to Monaco. There one of his
comrades playfully lifted him by the head, and to this it was imputed
that he was seized with disease of the glands of the neck, so severe as
to put a stop to his military career. He went to Paris and began the
study of medicine, supporting himself by working in a banker's office.
He early became interested in meteorology and in physical and chemical
speculations of a chimerical kind, but happily threw his main strength
into botany, and in 1778 published his _Flore française_, a work in
which by a dichotomous system of contrasting characters he enabled the
student with facility to determine species. This work, which went
through several editions and long kept the field, gained for its author
immediate popularity as well as admission to the Academy of Sciences.
In 1781 and 1782, under the title of botanist to the king, an
appointment obtained for him by Buffon, whose son accompanied him, he
travelled through various countries of Europe, extending his knowledge
of natural history; and on his return he began those elaborate
contributions to botany on which his reputation in that science
principally rests, namely, the _Dictionnaire de Botanique_ and the
_Illustrations de Genres_, voluminous works contributed to the
_Encyclopédie Méthodique_ (1785). In 1793, in consequence of changes in
the organization of the natural history department at the Jardin du Roi,
where he had held a botanical appointment since 1788, Lamarck was
presented to a zoological chair, and called on to lecture on the
_Insecta_ and _Vermes_ of Linnaeus, the animals for which he introduced
the term _Invertebrata_. Thus driven, comparatively late in life, to
devote his principal attention to zoology instead of botany, he had the
misfortune soon after to suffer from impaired vision; and the malady
resulted subsequently in total blindness. Yet his greatest zoological
work, the _Histoire naturelle des animaux sans vertèbres_, was published
from 1815 to 1822, with the assistance, in the last two volumes, of his
eldest daughter and of P. A. Latreille (1762-1833). A volume of plates
of the fossil shells of the neighbourhood of Paris was collected in 1823
from his memoirs in the _Annales des Muséums_. He died on the 18th of
December 1829.
The character of Lamarck as a naturalist is remarkable alike for its
excellences and its defects. His excellences were width of scope,
fertility of ideas and a pre-eminent faculty of precise description,
arising not only from a singularly terse style, but from a clear insight
into both the distinctive features and the resemblances of forms. That
part of his zoological work which constitutes his solid claim to the
highest honour as a zoologist is to be found in his extensive and
detailed labours in the departments of living and fossil _Invertebrata_.
His endeavours at classification of the great groups were necessarily
defective on account of the imperfect knowledge possessed in his time in
regard to many of them, e.g. echinoderms, ascidians and intestinal
worms; yet they are not without interest, particularly on account of the
comprehensive attempt to unite in one great division as _Articulata_ all
those groups that appeared to present a segmented construction.
Moreover, Lamarck was the first to distinguish vertebrate from
invertebrate animals by the presence of a vertebral column, and among
the Invertebrata to found the groups _Crustacea_, _Arachnida_ and
_Annelida_. In 1785 (_Hist. del' Acad._) he evinced his appreciation of
the necessity of natural orders in botany by an attempt at the
classification of plants, interesting, though crude and falling
immeasurably short of the system which grew in the hands of his intimate
friend A. L. de Jussieu. The problem of taxonomy has never been put more
philosophically than he subsequently put it in his _Animaux sans
vertèbres_: "What arrangement must be given to the general distribution
of animals to make it conformable to the order of nature in the
production of these beings?"
The most prominent defect in Lamarck must be admitted to have been want
of control in speculation. Doubtless the speculative tendency furnished
a powerful incentive to work, but it outran the legitimate deductions
from observation, and led him into the production of volumes of
worthless chemistry without experimental basis, as well as into spending
much time on fruitless meteorological predictions. His _Annuaires
Météorologiques_ were published yearly from 1800 to 1810, and were not
discontinued until after an unnecessarily public and brutal tirade from
Napoleon, administered on the occasion of being presented with one of
his works on natural history.
To the general reader the name of Lamarck is chiefly interesting on
account of his theory of the origin of life and of the diversities of
animal forms. The idea, which appears to have been favoured by Buffon
before him, that species were not through all time unalterable, and that
the more complex might have been developed from pre-existent simpler
forms, became with Lamarck a belief or, as he imagined, a demonstration.
Spontaneous generation, he considered, might be easily conceived as
resulting from such agencies as heat and electricity causing in small
gelatinous bodies an utricular structure, and inducing a "singular
tension," a kind of "éréthisme" or "orgasme"; and, having thus accounted
for the first appearance of life, he explained the whole organization of
animals and formation of different organs by four laws (introduction to
his _Histoire naturelle des animaux sans vertèbres_, 1815):--
1. "Life by its proper forces tends continually to increase the volume
of every body possessing it, and to enlarge its parts, up to a limit
which it brings about.
2. "The production of a new organ in an animal body results from the
supervention of a new want (_besoin_) continuing to make itself felt,
and a new movement which this want gives birth to and encourages.
3. "The development of organs and their force of action are constantly
in ratio to the employment of these organs.
4. "All which has been acquired, laid down, or changed in the
organization of individuals in the course of their life is conserved
by generation and transmitted to the new individuals which proceed
from those which have undergone those changes."
The second law is often referred to as Lamarck's hypothesis of the
evolution of organs in animals by appetence or longing, although he does
not teach that the animal's desires affect its conformation directly,
but that altered wants lead to altered habits, which result in the
formation of new organs as well as in modification, growth or dwindling
of those previously existing. Thus, he suggests that, ruminants being
pursued by carnivora, their legs have grown slender; and, their legs
being only fit for support, while their jaws are weak, they have made
attack with the crown of the head, and the determination of fluids
thither has led to the growth of horns. So also the stretching of the
giraffe's neck to reach the foliage he supposes to have led to its
elongation; and the kangaroo, sitting upright to support the young in
its pouch, he imagines to have had its fore-limbs dwarfed by disuse, and
its hind legs and tail exaggerated by using them in leaping. The fourth
law expresses the inheritance of acquired characters, which is denied by
August Weismann and his followers. For a more detailed account of
Lamarck's place in the history of the doctrine of evolution, see
EVOLUTION.
LA MARGHERITA, CLEMENTE SOLARO, COUNT DEL (1792-1869), Piedmontese
statesman, was born at Mondovi. He studied law at Siena and Turin, but
Piedmont was at that time under French domination, and being devoted to
the house of Savoy he refused to take his degree, as this proceeding
would have obliged him to recognize the authority of the usurper; after
the restoration of the Sardinian kingdom, however, he graduated. In 1816
he entered the diplomatic service. Later he returned to Turin, and
succeeded in gaining the confidence and esteem of King Charles Albert,
who in 1835 appointed him minister of foreign affairs. A fervent Roman
Catholic, devoted to the pope and to the Jesuits, friendly to Austria
and firmly attached to the principles of autocracy, he strongly opposed
every attempt at political innovation, and was in consequence bitterly
hated by the liberals. When the popular agitation in favour of
constitutional reform first broke out the king felt obliged to dispense
with La Margherita's services, although he had conducted public affairs
with considerable ability and absolute loyalty, even upholding the
dignity of the kingdom in the face of the arrogant attitude of the
cabinet of Vienna. He expounded his political creed and his policy as
minister to Charles Albert (from February 1835 to October 1847) in his
_Memorandum storico-politico_, published in 1851, a document of great
interest for the study of the conditions of Piedmont and Italy at that
time. In 1853 he was elected deputy for San Quirico, but he persisted in
regarding his mandate as derived from the royal authority rather than as
an emanation of the popular will. As leader of the Clerical Right in the
parliament he strongly opposed Cavour's policy, which was eventually to
lead to Italian unity, and on the establishment of the kingdom of Italy
he retired from public life.
LA MARMORA, ALFONSO FERRERO (1804-1878), Italian general and statesman,
was born at Turin on the 18th of November 1804. He entered the Sardinian
army in 1823, and was a captain in March 1848, when he gained
distinction and the rank of major at the siege of Peschiera. On the 5th
of August 1848 he liberated Charles Albert, king of Sardinia, from the
Milan revolutionaries, and in October was promoted general and appointed
minister of war. After suppressing the revolt of Genoa in 1849, he again
assumed in November 1849 the portfolio of war, which, save during the
period of his command of the Crimean expedition, he retained until 1859.
Having reconstructed the Piedmontese army, he took part in the war of
1859 against Austria; and in July of that year succeeded Cavour in the
premiership. In 1860 he was sent to Berlin and St Petersburg to arrange
for the recognition of the kingdom of Italy, and subsequently he held
the offices of governor of Milan and royal lieutenant at Naples, until,
in September 1864, he succeeded Minghetti as premier. In this capacity
he modified the scope of the September Convention by a note in which he
claimed for Italy full freedom of action in respect of national
aspirations to the possession of Rome, a document of which Visconti
Venosta afterwards took advantage when justifying the Italian occupation
of Rome in 1870. In April 1866 La Marmora concluded an alliance with
Prussia against Austria, and, on the outbreak of war in June, took
command of an army corps, but was defeated at Custozza on the 23rd of
June. Accused of treason by his fellow-countrymen, and of duplicity by
the Prussians, he eventually published in defence of his tactics (1873)
a series of documents entitled _Un po' più di luce sugli eventi dell'
anno_ 1866 (More light on the events of 1866) a step which caused
irritation in Germany, and exposed him to the charge of having violated
state secrets. Meanwhile he had been sent to Paris in 1867 to oppose the
French expedition to Rome, and in 1870, after the occupation of Rome by
the Italians, had been appointed lieutenant-royal of the new capital. He
died at Florence on the 5th of January 1878. La Marmora's writings
include _Un episodio del risorgimento italiano_ (Florence, 1875); and _I
segreti di stato nel governo constituzionale_ (Florence, 1877).
See G. Massani, _Il generale Alfonso La Marmora_ (Milan, 1880).
LAMARTINE, ALPHONSE MARIE LOUIS DE PRAT DE (1790-1869), French poet,
historian and statesman, was born at Mâcon on the 21st of October 1790.
The order of his surnames is a controversial matter, and they are
sometimes reversed. The family of Lamartine was good, and the title of
Prat was taken from an estate in Franche Comté. His father was
imprisoned during the Terror, and only released owing to the events of
the 9th Thermidor. Lamartine's early education was received from his
mother. He was sent to school at Lyons in 1805, but not being happy
there was transferred to the care of the Pères de la Foi at Belley,
where he remained until 1809. For some time afterwards he lived at home,
reading romantic and poetical literature, but in 1811 he set out for
Italy, where he seems to have sojourned nearly two years. His family
having been steady royalists, he entered the Gardes du corps at the
return of the Bourbons, and during the Hundred Days he sought refuge
first in Switzerland and then at Aix-en-Savoie, where he fell in love,
with abundant results of the poetical kind. After Waterloo he returned
to Paris. In 1818-1819 he revisited Switzerland, Savoy and Italy, the
death of his beloved affording him new subjects for verse. After some
difficulties he had his first book, the _Méditations, poétiques et
religieuses_, published (1820). It was exceedingly popular, and helped
him to make a position. He had left the army for some time; he now
entered the diplomatic service and was appointed secretary to the
embassy at Naples. On his way to his post he married, in 1823, at Geneva
a young English lady, Marianne Birch, who had both money and beauty, and
in the same year his _Nouvelles méditations poétiques_ appeared.
In 1824 he was transferred to Florence, where he remained five years.
His _Last Canto of Childe Harold_ appeared in 1825, and he had to fight
a duel (in which he was wounded) with an Italian officer, Colonel Pepe,
in consequence of a phrase in it. Charles X., on whose coronation he
wrote a poem, gave him the order of the Legion of Honour. The _Harmonies
poétiques et religieuses_ appeared in 1829, when he had left Florence.
Having refused an appointment in Paris under the Polignac ministry, he
went on a special mission to Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg. In the same
year he was elected to the Academy. Lamartine was in Switzerland, not in
Paris, at the time of the Revolution of July, and, though he put forth a
pamphlet on "Rational Policy," he did not at that crisis take any active
part in politics, refusing, however, to continue his diplomatic services
under the new government. In 1832 he set out with his wife and daughter
for Palestine, having been unsuccessful in his candidature for a seat in
the chamber. His daughter Julia died at Beirut, and before long he
received the news of his election by a constituency (Bergues) in the
department of the Nord. He returned through Turkey and Germany, and made
his first speech shortly after the beginning of 1834. Thereafter he
spoke constantly, and acquired considerable reputation as an
orator,--bringing out, moreover, many books in prose and verse. His
Eastern travels (_Voyage en Orient_) appeared in 1835, his _Chute d'un
ange_ and _Jocelyn_ in 1837, and his _Recueillements_, the last
remarkable volume of his poetry, in 1839. As the reign of Louis Philippe
went on, Lamartine, who had previously been a liberal royalist,
something after the fashion of Chateaubriand, became more and more
democratic in his opinions. He set about his greatest prose work, the
_Histoire des Girondins_, which at first appeared periodically, and was
published as a whole in 1847. Like many other French histories, it was a
pamphlet as well as a chronicle, and the subjects of Lamartine's pen
became his models in politics.
At the revolution of February Lamartine was one of the first to declare
for a provisional government, and became a member of it, with the post
of minister for foreign affairs. He was elected for the new constituent
assembly in ten different departments, and was chosen one of the five
members of the Executive Committee. For a few months indeed Lamartine,
from being a distinguished man of letters, an official of inferior rank
in diplomacy, and an eloquent but unpractical speaker in parliament,
became one of the foremost men in Europe. His inexperience in the
routine work of government, the utterly unpractical nature of his
colleagues, and the turbulence of the Parisian mob, proved fatal to his
chances. He gave some proofs of statesmanlike ability, and his eloquence
was repeatedly called into requisition to pacify the Parisians. But no
one can permanently carry on the government of a great country by
speeches from the balcony of a house in the capital, and Lamartine found
himself in a dilemma. So long as he held aloof from Ledru-Rollin and the
more radical of his colleagues, the disunion resulting weakened the
government; as soon as he effected an approximation to them the middle
classes fell off from him. The quelling of the insurrection of the 15th
of May was his last successful act. A month later the renewal of active
disturbances brought on the fighting of June, and Lamartine's influence
was extinguished in favour of Cavaignac. Moreover, his chance of renewed
political pre-eminence was gone. He had been tried and found wanting,
having neither the virtues nor the vices of his situation. In January
1849, though he was nominated for the presidency, only a few thousand
votes were given to him, and three months later he was not even elected
to the Legislative Assembly.
The remaining story of Lamartine's life is somewhat melancholy. He had
never been a rich man, nor had he been a saving one, and during his
period of popularity and office he had incurred great expenses. He now
set to work to repair his fortune by unremitting literary labour. He
brought out in the _Presse_ (1849) a series of _Confidences_, and
somewhat later a kind of autobiography, entitled _Raphael_. He wrote
several historical works of more or less importance, the _History of the
Revolution of 1848_, _The History of the Restoration_, _The History of
Turkey_, _The History of Russia_, besides a large number of small
biographical and miscellaneous works. In 1858 a subscription was opened
for his benefit. Two years afterwards, following the example of
Chateaubriand, he supervised an elaborate edition of his own works in
forty-one volumes. This occupied five years, and while he was engaged on
it his wife died (1863). He was now over seventy; his powers had
deserted him, and even if they had not the public taste had entirely
changed. His efforts had not succeeded in placing him in a position of
independence; and at last, in 1867, the government of the Empire (from
which he had perforce stood aloof, though he never considered it
necessary to adopt the active protesting attitude of Edgar Quinet and
Victor Hugo) came to his assistance, a vote of £20,000 being proposed in
April of that year for his benefit by Émile Ollivier. This was
creditable to both parties, for Lamartine, both as a distinguished man
of letters and as a past servant of the state, had every claim to the
bounty of his country. But he was reproached for accepting it by the
extreme republicans and irreconcilables. He did not enjoy it long, dying
on the 28th of February 1869.
As a statesman Lamartine was placed during his brief tenure of office
in a position from which it would have been almost impossible for any
man, who was not prepared and able to play the dictator, to emerge
with credit. At no time in history were unpractical crotchets so rife
in the heads of men as in 1848. But Lamartine could hardly have guided
the ship of state safely even in much calmer weather. He was amiable
and even estimable, the chief fault of his character being vanity and
an incurable tendency towards theatrical effect, which makes his
travels, memoirs and other personal records as well as his historical
works radically untrustworthy. Nor does it appear that he had any
settled political ideas. He did good by moderating the revolutionary
and destructive ardour of the Parisian populace in 1848; but he had
been perhaps more responsible than any other single person for
bringing about the events of that year by the vague and frothy
republican declamation of his _Histoire des Girondins_.
More must be said of his literary position. Lamartine had the
advantage of coming at a time when the literary field, at least in the
departments of belles lettres, was almost empty. The feeble school of
descriptive writers, epic poets of the extreme decadence, fabulists
and miscellaneous verse-makers, which the Empire had nourished could
satisfy no one. Madame de Staël was dead; Chateaubriand, though alive,
was something of a classic, and had not effected a full revolution.
Lamartine did not himself go the complete length of the Romantic
revival, but he went far in that direction. He availed himself of the
reviving interest in legitimism and Catholicism which was represented
by Bonald and Joseph de Maistre, of the nature worship of Rousseau and
Bernardin de Saint Pierre, of the sentimentalism of Madame de Staël,
of the medievalism and the romance of Chateaubriand and Scott, of the
_maladie du siècle_ of Chateaubriand and Byron. Perhaps if his matter
be very closely analysed it will be found that he added hardly
anything of his own. But if the parts of the mixture were like other
things the mixture itself was not. It seemed indeed to the immediate
generation so original that tradition has it that the _Méditations_
were refused by a publisher because they were in none of the accepted
styles. They appeared when Lamartine was nearly thirty years old. The
best of them, and the best thing that Lamartine ever did, is the
famous _Lac_, describing his return to the little mountain tarn of Le
Bourget after the death of his mistress, with whom he had visited it
in other days. The verse is exquisitely harmonious, the sentiments
conventional but refined and delicate, the imagery well chosen and
gracefully expressed. There is an unquestionable want of vigour, but
to readers of that day the want of vigour was entirely compensated by
the presence of freshness and grace. Lamartine's chief misfortune in
poetry was not only that his note was a somewhat weak one, but that he
could strike but one. The four volumes of the _Méditations_, the
_Harmonies_ and the _Recueillements_, which contained the prime of his
verse, are perhaps the most monotonous reading to be found anywhere in
work of equal bulk by a poet of equal talent. They contain nothing but
meditative lyrical pieces, almost any one of which is typical of the
whole, though there is considerable variation of merit. The two
narrative poems which succeeded the early lyrics, _Jocelyn_ and the
_Chute d'un ange_, were, according to Lamartine's original plan, parts
of a vast "Epic of the Ages," some further fragments of which survive.
_Jocelyn_ had at one time more popularity in England than most French
verse. _La Chute d'un ange_, in which the Byronic influence is more
obvious than in any other of Lamartine's works, and in which some have
also seen that of Alfred de Vigny, is more ambitious in theme, and
less regulated by scrupulous conditions of delicacy in handling, than
most of its author's poetry. It does, however, little more than prove
that such audacities were not for him.
As a prose writer Lamartine was very fertile. His characteristics in
his prose fiction and descriptive work are not very different from
those of his poetry. He is always and everywhere sentimental, though
very frequently, as in his shorter prose tales (_The Stone Mason of
Saint-Point_, _Graziella_, &c.), he is graceful as well as
sentimental. In his histories the effect is worse. It has been hinted
that Lamartine's personal narratives are doubtfully trustworthy; with
regard to his Eastern travels some of the episodes were stigmatized as
mere inventions. In his histories proper the special motive for
embellishment disappears, but the habit of inaccuracy remains. As an
historian he belongs exclusively to the rhetorical school as
distinguished from the philosophical on the one hand and the
documentary on the other.
It is not surprising when these characteristics of Lamartine's work
are appreciated to find that his fame declined with singular rapidity
in France. As a poet he had lost his reputation many years before he
died. He was entirely eclipsed by the brilliant and vigorous school
who succeeded him with Victor Hugo at their head. His power of
initiative in poetry was very small, and the range of poetic ground
which he could cover strictly limited. He could only carry the
picturesque sentimentalism of Rousseau, Bernardin de Saint Pierre and
Chateaubriand a little farther, and clothe it in language and verse a
little less antiquated than that of Chênedollé and Millevoye. He has
been said to be a French Cowper, and the parallel holds good in
respect of versification and of his relative position to the more
daringly innovating school that followed, though not in respect of
individual peculiarities. Lamartine in short occupied a kind of
half-way house between the 18th century and the Romantic movement, and
he never got any farther. When Matthew Arnold questioned his
importance in conversation with Sainte-Beuve, the answer was, "He is
important to _us_," and it was a true answer; but the limitation is
obvious. In more recent years, however, efforts have been made by
Brunetière and others to remove it. The usual revolution of critical
as of other taste, the oblivion of personal and political
unpopularity, and above all the reaction against Hugo and the extreme
Romantics, have been the main agents in this. Lamartine has been
extolled as a pattern of combined passion and restraint, as a model of
nobility of sentiment, and as a harmonizer of pure French classicism
in taste and expression with much, if not all, the better part of
Romanticism itself. These oscillations of opinion are frequent, if not
universal, and it is only after more than one or two swings that the
pendulum remains at the perpendicular. The above remarks are an
attempt to correct extravagance in either direction. But it is
difficult to believe that Lamartine can ever permanently take rank
among the first order of poets.
The edition mentioned is the most complete one of Lamartine, but there
are many issues of his separate works. After his death some poems and
_Mémoires inédits_ of his youth were published, and also two volumes
of correspondence, while in 1893 Mlle V. de Lamartine added a volume
of _Lettres_ to him. The change of views above referred to may be
studied in the detached articles of MM. Brunetière, Faguet, Lemaître,
&c., and in the more substantive work of Ch. de Pomairols, _Lamartine_
(1889); E. Deschanel, _Lamartine_ (1893); E. Zyrowski, _Lamartine_
(1896); and perhaps best of all in the Preface to Emile Legouis'
Clarendon Press edition of _Jocelyn_ (1906), where a vigorous effort
is made to combat the idea of Lamartine's sentimentality and
femininity as a poet. (G. Sa.)
LAMB, CHARLES (1775-1834), English essayist and critic, was born in
Crown Office Row, Inner Temple, London, on the 10th of February 1775.
His father, John Lamb, a Lincolnshire man, who filled the situation of
clerk and servant-companion to Samuel Salt, a member of parliament and
one of the benchers of the Inner Temple, was successful in obtaining for
Charles, the youngest of three surviving children, a presentation to
Christ's Hospital, where the boy remained from his eighth to his
fifteenth year (1782-1789). Here he had for a schoolfellow Samuel Taylor
Coleridge, his senior by rather more than two years, and a close and
tender friendship began which lasted for the rest of the lives of both.
When the time came for leaving school, where he had learned some Greek
and acquired considerable facility in Latin composition, Lamb, after a
brief stay at home (probably spent, as his school holidays had often
been, over old English authors in Salt's library) was condemned to the
labours of the desk--"an inconquerable impediment" in his speech
disqualifying him for the clerical profession, which, as the school
exhibitions were usually only given to those preparing for the church,
thus deprived him of the only means by which he could have obtained a
university education. For a short time he was in the office of Joseph
Paice, a London merchant, and then for twenty-three weeks, until the 8th
of February 1792, he held a small post in the Examiner's Office of the
South Sea House, where his brother John was established, a period which,
although his age was but sixteen, was to provide him nearly thirty years
later with materials for the first of the _Essays of Elia_. On the 5th
of April 1792, he entered the Accountant's Office in the East India
House, where during the next three and thirty years the hundred official
folios of what he used to call his true "works" were produced.
Of the years 1792-1795 we know little. At the end of 1794 he saw much of
Coleridge and joined him in writing sonnets in the _Morning Post_,
addressed to eminent persons: early in 1795 he met Southey and was much
in the company of James White, whom he probably helped in the
composition of the _Original Letters of Sir John Falstaff_; and at the
end of the year for a short time he became so unhinged mentally as to
necessitate confinement in an asylum. The cause, it is probable, was an
unsuccessful love affair with Ann Simmons, the Hertfordshire maiden to
whom his first sonnets are addressed, whom he would have seen when on
his visits as a youth to Blakesware House, near Widford, the country
home of the Plumer family, of which Lamb's grandmother, Mary Field, was
for many years, until her death in 1792, sole custodian.
It was in the late summer of 1796 that a dreadful calamity came upon the
Lambs, which seemed to blight all Lamb's prospects in the very morning
of life. On the 22nd of September his sister Mary, "worn down to a state
of extreme nervous misery by attention to needlework by day and to her
mother at night," was suddenly seized with acute mania, in which she
stabbed her mother to the heart. The calm self-mastery and loving
self-renunciation which Charles Lamb, by constitution excitable, nervous
and self-mistrustful, displayed at this crisis in his own history and in
that of those nearest him, will ever give him an imperishable claim to
the reverence and affection of all who are capable of appreciating the
heroisms of common life. With the help of friends he succeeded in
obtaining his sister's release from the lifelong restraint to which she
would otherwise have been doomed, on the express condition that he
himself should undertake the responsibility for her safe keeping. It
proved no light charge: for though no one was capable of affording a
more intelligent or affectionate companionship than Mary Lamb during her
periods of health, there was ever present the apprehension of the
recurrence of her malady; and when from time to time the premonitory
symptoms had become unmistakable, there was no alternative but her
removal, which took place in quietness and tears. How deeply the whole
course of Lamb's domestic life must have been affected by his singular
loyalty as a brother needs not to be pointed out.
Lamb's first appearance as an author was made in the year of the great
tragedy of his life (1796), when there were published in the volume of
_Poems on Various Subjects_ by Coleridge four sonnets by "Mr Charles
Lamb of the India House." In the following year he contributed, with
Charles Lloyd, a pupil of Coleridge, some pieces in blank verse to the
second edition of Coleridge's _Poems_. In 1797 his short summer holiday
was spent with Coleridge at Nether Stowey, where he met the Wordsworths,
William and Dorothy, and established a friendship with both which only
his own death terminated. In 1798, under the influence of Henry
Mackenzie's novel _Julie de Roubigné_, he published a short and pathetic
prose tale entitled _Rosamund Gray_, in which it is possible to trace
beneath disguised conditions references to the misfortunes of the
author's own family, and many personal touches; and in the same year he
joined Lloyd in a volume of _Blank Verse_, to which Lamb contributed
poems occasioned by the death of his mother and his aunt Sarah Lamb,
among them being his best-known lyric, "The Old Familiar Faces." In this
year, 1798, he achieved the unexpected publicity of an attack by the
_Anti-Jacobin_ upon him as an associate of Coleridge and Southey (to
whose _Annual Anthology_ he had contributed) in their Jacobin
machinations. In 1799, on the death of her father, Mary Lamb came to
live again with her brother, their home then being in Pentonville; but
it was not until 1800 that they really settled together, their first
independent joint home being at Mitre Court Buildings in the Temple,
where they lived until 1809. At the end of 1801, or beginning of 1802,
appeared Lamb's first play _John Woodvil_, on which he set great store,
a slight dramatic piece written in the style of the earlier Elizabethan
period and containing some genuine poetry and happy delineation of the
gentler emotions, but as a whole deficient in plot, vigour and
character; it was held up to ridicule by the _Edinburgh Review_ as a
specimen of the rudest condition of the drama, a work by "a man of the
age of Thespis." The dramatic spirit, however, was not thus easily
quenched in Lamb, and his next effort was a farce, _Mr H----_, the point
of which lay in the hero's anxiety to conceal his name "Hogsflesh"; but
it did not survive the first night of its appearance at Drury Lane, in
December 1806. Its author bore the failure with rare equanimity and good
humour--even to joining in the hissing--and soon struck into new and
more successful fields of literary exertion. Before, however, passing to
these it should be mentioned that he made various efforts to earn money
by journalism, partly by humorous articles, partly as dramatic critic,
but chiefly as a contributor of sarcastic or funny paragraphs, "sparing
neither man nor woman," in the _Morning Post_, principally in 1803.
In 1807 appeared _Tales founded on the Plays of Shakespeare_, written by
Charles and Mary Lamb, in which Charles was responsible for the
tragedies and Mary for the comedies; and in 1808, _Specimens of English
Dramatic Poets who lived about the time of Shakespeare_, with short but
felicitous critical notes. It was this work which laid the foundation of
Lamb's reputation as a critic, for it was filled with imaginative
understanding of the old playwrights, and a warm, discerning and novel
appreciation of their great merits. In the same year, 1808, Mary Lamb,
assisted by her brother, published _Poetry for Children_, and a
collection of short school-girl tales under the title _Mrs Leicester's
School_; and to the same date belongs _The Adventures of Ulysses_,
designed by Lamb as a companion to _The Adventures of Telemachus_. In
1810 began to appear Leigh Hunt's quarterly periodical, _The Reflector_,
in which Lamb published much (including the fine essays on the tragedies
of Shakespeare and on Hogarth) that subsequently appeared in the first
collective edition of his _Works_, which he put forth in 1818.
Between 1811, when _The Reflector_ ceased, and 1820, he wrote almost
nothing. In these years we may imagine him at his most social period,
playing much whist and entertaining his friends on Wednesday or Thursday
nights; meanwhile gathering that reputation as a conversationalist or
inspirer of conversation in others, which Hazlitt, who was at one time
one of Lamb's closest friends, has done so much to celebrate. When in
1818 appeared the _Works_ in two volumes, it may be that Lamb considered
his literary career over. Before coming to 1820, and an event which was
in reality to be the beginning of that career as it is generally
known--the establishment of the _London Magazine_--it should be recorded
that in the summer of 1819 Lamb, with his sister's full consent,
proposed marriage to Fanny Kelly, the actress, who was then in her
thirtieth year. Miss Kelly could not accept, giving as one reason her
devotion to her mother. Lamb bore the rebuff with characteristic humour
and fortitude.
The establishment of the _London Magazine_ in 1820 stimulated Lamb to
the production of a series of new essays (the _Essays of Elia_) which
may be said to form the chief corner-stone in the small but classic
temple of his fame. The first of these, as it fell out, was a
description of the old South Sea House, with which Lamb happened to have
associated the name of a "gay light-hearted foreigner" called Elia, who
was a clerk in the days of his service there. The pseudonym adopted on
this occasion was retained for the subsequent contributions, which
appeared collectively in a volume of essays called _Elia_, in 1823.
After a career of five years the _London Magazine_ came to an end; and
about the same period Lamb's long connexion with the India House
terminated, a pension of £450 (£441 net) having been assigned to him.
The increased leisure, however, for which he had long sighed, did not
prove favourable to literary production, which henceforth was limited to
a few trifling contributions to the _New Monthly_ and other serials, and
the excavation of gems from the mass of dramatic literature bequeathed
to the British Museum by David Garrick, which Lamb laboriously read
through in 1827, an occupation which supplied him for a time with the
regular hours of work he missed so much. The malady of his sister, which
continued to increase with ever shortening intervals of relief, broke in
painfully on his lettered ease and comfort; and it is unfortunately
impossible to ignore the deteriorating effects of an over-free
indulgence in the use of alcohol, and, in early life, tobacco, on a
temperament such as his. His removal on account of his sister to the
quiet of the country at Enfield, by tending to withdraw him from the
stimulating society of the large circle of literary friends who had
helped to make his weekly or monthly "at homes" so remarkable, doubtless
also tended to intensify his listlessness and helplessness. One of the
brightest elements in the closing years of his life was the friendship
and companionship of Emma Isola, whom he and his sister had adopted, and
whose marriage in 1833 to Edward Moxon, the publisher, though a source
of unselfish joy to Lamb, left him more than ever alone. While living at
Edmonton, whither he had moved in 1833 so that his sister might have the
continual care of Mr and Mrs Walden, who were accustomed to patients of
weak intellect, Lamb was overtaken by an attack of erysipelas brought on
by an accidental fall as he was walking on the London road. After a few
days' illness he died on the 27th of December, 1834. The sudden death of
one so widely known, admired and beloved, fell on the public as well as
on his own attached circle with all the poignancy of a personal calamity
and a private grief. His memory wanted no tribute that affection could
bestow, and Wordsworth commemorated in simple and solemn verse the
genius, virtues and fraternal devotion of his early friend.
Charles Lamb is entitled to a place as an essayist beside Montaigne, Sir
Thomas Browne, Steele and Addison. He unites many of the characteristics
of each of these writers--refined and exquisite humour, a genuine and
cordial vein of pleasantry and heart-touching pathos. His fancy is
distinguished by great delicacy and tenderness; and even his conceits
are imbued with human feeling and passion. He had an extreme and almost
exclusive partiality for earlier prose writers, particularly for Fuller,
Browne and Burton, as well as for the dramatists of Shakespeare's time;
and the care with which he studied them is apparent in all he ever
wrote. It shines out conspicuously in his style, which has an antique
air and is redolent of the peculiarities of the 17th century. Its
quaintness has subjected the author to the charge of affectation, but
there is nothing really affected in his writings. His style is not so
much an imitation as a reflexion of the older writers; for in spirit he
made himself their contemporary. A confirmed habit of studying them in
preference to modern literature had made something of their style
natural to him; and long experience had rendered it not only easy and
familiar but habitual. It was not a masquerade dress he wore, but the
costume which showed the man to most advantage. With thought and meaning
often profound, though clothed in simple language, every sentence of his
essays is pregnant.
He played a considerable part in reviving the dramatic writers of the
Shakesperian age; for he preceded Gifford and others in wiping the dust
of ages from their works. In his brief comments on each specimen he
displays exquisite powers of discrimination: his discernment of the true
meaning of his author is almost infallible. His work was a departure in
criticism. Former editors had supplied textual criticism and alternative
readings: Lamb's object was to show how our ancestors felt when they
placed themselves by the power of imagination in trying situations, in
the conflicts of duty or passion or the strife of contending duties;
what sorts of loves and enmities theirs were.
As a poet Lamb is not entitled to so high a place as that which can be
claimed for him as essayist and critic. His dependence on Elizabethan
models is here also manifest, but in such a way as to bring into all the
greater prominence his native deficiency in "the accomplishment of
verse." Yet it is impossible, once having read, ever to forget the
tenderness and grace of such poems as "Hester," "The Old Familiar
Faces," and the lines "On an infant dying as soon as born" or the quaint
humour of "A Farewell to Tobacco." As a letter writer Lamb ranks very
high, and when in a nonsensical mood there is none to touch him.
Editions and memoirs of Lamb are numerous. The _Letters_, with a
sketch of his life by Sir Thomas Noon Talfourd, appeared in 1837; the
_Final Memorials of Charles Lamb_ by the same hand, after Mary Lamb's
death, in 1848; Barry Cornwall's _Charles Lamb: A Memoir_, in 1866. Mr
P. Fitzgerald's _Charles Lamb: his Friends, his Haunts and his Books_
(1866); W. Carew Hazlitt's _Mary and Charles Lamb_ (1874). Mr
Fitzgerald and Mr Hazlitt have also both edited the _Letters_, and Mr
Fitzgerald brought Talfourd to date with an edition of Lamb's works in
1870-1876. Later and fuller editions are those of Canon Ainger in 12
volumes, Mr Macdonald in 12 volumes and Mr E. V. Lucas in 7 volumes,
to which in 1905 was added _The Life of Charles Lamb_, in 2 volumes.
(E. V. L.)
LAMB (a word common to Teutonic languages; cf. Ger. _Lamm_), the young
of sheep. The Paschal Lamb or Agnus Dei is used as a symbol of Jesus
Christ, the Lamb of God (John i. 29), and "lamb," like "flock," is often
used figuratively of the members of a Christian church or community,
with an allusion to Jesus' charge to Peter (John xxi. 15). The "lamb and
flag" is an heraldic emblem, the dexter fore-leg of the lamb supporting
a staff bearing a banner charged with the St George's cross. This was
one of the crests of the Knights Templars, used on seals as early as
1241; it was adopted as a badge or crest by the Middle Temple, the Inner
Temple using another crest of the Templars, the winged horse or Pegasus.
The old Tangier regiment, now the Queen's Royal West Surrey Regiment,
bore a Paschal Lamb as its badge. From their colonel, Percy Kirke
(q.v.), they were known as Kirke's Lambs. The exaggerated reputation of
the regiment for brutality, both in Tangier and in England after
Sedgmoor, lent irony to the nickname.
LAMBALLE, MARIE THÉRÈSE LOUISE OF SAVOY-CARIGNANO, PRINCESSE DE
(1749-1792), fourth daughter of Louis Victor of Carignano (d. 1774)
(great-grandfather of King Charles Albert of Sardinia), and of Christine
Henriette of Hesse-Rheinfels-Rothenburg, was born at Turin on the 8th of
September 1749. In 1767 she was married to Louis Alexandre Stanislaus de
Bourbon, prince of Lamballe, son of the duke of Penthièvre, a grandson
of Louis XIV.'s natural son the count of Toulouse. Her husband dying the
following year, she retired with her father-in-law to Rambouillet, where
she lived until the marriage of the dauphin, when she returned to court.
Marie Antoinette, charmed by her gentle and naïve manners, singled her
out for a companion and confidante. The impetuous character of the
dauphiness found in Madame de Lamballe that submissive temperament which
yields to force of environment, and the two became fast friends. After
her accession Marie Antoinette, in spite of the king's opposition, had
her appointed superintendent of the royal household. Between 1776 and
1785 the comtesse de Polignac succeeded in supplanting her; but when the
queen tired of the avarice of the Polignacs, she turned again to Madame
de Lamballe. From 1785 to the Revolution she was Marie Antoinette's
closest friend and the pliant instrument of her caprices. She came with
the queen to the Tuileries and as her salon served as a meeting-place
for the queen and the members of the Assembly whom she wished to gain
over, the people believed her to be the soul of all the intrigues. After
a visit to England in 1791 to appeal for help for the royal family she
made her will and returned to the Tuileries, where she continued her
services to the queen until the 10th of August, when she shared her
imprisonment in the Temple. On the 19th of August she was transferred to
La Force, and having refused to take the oath against the monarchy, she
was on the 3rd of September delivered over to the fury of the populace,
after which her head was placed on a pike and carried before the windows
of the queen.
See George Bertin, _Madame de Lamballe_ (Paris, 1888); Austin Dobson,
_Four Frenchwomen_ (1890); B. C. Hardy, _Princesse de Lamballe_
(1908); Comte de Lescure, _La Princesse de Lamballe ... d'après des
documents inédits_ (1864); some letters of the princess published by
Ch. Schmidt in _La Révolution française_ (vol. xxxix., 1900); L.
Lambeau, _Essais sur la mort de madame la princesse de Lamballe_
(1902); Sir F. Montefiore, _The Princesse de Lamballe_ (1896). _The
Secret Memoirs of the Royal Family of France ... now first published
from the Journal, Letters and Conversations of the Princesse de
Lamballe_ (London, 2 vols., 1826) have since appeared in various
editions in English and in French. They are attributed to Catherine
Hyde, Marchioness Govion-Broglio-Solari, and are apocryphal.
LAMBALLE, a town of north-western France, in the department of
Côtes-du-Nord, on the Gouessant 13 m. E.S.E. of St Brieuc by rail. Pop.
(1906) 4347. Crowning the eminence on which the town is built is a
beautiful Gothic church (13th and 14th centuries), once the chapel of
the castle of the counts of Penthièvre. La Noue, the famous Huguenot
leader, was mortally wounded in 1591 in the siege of the castle, which
was dismantled in 1626 by Richelieu. Of the other buildings, the church
of St Martin (11th, 15th and 16th centuries) is the chief. Lamballe has
an important _haras_ (depot for stallions) and carries on trade in
grain, tanning and leather-dressing; earthenware is manufactured in the
environs. Lamballe was the capital of the territory of the counts of
Penthièvre, who in 1569 were made dukes.
LAMBAYEQUE, a coast department of northern Peru, bounded N. by Piura, E.
and S. by Cajamarca and Libertad. Area, 4614 sq. m. Pop. (1906 estimate)
93,070. It belongs to the arid region of the coast, and is settled along
the river valleys where irrigation is possible. It is one of the chief
sugar-producing departments of Peru, and in some valleys, especially
near Ferreñafe, rice is largely produced. Four railways connect its
principal producing centres with the small ports of Eten and Pimentel,
viz.: Eten to Ferreñafe, 27 m.; Eten to Cayalti, 23 m.; Pimentel to
Lambayeque, 15 m.; and Chiclayo to Pátapo, 15 m. The principal towns are
Chiclayo, the departmental capital, with a population (1906 estimate) of
10,500, Ferreñafe 6000, and Lambayeque 4500.
LAMBEAUX, JEF (JOSEPH MARIE THOMAS), (1852-1908), Belgian sculptor, was
born at Antwerp. He studied at the Antwerp Academy of Fine Arts, and was
a pupil of Jean Geefs. His first work, "War," was exhibited in 1871, and
was followed by a long series of humorous groups, including "Children
dancing," "Say 'Good Morning,'" "The Lucky Number" and "An Accident"
(1875). He then went to Paris, where he executed for the Belgian salons
"The Beggar" and "The Blind Pauper," and produced "The Kiss" (1881),
generally regarded as his masterpiece. After visiting Italy, where he
was much impressed by the works of Jean Bologne, he showed a strong
predilection for effects of force and motion. Other notable works are
his fountain at Antwerp (1886), "Robbing the Eagle's Eyrie" (1890),
"Drunkenness" (1893), "The Triumph of Woman," "The Bitten Faun" (which
created a great stir at the Exposition Universelle at Liége in 1905),
and "The Human Passions," a colossal marble bas-relief, elaborated from
a sketch exhibited in 1889. Of his numerous busts may be mentioned those
of Hendrik Conscience, and of Charles Bals, the burgomaster of Brussels.
He died on the 6th of June 1908.
LAMBERMONT, AUGUSTE, BARON (1819-1905), Belgian statesman, was born at
Dion-le-Val in Brabant on the 25th of March 1819. He came of a family of
small farmer proprietors, who had held land during three centuries. He
was intended for the priesthood and entered the seminary of Floreffe,
but his energies claimed a more active sphere. He left the monastery for
Louvain University. Here he studied law, and also prepared himself for
the military examinations. At that juncture the first Carlist war broke
out, and Lambermont hastened to the scene of action. His services were
accepted (April 1838) and he was entrusted with the command of two small
cannon. He also acted as A.D.C. to Colonel Durando. He greatly
distinguished himself, and for his intrepidity on one occasion he was
decorated with the Cross of the highest military Order of St Ferdinand.
Returning to Belgium he entered the Ministry for Foreign Affairs in
1842. He served in this department sixty-three years. He was closely
associated with several of the most important questions in Belgian
history during the last half of the 19th century--notably the freeing of
the Scheldt. He was one of the very first Belgians to see the importance
of developing the trade of their country, and at his own request he was
attached to the commercial branch of the foreign office. The tolls
imposed by the Dutch on navigation on the Scheldt strangled Belgian
trade, for Antwerp was the only port of the country. The Dutch had the
right to make this levy under treaties going back to the treaty of
Munster in 1648, and they clung to it still more tenaciously after
Belgium separated herself in 1830-1831 from the united kingdom of the
Netherlands--the London conference in 1839 fixing the toll payable to
Holland at 1.50 florins (3s.) per ton. From 1856 to 1863 Lambermont
devoted most of his energies to the removal of this impediment. In 1856
he drew up a plan of action, and he prosecuted it with untiring
perseverance until he saw it embodied in an international convention
seven years later. Twenty-one powers and states attended a conference
held on the question at Brussels in 1863, and on the 15th of July the
treaty freeing the Scheldt was signed. For this achievement Lambermont
was made a baron. Among other important conferences in which Lambermont
took a leading part were those of Brussels (1874) on the usages of war,
Berlin (1884-1885) on Africa and the Congo region, and Brussels (1890)
on Central African Affairs and the Slave Trade. He was joint reporter
with Baron de Courcel of the Berlin conference in 1884-1885, and on
several occasions he was chosen as arbitrator by one or other of the
great European powers. But his great achievement was the freeing of the
Scheldt, and in token of its gratitude the city of Antwerp erected a
fine monument to his memory. He died on the 7th of March 1905.
LAMBERT, DANIEL (1770-1809), an Englishman famous for his great size,
was born near Leicester on the 13th of March 1770, the son of the keeper
of the jail, to which post he succeeded in 1791. About this time his
size and weight increased enormously, and though he had led an active
and athletic life he weighed in 1793 thirty-two stone (448 lb.). In 1806
he resolved to profit by his notoriety, and resigning his office went up
to London and exhibited himself. He died on the 21st of July 1809, and
at the time measured 5 ft. 11 in. in height and weighed 52¾ stone (739
lb.). His waistcoat, now in the Kings Lynn Museum, measures 102 in.
round the waist. His coffin contained 112 ft. of elm and was built on
wheels. His name has been used as a synonym for immensity. George
Meredith describes London as the "Daniel Lambert of cities," and Herbert
Spencer uses the phrase "a Daniel Lambert of learning." His enormous
proportions were depicted on a number of tavern signs, but the best
portrait of him, a large mezzotint, is preserved at the British Museum
in Lyson's _Collectanea_.
LAMBERT, FRANCIS (c. 1486-1530), Protestant reformer, was the son of a
papal official at Avignon, where he was born between 1485 and 1487. At
the age of 15 he entered the Franciscan monastery at Avignon, and after
1517 he was an itinerant preacher, travelling through France, Italy and
Switzerland. His study of the Scriptures shook his faith in Roman
Catholic theology, and by 1522 he had abandoned his order, and became
known to the leaders of the Reformation in Switzerland and Germany. He
did not, however, identify himself either with Zwinglianism or
Lutheranism; he disputed with Zwingli at Zürich in 1522, and then made
his way to Eisenach and Wittenberg, where he married in 1523. He
returned to Strassburg in 1524, being anxious to spread the doctrines of
the Reformation among the French-speaking population of the
neighbourhood. By the Germans he was distrusted, and in 1526 his
activities were prohibited by the city of Strassburg. He was, however,
befriended by Jacob Sturm, who recommended him to the Landgraf Philip of
Hesse, the most liberal of the German reforming princes. With Philip's
encouragement he drafted that scheme of ecclesiastical reform for which
he is famous. Its basis was essentially democratic and congregational,
though it provided for the government of the whole church by means of a
synod. Pastors were to be elected by the congregation, and the whole
system of canon-law was repudiated. This scheme was submitted by Philip
to a synod at Homburg; but Luther intervened and persuaded the Landgraf
to abandon it. It was far too democratic to commend itself to the
Lutherans, who had by this time bound the Lutheran cause to the support
of princes rather than to that of the people. Philip continued to favour
Lambert, who was appointed professor and head of the theological faculty
in the Landgraf's new university of Marburg. Patrick Hamilton (q.v.),
the Scottish martyr, was one of his pupils; and it was at Lambert's
instigation that Hamilton composed his _Loci communes_, or _Patrick's
Pleas_ as they were popularly called in Scotland. Lambert was also one
of the divines who took part in the great conference of Marburg in 1529;
he had long wavered between the Lutheran and the Zwinglian view of the
Lord's Supper, but at this conference he definitely adopted the
Zwinglian view. He died of the plague on the 18th of April 1530, and was
buried at Marburg.
A catalogue of Lambert's writings is given in Haag's _La France
protestante_. See also lives of Lambert by Baum (Strassburg, 1840); F.
W. Hessencamp (Elberfeld, 1860), Stieve (Breslau, 1867) and Louis
Ruffet (Paris, 1873); Lorimer, _Life of Patrick Hamilton_ (1857); A.
L. Richter, _Die evangelischen Kirchenordnungen des 16. Jahrh_.
(Weimar, 1846); Hessencamp, _Hessische Kirchenordnungen im Zeitalter
der Reformation_; Philip of _Hesse's Correspondence with Bucer_, ed.
M. Lenz; Lindsay, _Hist. Reformation_; _Allgemeine deutsche
Biographie_. (A. F. P.)
LAMBERT, JOHANN HEINRICH (1728-1777), German physicist, mathematician
and astronomer, was born at Mulhausen, Alsace, on the 26th of August
1728. He was the son of a tailor; and the slight elementary instruction
he obtained at the free school of his native town was supplemented by
his own private reading. He became book-keeper at Montbéliard ironworks,
and subsequently (1745) secretary to Professor Iselin, the editor of a
newspaper at Basel, who three years later recommended him as private
tutor to the family of Count A. von Salis of Coire. Coming thus into
virtual possession of a good library, Lambert had peculiar opportunities
for improving himself in his literary and scientific studies. In 1759,
after completing with his pupils a tour of two years' duration through
Göttingen, Utrecht, Paris, Marseilles and Turin, he resigned his
tutorship and settled at Augsburg. Munich, Erlangen, Coire and Leipzig
became for brief successive intervals his home. In 1764 he removed to
Berlin, where he received many favours at the hand of Frederick the
Great and was elected a member of the Royal Academy of Sciences of
Berlin, and in 1774 edited the Berlin _Ephemeris_. He died of
consumption on the 25th of September 1777. His publications show him to
have been a man of original and active mind with a singular facility in
applying mathematics to practical questions.
His mathematical discoveries were extended and overshadowed by his
contemporaries. His development of the equation x^m + px = q in an
infinite series was extended by Leonhard Euler, and particularly by
Joseph Louis Lagrange. In 1761 he proved the irrationality of [pi]; a
simpler proof was given somewhat later by Legendre. The introduction of
hyperbolic functions into trigonometry was also due to him. His
geometrical discoveries are of great value, his _Die freie Perspective_
(1759-1774) being a work of great merit. Astronomy was also enriched by
his investigations, and he was led to several remarkable theorems on
conics which bear his name. The most important are: (1) To express the
time of describing an elliptic arc under the Newtonian law of
gravitation in terms of the focal distances of the initial and final
points, and the length of the chord joining them. (2) A theorem relating
to the apparent curvature of the geocentric path of a comet.
Lambert's most important work, _Pyrometrie_ (Berlin, 1779), is a
systematic treatise on heat, containing the records and full
discussion of many of his own experiments. Worthy of special notice
also are _Photometria_ (Augsburg, 1760), _Insigniores orbitae
cometarum proprietates_ (Augsburg, 1761), and _Beiträge zum Gebrauche
der Mathematik und deren Anwendung_ (4 vols., Berlin, 1765-1772).
The _Memoirs_ of the Berlin Academy from 1761 to 1784 contain many of
his papers, which treat of such subjects as resistance of fluids,
magnetism, comets, probabilities, the problem of three bodies,
meteorology, &c. In the _Acta Helvetica_ (1752-1760) and in the _Nova
acta erudita_ (1763-1769) several of his contributions appear. In
Bode's _Jahrbuch_ (1776-1780) he discusses nutation, aberration of
light, Saturn's rings and comets; in the _Nova acta Helvetica_ (1787)
he has a long paper "Sur le son des corps élastiques," in Bernoulli
and Hindenburg's _Magazin_ (1787-1788) he treats of the roots of
equation and of parallel lines; and in Hindenburg's _Archiv_
(1798-1799) he writes on optics and perspective. Many of these pieces
were published posthumously. Recognized as among the first
mathematicians of his day, he was also widely known for the
universality and depth of his philological and philosophical
knowledge. The most valuable of his logical and philosophical memoirs
were published collectively in 2 vols. (1782).
See Huber's _Lambert nach seinem Leben und Wirken_; M. Chasles,
_Geschichte der Geometrie_; and Baensch, Lamberts _Philosophie und
seine Stellung zu Kant_ (1902).
LAMBERT [_alias_ NICHOLSON], JOHN (d. 1538), English Protestant martyr,
was born at Norwich and educated at Cambridge, where he graduated B.A.
and was admitted in 1521 a fellow of Queen's College on the nomination
of Catherine of Aragon. After acting for some years as a "mass-priest,"
his views were unsettled by the arguments of Bilney and Arthur; and
episcopal persecution compelled him, according to his own account, to
assume the name Lambert instead of Nicholson. He likewise removed to
Antwerp, where he became chaplain to the English factory, and formed a
friendship with Frith and Tyndale. Returning to England in 1531, he came
under the notice of Archbishop Warham, who questioned him closely on his
religious beliefs. Warham's death in August 1532 relieved Lambert from
immediate danger, and he earned a living for some years by teaching
Latin and Greek near the Stocks Market in London. The duke of Norfolk
and other reactionaries accused him of heresy in 1536, but reforming
tendencies were still in the ascendant, and Lambert escaped. In 1538,
however, the reaction had begun, and Lambert was its first victim. He
singled himself out for persecution by denying the Real Presence: and
Henry VIII., who had just rejected the Lutheran proposals for a
theological union, was in no mood to tolerate worse heresies. Lambert
had challenged some views expressed by Dr John Taylor, afterwards bishop
of Lincoln; and Cranmer as archbishop condemned Lambert's opinions. He
appealed to the king as supreme head of the Church, and on the 16th of
November Henry heard the case in person before a large assembly of
spiritual and temporal peers. For five hours Lambert disputed with the
king and ten bishops; and then, as he boldly denied that the Eucharist
was the body of Christ, he was condemned to death by Cromwell as
vicegerent. Henry's condescension and patience produced a great
impression on his Catholic subjects; but Cromwell is said by Foxe to
have asked Lambert's pardon before his execution, and Cranmer eventually
adopted the views he condemned in Lambert. Lambert was burnt at
Smithfield on the 22nd of November.
See _Letters and Papers of Henry VIII._; Foxe's _Acts and Monuments_;
Froude, _History_; Dixon, _Church History_; Gairdner, _Lollardy and
the Reformation_, _Dict. of Nat. Biog._ and authorities there cited.
(A. F. P.)
LAMBERT, JOHN (1619-1694), English general in the Great Rebellion, was
born at Calton Hall, Kirkby Malham, in the West Riding of Yorkshire. His
family was of ancient lineage, and long settled in the county. He
studied law, but did not make it his profession. In 1639 he married
Frances, daughter of Sir William Lister. At the opening of the Civil War
he took up arms for the parliament, and in September 1642 was appointed
a captain of horse in the army commanded by Ferdinando, Lord Fairfax. A
year later he had become colonel of a regiment of horse, and he
distinguished himself at the siege of Hull in October, 1643. Early in
1644 he did good service at the battles of Nantwich and Bradford. At
Marston Moor Lambert's own regiment was routed by the charge of Goring's
horse; but he cut his way through with a few troops and joined Cromwell
on the other side of the field. When the New Model army was formed in
the beginning of 1645, Colonel Lambert was appointed to succeed Fairfax
in command of the northern forces. General Poyntz, however, soon
replaced him, and under this officer he served in the Yorkshire campaign
of 1645, receiving a wound before Pontefract. In 1646 he was given a
regiment in the New Model, serving with Fairfax in the west of England,
and he was a commissioner, with Cromwell and others, for the surrender
of Oxford in the same year. "It is evident," says C. H. Firth (_Dict.
Nat. Biog._), "that he was from the first regarded as an officer of
exceptional capacity and specially selected for semi-political
employments."
When the quarrel between the army and the parliament began, Lambert
threw himself warmly into the army's cause. He assisted Ireton in
drawing up the several addresses and remonstrances issued by the army,
both men having had some experience in the law, and being "of a subtle
and working brain." Early in August 1647 Lambert was sent by Fairfax as
major-general to take charge of the forces in the northern counties. His
wise and just managing of affairs in those parts is commended by
Whitelocke. He suppressed a mutiny among his troops, kept strict
discipline and hunted down the moss-troopers who infested the moorland
country.
When the Scottish army under the marquis of Hamilton invaded England in
the summer of 1648, Lambert was engaged in suppressing the Royalist
rising in his district. The arrival of the Scots obliged him to retreat;
but Lambert displayed the greatest energy and did not cease to harass
the invaders till Cromwell came up from Wales and with him destroyed the
Scottish army in the three days' fighting from Preston to Warrington.
After the battle Lambert's cavalry headed the chase, pursuing the
defeated army _à outrance_, and finally surrounded it at Uttoxeter,
where Hamilton surrendered to Lambert on the 25th of August. He then led
the advance of Cromwell's army into Scotland, where he was left in
charge on Cromwell's return. From December 1648 to March 1649 he was
engaged in the siege of Pontefract Castle; Lambert was thus absent from
London at the time of Pride's Purge and the trial and execution of the
king.
When Cromwell was appointed to the command of the war in Scotland (July
1650), Lambert went with him as major-general and second in command. He
was wounded at Musselburgh, but returned to the front in time to take a
conspicuous share in the victory of Dunbar. He himself defeated the
"Protesters" or "Western Whigs" at Hamilton, on the 1st of December
1650. In July 1651 he was sent into Fife to get in the rear and flank of
the Scottish army near Falkirk, and force them to decisive action by
cutting off their supplies. This mission, in the course of which Lambert
won an important victory at Inverkeithing, was executed with entire
success, whereupon Charles II., as Lambert had foreseen, made for
England. For the events of the Worcester campaign, which quickly
followed, see GREAT REBELLION. Lambert's part in the general plan was
carried out most brilliantly, and in the crowning victory of Worcester
he commanded the right wing of the English army, and had his horse shot
under him. Parliament now conferred on him a grant of lands in Scotland
worth £1000 per annum.
In October 1651 Lambert was made a commissioner to settle the affairs of
Scotland, and on the death of Ireton he was appointed lord deputy of
Ireland (January 1652). He accepted the office with pleasure, and made
magnificent preparations; parliament, however, soon afterwards
reconstituted the Irish administration and Lambert refused to accept
office on the new terms. Henceforward he began to oppose the Rump. In
the council of officers he headed the party desiring representative
government, as opposed to Harrison who favoured a selected oligarchy of
"God-fearing" men, but both hated what remained of the Long parliament,
and joined in urging Cromwell to dissolve it by force. At the same time
Lambert was consulted by the parliamentary leaders as to the possibility
of dismissing Cromwell from his command, and on the 15th of March 1653
Cromwell refused to see him, speaking of him contemptuously as
"bottomless Lambert." On the 20th of April, however, Lambert accompanied
Cromwell when he dismissed the council of state, on the same day as the
forcible expulsion of the parliament. Lambert now favoured the formation
of a small executive council, to be followed by an elective parliament
whose powers should be limited by a written instrument of government.
Being at this time the ruling spirit in the council of state, and the
idol of the army, there were some who looked on him as a possible rival
of Cromwell for the chief executive power, while the royalists for a
short time had hopes of his support. He was invited, with Cromwell,
Harrison and Desborough, to sit in the nominated parliament of 1653; and
when the unpopularity of that assembly increased, Cromwell drew nearer
to Lambert. In November 1653 Lambert presided over a meeting of
officers, when the question of constitutional settlement was discussed,
and a proposal made for the forcible expulsion of the nominated
parliament. On the 1st of December he urged Cromwell to assume the title
of king, which the latter refused. On the 12th the parliament resigned
its powers into Cromwell's hands, and on the 13th Lambert obtained the
consent of the officers to the Instrument of Government (q.v.), in the
framing of which he had taken a leading part. He was one of the seven
officers nominated to seats in the council created by the Instrument. In
the foreign policy of the protectorate he was the most clamorous of
those who called for alliance with Spain and war with France in 1653,
and he firmly withstood Cromwell's design for an expedition to the West
Indies.
In the debates in parliament on the Instrument of Government in 1654
Lambert proposed that the office of protector should be made hereditary,
but was defeated by a majority which included members of Cromwell's
family. In the parliament of this year, and again in 1656, Lord Lambert,
as he was now styled, sat as member for the West Riding. He was one of
the major-generals appointed in August 1655 to command the militia in
the ten districts into which it was proposed to divide England, and who
were to be responsible for the maintenance of order and the
administration of the law in their several districts. Lambert took a
prominent part in the committee of council which drew up instructions to
the major-generals, and he was probably the originator, and certainly
the organizer, of the system of police which these officers were to
control. Gardiner conjectures that it was through divergence of opinion
between the protector and Lambert in connexion with these "instructions"
that the estrangement between the two men began. At all events, although
Lambert had himself at an earlier date requested Cromwell to take the
royal dignity, when the proposal to declare Oliver king was started in
parliament (February 1657) he at once declared strongly against it. A
hundred officers headed by Fleetwood and Lambert waited on the
protector, and begged him to put a stop to the proceedings. Lambert was
not convinced by Cromwell's arguments, and their complete estrangement,
personal as well as political, followed. On his refusal to take the oath
of allegiance to the protector, Lambert was deprived of his commissions,
receiving, however, a pension of £2000 a year. He retired to his garden
at Wimbledon, and appeared no more in public during Oliver Cromwell's
lifetime; but shortly before his death Cromwell sought a reconciliation,
and Lambert and his wife visited him at Whitehall.
When Richard Cromwell was proclaimed protector his chief difficulty lay
with the army, over which he exercised no effective control. Lambert,
though holding no military commission, was the most popular of the old
Cromwellian generals with the rank and file of the army, and it was very
generally believed that he would instal himself in Oliver's seat of
power. Richard's adherents tried to conciliate him, and the royalist
leaders made overtures to him, even proposing that Charles II. should
marry Lambert's daughter. Lambert at first gave a lukewarm support to
Richard Cromwell, and took no part in the intrigues of the officers at
Fleetwood's residence, Wallingford House. He was a member of the
parliament which met in January 1659, and when it was dissolved in April
under compulsion of Fleetwood and Desborough, he was restored to his
commands. He headed the deputation to Lenthall in May inviting the
return of the Rump, which led to the tame retirement of Richard Cromwell
into obscurity; and he was appointed a member of the committee of safety
and of the council of state. When the parliament, desirous of
controlling the power of the army, withheld from Fleetwood the right of
nominating officers, Lambert was named one of a council of seven charged
with this duty. The parliament's evident distrust of the soldiers caused
much discontent in the army; while the entire absence of real authority
encouraged the royalists to make overt attempts to restore Charles II.,
the most serious of which, under Sir George Booth and the earl of Derby,
was crushed by Lambert near Chester on the 19th of August. He promoted a
petition from his army that Fleetwood might be made lord-general and
himself major-general. The republican party in the House took offence.
The Commons (October 12th, 1659) cashiered Lambert and other officers,
and retained Fleetwood as chief of a military council under the
authority of the speaker. On the next day Lambert caused the doors of
the House to be shut and the members kept out. On the 26th a "committee
of safety" was appointed, of which he was a member. He was also
appointed major-general of all the forces in England and Scotland,
Fleetwood being general. Lambert was now sent with a large force to meet
Monk, who was in command of the English forces in Scotland, and either
negotiate with him or force him to terms. Monk, however, set his army in
motion southward. Lambert's army began to melt away, and he was kept in
suspense by Monk till his whole army fell from him and he returned to
London almost alone. Monk marched to London unopposed. The "excluded"
Presbyterian members were recalled. Lambert was sent to the Tower (March
3rd, 1660), from which he escaped a month later. He tried to rekindle
the civil war in favour of the Commonwealth, but was speedily recaptured
and sent back to the Tower (April 24th). On the Restoration he was
exempted from danger of life by an address of both Houses to the king,
but the next parliament (1662) charged him with high treason.
Thenceforward for the rest of his life Lambert remained in custody in
Guernsey. He died in 1694.
Lambert would have left a better name in history if he had been a
cavalier. His genial, ardent and excitable nature, easily raised and
easily depressed, was more akin to the royalist than to the puritan
spirit. Vain and sometimes overbearing, as well as ambitious, he
believed that Cromwell could not stand without him; and when Cromwell
was dead, he imagined himself entitled and fitted to succeed him. Yet
his ambition was less selfish than that of Monk. Lambert is accused of
no ill faith, no want of generosity, no cold and calculating policy.
As a soldier he was far more than a fighting general and possessed
many of the qualities of a great general. He was, moreover, an able
writer and speaker, and an accomplished negotiator and took pleasure
in quiet and domestic pursuits. He learnt his love of gardening from
Lord Fairfax, who was also his master in the art of war. He painted
flowers, besides cultivating them, and incurred the blame of Mrs
Hutchinson by "dressing his flowers in his garden and working at the
needle with his wife and his maids." He made no special profession of
religion; but no imputation is cast upon his moral character by his
detractors. It has been said that he became a Roman Catholic before
his death.
LAMBERT OF HERSFELD (d. c. 1088), German chronicler, was probably a
Thuringian by birth and became a monk in the Benedictine abbey of
Hersfeld in 1058. As he was ordained priest at Aschaffenburg he is
sometimes called Lambert of Aschaffenburg, or Schafnaburg. He made a
pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and visited various monasteries of his
order; but he is famous as the author of some _Annales_. From the
creation of the world until about 1040 these _Annales_ are a jejune copy
of other annals, but from 1040 to their conclusion in 1077 they are
interesting for the history of Germany and the papacy. The important
events during the earlier part of the reign of the emperor Henry IV.,
including the visit to Canossa and the battle of Hohenburg, are vividly
described. Their tone is hostile to Henry IV. and friendly to the
papacy; their Latin style is excellent. The _Annales_ were first
published in 1525 and are printed in the _Monumenta Germaniae
historica_, Bände iii. and v. (Hanover and Berlin, 1826 fol.). Formerly
Lambert's reputation for accuracy and impartiality was very high, but
both qualities have been somewhat discredited.
Lambert is also regarded as the author of the _Historia
Hersfeldensis_, the extant fragments of which are published in Band v.
of the _Monumenta_ of a _Vita Lulli_, Lullus, archbishop of Mainz,
being the founder of the abbey of Hersfeld; and of a _Carmen de bello
Saxonico_. His _Opera_ have been edited with an introduction by O.
Holder-Egger (Hanover, 1894).
See H. Delbrück, _Über die Glaubwürdigkeit Lamberts von Hersfeld_
(Bonn, 1873); A. Eigenbrodt, _Lampert von Hersfeld und die neuere
Quellenforschung_ (Cassel, 1896); L. von Ranke, _Zur Kritik
frankisch-deutscher Reichsannalisten_ (Berlin, 1854); W. Wattenbach,
_Deutschlands Geschichtsquellen_ Band ii. (Berlin, 1906) and A.
Potthast, _Bibliotheca Historica_ (Berlin, 1896).
LAMBESSA, the ancient Lambaesa, a village of Algeria, in the
arrondissement of Batna and department of Constantine, 7 m. S.E. of
Batna and 17 W. of Timgad. The modern village, the centre of an
agricultural colony founded in 1848, is noteworthy for its great convict
establishment (built about 1850). The remains of the Roman town, and
more especially of the Roman camp, in spite of wanton vandalism, are
among the most interesting ruins in northern Africa. They are now
preserved by the _Service des Monuments historiques_ and excavations
have resulted in many interesting discoveries. The ruins are situated on
the lower terraces of the Jebel Aures, and consist of triumphal arches
(one to Septimius Severus, another to Commodus), temples, aqueducts,
vestiges of an amphitheatre, baths and an immense quantity of masonry
belonging to private houses. To the north and east lie extensive
cemeteries with the stones standing in their original alignments; to the
west is a similar area, from which, however, the stones have been
largely removed for building the modern village. Of the temple of
Aesculapius only one column is standing, though in the middle of the
19th century its façade was entire. The capitol or temple dedicated to
Jupiter, Juno and Minerva, which has been cleared of débris, has a
portico with eight columns. On level ground about two-thirds of a mile
from the centre of the ancient town stands the camp, its site now partly
occupied by the penitentiary and its gardens. It measures 1640 ft. N. to
S. by 1476 ft. E. to W., and in the middle rise the ruins of a building
commonly called, but incorrectly, the praetorium. This noble building,
which dates from A.D. 268, is 92 ft. long by 66 ft. broad and 49 ft.
high; its southern façade has a splendid peristyle half the height of
the wall, consisting of a front row of massive Ionic columns and an
engaged row of Corinthian pilasters. Behind this building (which was
roofed), is a large court giving access to other buildings, one being
the arsenal. In it have been found many thousands of projectiles. To the
S.E. are the remains of the baths. The ruins of both city and camp have
yielded many inscriptions (Renier edited 1500, and there are 4185 in the
_Corpus Inscr. Lat._ vol. viii.); and, though a very large proportion
are epitaphs of the barest kind, the more important pieces supply an
outline of the history of the place. Over 2500 inscriptions relating to
the camp have been deciphered. In a museum in the village are objects of
antiquity discovered in the vicinity. Besides inscriptions, statues,
&c., are some fine mosaics found in 1905 near the arch of Septimius
Severus. The statues include those of Aesculapius and Hygieia, taken
from the temple of Aesculapius.
Lambaesa was a military foundation. The camp of the third legion
(Legio III. Augusta), to which it owes its origin, appears to have
been established between A.D. 123 and 129, in the time of Hadrian,
whose address to his soldiers was found inscribed on a pillar in a
second camp to the west of the great camp still extant. By 166 mention
is made of the decurions of a vicus, 10 curiae of which are known by
name; and the vicus became a municipium probably at the time when it
was made the capital of the newly founded province of Numidia. The
legion was removed by Gordianus, but restored by Valerianus and
Gallienus; and its final departure did not take place till after 392.
The town soon afterwards declined. It never became the seat of a
bishop, and no Christian inscriptions have been found among the ruins.
About 2 m. S. of Lambessa are the ruins of Markuna, the ancient
Verecunda, including two triumphal arches.
See S. Gsell, _Les Monuments antiques de l'Algérie_ (Paris, 1901) and
_L'Algérie dans l'antiquité_ (Algiers, 1903); L. Renier, _Inscriptions
romaines de l'Algérie_ (Paris, 1855); Gustav Wilmann, "Die röm.
Lagerstadt Afrikas," in _Commentationes phil. in honorem Th. Mommseni_
(Berlin, 1877); Sir L. Playfair, _Travels in the Footsteps of Bruce_
(London, 1877); A. Graham, _Roman Africa_ (London, 1902).
LAMBETH, a southern metropolitan borough of London, England, bounded
N.W. by the river Thames, N.E. by Southwark, E. by Camberwell and W. by
Wandsworth and Battersea, and extending S. to the boundary of the county
of London. Pop. (1901) 301,895. The name is commonly confined to the
northern part of the borough, bordering the river; but the principal
districts included are Kennington and Vauxhall (north central), Brixton
(central) and part of Norwood (south). Four road-bridges cross the
Thames within the limits of the borough, namely Waterloo, Westminster,
Lambeth and Vauxhall, of which the first, a fine stone structure, dates
from 1817, and is the oldest Thames bridge standing within the county of
London. The main thoroughfare runs S. from Westminster Bridge Road as
Kennington Road, continuing as Brixton Road and Brixton Hill, Clapham
Road branching S.W. from it at Kennington. Several thoroughfares also
converge upon Vauxhall Bridge, and from a point near this down to
Westminster Bridge the river is bordered by the fine Albert Embankment.
Early records present the name _Lamb-hythe_ in various forms. The suffix
is common along the river in the meaning of a haven, but the prefix is
less clear; a Saxon word signifying mud is suggested. Brixton and
Kennington are mentioned in Domesday; and in Vauxhall is concealed the
name of Falkes de Breauté, an unscrupulous adventurer of the time of
John and Henry III. exiled in 1225. The manor of North Lambeth was given
to the bishopric of Rochester in the time of Edward the Confessor, and
the bishops had a house here till the 16th century. They did not,
however, retain the manor beyond the close of the 12th century, when it
was acquired by the see of Canterbury. The palace of the archbishops is
still here, and forms, with the parish church, a picturesque group of
buildings, lying close to the river opposite the majestic Houses of
Parliament, and to some extent joining with them to make of this reach
of the Thames one of the finest prospects in London. The oldest part of
the palace remaining is the Early English chapel. The so-called
Lollard's Tower, which retains evidence of its use as a prison, dates c.
1440. There is a fine Tudor gatehouse of brick, and the hall is dated
1663. The portion now inhabited by the archbishops was erected in 1834
and fronts a spacious quadrangle. Among the portraits of the archbishops
here are examples by Holbein, Van Dyck, Hogarth and Reynolds. There is a
valuable library. The church of St Mary was rebuilt c. 1850, though the
ancient monuments preserved give it an appearance of antiquity. Here are
tombs of some of the archbishops, including Bancroft (d. 1610), and of
the two Tradescants, collectors, and a memorial to Elias Ashmole, whose
name is preserved in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford University, to which
he presented the collections of his friend the younger Tradescant (d.
1662). In the present Westminster Bridge Road was a circus, well known
in the later 18th and early 19th centuries as Astley's, and near
Vauxhall Bridge were the celebrated Vauxhall Gardens.
The principal modern pleasure grounds are Kennington Park (20 acres),
and Brockwell Park (127 acres) south of Brixton, and near the southern
end of Kennington Road is Kennington Oval, the ground of the Surrey
County Cricket Club, the scene of its home matches and of other
important fixtures. Among institutions the principal is St Thomas'
Hospital, the extensive buildings of which front the Albert
Embankment. The original foundation dated from 1213, was situated in
Southwark, and was connected with the priory of Bermondsey. The
existing buildings, subsequently enlarged, were opened in 1871, are
divided into a series of blocks, and include a medical school. Other
hospitals are the Royal, for children and women, Waterloo Road, the
Lying-in Hospital, York Road, and the South-western fever hospital in
Stockwell. There are technical institutes in Brixton and Norwood; and
on Brixton Hill is Brixton Prison. In the northern part of the borough
are numerous factories, including the great Doulton pottery works. The
parliamentary borough of Lambeth has four divisions, North,
Kennington, Brixton and Norwood, each returning one member. The
borough council consists of a mayor, 10 aldermen and 60 councillors.
Area, 4080.4 acres.
LAMBETH CONFERENCES, the name given to the periodical assemblies of
bishops of the Anglican Communion (Pan-Anglican synods), which since
1867 have met at Lambeth Palace, the London residence of the archbishop
of Canterbury. The idea of these meetings was first suggested in a
letter to the archbishop of Canterbury by Bishop Hopkins of Vermont in
1851, but the immediate impulse came from the colonial Church in Canada.
In 1865 the synod of that province, in an urgent letter to the
archbishop of Canterbury (Dr Longley), represented the unsettlement of
members of the Canadian Church caused by recent legal decisions of the
Privy Council, and their alarm lest the revived action of Convocation
"should leave us governed by canons different from those in force in
England and Ireland, and thus cause us to drift into the status of an
independent branch of the Catholic Church." They therefore requested him
to call a "national synod of the bishops of the Anglican Church at home
and abroad," to meet under his leadership. After consulting both houses
of the Convocation of Canterbury, Archbishop Longley assented, and
convened all the bishops of the Anglican Communion (then 144 in number)
to meet at Lambeth in 1867. Many Anglican bishops (amongst them the
archbishop of York and most of his suffragans) felt so doubtful as to
the wisdom of such an assembly that they refused to attend it, and Dean
Stanley declined to allow Westminster Abbey to be used for the closing
service, giving as his reasons the partial character of the assembly,
uncertainty as to the effect of its measures and "the presence of
prelates not belonging to our Church." Archbishop Longley said in his
opening address, however, that they had no desire to assume "the
functions of a general synod of all the churches in full communion with
the Church of England," but merely to "discuss matters of practical
interest, and pronounce what we deem expedient in resolutions which may
serve as safe guides to future action." Experience has shown how
valuable and wise this course was. The resolutions of the Lambeth
Conferences have never been regarded as synodical decrees, but their
weight has increased with each conference. Apprehensions such as those
which possessed the mind of Dean Stanley have long passed away.
Seventy-six bishops accepted the primate's invitation to the first
conference, which met at Lambeth on the 24th of September 1867, and sat
for four days, the sessions being in private. The archbishop opened the
conference with an address: deliberation followed; committees were
appointed to report on special questions; resolutions were adopted, and
an encyclical letter was addressed to the faithful of the Anglican
Communion. Each of the subsequent conferences has been first received in
Canterbury cathedral and addressed by the archbishop from the chair of
St Augustine. It has then met at Lambeth, and after sitting for five
days for deliberation upon the fixed subjects and appointment of
committees, has adjourned, to meet again at the end of a fortnight and
sit for five days more, to receive reports, adopt resolutions and to put
forth the encyclical letter.
I. _First Conference_ (September 24-28, 1867), convened and presided
over by Archbishop Longley. The proposed order of subjects was
entirely altered in view of the Colenso case, for which urgency was
claimed; and most of the time was spent in discussing it. Of the
thirteen resolutions adopted by the conference, two have direct
reference to this case; the rest have to do with the creation of new
sees and missionary jurisdictions, commendatory letters, and a
"voluntary spiritual tribunal" in cases of doctrine and the due
subordination of synods. The reports of the committees were not ready,
and were carried forward to the conference of 1878.
II. _Second Conference_ (July 2-27, 1878), convened and presided over
by Archbishop Tait. On this occasion no hesitation appears to have
been felt; 100 bishops were present, and the opening sermon was
preached by the archbishop of York. The reports of the five special
committees (based in part upon those of the committee of 1867) were
embodied in the encyclical letter, viz. on the best mode of
maintaining union, voluntary boards of arbitration, missionary bishops
and missionaries, continental chaplains and the report of a committee
on difficulties submitted to the conference.
III. _Third Conference_ (July 3-27, 1888), convened and presided over
by Archbishop Benson; 145 bishops present; the chief subject of
consideration being the position of communities which do not possess
the historic episcopate. In addition to the encyclical letter,
nineteen resolutions were put forth, and the reports of twelve special
committees are appended upon which they are based, the subjects being
intemperance, purity, divorce, polygamy, observance of Sunday,
socialism, care of emigrants, mutual relations of dioceses of the
Anglican Communion, home reunion, Scandinavian Church, Old Catholics,
&c., Eastern Churches, standards of doctrine and worship. Perhaps the
most important of these is the famous "Lambeth Quadrilateral," which
laid down a fourfold basis for home reunion--the Holy Scriptures, the
Apostles' and Nicene creeds, the two sacraments ordained by Christ
himself and the historic episcopate.
IV. _Fourth Conference_ (July 5-31, 1897), convened by Archbishop
Benson, presided over by Archbishop Temple; 194 bishops present. One
of the chief subjects for consideration was the creation of a
"tribunal of reference"; but the resolutions on this subject were
withdrawn, owing, it is said, to the opposition of the American
bishops, and a more general resolution in favour of a "consultative
body" was substituted. The encyclical letter is accompanied by
sixty-three resolutions (which include careful provision for
provincial organization and the extension of the title "archbishop" to
all metropolitans, a "thankful recognition of the revival of
brotherhoods and sisterhoods, and of the office of deaconess," and a
desire to promote friendly relations with the Eastern Churches and the
various Old Catholic bodies), and the reports of the eleven committees
are subjoined.
V. _Fifth Conference_ (July 6-August 5, 1908), convened by Archbishop
Randall Davidson, who presided; 241 bishops were present. The chief
subjects of discussion were: the relations of faith and modern
thought, the supply and training of the clergy, education, foreign
missions, revision and "enrichment" of the Prayer-Book, the relation
of the Church to "ministries of healing" (Christian Science, &c.), the
questions of marriage and divorce, organization of the Anglican
Church, reunion with other Churches. The results of the deliberations
were embodied in seventy-eight resolutions, which were appended to the
encyclical issued, in the name of the conference, by the Archbishop of
Canterbury on the 8th of August.
The fifth Lambeth conference, following as it did close on the great
Pan-Anglican congress, is remarkable mainly as a proof of the growth
of the influence and many-sided activity of the Anglican Church, and
as a conspicuous manifestation of her characteristic principles. Of
the seventy-eight resolutions none is in any sense epoch-making, and
their spirit is that of the traditional Anglican _via media_. In
general they are characterized by a firm adherence to the fundamental
articles of Catholic orthodoxy, tempered by a tolerant attitude
towards those not of "the household of the faith." The report of the
committee on faith and modern thought is "a faithful attempt to show
how the claim of our Lord Jesus Christ, which the Church is set to
present to each generation, may, under the characteristic conditions
of our time, best command allegiance." On the question of education
(Res. 11-19) the conference reaffirmed strongly the necessity for
definite Christian teaching in schools, "secular systems" being
condemned as "educationally as well as morally unsound, since they
fail to co-ordinate the training of the whole nature of the child"
(Res. 11). The resolutions on questions affecting foreign missions
(20-26) deal with e.g. the overlapping of episcopal jurisdictions (22)
and the establishment of Churches on lines of race or colour, which is
condemned (20). The resolutions on questions of marriage and divorce
(37-43) reaffirm the traditional attitude of the Church; it is,
however, interesting to note that the resolution (40) deprecating the
remarriage in church of the innocent party to a divorce was carried
only by eighty-seven votes to eighty-four. In resolutions 44 to 53 the
conference deals with the duty of the Church towards modern democratic
ideals and social problems; affirms the responsibility of investors
for the character and conditions of the concerns in which their money
is placed (49); "while frankly acknowledging the moral gains sometimes
won by war" strongly supports the extension of international
arbitration (52); and emphasizes the duty of a stricter observance of
Sunday (53). On the question of reunion, the ideal of corporate unity
was reaffirmed (58). It was decided to send a deputation of bishops
with a letter of greeting to the national council of the Russian
Church about to be assembled (60) and certain conditions were laid
down for inter-communion with certain of the Churches of the Orthodox
Eastern Communion (62) and the "ancient separated Churches of the
East" (63-65). Resolution 67 warned Anglicans from contracting
marriages, under actual conditions, with Roman Catholics. By
resolution 68 the conference stated its desire to "maintain and
strengthen the friendly relations" between the Churches of the
Anglican Communion and "the ancient Church of Holland" (Jansenist, see
UTRECHT) and the old Catholic Churches; and resolutions 70-73 made
elaborate provisions for a projected corporate union between the
Anglican Church and the _Unitas Fratrum_ (Moravian Brethren). As to
"home reunion," however, it was made perfectly clear that this would
only be possible "on lines suggested by such precedents as those of
1610," i.e. by the Presbyterian Churches accepting the episcopal
model. So far as the organization of the Anglican Church is concerned,
the most important outcome of the conference was the reconstruction of
the Central Consultative Body on representative lines (54-56); this
body to consist of the archbishop of Canterbury and seventeen bishops
appointed by the various Churches of the Anglican Communion throughout
the world. A notable feature of the conference was the presence of the
Swedish bishop of Kalmar, who presented a letter from the archbishop
of Upsala, as a tentative advance towards closer relations between the
Anglican Church and the Evangelical Church of Sweden.
See Archbishop R. T. Davidson, _The Lambeth Conferences of 1867, 1878
and 1888_ (London, 1896); _Conference of Bishops of the Anglican
Communion, Encyclical Letter_, &c. (London, 1897 and 1908).
LAMBINUS, DIONYSIUS, the Latinized name of DENIS LAMBIN (1520-1572),
French classical scholar, born at Montreuil-sur-mer in Picardy. Having
devoted several years to classical studies during a residence in Italy,
he was invited to Paris in 1650 to fill the professorship of Latin in
the Collège de France, which he soon afterwards exchanged for that of
Greek. His lectures were frequently interrupted by his ill-health and
the religious disturbances of the time. His death (September 1572) is
said to have been caused by his apprehension that he might share the
fate of his friend Peter Ramus (Pierre de la Ramée), who had been killed
in the massacre of St Bartholomew. Lambinus was one of the greatest
scholars of his age, and his editions of classical authors are still
useful. In textual criticism he was a conservative, but by no means a
slavish one; indeed, his opponents accused him of rashness in
emendation. His chief defect is that he refers vaguely to his MSS.
without specifying the source of his readings, so that their relative
importance cannot be estimated. But his commentaries, with their wealth
of illustration and parallel passages, are a mine of information. In the
opinion of the best scholars, he preserved the happy mean in his
annotations, although his own countrymen have coined the word _lambiner_
to express trifling and diffuseness.
His chief editions are: Horace (1561); Lucretius (1564), on which see
H. A. J. Munro's preface to his edition; Cicero (1566); Cornelius
Nepos (1569); Demosthenes (1570), completing the unfinished work of
Guillaume Morel; Plautus (1576).
See Peter Lazer, _De Dionysio Lambino narratio_, printed in Orelli's
_Onomasticon Tullianum_ (i. 1836), and _Trium disertissimorum virorum
praefationes ac epistolae familiares aliquot: Mureti, Lambini, Regii_
(Paris, 1579); also Sandys, _Hist. of Classical Scholarship_ (1908,
ii. 188), and A. Horawitz in Ersch and Gruber's _Allgemeine
Encyclopädie_.
LAMBOURN, a market town in the Newbury parliamentary division of
Berkshire, England, 65 m. W. of London, the terminus of the Lambourn
Valley light railway from Newbury. Pop. (1901) 2071. It lies high up the
narrow valley of the Lambourn, a tributary of the Kennet famous for its
trout-fishing, among the Berkshire Downs. The church of St Michael is
cruciform and principally late Norman, but has numerous additions of
later periods and has been considerably altered by modern restoration.
The inmates of an almshouse founded by John Estbury, _c._ 1500, by his
desire still hold service daily at his tomb in the church. A
Perpendicular market-cross stands without the church. The town has
agricultural trade, but its chief importance is derived from large
training stables in the neighbourhood. To the north of the town is a
large group of _tumuli_ known as the Seven Barrows, ascertained by
excavation to be a British burial-place.
LAMECH [Hebrew: Lemech], the biblical patriarch, appears in each of the
antediluvian genealogies, Gen. iv. 16-24 J., and Gen. v. P. In the
former he is a descendant of Cain, and through his sons the author of
primitive civilization; in the latter he is the father of Noah. But it
is now generally held that these two genealogies are variant adaptations
of the Babylonian list of primitive kings (see ENOCH). It is doubtful
whether Lamech is to be identified with the name of any one of these
kings; he may have been introduced into the genealogy from another
tradition.
In the older narrative in Gen. iv. Lamech's family are the originators
of various advances in civilization; he himself is the first to marry
more than one wife, 'Adah ("ornament," perhaps specially "dawn") and
Zillah ("shadow"). He has three sons Jabal, Jubal, and Tubal, the
last-named qualified by the addition of Cain (= "smith"[1]). The
assonance of these names is probably intentional, cf. the brothers Hasan
and Hosein of early Mahommedan history. Jabal institutes the life of
nomadic shepherds, Jubal is the inventor of music, Tubal-Cain the first
smith. Jabal and Jubal may be forms of a root used in Hebrew and
Phoenician for ram and ram's horn (i.e. trumpet), and underlying our
"jubilee." Tubal may be the eponymous ancestor of the people of that
name mentioned in Ezekiel in connexion with "vessels of bronze."[2] All
three names are sometimes derived from [Hebrew: yuval] in the sense of
offspring, so that they would be three different words for "son," and
there are numerous other theories as to their etymology. Lamech has also
a daughter Naamah ("gracious," "pleasant," "comely"; cf. No'mân, a name
of the deity Adonis). This narrative clearly intends to account for the
origin of these various arts as they existed in the narrator's time; it
is not likely that he thought of these discoveries as separated from his
own age by a universal flood; nor does the tone of the narrative suggest
that the primitive tradition thought of these pioneers of civilization
as members of an accursed family. Probably the passage was originally
independent of the document which told of Cain and Abel and of the
Flood; Jabal may be a variant of Abel. An ancient poem is connected with
this genealogy:
"Adah and Zillah, hear my voice;
Ye wives of Lamech, give ear unto my speech.
I slay a man for a wound,
A young man for a stroke;
For Cain's vengeance is sevenfold,
But Lamech's seventy-fold and seven."
In view of the connexion, the poem is interpreted as expressing Lamech's
exultation at the advantage he expects to derive from Tubal-Cain's new
inventions; the worker in bronze will forge for him new and formidable
weapons, so that he will be able to take signal vengeance for the least
injury. But the poem probably had originally nothing to do with the
genealogy. It may have been a piece of folk-song celebrating the prowess
of the tribe of Lamech; or it may have had some relation to a story of
Cain and Abel in which Cain was a hero and not a villain.
The genealogy in Gen. v. belongs to the Priestly Code, _c._ 450 B.C.,
and may be due to a revision of ancient tradition in the light of
Babylonian archaeology. It is noteworthy that according to the numbers
in the Samaritan MSS. Lamech dies in the year of the Flood.
The origin of the name Lamech and its original meaning are doubtful.
It was probably the name of a tribe or deity, or both. According to C.
J. Ball,[3] Lamech is an adaptation of the Babylonian _Lamga_, a title
of Sin the moon god, and synonymous with _Ubara_ in the name
Ubara-Tutu, the Otiartes of Berossus, who is the ninth of the ten
primitive Babylonian kings, and the father of the hero of the
Babylonian flood story, just as Lamech is the ninth patriarch, and the
father of Noah. Spurrell[4] states that Lamech cannot be explained
from the Hebrew, but may possibly be connected with the Arabic
_yalmakun_, "a strong young man."
Outside of Genesis, Lamech is only mentioned in the Bible in 1 Chron.
i. 3, Luke iii. 36. Later Jewish tradition expanded and interpreted
the story in its usual fashion. (W. H. Be.)