LESBONAX, of Mytilene, Greek sophist and rhetorician, flourished in the

time of Augustus. According to Photius (_cod._ 74) he was the author of

sixteen political speeches, of which two are extant, a hortatory speech

after the style of Thucydides, and a speech on the Corinthian War. In

the first he exhorts the Athenians against the Spartans, in the second

(the title of which is misleading) against the Thebans (edition by F.

Kiehr, _Lesbonactis quae supersunt_, Leipzig, 1907). Some erotic letters

are also attributed to him.

The Lesbonax described in Suidas as the author of a large number of

philosophical works is probably of much earlier date; on the other

hand, the author of a small treatise [Greek: Peri Schêmatôn] on

grammatical figures (ed. Rudolf Müller, Leipzig, 1900), is probably

later.

LESBOS (Mytilene, Turk. _Midullu_), an island in the Aegean sea, off the

coast of Mysia, N. of the entrance of the Gulf of Smyrna, forming the

main part of a sanjak in the archipelago vilayet of European Turkey. It

is divided into three districts, Mytilene or Kastro in the E., Molyvo in

the N., and Calloni in the W. Since the middle ages it has been known as

Mytilene, from the name of its principal town. Strabo estimated the

circumference of the island at 1100 stadia, or about 138 m., and Scylax

reckoned it seventh in size of the islands of the Mediterranean. The

width of the channel between it and the mainland varies from 7 to 10 m.

The island is roughly triangular in shape; the three points are Argennum

on the N.E., Sigrium (Sigri) on the W., and Malea (Maria) on the S.E.

The Euripus Pyrrhaeus (Calloni) is a deep gulf on the west between

Sigrium and Malea. The country though mountainous is very fertile,

Lesbos being celebrated in ancient times for its wine, oil and grain.

Homer refers to its wealth. Its chief produce now is olives, which also

form its principal export. Soap, skins and valonea are also exported,

and mules and cattle are extensively bred. The sardine fishery is an

important trade, and antimony, marble and coal are found on the island.

The surface is rugged and mountainous, the highest point, Mount Olympus

(Hagios Elias) being 3080 ft. The island has suffered from periodical

earthquakes. The roads were remade in 1889, and there is telegraphic

communication on the island, and to the mainland by cable. The ports are

Sigri and Mytilene. The Gulf of Calloni and Hiera or Olivieri can only

be entered by vessels of small draught.

The chief town, called Mytilene, is built in amphitheatre shape round a

small hill crowned by remains of an ancient fortress. There are now 14

mosques and 7 churches, including a cathedral. It was originally built

on an island close to the eastern coast of Lesbos, and afterwards when

the town became too large for the island, it was joined to Lesbos by a

causeway, and the city spread along the coast. There was a harbour on

each side of the small island. Maloeis, by some surmised to be the

northern of these, was not far away. Besides the five cities which gave

the island the name of Pentapolis (Mytilene, Methymna, Antissa, Eresus,

Pyrrha), there was a town called Arisba, destroyed by an earthquake in

the time of Herodotus. Professor Conze thinks that this is the site now

called Palaikastro, N.E. of Calloni. Pyrrha lay S.E. of Calloni, and is

now also called Palaikastro. Antissa was on the N. coast near Sigri. It

was destroyed by the Romans in 168 B.C. Eresus was also near Sigri on

the S. coast. Methymna was on the N. coast, on the site of Molyvo, still

the second city of the island. The name Methymna is derived from the

wine (Gr. [Greek: methy]) for which it was famous. Considerable remains

of town walls and other buildings are to be seen on all these sites.

(E. Gr.)

_History._--Although the position of Lesbos near the old-established

trade-route to the Hellespont marks it out as an important site even in

pre-historic days, no evidence on the early condition of the island is

as yet obtainable, beyond the Greek tradition which represented it at

the time of the Trojan war as inhabited by an original stock of Pelasgi

and an immigrant population of Ionians. In historic times it was peopled

by an "Aeolian" race who reckoned Boeotia as their motherland and

claimed to have migrated about 1050 B.C.; its principal nobles traced

their pedigree to Orestes, son of Agamemnon. Lesbos was the most

prominent of Aeolian settlements, and indeed played a large part in the

early development of Greek life. Its commercial activity is attested by

several colonies in Thrace and the Troad, and by the participation of

its traders in the settlement of Naucratis in Egypt; hence also the town

of Mytilene, by virtue of its good harbour, became the political capital

of the island. The climax of its prosperity was reached about 600 B.C.,

when a citizen named Pittacus was appointed as _aesymnetes_ (dictator)

to adjust the balance between the governing nobility and the insurgent

commons and by his wise administration and legislation won a place among

the Seven Sages of Greece. These years also constitute the golden age of

Lesbian culture. The lyric poetry of Greece, which owed much to two

Lesbians of the 7th century, the musician Terpander and the dithyrambist

Arion, attained the standard of classical excellence under Pittacus'

contemporaries Alcaeus and Sappho. In the 6th century the importance of

the island declined, partly through a protracted and unsuccessful

struggle with Athens for the possession of Sigeum near the Hellespont,

partly through a crushing naval defeat inflicted by Polycrates of Samos

(about 550). The Lesbians readily submitted to Persia after the fall of

Croesus of Lydia, and although hatred of their tyrant Coës, a Persian

protégé, drove them to take part in the Ionic revolt (499-493), they

made little use of their large navy and displayed poor spirit at the

decisive battle of Lade. In the 5th century Lesbos for a long time

remained a privileged member of the Delian League (q.v.), with full

rights of self-administration, and under the sole obligation of

assisting Athens with naval contingents. Nevertheless at the beginning

of the Peloponnesian War the ruling oligarchy of Mytilene forced on a

revolt, which was ended after a two years' siege of that town (429-427).

The Athenians, who had intended to punish the rebels by a wholesale

execution, contented themselves with killing the ringleaders,

confiscating the land and establishing a garrison. In the later years of

the war Lesbos was repeatedly attacked by the Peloponnesians, and in 405

the harbour of Mytilene was the scene of a battle between the admirals

Callicratidas and Conon. In 389 most of the island was recovered for the

Athenians by Thrasybulus; in 377 it joined the Second Delian League, and

remained throughout a loyal member, although in the second half of the

century the dominant democracy was for a while supplanted by a tyranny.

In 334 Lesbos served as a base for the Persian admiral Memnon against

Alexander the Great. During the Third Macedonian war the Lesbians sided

with Perseus against Rome; similarly in 88 they became eager allies of

Mithradates VI. of Pontus, and Mytilene stood a protracted siege on his

behalf. This town, nevertheless, was raised by Pompey to the status of a

free community, thanks no doubt to his confidant Theophanes, a native of

Mytilene.

Of the other towns on the island, Antissa, Eresus and Pyrrha possess no

separate history. Methymna in the 5th and 4th centuries sometimes

figures as a rival of Mytilene, with an independent policy. Among the

distinguished Lesbians, in addition to those cited, may be mentioned the

cyclic poet Lesches, the historian Hellanicus and the philosophers

Theophrastus and Cratippus.

During the Byzantine age the island, which now assumes the name of

Mytilene, continued to flourish. In 1091 it fell for a while into the

hands of the Seljuks, and in the following century was repeatedly

occupied by the Venetians. In 1224 it was recovered by the Byzantine

emperors, who in 1354 gave it as a dowry to the Genoese family

Gattilusio. After prospering under their administration Mytilene passed

in 1462 under Turkish control, and has since had an uneventful history.

The present population is about 130,000 of whom 13,000 are Turks and

Moslems and 117,000 Greeks.

See Strabo xiii. pp. 617-619; Herodotus ii. 178, iii. 39, vi. 8, 14;

Thucydides iii. 2-50; Xenophon, _Hellenica_, i., ii.; S. Plehn,

_Lesbiacorum Liber_ (Berlin, 1828); C. T. Newton, _Travels and

Discoveries in the Levant_ (London, 1865); B. V. Head, _Historia

Numorum_ (Oxford, 1887), pp. 487-488; E. L. Hicks and G. F. Hill,

_Greek Historical Inscriptions_ (Oxford, 1901), Nos. 61, 94, 101, 139,

164; Conze, _Reise auf der Insel Lesbos_ (1865); Koldewey, _Antike

Baureste auf Lesbos_ (Berlin, 1890). (M. O. B. C.)

LESCHES (Lescheos in Pausanias x. 25. 5), the reputed author of the

_Little Iliad_ ([Greek: Ilias mikra]), one of the "cyclic" poems.

According to the usually accepted tradition, he was a native of Pyrrha

in Lesbos, and flourished about 660 B.C. (others place him about 50

years earlier). The _Little Iliad_ took up the story of the Homeric

_Iliad_, and, beginning with the contest between Ajax and Odysseus for

the arms of Achilles, carried it down to the fall of Troy (Aristotle,

_Poetics_, 23). According to the epitome in the _Chrestomathy_ of

Proclus, it ended with the admission of the wooden horse within the

walls of the city. Some ancient authorities ascribe the work to a

Lacedaemonian named Cinaethon, and even to Homer.

See F. G. Welcker, _Der epische Cyclus_ (1865-1882); Müller and

Donaldson, _Hist. of Greek Literature_, i. ch. 6; G. H. Bode,

_Geschichte der hellenischen Dichtkunst_, i.

LESCURE, LOUIS MARIE JOSEPH, MARQUIS DE (1766-1793), French soldier and

anti-revolutionary, was born near Bressuire. He was educated at the

École Militaire, which he left at the age of sixteen. He was in command

of a company of cavalry in the Régiment de Royal-Piémont, but being

opposed to the ideas of the Revolution he emigrated in 1791; he soon,

however, returned to France, and on the 10th of August 1792 took part in

the defence of the Tuileries against the mob of Paris. The day after, he

was forced to leave Paris, and took refuge in the château of Clisson

near Bressuire. On the outbreak of the revolt of Vendée against the

Republic, he was arrested and imprisoned with all his family, as one of

the promoters of the rising. He was set at liberty by the Royalists, and

became one of their leaders, fighting at Thouars, taking Fontenay and

Saumur (May-June 1793), and, after an unsuccessful attack on Nantes,

joining H. du Verger de la Rochejaquelein, another famous Vendean

leader. Their peasant troops, opposed to the republican general F. J.

Westermann, sustained various defeats, but finally gained a victory

between Tiffauges and Cholet on the 19th of September 1793. The struggle

was then concentrated round Chatillon, which was time after time taken

and lost by the Republicans. Lescure was killed on the 15th of October

1793 near the château of La Tremblaye between Einée and Fougères.

See Marquise de la Rochejaquelein (Lescure's widow, who afterwards

married La Rochejaquelein), _Mémoires_ (Paris, 1817); Jullien de

Courcelles, _Dictionnaire des généraux français_, tome vii. (1823); T.

Muret, _Histoire des guerres de l'ouest_ (Paris, 1848); and J. A. M.

Crétineau-Joly, _Guerres de Vendée_ (1834).

LESDIGUIÈRES, FRANÇOIS DE BONNE, DUC DE (1543-1626), constable of

France, was born at Saint-Bonnet de Champsaur on the 1st of April 1543,

of a family of notaries with pretensions to nobility. He was educated at

Avignon under a Protestant tutor, and had begun the study of law in

Paris when he enlisted as an archer. He served under the

lieutenant-general of his native province of Dauphiné, Bertrand de

Simiane, baron de Gordes, but when the Huguenots raised troops in

Dauphiné Lesdiguières threw in his lot with them, and under his kinsman

Antoine Rambaud de Furmeyer, whom he succeeded in 1570, distinguished

himself in the mountain warfare that followed by his bold yet prudent

handling of troops. He fought at Jarnac and Moncontour, and was a guest

at the wedding of Henry IV. of Navarre. Warned of the impending massacre

he retired hastily to Dauphiné, where he secretly equipped and drilled a

determined body of Huguenots, and in 1575, after the execution of

Montbrun, became the acknowledged leader of the Huguenot resistance in

the district with the title of commandant general, confirmed in 1577 by

Marshal Damville, by Condé in 1580, and by Henry of Navarre in 1582. He

seized Gap by a lucky night attack on the 3rd of January 1577,

re-established the reformed religion there, and fortified the town. He

refused to acquiesce in the treaty of Poitiers (1578) which involved the

surrender of Gap, and after two years of fighting secured better terms

for the province. Nevertheless in 1580 he was compelled to hand the

place over to Mayenne and to see the fortifications dismantled. He took

up arms for Henry IV. in 1585, capturing Chorges, Embrun, Châteauroux

and other places, and after the truce of 1588-1589 secured the complete

submission of Dauphiné. In 1590 he beat down the resistance of Grenoble,

and was now able to threaten the leaguers and to support the governor of

Provence against the raids of Charles Emmanuel I. of Savoy. He defeated

the Savoyards at Esparron in April 1591, and in 1592 began the

reconquest of the marquessate of Saluzzo which had been seized by

Charles Emmanuel. After his defeat of the Spanish allies of Savoy at

Salebertrano in June 1593 there was a truce, during which Lesdiguières

was occupied in maintaining the royal authority against Éperon in

Provence. The war with Savoy proceeded intermittently until 1601, when

Henry IV. concluded peace, much to the dissatisfaction of Lesdiguières.

The king regarded his lieutenant's domination in Dauphiné with some

distrust, although he was counted among the best of his captains.

Nevertheless he made him a marshal of France in 1609, and ensured the

succession to the lieutenant-generalship of Dauphiné, vested in

Lesdiguières since 1597, to his son-in-law Charles de Créquy. Sincerely

devoted to the throne, Lesdiguières took no part in the intrigues which

disturbed the minority of Louis XIII., and he moderated the political

claims made by his co-religionists under the terms of the Edict of

Nantes. After the death of his first wife, Claudine de Bérenger, he

married the widow of Ennemond Matel, a Grenoble shopkeeper, who was

murdered in 1617. Lesdiguières was then 73, and this lady, Marie Vignon,

had long been his mistress. He had two daughters, one of whom,

Françoise, married Charles de Créquy. In 1622 he formally abjured the

Protestant faith, his conversion being partly due to the influence of

Marie Vignon. He was already a duke and peer of France; he now became

constable of France, and received the order of the Saint Esprit. He had

long since lost the confidence of the Huguenots, but he nevertheless

helped the Vaudois against the duke of Savoy. Lesdiguières had the

qualities of a great general, but circumstances limited him to the

mountain warfare of Dauphiné, Provence and Savoy. He had almost

unvarying success through sixty years of fighting. His last campaign,

fought in alliance with Savoy to drive the Spaniards from the

Valtelline, was the least successful of his enterprises. He died of

fever at Valence on the 21st of September 1626.

The life of the Huguenot captain has been written in detail by Ch.

Dufuyard, _Le Connétable de Lesdiguières_ (Paris, 1892). His first

biographer was his secretary Louis Videl, _Histoire de la vie du

connestable de Lesdiguières_ (Paris, 1638). Much of his official

correspondence, with an admirable sketch of his life, is contained in

_Actes et correspondance du connétable de Lesdiguières_, edited by

Comte Douglas and J. Roman in _Documents historiques inédits pour

servir à l'histoire de Dauphiné_ (Grenoble, 1878). Other letters are

in the _Lettres et mémoires_ (Paris, 1647) of Duplessis-Mornay.

LESGHIANS, or LESGHIS (from the Persian _Leksi_, called Leki by the

Grusians or Georgians, Armenians and Ossetes), the collective name for a

number of tribes of the eastern Caucasus, who, with their kinsfolk the

Chechenzes, have inhabited Daghestan from time immemorial. They spread

southward into the Transcaucasian circles Kuba, Shemakha, Nukha and

Sakataly. They are mentioned as [Greek: Lêchai] by Strabo and Plutarch

along with the [Greek: Gêlai] (perhaps the modern Galgai, a Chechenzian

tribe), and their name occurs frequently in the chronicles of the

Georgians, whose territory was exposed to their raids for centuries,

until, on the surrender (1859) to Russia of the Chechenzian chieftain

Shamyl, they became Russian subjects. Moses of Chorene mentions a battle

in the reign of the Armenian king Baba (A.D. 370-377), in which Shagir,

king of the Lekians, was slain. The most important of the Lesghian

tribes are the Avars (q.v.), the Kasimukhians or Lakians, the Darghis

and the Kurins or Lesghians proper. Komarov[1] gives the total number

of the tribes as twenty-seven, all speaking distinct dialects. Despite

this, the Lesghian peoples, with the exception of the Udi and Kubatschi,

are held to be ethnically identical. The Lesghians are not usually so

good-looking as the Circassians or the Chechenzes. They are tall,

powerfully built, and their hybrid descent is suggested by the range of

colouring, some of the tribes exhibiting quite fair, others quite dark,

individuals. Among some there is an obvious mongoloid strain. In

disposition they are intelligent, bold and persistent, and capable of

reckless bravery, as was proved in their struggle to maintain their

independence. They are capable of enduring great physical fatigue. They

live a semi-savage life on their mountain slopes, for the most part

living by hunting and stock-breeding. Little agriculture is possible.

Their industries are mainly restricted to smith-work and cutlery and the

making of felt cloaks, and the women weave excellent shawls. They are

for the most part fanatical Mahommedans.

See Moritz Wagner, _Schamyl_ (Leipzig, 1854); von Seidlitz,

"Ethnographie des Kaukasus," in _Petermann's Mitteilungen_ (1880);

Ernest Chantre, _Recherches anthropologiques dans le Caucase_ (Lyon,

1885-1887); J. de Morgan, _Recherches sur les origines des peuples du

Caucase_ (Paris, 1889).

FOOTNOTE:

[1] _Ethnological Map of Daghestan._

LESINA (Serbo-Croatian, _Hvar_), an island in the Adriatic Sea, forming

part of Dalmatia, Austria. Lesina lies between the islands of Brazza on

the north and Curzola on the south; and is divided from the peninsula of

Sabbioncello by the Narenta channel. Its length is 41 m.; its greatest

breadth less than 4 m. It has a steep rocky coast with a chain of thinly

wooded limestone hills. The climate is mild, and not only the grape and

olive, but dates, figs and the carob or locust-bean flourish. The

cultivation of these fruits, boat-building, fishing and the preparation

of rosemary essence and liqueurs are the principal resources of the

islanders. Lesina (_Hvar_) and Cittavecchia (_Starigrad_) are the

principal towns and seaports, having respectively 2138 and 3120

inhabitants. Lesina, the capital, contains an arsenal, an observatory

and some interesting old buildings of the 16th century. It is a Roman

Catholic bishopric, and the centre of an administrative district, which

includes Cittavecchia, Lissa, and some small neighbouring islands. Pop.

(1900) of island 18,091, of district 27,928.

To the primitive "Illyrian" race, whose stone cists and bronze

implements have been disinterred from barrows near the capital, may

perhaps be attributed the "Cyclopean" walls at Cittavecchia. About 385

B.C., a Greek colony from Paros built a city on the site of the present

Lesina, naming it _Paros_ or _Pharos_. The forms _Phara_, _Pharia_

(common among Latin writers), and _Pityeia_, also occur. In 229 B.C. the

island was betrayed to the Romans by Demetrius, lieutenant of the

Illyrian queen Teuta; but in 219, as Demetrius proved false to Rome

also, his capital was razed by Lucius Aemilius Paullus. _Neos Pharos_,

now Cittavecchia, took its place, and flourished until the 6th century,

when the island was laid waste by barbarian invaders. Constantine

Porphyrogenitus mentions Lesina as a colony of pagan Slavs, in the 10th

century. Throughout the middle ages it remained a purely Slavonic

community; and its name, which appears in old documents as _Lisna_,

_Lesna_ or _Lyesena_, "wooded" is almost certainly derived from the

Slavonic _lyés_, "forest," not from the Italian _lesina_, "an awl." But

the old form Pharia persisted, as _Far_ or _Hvar_, with the curious

result that the modern Serbo-Croatian name is Greek, and the modern

Italian name Slavonic in origin. Lesina became a bishopric in 1145, and

received a charter from Venice in 1331. It was sacked by the enemies of

Venice in 1354 and 1358; ceded to Hungary in the same year; held by

Ragusa from 1413 to 1416; and incorporated in the Venetian dominions in

1420. During the 16th century Lesina city had a considerable maritime

trade, and, though sacked and partly burned by the Turks in 1571, it

remained the chief naval station of Venice, in these waters, until 1776,

when it was superseded by Curzola. Passing to Austria in 1797, and to

France in 1805, it withstood a Russian attack in 1807, but was

surrendered by the French in 1813, and finally annexed to Austria in

1815.

LESION (through Fr. from Lat. _laesio_, injury, _laedere_, to hurt), an

injury, hurt, damage. In Scots law the term is used of damage suffered

by a party in a contract sufficient to enable him to bring an action for

setting it aside. In pathology, the chief use, the word is applied to

any morbid change in the structure of an organ, whether shown by visible

changes or by disturbance of function.

LESKOVATS (LESKOVATZ or LESKOVAC), a town in Servia, between Nish and

Vranya, on the railway line from Nish to Salonica. Pop. (1901) 13,707.

It is the headquarters of the Servian hemp industry, the extensive plain

in which the town lies growing the best flax and hemp in all the Balkan

peninsula. The plain is not only the most fertile portion of Servia, but

also the best cultivated. Besides flax and hemp, excellent tobacco is

grown. Five valleys converge on the plain from different directions, and

the inhabitants of the villages in these valleys are all occupied in

growing flax and hemp, which they send to Leskovats to be stored or

manufactured into ropes. After Belgrade and Nish, Leskovats is the most

prosperous town in Servia.

LESLEY, JOHN (1527-1596), Scottish bishop and historian, was born in

1527. His father was Gavin Lesley, rector of Kingussie. He was educated

at the university of Aberdeen, where he took the degree of M.A. In 1538

he obtained a dispensation permitting him to hold a benefice,

notwithstanding his being a natural son, and in June 1546 he was made an

acolyte in the cathedral church of Aberdeen, of which he was afterwards

appointed a canon and prebendary. He also studied at Poitiers, at

Toulouse and at Paris, where he was made doctor of laws in 1553. In 1558

he took orders and was appointed Official of Aberdeen, and inducted into

the parsonage and prebend of Oyne. At the Reformation Lesley became a

champion of Catholicism. He was present at the disputation held in

Edinburgh in 1561, when Knox and Willox were his antagonists. He was one

of the commissioners sent the same year to bring over the young Queen

Mary to take the government of Scotland. He returned in her train, and

was appointed a privy councillor and professor of canon law in King's

College, Aberdeen, and in 1565 one of the senators of the college of

justice. Shortly afterwards he was made abbot of Lindores, and in 1565

bishop of Ross, the election to the see being confirmed in the following

year. He was one of the sixteen commissioners appointed to revise the

laws of Scotland, and the volume of the _Actis and Constitutionis of the

Realme of Scotland_ known as the Black Acts was, chiefly owing to his

care, printed in 1566.

The bishop was one of the most steadfast friends of Queen Mary. After

the failure of the royal cause, and whilst Mary was a captive in

England, Lesley (who had gone to her at Bolton) continued to exert

himself on her behalf. He was one of the commissioners at the conference

at York in 1568. He appeared as her ambassador at the court of Elizabeth

to complain of the injustice done to her, and when he found he was not

listened to, he laid plans for her escape. He also projected a marriage

for her with the duke of Norfolk, which ended in the execution of that

nobleman. For this he was put under the charge of the bishop of London,

and then of the bishop of Ely (in Holborn), and afterwards imprisoned in

the Tower of London. During his confinement he collected materials for

his history of Scotland, by which his name is now chiefly known. In 1571

he presented the latter portion of this work, written in Scots, to Queen

Mary to amuse her in her captivity. He also wrote for her use his _Piae

Consolationes_, and the queen devoted some of the hours of her captivity

to translating a portion of it into French verse.

In 1573 he was liberated from prison, but was banished from England. For

two years he attempted unsuccessfully to obtain the assistance of

Continental princes in favour of Queen Mary. While at Rome in 1578 he

published his Latin history _De Origine, Moribus, et Rebus Gestis

Scotorum_. In 1579 he went to France, and was made suffragan and

vicar-general of the archbishopric of Rouen. Whilst visiting his

diocese, however, he was thrown into prison, and had to pay 3000

pistoles to prevent his being given up to Elizabeth. During the

remainder of the reign of Henry III. he lived unmolested, but on the

accession of the Protestant Henry IV. he again fell into trouble. In

1590 he was thrown into prison, and had to purchase his freedom at the

same expense as before. In 1593 he was made bishop of Coutances in

Normandy, and had licence to hold the bishopric of Ross till he should

obtain peaceable possession of the former see. He retired to an

Augustinian monastery near Brussels, where he died on the 31st of May

1596.

The chief works of Lesley are as follows: _A Defence of the Honour of

... Marie, Queene of Scotland, by Eusebius Dicaeophile_ (London,

1569), reprinted, with alterations, at Liége in 1571, under the title,

_A Treatise concerning the Defence of the Honour of Marie, Queene of

Scotland, made by Morgan Philippes, Bachelar of Divinitie, Piae

afflicti animi consolationes, ad Mariam Scot. Reg._ (Paris, 1574); _De

origine, moribus et rebus gestis Scotorum libri decem_ (Rome, 1578;

re-issued 1675); _De illustrium feminarum in republica administranda

authoritate libellus_ (Reims, 1580; a Latin version of a tract on "The

Lawfulness of the Regiment of Women": cf. Knox's pamphlet); _De titulo

et jure Mariae Scot. Reg., quo regni Angliae successionem sibi juste

vindicat_ (Reims, 1580; translated in 1584). The history of Scotland

from 1436 to 1561 owes much, in its earlier chapters, to the accounts

of Hector Boece (q.v.) and John Major (q.v.), though no small portion

of the topographical matter is first-hand. In the later sections he

gives an independent account (from the Catholic point of view) which

is a valuable supplement and a corrective in many details, to the

works of Buchanan and Knox. A Scots version of the history was written

in 1596 by James Dalrymple of the Scottish Cloister at Regensburg. It

has been printed for the Scottish Text Society (2 vols., 1888-1895)

under the editorship of the Rev. E. G. Cody, O.S.B. A slight sketch by

Lesley of Scottish history from 1562 to 1571 has been translated by

Forbes-Leith in his _Narrative of Scottish Catholics_ (1885), from the

original MS. now in the Vatican.

LESLEY, J. PETER (1819-1903), American geologist, was born in

Philadelphia on the 17th of September 1819. It is recorded by Sir A.

Geikie that "He was christened Peter after his father and grandfather,

and at first wrote his name 'Peter Lesley, Jr.,' but disliking the

Christian appellation that had been given to him, he eventually

transformed his signature by putting the J. of 'Junior' at the

beginning." He was educated for the ministry at the university of

Pennsylvania, where he graduated in 1838; but the effects of close study

having told upon his health, he served for a time as sub-assistant on

the first geological survey of Pennsylvania under Professor H. D.

Rogers, and was afterwards engaged in a special examination of the coal

regions. On the termination of the survey in 1841 he entered Princeton

seminary and renewed his theological studies, at the same time giving

his leisure time to assist Professor Rogers in preparing the final

report and map of Pennsylvania. He was licensed to preach in 1844; he

then paid a visit to Europe and entered on a short course of study at

the university of Halle. Returning to America he worked during two years

for the American Tract Society, and at the close of 1847 he joined

Professor Rogers again in preparing geological maps and sections at

Boston. He then accepted the pastorate of the Congregational church at

Milton, a suburb of Boston, where he remained until 1851, when, his

views having become Unitarian, he abandoned the ministry and entered

into practice as a consulting geologist. In the course of his work he

made elaborate surveys of the Cape Breton coalfield, and of other coal

and iron regions. From 1855 to 1859 he was secretary of the American

Iron Association; for twenty-seven years (1858-1885) he was secretary

and librarian of the American Philosophical Society; from 1872 to 1878

he was professor of geology and dean of the faculty of science in the

university of Pennsylvania, and from 1874-1893 he was in charge of the

second geological survey of the state. He then retired to Milton, Mass.,

where he died on the 1st of June 1903. He published _Manual of Coal and

its Topography_ (1856); _The Iron Manufacturer's Guide to the Furnaces,

Forges and Rolling Mills of the United States_ (1859).

See Memoir by Sir A. Geikie in _Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc._ (May 1904);

and Memoir (with portrait) by B. S. Lyman, printed in advance with

portrait, and afterwards in abstract only in _Trans. Amer. Inst.

Mining Engineers_, xxxiv. (1904) p. 726.

LESLIE, CHARLES (1650-1722), Anglican nonjuring divine, son of John

Leslie (1571-1671), bishop of Raphoe and afterwards of Clogher, was born

in July 1650 in Dublin, and was educated at Enniskillen school and

Trinity College, Dublin. Going to England he read law for a time, but

soon turned his attention to theology, and took orders in 1680. In 1687

he became chancellor of the cathedral of Connor and a justice of the

peace, and began a long career of public controversy by responding in

public disputation at Monaghan to the challenge of the Roman Catholic

bishop of Clogher. Although a vigorous opponent of Roman Catholicism,

Leslie was a firm supporter of the Stuart dynasty, and, having declined

at the Revolution to take the oath to William and Mary, he was on this

account deprived of his benefice. In 1689 the growing troubles in

Ireland induced him to withdraw to England, where he employed himself

for the next twenty years in writing various controversial pamphlets in

favour of the nonjuring cause, and in numerous polemics against the

Quakers, Jews, Socinians and Roman Catholics, and especially in that

against the Deists with which his name is now most commonly associated.

He had the keenest scent for every form of heresy and was especially

zealous in his defence of the sacraments. A warrant having been issued

against him in 1710 for his pamphlet _The Good Old Cause, or Lying in

Truth_, he resolved to quit England and to accept an offer made by the

Pretender (with whom he had previously been in frequent correspondence)

that he should reside with him at Bar-le-Duc. After the failure of the

Stuart cause in 1715, Leslie accompanied his patron into Italy, where he

remained until 1721, in which year, having found his sojourn amongst

Roman Catholics extremely unpleasant, he sought and obtained permission

to return to his native country. He died at Glaslough, Monaghan, on the

13th of April 1722.

The _Theological Works_ of Leslie were collected and published by

himself in 2 vols. folio in 1721; a later edition, slightly enlarged,

appeared at Oxford in 1832 (7 vols. 8vo). Though marred by persistent

arguing in a circle they are written in lively style and show

considerable erudition. He had the somewhat rare distinction of making

several converts by his reasonings, and Johnson declared that "Leslie

was a reasoner, and a reasoner who was not to be reasoned against." An

historical interest in all that now attaches to his subjects and his

methods, as may be seen when the promise given in the title of his

best-known work is contrasted with the actual performance. The book

professes to be _A Short and Easy Method with the Deists, wherein the

certainty of the Christian Religion is Demonstrated by Infallible

Proof from Four Rules, which are incompatible to any imposture that

ever yet has been, or that can possibly be_ (1697). The four rules

which, according to Leslie, have only to be rigorously applied in

order to establish not the probability merely but the absolute

certainty of the truth of Christianity are simply these: (1) that the

matter of fact be such as that men's outward senses, their eyes and

ears, may be judges of it; (2) that it be done publicly, in the face

of the world; (3) that not only public monuments be kept up in memory

of it, but some outward actions be performed; (4) that such monuments

and such actions or observances be instituted and do commence from the

time that the matter of fact was done. Other publications of Leslie

are _The Snake in the Grass_ (1696), against the Quakers; _A Short

Method with the Jews_ (1689); _Gallienus Redivivus_ (an attack on

William III., 1695); _The Socinian Controversy Discussed_ (1697); _The

True Notion of the Catholic Church_ (1703); and _The Case Stated

between the Church of Rome and the Church of England_ (1713).

LESLIE, CHARLES ROBERT (1794-1859), English genre-painter, was born in

London on the 19th of October 1794. His parents were American, and when

he was five years of age he returned with them to their native country.

They settled in Philadelphia, where their son was educated and

afterwards apprenticed to a bookseller. He was, however, mainly

interested in painting and the drama, and when George Frederick Cooke

visited the city he executed a portrait of the actor, from recollection

of him on the stage, which was considered a work of such promise that a

fund was raised to enable the young artist to study in Europe. He left

for London in 1811, bearing introductions which procured for him the

friendship of West, Beechey, Allston, Coleridge and Washington Irving,

and was admitted as a student of the Royal Academy, where he carried off

two silver medals. At first, influenced by West and Fuseli, he essayed

"high art," and his earliest important subject depicted Saul and the

Witch of Endor; but he soon discovered his true aptitude and became a

painter of cabinet-pictures, dealing, not like those of Wilkie, with the

contemporary life that surrounded him, but with scenes from the great

masters of fiction, from Shakespeare and Cervantes, Addison and Molière,

Swift, Sterne, Fielding and Smollett. Of individual paintings we may

specify "Sir Roger de Coverley going to Church" (1819); "May-day in the

Time of Queen Elizabeth" (1821); "Sancho Panza and the Duchess" (1824);

"Uncle Toby and the Widow Wadman" (1831); _La Malade Imaginaire_, act

iii. sc. 6 (1843); and the "Duke's Chaplain Enraged leaving the Table,"

from _Don Quixote_ (1849). Many of his more important subjects exist in

varying replicas. He possessed a sympathetic imagination, which enabled

him to enter freely into the spirit of the author whom he illustrated, a

delicate perception for female beauty, an unfailing eye for character

and its outward manifestation in face and figure, and a genial and sunny

sense of humour, guided by an instinctive refinement which prevented it

from overstepping the bounds of good taste. In 1821 Leslie was elected

A.R.A., and five years later full academician. In 1833 he left for

America to become teacher of drawing in the military academy at West

Point, but the post proved an irksome one, and in some six months he

returned to England. He died on the 5th of May 1859.

In addition to his skill as an artist, Leslie was a ready and pleasant

writer. His _Life_ of his friend Constable, the landscape painter,

appeared in 1843, and his _Handbook for Young Painters_, a volume

embodying the substance of his lectures as professor of painting to

the Royal Academy, in 1855. In 1860 Tom Taylor edited his

_Autobiography and Letters_, which contain interesting reminiscences

of his distinguished friends and contemporaries.

LESLIE, FRED [FREDERICK HOBSON] (1855-1892), English actor, was born at

Woolwich on the 1st of April 1855. He made his first stage appearance in

London as Colonel Hardy in _Paul Pry_ in 1878. He had a good voice, and

in 1882 made a great hit as Rip Van Winkle in Planquette's opera of that

name at the Comedy. In 1885 he appeared at the Gaiety as Jonathan Wild

in H. P. Stephens and W. Yardley's burlesque _Little Jack Sheppard_. His

extraordinary success in this part determined his subsequent career, and

for some years he and Nelly Farren, with whom he played in perfect

association, were the pillars of Gaiety burlesque. Leslie's "Don Caesar

de Bazan" in _Ruy Blas, or the Blasé Roué_, was perhaps the most popular

of his later parts. In all of them it was his own versatility and

entertaining personality which formed the attraction; whether he sang,

danced, whistled or "gagged," his performance was an unending flow of

high spirits and ludicrous charm. Under the pseudonym of "A. C. Torr" he

was acknowledged on the programmes as part-author of these burlesques,

and while on occasion he acted in more serious comedy, for which he had

undoubted capacity, his fame rests on his connexion with them. In 1881

and 1883 he played in America. He died on the 7th of December 1892.

See W. T. Vincent, _Recollections of Fred Leslie_ (1894).

LESLIE, SIR JOHN (1766-1832), Scottish mathematician and physicist, was

born of humble parentage at Largo, Fifeshire, on the 16th of April 1766,

and received his early education there and at Leven. In his thirteenth

year, encouraged by friends who had even then remarked his aptitude for

mathematical and physical science, he entered the university of St

Andrews. On the completion of his arts course, he nominally studied

divinity at Edinburgh until 1787; in 1788-1789 he spent rather more than

a year as private tutor in a Virginian family, and from 1790 till the

close of 1792 he held a similar appointment at Etruria in Staffordshire,

with the family of Josiah Wedgwood, employing his spare time in

experimental research and in preparing a translation of Buffon's

_Natural History of Birds_, which was published in nine 8vo vols. in

1793, and brought him some money. For the next twelve years (passed

chiefly in London or at Largo, with an occasional visit to the continent

of Europe) he continued his physical studies, which resulted in numerous

papers contributed by him to Nicholson's _Philosophical Journal_, and in

the publication (1804) of the _Experimental Inquiry into the Nature and

Properties of Heat_, a work which gained him the Rumford Medal of the

Royal Society of London. In 1805 he was elected to succeed John

Playfair in the chair of mathematics at Edinburgh, not, however, without

violent though unsuccessful opposition on the part of a narrow-minded

clerical party who accused him of heresy in something he had said as to

the "unsophisticated notions of mankind" about the relation of cause and

effect. During his tenure of this chair he published two volumes of a

_Course of Mathematics_--the first, entitled _Elements of Geometry,

Geometrical Analysis and Plane Trigonometry_, in 1809, and the second,

_Geometry of Curve Lines_, in 1813; the third volume, on _Descriptive

Geometry and the Theory of Solids_ was never completed. With reference

to his invention (in 1810) of a process of artificial congelation, he

published in 1813 _A Short Account of Experiments and Instruments

depending on the relations of Air to Heat and Moisture_; and in 1818 a

paper by him "On certain impressions of cold transmitted from the higher

atmosphere, with an instrument (the aethrioscope) adapted to measure

them," appeared in the _Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh_.

In 1819, on the death of Playfair, he was promoted to the more congenial

chair of natural philosophy, which he continued to hold until his death,

and in 1823 he published, chiefly for the use of his class, the first

volume of his never-completed _Elements of Natural Philosophy_. Leslie's

main contributions to physics were made by the help of the "differential

thermometer," an instrument whose invention was contested with him by

Count Rumford. By adapting to this instrument various ingenious devices

he was enabled to employ it in a great variety of investigations,

connected especially with photometry, hygroscopy and the temperature of

space. In 1820 he was elected a corresponding member of the Institute of

France, the only distinction of the kind which he valued, and early in

1832 he was created a knight. He died at Coates, a small property which

he had acquired near Largo, on the 3rd of November 1832.

LESLIE, THOMAS EDWARD CLIFFE (1827-1882), English economist, was born in

the county of Wexford in (as is believed) the year 1827. He was the

second son of the Rev. Edward Leslie, prebendary of Dromore, and rector

of Annahilt, in the county of Down. His family was of Scottish descent,

but had been connected with Ireland since the reign of Charles I.

Amongst his ancestors were that accomplished prelate, John Leslie

(1571-1671), bishop first of Raphoe and afterwards of Clogher, who, when

holding the former see, offered so stubborn a resistance to the

Cromwellian forces, and the bishop's son Charles (see above), the

nonjuror. Cliffe Leslie received his elementary education from his

father, who resided in England, though holding church preferment as well

as possessing some landed property in Ireland; by him he was taught

Latin, Greek and Hebrew, at an unusually early age; he was afterwards

for a short time under the care of a clergyman at Clapham, and was then

sent to King William's College, in the Isle of Man, where he remained

until, in 1842, being then only fifteen years of age, he entered Trinity

College, Dublin. He was a distinguished student there, obtaining,

besides other honours, a classical scholarship in 1845, and a senior

moderatorship (gold medal) in mental and moral philosophy at his degree

examination in 1846. He became a law student at Lincoln's Inn, was for

two years a pupil in a conveyancer's chambers in London, and was called

to the English bar. But his attention was soon turned from the pursuit

of legal practice, for which he seems never to have had much

inclination, by his appointment, in 1853, to the professorship of

jurisprudence and political economy in Queen's College, Belfast. The

duties of this chair requiring only short visits to Ireland in certain

terms of each year, he continued to reside and prosecute his studies in

London, and became a frequent writer on economic and social questions in

the principal reviews and other periodicals. In 1870 he collected a

number of his essays, adding several new ones, into a volume entitled

_Land Systems and Industrial Economy of Ireland, England and Continental

Countries_. J. S. Mill gave a full account of the contents of this work

in a paper in the _Fortnightly Review_, in which he pronounced Leslie to

be "one of the best living writers on applied political economy." Mill

had sought his acquaintance on reading his first article in

_Macmillan's Magazine_; he admired his talents and took pleasure in his

society, and treated him with a respect and kindness which Leslie always

gratefully acknowledged.

In the frequent visits which Leslie made to the continent, especially to

Belgium and some of the less-known districts of France and Germany, he

occupied himself much in economic and social observation, studying the

effects of the institutions and system of life which prevailed in each

region, on the material and moral condition of its inhabitants. In this

way he gained an extensive and accurate acquaintance with continental

rural economy, of which he made excellent use in studying parallel

phenomena at home. The accounts he gave of the results of his

observations were among his happiest efforts; "no one," said Mill, "was

able to write narratives of foreign visits at once so instructive and so

interesting." In these excursions he made the acquaintance of several

distinguished persons, amongst others of M. Léonce de Lavergne and M.

Émile de Laveleye. To the memory of the former of these he afterwards

paid a graceful tribute in a biographical sketch (_Fortnightly Review_,

February 1881); and to the close of his life there existed between him

and M. de Laveleye relations of mutual esteem and cordial intimacy.

Two essays of Leslie's appeared in volumes published under the auspices

of the Cobden Club, one on the "Land System of France" (2nd ed., 1870),

containing an earnest defence of _la petite culture_ and still more of

_la petite propriété_; the other on "Financial Reform" (1871), in which

he exhibited in detail the impediments to production and commerce

arising from indirect taxation. Many other articles were contributed by

him to reviews between 1875 and 1879, including several discussions of

the history of prices and the movements of wages in Europe, and a sketch

of life in Auvergne in his best manner; the most important of them,

however, related to the philosophical method of political economy,

notably a memorable one which appeared in the Dublin University

periodical, _Hermathena_. In 1879 the provost and senior fellows of

Trinity College published for him a volume in which a number of these

articles were collected under the title of _Essays in Political and

Moral Philosophy_. These and some later essays, together with the

earlier volume on _Land Systems_, form the essential contribution of

Leslie to economic literature. He had long contemplated, and had in part

written, a work on English economic and legal history, which would have

been his _magnum opus_--a more substantial fruit of his genius and his

labours than anything he has left. But the MS. of this treatise, after

much pains had already been spent on it, was unaccountably lost at Nancy

in 1872; and, though he hoped to be able speedily to reproduce the

missing portion and finish the work, no material was left in a state fit

for publication. What the nature of it would have been may be gathered

from an essay on the "History and Future of Profit" in the _Fortnightly

Review_ for November 1881, which is believed to have been in substance

an extract from it.

That he was able to do so much may well be a subject of wonder when it

is known that his labours had long been impeded by a painful and

depressing malady, from which he suffered severely at intervals, whilst

he never felt secure from its recurring attacks. To this disease he in

the end succumbed at Belfast, on the 27th of January 1882.

Leslie's work may be distributed under two heads, that of applied

political economy and that of discussion on the philosophical method

of the science. The _Land Systems_ belonged principally to the former

division. The author perceived the great and growing importance for

the social welfare of both Ireland and England of what is called "the

land question," and treated it in this volume at once with breadth of

view and with a rich variety of illustrative detail. His general

purpose was to show that the territorial systems of both countries

were so encumbered with elements of feudal origin as to be altogether

unfitted to serve the purposes of a modern industrial society. The

policy he recommended is summed up in the following list of

requirements, "a simple jurisprudence relating to land, a law of equal

intestate succession, a prohibition of entail, a legal security for

tenants' improvements, an open registration of title and transfer and

a considerable number of peasant properties." The volume is full of

practical good sense, and exhibits a thorough knowledge of home and

foreign agricultural economy; and in the handling of the subject is

everywhere shown the special power which its author possessed of

making what he wrote interesting as well as instructive. The way in

which sagacious observation and shrewd comment are constantly

intermingled in the discussion not seldom reminds us of Adam Smith,

whose manner was more congenial to Leslie than the abstract and arid

style of Ricardo.

But what, more than anything else, marks him as an original thinker

and gives him a place apart among contemporary economists, is his

exposition and defence of the historical method in political economy.

Both at home and abroad there has for some time existed a profound and

growing dissatisfaction with the method and many of the doctrines of

the hitherto dominant school, which, it is alleged, under a

"fictitious completeness, symmetry and exactness" disguises a real

hollowness and discordance with fact. It is urged that the attempt to

deduce the economic phenomena of a society from the so-called

universal principle of "the desire of wealth" is illusory, and that

they cannot be fruitfully studied apart from the general social

conditions and historic development of which they are the outcome. Of

this movement of thought Leslie was the principal representative, if

not the originator, in England. There is no doubt, for he has himself

placed it on record, that the first influence which impelled him in

the direction of the historical method was that of Sir Henry Maine, by

whose personal teaching of jurisprudence, as well as by the example of

his writings, he was led "to look at the present economic structure

and state of society as the result of a long evolution." The study of

those German economists who represent similar tendencies doubtless

confirmed him in the new line of thought on which he had entered,

though he does not seem to have been further indebted to any of them

except, perhaps, in some small degree to Roscher. And the writings of

Comte, whose "prodigious genius," as exhibited in the _Philosophie

Positive_, he admired and proclaimed, though he did not accept his

system as a whole, must have powerfully co-operated to form in him the

habit of regarding economic science as only a single branch of

sociology, which should always be kept in close relation to the

others. The earliest writing in which Leslie's revolt against the

so-called "orthodox school" distinctly appears is his _Essay on

Wages_, which was first published in 1868 and was reproduced as an

appendix to the volume on _Land Tenures_. In this, after exposing the

inanity of the theory of the wage-fund, and showing the utter want of

agreement between its results and the observed phenomena, he concludes

by declaring that "political economy must be content to take rank as

an inductive, instead of a purely deductive science," and that, by

this change of character, "it will gain in utility, interest and real

truth far more than a full compensation for the forfeiture of a

fictitious title to mathematical exactness and certainty." But it is

in the essays collected in the volume of 1879 that his attitude in

relation to the question of method is most decisively marked. In one

of these, on "the political economy of Adam Smith," he exhibits in a

very interesting way the co-existence in the _Wealth of Nations_ of

historical-inductive investigation in the manner of Montesquieu with a

priori speculation founded on theologico-metaphysical bases, and

points out the error of ignoring the former element, which is the

really characteristic feature of Smith's social philosophy, and places

him in strong contrast with his _soi-disant_ followers of the school

of Ricardo. The essay, however, which contains the most brilliant

polemic against the "orthodox school," as well as the most luminous

account and the most powerful vindication of the new direction, was

that of which we have above spoken as having first appeared in

_Hermathena_. It may be recommended as supplying the best extant

presentation of one of the two contending views of economic method. On

this essay mainly rests the claim of Leslie to be regarded as the

founder and first head of the English historical school of political

economy. Those who share his views on the philosophical constitution

of the science regard the work he did, notwithstanding its

unsystematic character, as in reality the most important done by any

English economists in the latter half of the 19th century. But even

the warmest partisans of the older school acknowledge that he did

excellent service by insisting on a kind of inquiry, previously too

much neglected, which was of the highest interest and value, in

whatever relation it might be supposed to stand to the establishment

of economic truth. The members of both groups alike recognized his

great learning, his patient and conscientious habits of investigation

and the large social spirit in which he treated the problems of his

science. (J. K. I.)

LESLIE, a police burgh of Fifeshire, Scotland. Pop. (1901) 3587. It lies

on the Leven, the vale of which is overlooked by the town, 4 m. W. of

Markinch by the North British railway. The industries include

paper-making, flax-spinning, bleaching and linen-weaving. The old church

claims to be the "Christ's Kirk on the Green" of the ancient ballads of

that name. A stone on the Green, called the Bull Stone, is said to have

been used when bull-baiting was a popular pastime. Leslie House, the

seat of the earl of Rothes, designed by Sir William Bruce, rivalled

Holyrood in magnificence. It was noted for its tapestry and its gallery

of family portraits and other pictures, including a portrait of

Rembrandt by himself. Daniel Defoe considered its park the glory of the

kingdom. The mansion sustained serious damage from fire in 1763. Norman

Leslie, master of Rothes, was concerned in the killing of Cardinal

Beaton (1546), and the dagger with which John Leslie, Norman's uncle,

struck the fatal blow is preserved in Leslie House.

MARKINCH (pop. 1499), a police burgh situated between Conland Burn and

the Leven, 7¼ m. N. by E. of Kirkcaldy by the North British railway, is

a place of great antiquity. A cell of the Culdees was established here

by one of the last of the Celtic bishops, the site of which may possibly

be marked by the ancient cross of Balgonie. Markinch is also believed to

have been a residence of the earlier kings, where prior to the 11th

century they occasionally administered justice; and in the reign of

William the Lion (d. 1214) the warrantors of goods alleged to have been

stolen were required to appear here. Its industries comprise bleaching,

flax-spinning, paper-making, distilling and coal-mining. Balgonie

Castle, close by, the keep of which is 80 ft. high, was a residence of

Alexander Leslie, the first earl of Leven, and at Balfour Castle were

born Cardinal Beaton and his uncle and nephew the archbishops of

Glasgow.

LESPINASSE, JEANNE JULIE ÉLÉONORE DE (1732-1776), French author, was

born at Lyons on the 9th of November 1732. A natural child of the

comtesse d'Albon, she was brought up as the daughter of Claude

Lespinasse of Lyons. On leaving her convent school she became governess

in the house of her mother's legitimate daughter, Mme de Vichy, who had

married the brother of the marquise du Deffand. Here Mme du Deffand made

her acquaintance, and, recognizing her extraordinary gifts, persuaded

her to come to Paris as her companion. The alliance lasted ten years

(1754-1764) until Mme du Deffand became jealous of the younger woman's

increasing influence, when a violent quarrel ensued. Mlle de Lespinasse

set up a salon of her own which was joined by many of the most brilliant

members of Mme du Deffand's circle. D'Alembert was one of the most

assiduous of her friends and eventually came to live under the same

roof. There was no scandal attached to this arrangement, which ensured

d'Alembert's comfort and lent influence to Mlle de Lespinasse's salon.

Although she had neither beauty nor rank, her ability as a hostess made

her reunions the most popular in Paris. She owes her distinction,

however, not to her social success, but to circumstances which remained

a secret during her lifetime from her closest friends. Two volumes of

_Lettres_ published in 1809 displayed her as the victim of a passion of

a rare intensity. In virtue of this ardent, intense quality Sainte Beuve

and other of her critics place her letters in the limited category to

which belong the Latin letters of Héloïse and those of the Portuguese

Nun. Her first passion, a reasonable and serious one, was for the

marquis de Mora, son of the Spanish ambassador in Paris. De Mora had

come to Paris in 1765, and with some intervals remained there until 1772

when he was ordered to Spain for his health. On the way to Paris in 1774

to fulfil promises exchanged with Mlle de Lespinasse, he died at

Bordeaux. But her letters to the comte de Guibert, the worthless object

of her fatal infatuation, begin from 1773. From the struggle between her

affection for de Mora and her blind passion for her new lover they go on

to describe her partial disenchantment on Guibert's marriage and her

final despair. Mlle de Lespinasse died on the 23rd of May 1776, her

death being apparently hastened by the agitation and misery to which she

had been for the last three years of her life a prey. In addition to the

_Lettres_ she was the author of two chapters intended as a kind of

sequel to Sterne's _Sentimental Journey_.

Her _Lettres_ ... were published by Mme de Guibert in 1809 and a

spurious additional collection appeared in 1820. Among modern editions

may be mentioned that of Eugène Asse (1876-1877). _Lettres inédites de

Mademoiselle de Lespinasse à Condorcet, à D'Alembert, à Guibert, au

comte de Crillon_, edited by M. Charles Henry (1887), contains copies

of the documents available for her biography. Mrs Humphry Ward's

novel, _Lady Rose's Daughter_, owes something to the character of Mlle

de Lespinasse.

LES SABLES D'OLONNE, a seaport of western France, capital of an

arrondissement of the department of Vendée, on an inlet of the Atlantic

seaboard, 23 m. S.W. of La Roche-sur-Yon by rail. Pop. (1906) 11,847.

The town stands between the sea on the south and the port on the north,

while on the west it is separated by a channel from the suburb of La

Chaume, built at the foot of a range of dunes 65 ft. high, which

terminates southwards in the rocky peninsula of L'Aiguille. The

beautiful smoothly sloping beach, 1 m. in length, is much frequented by

bathers. To the north of Sables extend salt-marshes and oyster-parks,

yielding 6,000,000 to 8,000,000 oysters per annum. Sables has a church

built in the Late Gothic style towards the middle of the 17th century.

The port, consisting of a tidal basin and a wet-dock, is accessible to

vessels of 2000 tons, but is dangerous when the winds are from the

south-west. The lighthouse of Barges, a mile out at sea to the west, is

visible for 17 to 18 nautical miles. The inhabitants are employed

largely in sardine and tunny fishing; there are imports of coal, wood,

petroleum and phosphates. Boat-building and sardine-preserving are

carried on. The town has a sub-prefecture and a tribunal of first

instance.

Founded by Basque or Spanish sailors, Sables was the first place in

Poitou invaded by the Normans in 817. Louis XI., who went there in 1472,

granted the inhabitants various privileges, improved the harbour, and

fortified the entrance. Captured and recaptured during the Wars of

Religion, the town afterwards became a nursery of hardy sailors and

privateers, who harassed the Spaniards and afterwards the English. In

1696 Sables was bombarded by the combined fleets of England and Holland.

In the middle of the 18th century hurricanes caused grievous damage to

town and harbour.

LES SAINTES-MARIES, a coast village of south-eastern France in the

department of Boûches-du-Rhône, 24 m. S.S.W. of Arles by rail. Pop.

(1906) 544. Saintes-Maries is situated in the plain of the Camargue, 1½

m. E. of the mouth of the Petit-Rhône. It is the object of an ancient

and famous pilgrimage due to the tradition that Mary, sister of the

Virgin, and Mary, mother of James and John, together with their black

servant Sara, Lazarus, Martha, Mary Magdalen and St Maximin fled thither

to escape persecution in Judaea. The relics of the two Maries, who are

said to have been buried at Saintes-Maries, are bestowed in the upper

storey of the apse of the fortress-church, a remarkable building of the

12th century with crenelated and machicolated walls. Two festivals are

held in the town, a less important one in October, the other, on the

24th and 25th of May, unique for its gathering of gipsies who come in

large numbers to do honour to the tomb of their patroness Sara,

contained in the crypt below the apse.

LESSE, one of the most romantic of the smaller rivers of Belgium. It

rises at Ochamps in the Ardennes, and flowing in a north-westerly course

reaches the Meuse at Anseremme, a few miles above Dinant. The river is

only 49 m. long, but its meandering course may be judged by the fact

that it is no more than 29 m. from Ochamps to Anseremme in a straight

line. There is a good deal of pretty scenery along this river, as, for

instance, at Ciergnon, but the most striking part of the valley is

contained in the last 12 m. from Houyet to Anseremme. In this section

the river is confined between opposing walls of cliff ranging from 300

to 500 ft. above the river. Here were discovered in the caves near

Walzin the bones of prehistoric men, and other evidence of the primitive

occupants of this globe at a period practically beyond computation.

Another curious natural feature of the Lesse is that on reaching the

hill of Han it disappears underground, reappearing about 1 m. farther on

at the village of that name. Here are the curious and interesting Han

grottoes. The Lesse receives altogether in its short course the water of

thirteen tributaries.

LESSEPS, FERDINAND DE (1805-1894). French diplomatist and maker of the

Suez Canal, was born at Versailles on the 19th of November 1805. The

origin of his family has been traced back as far as the end of the 14th

century. His ancestors, it is believed, came from Scotland, and settled

at Bayonne when that region was occupied by the English. One of his

great-grandfathers was town clerk and at the same time secretary to

Queen Anne of Neuberg, widow of Charles II. of Spain, exiled to Bayonne

after the accession of Philip V. From the middle of the 18th century

the ancestors of Ferdinand de Lesseps followed the diplomatic career,

and he himself occupied with real distinction several posts in the same

calling from 1825 to 1849. His uncle was ennobled by King Louis XVI.,

and his father was made a count by Napoleon I. His father, Mathieu de

Lesseps (1774-1832), was in the consular service; his mother, Catherine

de Grivégnée, was Spanish, and aunt of the countess of Montijo, mother

of the empress Eugénie. His first years were spent in Italy, where his

father was occupied with his consular duties. He was educated at the

College of Henry IV. in Paris. From the age of 18 years to 20 he was

employed in the commissary department of the army. From 1825 to 1827 he

acted as assistant vice-consul at Lisbon, where his uncle, Barthélemy de

Lesseps, was the French chargé d'affaires. This uncle was an old

companion of La Pérouse and a survivor of the expedition in which that

navigator perished. In 1828 Ferdinand was sent as an assistant

vice-consul to Tunis, where his father was consul-general. He

courageously aided the escape of Youssouff, pursued by the soldiers of

the bey, of whom he was one of the officers, for violation of the

seraglio law. Youssouff acknowledged this protection given by a

Frenchman by distinguishing himself in the ranks of the French army at

the time of the conquest of Algeria. Ferdinand de Lesseps was also

entrusted by his father with missions to Marshal Count Clausel,

general-in-chief of the army of occupation in Algeria. The marshal wrote

to Mathieu de Lesseps on the 18th of December 1830: "I have had the

pleasure of meeting your son, who gives promise of sustaining with great

credit the name he bears." In 1832 Ferdinand de Lesseps was appointed

vice-consul at Alexandria. To the placing in quarantine of the vessel

which took him to Egypt is due the origin of his great conception of a

canal across the isthmus of Suez. In order to help him to while away the

time at the lazaretto, M. Mimaut, consul-general of France at

Alexandria, sent him several books, among which was the memoir written

upon the Suez Canal, according to Bonaparte's instructions, by the civil

engineer Lapère, one of the scientific members of the French expedition.

This work struck de Lesseps's imagination, and gave him the idea of

piercing the African isthmus. This idea, moreover, was conceived in

circumstances that were to prepare the way for its realization. Mehemet

Ali, who was the viceroy of Egypt, owed his position, to a certain

extent, to the recommendations made in his behalf to the French

government by Mathieu de Lesseps, who was consul-general in Egypt when

Mehemet Ali was a simple colonel. The viceroy therefore welcomed

Ferdinand affectionately, while Said Pacha, Mehemet's son, began those

friendly relations that he did not forget later, when he gave him the

concession for making the Suez Canal. In 1833 Ferdinand de Lesseps was

sent as consul to Cairo, and soon afterwards given the management of the

consulate-general at Alexandria, a post that he held until 1837. While

he was there a terrible epidemic of the plague broke out and lasted for

two years, carrying off more than a third of the inhabitants of Cairo

and Alexandria. During this time he went from one city to the other,

according as the danger was more pressing, and constantly displayed an

admirable zeal and an imperturbable energy. Towards the close of the

year 1837 he returned to France, and on the 21st of December married

Mlle Agathe Delamalle, daughter of the government prosecuting attorney

at the court of Angers. By this marriage M. de Lesseps became the father

of five sons. In 1839 he was appointed consul at Rotterdam, and in the

following year transferred to Malaga, the place of origin of his

mother's family. In 1842 he was sent to Barcelona, and soon afterwards

promoted to the grade of consul-general. In the course of a bloody

insurrection in Catalonia, which ended in the bombardment of Barcelona,

Ferdinand de Lesseps showed the most persistent bravery, rescuing from

death, without distinction, the men belonging to the rival factions, and

protecting and sending away not only the Frenchmen who were in danger,

but foreigners of all nationalities. From 1848 to 1849 he was minister

of France at Madrid. In the latter year the government of the French

Republic confided to him a mission to Rome at the moment when it was a

question whether the expelled pope would return to the Vatican with or

without bloodshed. Following his interpretation of the instructions he

had received, de Lesseps began negotiations with the existing government

at Rome, according to which Pius IX. should peacefully re-enter the

Vatican and the independence of the Romans be assured at the same time.

But while he was negotiating, the elections in France had caused a

change in the foreign policy of the government. His course was

disapproved; he was recalled and brought before the council of state,

which blamed his conduct without giving him a chance to justify himself.

Rome, attacked by the French army, was taken by assault after a month's

sanguinary siege. M. de Lesseps then retired from the diplomatic

service, and never afterwards occupied any public office. In 1853 he

lost his wife and daughter at a few days' interval. Perhaps his energy

would not have been sufficient to sustain him against these repeated

blows of destiny if, in 1854, the accession to the viceroyalty of Egypt

of his old friend, Said Pacha, had not given a new impulse to the ideas

that had haunted him for the last twenty-two years concerning the Suez

Canal. Said Pacha invited M. de Lesseps to pay him a visit, and on the

7th of November 1854 he landed at Alexandria; on the 30th of the same

month Said Pacha signed the concession authorizing M. de Lesseps to

pierce the isthmus of Suez.

A first scheme, indicated by him, was immediately drawn out by two

French engineers who were in the Egyptian service, MM. Linant Bey and

Mougel Bey. This project, differing from others that had been previously

presented or that were in opposition to it, provided for a direct

communication between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea. After being

slightly modified, the plan was adopted in 1856 by an international

commission of civil engineers to which it had been submitted. Encouraged

by this approval, de Lesseps no longer allowed anything to stop him. He

listened to no adverse criticism and receded before no obstacle. Neither

the opposition of Lord Palmerston, who considered the projected

disturbance as too radical not to endanger the commercial position of

Great Britain, nor the opinions entertained, in France as well as in

England, that the sea in front of Port Said was full of mud which would

obstruct the entrance to the canal, that the sands from the desert would

fill the trenches--no adverse argument, in a word, could dishearten

Ferdinand de Lesseps. His faith made him believe that his adversaries

were in the wrong; but how great must have been this faith, which

permitted him to undertake the work at a time when mechanical appliances

for the execution of such an undertaking did not exist, and when for the

utilization of the proposed canal there was as yet no steam mercantile

marine! Impelled by his convictions and talent, supported by the emperor

Napoleon III. and the empress Eugénie, he succeeded in rousing the

patriotism of the French and obtaining by their subscriptions more than

half of the capital of two hundred millions of francs which he needed in

order to form a company. The Egyptian government subscribed for eighty

millions' worth of shares. The company was organized at the end of 1858.

On the 25th of April 1859 the first blow of the pickaxe was given by

Lesseps at Port Said, and on the 17th of November 1869 the canal was

officially opened by the Khedive, Ismail Pacha (see SUEZ CANAL). While

in the interests of his canal Lesseps had resisted the opposition of

British diplomacy to an enterprise which threatened to give to France

control of the shortest route to India, he acted loyally towards Great

Britain after Lord Beaconsfield had acquired the Suez shares belonging

to the Khedive, by frankly admitting to the board of directors of the

company three representatives of the British government. The

consolidation of interests which resulted, and which has been developed

by the addition in 1884 of seven other British directors, chosen from

among shipping merchants and business men, has augmented, for the

benefit of all concerned, the commercial character of the enterprise.

Ferdinand de Lesseps steadily endeavoured to keep out of politics. If in

1869 he appeared to deviate from this principle by being a candidate at

Marseilles for the Corps Législatif, it was because he yielded to the

entreaties of the Imperial government in order to strengthen its

goodwill for the Suez Canal. Once this goodwill had been shown, he bore

no malice towards those who rendered him his liberty by preferring

Gambetta. He afterwards declined the other candidatures that were

offered him: for the Senate in 1876, and for the Chamber in 1877. In

1873 he became interested in a project for uniting Europe and Asia by a

railway to Bombay, with a branch to Peking. He subsequently encouraged

Major Roudaire, who wished to transform the Sahara desert into an inland

sea. The king of the Belgians having formed an International African

Society, de Lesseps accepted the presidency of the French committee,

facilitated M. de Brazza's explorations, and acquired stations that he

subsequently abandoned to the French government. These stations were the

starting-point of French Congo. In 1879 a congress assembled in the

rooms of the Geographical Society at Paris, under the presidency of

Admiral de la Roncière le Noury, and voted in favour of the making of

the Panama Canal. Public opinion, it may be declared, designated

Ferdinand de Lesseps as the head of the enterprise. It was upon that

occasion that Gambetta bestowed upon him the title of _Le Grand

Français_. He was not a man to shirk responsibility, and notwithstanding

that he had reached the age of 74, he undertook to carry out the Panama

Canal project (see PANAMA CANAL and FRANCE: _History_). Politics, which

de Lesseps had always avoided, was his greatest enemy in this matter.

The winding-up of the Panama Company having been declared in the month

of December 1888, the adversaries of the French Republic, seeking for a

scandal that would imperil the government, hoped to bring about the

prosecution of the directors of the Panama Company. Their attacks were

so vigorously made that the government was obliged, in self-defence, to

have judicial proceedings taken against Ferdinand de Lesseps, his son

Charles (b. 1849) and his co-workers Fontane and Cottu. Charles de

Lesseps, a victim offered to the fury of the politicians, tried to

divert the storm upon his head and prevent it from reaching his father.

He managed to draw down upon himself alone the burden of the

condemnations pronounced. One of the consequences of the persecutions of

which he was the object was to oblige him to spend three years, from

1896 to 1899, in England, where his participation in the management of

the Suez Canal had won for him some strong friendships, and where he was

able to see the great respect in which the memory and name of his father

were held by Englishmen.

Ferdinand de Lesseps died at La Chenaie on the 7th of December 1894. He

had contracted a second marriage in 1869 with Mlle Autard de Bragard,

daughter of a former magistrate of Mauritius; and eleven out of twelve

children of this marriage survived him. M. de Lesseps was a member of

the French Academy, of the Academy of Sciences, of numerous scientific

societies, Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour and of the Star of India,

and had received the freedom of the City of London. According to some

accounts he was unconscious of the disastrous events that took place

during the closing months of his life. Others report that, feeling

himself powerless to scatter the gathered clouds, and aware of his

physical feebleness, he had had the moral courage to pass in the eyes of

his family, which he did not wish to afflict, as the dupe of the efforts

they employed to conceal the truth from him. This last version would not

be surprising if we relied upon the following portrait, sketched by a

person who knew him intimately:--"Simple in his tastes, never thinking

of himself, constantly preoccupied about others, supremely kind, he did

not and would not recognize such a thing as evil. Of a confiding nature,

he was inclined to judge others by himself. This naturally affectionate

abandonment that every one felt in him had procured him profound

attachments and rare devotions. He showed, while making the Suez Canal,

what a gift he possessed for levying the pacific armies he conducted. He

set duty above everything, had in the highest degree a reverence for

honour, and placed his indomitable courage at the service of everything

that was beneficial with an abnegation that nothing could tire. His

marvellous physical and moral equilibrium gave him an evenness of temper

which always rendered his society charming. Whatever his cares, his

work or his troubles, I have never noticed in him aught but generous

impulses and a love of humanity carried even to those heroic imprudences

of which they alone are capable who devote themselves to the

amelioration of humanity." No doubt this eulogy requires some

reservations. The striking and universal success which crowned his work

on the Suez Canal gave him an absoluteness of thought which brooked no

contradiction, a despotic temper before which every one must bow, and

against which, when he had once taken a resolution, nothing could

prevail, not even the most authoritative opposition or the most

legitimate entreaties. He had resolved to construct the Panama Canal

without locks, to make it an uninterrupted navigable way. All attempts

to dissuade him from this resolution failed before his tenacious will.

At his advanced age he went with his youngest child to Panama to see

with his own eyes the field of his new enterprise. He there beheld the

Culebra and the Chagres; he saw the mountain and the stream, those two

greatest obstacles of nature that sought to bar his route. He paid no

heed to them, but began the struggle against the Culebra and the

Chagres. It was against them that was broken his invincible will,

sweeping away in the defeat the work of Panama, his own fortune, his

fame and almost an atom of his honour. But this atom, only grazed by

calumny, has already been restored to him by posterity, for he died

poor, having been the first to suffer by the disaster to his illusions.

Political agitators, in order to sap the power of the Opportunist party,

did not hesitate to drag in the mud one of the greatest citizens of

France. But when the Panama "scandal" has been forgotten, for centuries

to come the traveller in saluting the statue of Ferdinand de Lesseps at

the entrance of the Suez Canal will pay homage to one of the most

powerful embodiments of the creative genius of the 19th century.

See G. Barnett Smith, _The Life and Enterprises of Ferdinand de

Lesseps_ (London, 1893); and _Souvenirs de quarante ans_, by Ferdinand

de Lesseps (trans. by C. B. Pitman). (de B.)

LESSING, GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM (1729-1781), German critic and dramatist, was

born at Kamenz in Upper Lusatia (Oberlausitz), Saxony, on the 22nd of

January 1729. His father, Johann Gottfried Lessing, was a clergyman,

and, a few years after his son's birth, became _pastor primarius_ or

chief pastor of Kamenz. After attending the Latin school of his native

town, Gotthold was sent in 1741 to the famous school of St Afra at

Meissen, where he made such rapid progress, especially in classics and

mathematics, that, towards the end of his school career, he was

described by the rector as "a steed that needed double fodder." In 1746

he entered the university of Leipzig as a theological student. The

philological lectures of Johann Friedrich Christ (1700-1756) and Johann

August Ernesti (1707-1781) proved, however, more attractive than those

on theology, and he attended the philosophical disputations presided

over by his friend A. G. Kästner, professor of mathematics and also an

epigrammatist of repute. Among Lessing's chief friends in Leipzig were

C. F. Weisse (1726-1804) the dramatist, and Christlob Mylius

(1722-1754), who had made some name for himself as a journalist. He was

particularly attracted by the theatre then directed by the talented

actress Karoline Neuber (1697-1760), who had assisted Gottsched in his

efforts to bring the German stage into touch with literature. Frau

Neuber even accepted for performance Lessing's first comedy, _Der junge

Gelehrte_ (1748), which he had begun at school. His father naturally did

not approve of these new interests and acquaintances, and summoned him

home. He was only allowed to return to Leipzig on the condition that he

would devote himself to the study of medicine. Some medical lectures he

did attend, but as long as Frau Neuber's company kept together the

theatre had an irresistible fascination for him.

In 1748, however, the company broke up, and Lessing, who had allowed

himself to become surety for some of the actors' debts, was obliged to

leave Leipzig too, in order to escape their creditors. He went to

Wittenberg, and afterwards, towards the end of the year, to Berlin,

where his friend Mylius had established himself as a journalist. In

Berlin Lessing now spent three years, maintaining himself chiefly by

literary work. He translated three volumes of Charles Rollin's _Histoire

ancienne_, wrote several plays--_Der Misogyn_, _Der Freigeist_, _Die

Juden_--and in association with Mylius, began the _Beiträge zur Historie

und Aufnahine des Theaters_ (1750), a periodical--which soon came to an

end--for the discussion of matters connected with the drama. Early in

1751 he became literary critic to the _Vossische Zeitung_, and in this

position laid the foundation for his reputation as a reviewer of

learning, judgment and wit. At the end of 1751 he was in Wittenberg

again, where he spent about a year engaged in unremitting study and

research. He then returned to Berlin with a view to making literature

his profession; and the next three years were among the busiest of his

life. Besides translating for the booksellers, he issued several numbers

of the _Theatralische Bibliothek_, a periodical similar to that which he

had begun with Mylius; he also continued his work as critic to the

_Vossische Zeitung_. In 1754 he gave a particularly brilliant proof of

his critical powers in his _Vademecum für Herrn S. G. Lange_; as a

retort to that writer's overbearing criticism, Lessing exposed with

scathing satire Lange's errors in his popular translation of Horace.

By 1753 Lessing felt that his position was sufficiently assured to allow

of him issuing an edition of his collected writings (_Schriften_, 6

vols., 1753-1755). They included his lyrics and epigrams, most of which

had already appeared during his first residence in Berlin in a volume of

_Kleinigkeiten_, published anonymously. Much more important were the

papers entitled _Rettungen_, in which he undertook to vindicate the

character of various writers--Horace and writers of the Reformation

period, such as Cochlaeus and Cardanus--who had been misunderstood or

falsely judged by preceding generations. The _Schriften_ also contained

Lessing's early plays, and one new one, _Miss Sara Sampson_ (1755).

Hitherto Lessing had, as a dramatist, followed the methods of

contemporary French comedy as cultivated in Leipzig; _Miss Sara

Sampson_, however, marks the beginning of a new period in the history of

the German drama. This play, based more or less on Lille's _Merchant of

London_, and influenced in its character-drawing by the novels of

Richardson, is the first _bürgerliches Trauerspiel_, or "tragedy of

common life" in German. It was performed for the first time at

Frankfort-on-Oder in the summer of 1755, and received with great favour.

Among Lessing's chief friends during his second residence in Berlin were

the philosopher Moses Mendelssohn (1729-1786), in association with whom

he wrote in 1755 an admirable treatise, _Pope ein Metaphysiker!_ tracing

sharply the lines which separate the poet from the philosopher. He was

also on intimate terms with C. F. Nicolai (1733-1811), a Berlin

bookseller and rationalistic writer, and with the "German Horace" K. W.

Ramler (1725-1798); he had also made the acquaintance of J. W. L. Gleim

(1719-1803), the Halberstadt poet, and E. C. von Kleist (1715-1759), a

Prussian officer, whose fine poem. _Der Frühling_, had won for him

Lessing's warm esteem.

In October 1755 Lessing settled in Leipzig with a view to devoting

himself more exclusively to the drama. In 1756 he accepted the

invitation of Gottfried Winkler, a wealthy young merchant, to accompany

him on a foreign tour for three years. They did not, however, get beyond

Amsterdam, for the outbreak of the Seven Years' War made it necessary

for Winkler to return home without loss of time. A disagreement with his

patron shortly after resulted in Lessing's sudden dismissal; he demanded

compensation and, although in the end the court decided in his favour,

it was not until the case had dragged on for about six years. At this

time Lessing began the study of medieval literature to which attention

had been drawn by the Swiss critics, Bodmer and Breitinger, and wrote

occasional criticisms for Nicolai's _Bibliothek der schönen

Wissenschaften_. In Leipzig Lessing had also an opportunity of

developing his friendship with Kleist who happened to be stationed

there. The two men were mutually attracted, and a warm affection sprang

up between them. In 1758 Kleist's regiment being ordered to new

quarters, Lessing decided not to remain behind him and returned again to

Berlin. Kleist was mortally wounded in the following year at the battle

of Kunersdorf.

Lessing's third residence in Berlin was made memorable by the _Briefe,

die neueste Literatur betreffend_ (1759-1765), a series of critical

essays--written in the form of letters to a wounded officer--on the

principal books that had appeared since the beginning of the Seven

Years' War. The scheme was suggested by Nicolai, by whom the _Letters_

were published. In Lessing's share in this publication, his critical

powers and methods are to be seen at their best. He insisted especially

on the necessity of truth to nature in the imaginative presentation of

the facts of life, and in one letter he boldly proclaimed the

superiority of Shakespeare to Corneille, Racine and Voltaire. At the

same time he marked the immutable conditions to which even genius must

submit if it is to succeed in its appeal to our sympathies. While in

Berlin at this time, he edited with Ramler a selection from the writings

of F. von Logau, an epigrammatist of the 17th century, and introduced to

the German public the _Lieder eines preussischen Grenadiers_, by J. W.

L. Gleim. In 1759 he published _Philotas_, a prose tragedy in one act,

and also a complete collection of his fables, preceded by an essay on

the nature of the fable. The latter is one of his best essays on

criticism, defining with perfect lucidity what is meant by "action" in

works of the imagination, and distinguishing the action of the fable

from that of the epic and the drama.

In 1760, feeling the need of some change of scene and work, Lessing went

to Breslau, where he obtained the post of secretary to General

Tauentzien, to whom Kleist had introduced him in Leipzig. Tauentzien was

not only a general in the Prussian army, but governor of Breslau, and

director of the mint. During the four years which Lessing spent in

Breslau, he associated chiefly with Prussian officers, went much into

society, and developed a dangerous fondness for the gaming table. He did

not, however, lose sight of his true goal; he collected a large library,

and, after the conclusion of the Seven Years' War, in 1763, he resumed

more enthusiastically than ever the studies which had been partially

interrupted. He investigated the early history of Christianity and

penetrated more deeply than any contemporary thinker into the

significance of Spinoza's philosophy. He also found time for the studies

which were ultimately to appear in the volume entitled _Laokoon_, and in

fresh spring mornings he sketched in a garden the plan of _Minna von

Barnhelm_.

After resigning his Breslau appointment in 1765, he hoped for a time to

obtain a congenial appointment in Dresden, but nothing came of this and

he was again compelled, much against his will, to return to Berlin. His

friends there exerted themselves to obtain for him the office of keeper

of the royal library, but Frederick had not forgotten Lessing's quarrel

with Voltaire, and declined to consider his claims. During the two years

which Lessing now spent in the Prussian capital, he was restless and

unhappy, yet it was during this period that he published two of his

greatest works, _Laokoon, oder über die Grenzen der Malerei und Poesie_

(1766) and _Minna von Barnhelm_ (1767). The aim of Laokoon, which ranks

as a classic, not only in German but in European literature, is to

define by analysis the limitations of poetry and the plastic arts. Many

of his conclusions have been corrected and extended by later criticism;

but he indicated more decisively than any of his predecessors the

fruitful principle that each art is subject to definite conditions, and

that it can accomplish great results only by limiting itself to its

special function. The most valuable parts of the work are those which

relate to poetry, of which he had a much more intimate knowledge than of

sculpture and painting. His exposition of the methods of Homer and

Sophocles is especially suggestive, and he may be said to have marked an

epoch in the appreciation of these writers, and of Greek literature

generally. The power of _Minna von Barnhelm_, Lessing's greatest drama,

was also immediately recognized. Tellheim, the hero of the comedy, is an

admirable study of a manly and sensitive soldier, with somewhat

exaggerated ideas of conventional honour; and Minna, the heroine, is one

of the brightest and most attractive figures in German comedy. The

subordinate characters are conceived with even more force and vividness;

and the plot, which reflects precisely the struggles and aspirations of

the period that immediately followed the Seven Years' War, is simply and

naturally unfolded.

In 1767 Lessing settled in Hamburg, where he had been invited to take

part in the establishment of a national theatre. The scheme promised

well, and, as he associated himself with Johann Joachim Christoph Bode

(1730-1793), a literary man whom he respected, in starting a printing

establishment, he hoped that he might at last look forward to a peaceful

and prosperous career. The theatre, however, was soon closed, and the

printing establishment failed, leaving behind it a heavy burden of debt.

In despair, Lessing determined towards the end of his residence in

Hamburg to quit Germany, believing that in Italy he might find congenial

labour that would suffice for his wants. The _Hamburgische Dramaturgie_

(1767-1768), Lessing's commentary on the performances of the National

Theatre, is the first modern handbook of the dramatist's art. By his

original interpretation of Aristotle's theory of tragedy, he delivered

German dramatists from the yoke of the classic tragedy of France, and

directed them to the Greek dramatists and to Shakespeare. Another result

of Lessing's labours in Hamburg was the _Antiquarische Briefe_ (1768), a

series of masterly letters in answer to Christian Adolf Klotz

(1738-1771), a professor of the university of Halle, who, after

flattering Lessing, had attacked him, and sought to establish a kind of

intellectual despotism by means of critical journals which he directly

or indirectly controlled. In connexion with this controversy Lessing

wrote his brilliant little treatise, _Wie die Alten den Tod gebildet_

(1769), contrasting the medieval representation of death as a skeleton

with the Greek conception of death as the twin-brother of sleep.

Instead of settling in Italy, as he intended, Lessing accepted in 1770

the office of librarian at Wolfenbüttel, a post which was offered to him

by the hereditary prince of Brunswick. In this position he passed his

remaining years. For a time he was not unhappy, but the debts which he

had contracted in Hamburg weighed heavily on him, and he missed the

society of his friends; his health, too, which had hitherto been

excellent, gradually gave way. In 1775 he travelled for nine months in

Italy with Prince Leopold of Brunswick, and in the following year he

married Eva König, the widow of a Hamburg merchant, with whom he had

been on terms of intimate friendship. But their happiness lasted only

for a brief period; in 1778 she died in childbed.

Soon after settling in Wolfenbüttel, Lessing found in the library the

manuscript of a treatise by Berengarius of Tours on transubstantiation

in reply to Lanfranc. This was the occasion of Lessing's powerful essay

on Berengarius, in which he vindicated the latter's character as a

serious and consistent thinker. In 1771 he published his _Zerstreute

Anmerkungen über das Epigramm, und einige der vornehmsten

Epigrammatisten_--a work which Herder described as "itself an epigram."

Lessing's theory of the origin of the epigram is somewhat fanciful, but

no other critic has offered so many pregnant hints as to the laws of

epigrammatic verse, or defended with so much force and ingenuity the

character of Martial. In 1772 he published _Emilia Galotti_, a tragedy

which he had begun many years before in Leipzig. The subject was

suggested by the Roman legend of Virginia, but the scene is laid in an

Italian court, and the whole play is conceived in the spirit of the

"tragedy of common life." Its defect is that its tragic conclusion does

not seem absolutely inevitable, but the characters--especially those of

the Gräfin Orsina and Marinelli, the prince of Guastalla's chamberlain

who weaves the intrigue from which Emilia escapes by death, are

powerfully drawn. Having completed _Emilia Galotti_, which the younger

generation of playwrights at once accepted as a model, Lessing occupied

himself for some years almost exclusively with the treasures of the

Wolfenbüttel library. The results of these researches he embodied in a

series of volumes, _Zur Geschichte und Literatur_, the first being

issued in 1773, the last in the year of his death.

The last period of Lessing's life was devoted chiefly to theological

controversy. H. S. Reimarus (1694-1768), professor of oriental

languages in Hamburg, who commanded general respect as a scholar and

thinker, wrote a book entitled _Apologie oder Schutzschrift für die

vernünftigen Verehrer Gottes_. His standpoint was that of the English

deists, and he investigated, without hesitation, the evidence for the

miracles recorded in the Bible. The manuscript of this work was, after

the author's death, entrusted by his daughter to Lessing, who published

extracts from it in his _Zur Geschichte und Literatur_ in 1774-1778.

These extracts, the authorship of which was not publicly avowed, were

known as the _Wolfenbütteler Fragmente_. They created profound

excitement among orthodox theologians, and evoked many replies, in which

Lessing was bitterly condemned for having published writings of so

dangerous a tendency. His most formidable assailant was Johann Melchior

Goeze (1717-1786), the chief pastor of Hamburg, a sincere and earnest

theologian, but utterly unscrupulous in his choice of weapons against an

opponent. To him, therefore, Lessing addressed in 1778 his most

elaborate answers--_Eine Parabel_, _Axiomata_, eleven letters with the

title _Anti-Goeze_, and two pamphlets in reply to an inquiry by Goeze as

to what Lessing meant by Christianity. These papers are not only full of

thought and learning; they are written with a grace, vivacity and energy

that make them hardly less interesting to-day than they were to

Lessing's contemporaries. He does not undertake to defend the

conclusions of Reimarus; his immediate object is to claim the right of

free criticism in regard even to the highest subjects of human thought.

The argument on which he chiefly relies is that the Bible cannot be

considered necessary to a belief in Christianity, since Christianity was

a living and conquering power before the New Testament in its present

form was recognized by the church. The true evidence for what is

essential in Christianity, he contends, is its adaptation to the wants

of human nature; hence the religious spirit is undisturbed by the

speculations of the boldest thinkers. The effect of this controversy was

to secure wider freedom for writers on theology, and to suggest new

problems regarding the growth of Christianity, the formation of the

canon and the essence of religion. The Brunswick government having, in

deference to the consistory, confiscated the _Fragments_ and ordered

Lessing to discontinue the controversy, he resolved, as he wrote to

Elise Reimarus, to try "whether they would let him preach undisturbed

from his old pulpit, the stage." In _Nathan der Weise_, written in the

winter of 1778-1779, he gave poetic form to the ideas which he had

already developed in prose. Its governing conception is that noble

character may be associated with the most diverse creeds, and that there

can, therefore, be no good reason why the holders of one sect of

religious principles should not tolerate those who maintain wholly

different doctrines. The play, which is written in blank verse, is too

obviously a continuation of Lessing's theological controversy to rank

high as poetry, but the representatives of the three religions--the

Mahommedan Saladin, the Jew Nathan and the Christian Knight Templar--are

finely conceived, and show that Lessing's dramatic instinct had, in

spite of other interests, not deserted him. In 1780 appeared _Die

Erziehung des Menschengeschlechts_, the first half of which he had

published in 1777 with one of the _Fragments_. This work, composed a

hundred brief paragraphs, was the last, and is one of the most

suggestive of Lessing's writings. The doctrine on which its argument is

based is that no dogmatic creed can be regarded as final, but that every

historical religion had its share in the development of the spiritual

life of mankind. Lessing also maintains that history reveals a definite

law of progress, and that occasional retrogression may be necessary for

the advance of the world towards its ultimate goal. These ideas formed a

striking contrast to the principles both of orthodox and of sceptical

writers in Lessing's day, and gave a wholly new direction to religious

philosophy. Another work of Lessing's last years, _Ernst und Falk_ (a

series of five dialogues, of which the first three were published in

1777, the last two in 1780), also set forth many new points of view. Its

nominal subject is freemasonry, but its real aim is to plead for a

humane and charitable spirit in opposition to a narrow patriotism, an

extravagant respect for rank, and exclusive devotion to any particular

church.

Lessing's theological opinions exposed him to much petty persecution,

and he was in almost constant straits for money. Nothing, however, broke

his manly and generous spirit. To the end he was always ready to help

those who appealed to him for aid, and he devoted himself with growing

ardour to the search for truth. He formed many new plans of work, but in

the course of 1780 it became evident to his friends that he would not be

able much longer to continue his labours. His health had been undermined

by excessive work and anxiety, and after a short illness he died at

Brunswick on the 15th of February 1781. "We lose much in him," wrote

Goethe after Lessing's death, "more than we think." It may be questioned

whether there is any other writer to whom the Germans owe a deeper debt

of gratitude. He was succeeded by poets and philosophers who gave

Germany for a time the first place in the intellectual life of the

world, and it was Lessing, as they themselves acknowledged, who prepared

the way for their achievements. Without attaching himself to any

particular system of philosophical doctrine, he fought error

incessantly, and in regard to art, poetry and the drama and religion,

suggested ideas which kindled the enthusiasm of aspiring minds, and

stimulated their highest energies.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.--The first edition of Lessing's collected works, edited

by his brother Karl Gotthelf Lessing (1740-1812), J. J. Eschenburg and

F. Nicolai, appeared in 26 vols. between 1791 and 1794, as a

continuation of the _Vermischte Schriften_, edited by Lessing himself

in 4 vols. (1771-1785); the _Sämtliche Schriften_, edited by Karl

Lachmann, were published in 13 vols. (1825-1828), this edition being

subsequently re-edited by W. von Maltzahn (1853-1857) and by F.

Muncker (21 vols., 1886 ff.), the last mentioned being the standard

edition of Lessing's works. Other editions are _Lessings Werke_,

published by Hempel, under the editorship of various scholars (23

vols., 1868-1877); an illustrated edition published by Grote in 8

vols. (1875, new ed., 1882); _Lessings Werke_, edited by R. Boxberger

and H. Blümner, in Kürschner's _Deutsche Nationalliteratur_, vols.

58-71 (1883-1890). There are also many popular editions. Lessing's

correspondence is included in the Lachmann editions and in that of

Hempel (edited by C. C. Redlich, 1879; _Nachträge und Berichtigungen_,

1886); his correspondence with his wife was published as early as 1789

(2 vols., new edition by A. Schöne, 1885). The chief biographies of

Lessing are by K. G. Lessing (his brother), (1793-1795, a reprint in

Reclam's _Universalbibliothek_); by J. F. Schink (1825); T. W. Danzel

and G. E. Guhrauer (1850-1853, 2nd ed. by W. von Maltzahn and R.

Boxberger, 2 vols., 1880-1881); A. Stahr (2 vols., 1859, 9th ed.,

1887); J. Sime, _Lessing, his Life and Works_ (2 vols., 1877); H.

Zimmern, _Lessing's Life and Works_ (1878); H. Düntzer, _Lessings

Leben_ (1882); E. Schmidt, _Lessing, Geschichte seines Lebens und

seiner Schriften_ (2 vols., 1884-1892, 3rd ed., 1910)--this is the

most complete biography; T. W. Rolleston, _Lessing_ (in "Great

Writers," 1889); K. Borinski, _Lessing_ (2 vols., 1900). Cf. also C.

Hebler, _Lessing-Studien_ (1862); A. Lehmann, _Forschungen über

Lessings Sprache_ (1875); W. Cosack, _Materialien zu Lessings

Hamburgischer Dramaturgie_ (1876, 2nd ed., 1891); H. Blümner,

_Lessings Laokoon_ (1876, 2nd ed., 1880); H. Blümner,

_Laokoon-Studien_ (2 vols., 1881-1882); K. Fischer, _Lessing als

Reformator der deutschen Literatur dargestellt_ (2 vols., 1881, 2nd

ed., 1888); B. A. Wagner, _Lessing-Forschungen_ (1881); J. W. Braun,

_Lessing im Urteile seiner Zeitgenossen_ (2 vols., 1884); P. Albrecht,

_Lessings Plagiate_ (6 vols., 1890 ff.); K. Werder, _Vorlesungen über

Lessings Nathan_ (1892); G. Kettner, _Lessings Dramen im Lichte ihrer

und unsrer Zeit_ (1904). Translations of Lessing's _Dramatic Works_ (2

vols., 1878), edited by E. Bell, and of _Laokoon, Dramatic Notes and

the Representation of Death by the Ancients_, by E. C. Beasley and H.

Zimmern (1 vol., 1879), will be found in Bohn's "Standard Library."

(J. Si.; J. G. R.)

LESSON (through Fr. _leçon_ from Lat. _lectio_, reading; _legere_, to

read), properly a certain portion of a book appointed to be read aloud,

or learnt for repetition, hence anything learnt or studied, a course of

instruction or study. A specific meaning of the word is that of a

portion of Scripture or other religious writings appointed to be read at

divine service, in accordance with a table known as a "lectionary." In

the Church of England the lectionary is so ordered that most of the Old

Testament is read through during the year as the First Lesson at Morning

and Evening Prayer, and as the Second Lesson the whole of the New

Testament, except Revelation, of which only portions are read. (See

LECTION and LECTIONARY.)

LESTE, a desert wind, similar to the Leveche (q.v.), observed in

Madeira. It blows from an easterly direction in autumn, winter and

spring, rarely in summer, and is of intense dryness, sometimes reducing

the relative humidity at Funchal to below 20%. The Leste is commonly

accompanied by clouds of fine red sand.

L'ESTRANGE, SIR ROGER (1616-1704), English pamphleteer on the royalist

and court side during the Restoration epoch, but principally remarkable

as the first English man of letters of any distinction who made

journalism a profession, was born at Hunstanton in Norfolk on the 17th

of December 1616. In 1644, during the civil war, he headed a conspiracy

to seize the town of Lynn for the king, under circumstances which led to

his being condemned to death as a spy. The sentence, however, was not

executed, and after four years' imprisonment in Newgate he escaped to

the Continent. He was excluded from the Act of Indemnity, but in 1653

was pardoned by Cromwell upon his personal solicitation, and lived

quietly until the Restoration, when after some delay his services and

sufferings were acknowledged by his appointment as licenser of the

press. This office was administered by him in the spirit which might be

expected from a zealous cavalier. He made himself notorious, not merely

by the severity of his literary censorship, but by his vigilance in the

suppression of clandestine printing. In 1663 (see NEWSPAPERS) he

commenced the publication of the _Public Intelligencer_ and the _News_,

from which eventually developed the famous official paper the _London

Gazette_ in 1665. In 1679 he again became prominent with the

_Observator_, a journal specially designed to vindicate the court from

the charge of a secret inclination to popery. He discredited the Popish

Plot, and the suspicion he thus incurred was increased by the conversion

of his daughter to Roman Catholicism, but there seems no reason to

question the sincerity of his own attachment to the Church of England.

In 1687 he gave a further proof of independence by discontinuing the

_Observator_ from his unwillingness to advocate James II.'s Edict of

Toleration, although he had previously gone all lengths in support of

the measures of the court. The Revolution cost him his office as

licenser, and the remainder of his life was spent in obscurity. He died

in 1704. It is to L'Estrange's credit that among the agitations of a

busy political life he should have found time for much purely literary

work as a translator of Josephus, Cicero, Seneca, Quevedo and other

standard authors.

LESUEUR, DANIEL, the pseudonym of JEANNE LAPANZE, _née_ Loiseau (1860-

), French poet and novelist, who was born in Paris in 1860. She

published a volume of poems, _Fleurs d'avril_ (1882), which was crowned

by the Academy. She also wrote some powerful novels dealing with

contemporary life: _Le Mariage de Gabrielle_ (1882); _Un Mystérieux

Amour_ (1892), with a series of philosophical sonnets; _L'Amant de

Geneviève_ (1883); _Marcelle_ (1885); _Une Vie tragique_ (1890);

_Justice de femme_ (1893); _Comédienne Haine d'amour_ (1894); _Honneur

d'une femme_ (1901); _La Force du passé_ (1905). Her poems were

collected in 1895. She published in 1905 a book on the economic status

of women, _L'Évolution féminine_; and in 1891-1893 a translation (2

vols.) of the works of Lord Byron, which was awarded a prize by the

Academy. Her _Masque d'amour_, a five-act play based on her novel (1904)

of the same name, was produced at the Théâtre Sarah Bernhardt in 1905.

She received the ribbon of the Legion of Honour in 1900, and the prix

Vitet from the French Academy in 1905. She married in 1904 Henry Lapanze

(b. 1867), a well-known writer on art.

LE SUEUR, EUSTACHE (1617-1655), one of the founders of the French

Academy of painting, was born on the 19th of November 1617 at Paris,

where he passed his whole life, and where he died on the 30th of April

1655. His early death and retired habits have combined to give an air of

romance to his simple history, which has been decorated with as many

fables as that of Claude. We are told that, persecuted by Le Brun, who

was jealous of his ability, he became the intimate friend and

correspondent of Poussin, and it is added that, broken-hearted at the

death of his wife, Le Sueur retired to the monastery of the Chartreux

and died in the arms of the prior. All this, however, is pure fiction.

The facts of Le Sueur's life are these. He was the son of Cathelin Le

Sueur, a turner and sculptor in wood, who placed his son with Vouet, in

whose studio he rapidly distinguished himself. Admitted at an early age

into the guild of master-painters, he left them to take part in

establishing the academy of painting and sculpture, and was one of the

first twelve professors of that body. Some paintings, illustrative of

the Hypnerotomachia Polyphili, which were reproduced in tapestry,

brought him into notice, and his reputation was further enhanced by a

series of decorations (Louvre) in the mansion of Lambert de Thorigny,

which he left uncompleted, for their execution was frequently

interrupted by other commissions. Amongst these were several pictures

for the apartments of the king and queen in the Louvre, which are now

missing, although they were entered in Bailly's inventory (1710); but

several works produced for minor patrons have come down to us. In the

gallery of the Louvre are the "Angel and Hagar," from the mansion of De

Tonnay Charente; "Tobias and Tobit," from the Fieubet collection;

several pictures executed for the church of Saint Gervais; the

"Martyrdom of St Lawrence," from Saint Germain de l'Auxerrois; two very

fine works from the destroyed abbey of Marmoutiers; "St Paul preaching

at Ephesus," one of Le Sueur's most complete and thorough performances,

painted for the goldsmith's corporation in 1649; and his famous series

of the "Life of St Bruno," executed in the cloister of the Chartreux.

These last have more personal character than anything else which Le

Sueur produced, and much of their original beauty survives in spite of

injuries and restorations and removal from the wall to canvas. The

Louvre also possesses many fine drawings (reproduced by Braun), of which

Le Sueur left an incredible quantity, chiefly executed in black and

white chalk His pupils, who aided him much in his work, were his wife's

brother, Th. Goussé, and three brothers of his own, as well as Claude

Lefebvre and Patel the landscape painter.

Most of his works have been engraved, chiefly by Picart, B. Audran,

Seb. Leclerc, Drevet, Chauveau, Poilly and Desplaces. Le Sueur's work

lent itself readily to the engraver's art, for he was a charming

draughtsman; he had a truly delicate perception of varied shades of

grave and elevated sentiment, and possessed the power to render them.

His graceful facility in composition was always restrained by a very

fine taste, but his works often fail to please completely, because,

producing so much, he had too frequent recourse to conventional types,

and partly because he rarely saw colour except with the cold and

clayey quality proper to the school of Vouet; yet his "St Paul at

Ephesus" and one or two other works show that he was not naturally

deficient in this sense, and whenever we get direct reference to

nature--as in the monks of the St Bruno series--we recognize his

admirable power to read and render physiognomy of varied and serious

type.

See Guillet de St Georges, _Mém. inéd._; C. Blanc, _Histoire des

peintres_; Vitet, _Catalogue des tableaux du Louvre_; d'Argenville,

_Vies des peintres._

LESUEUR, JEAN FRANÇOIS (1760 or 1763-1837), French musical composer, was

born on the 15th of January 1760 (or 1763) at Drucat-Plessiel, near

Abbeville. He was a choir boy in the cathedral of Amiens, and then

became musical director at various churches. In 1786 he obtained by open

competition the musical directorship of the cathedral of Notre-Dame in

Paris, where he gave successful performances of sacred music with a full

orchestra. This place he resigned in 1787; and, after a retirement of

five years in a friend's country house, he produced _La Caverne_ and two

other operas at the Théâtre Feydeau in Paris. At the foundation of the

Paris Conservatoire (1795) Lesueur was appointed one of its inspectors

of studies, but was dismissed in 1802, owing to his disagreements with

Méhul. Lesueur succeeded G. Paisiello as _Maestro di cappella_ to

Napoleon, and produced (1804) his _Ossian_ at the Opéra. He also

composed for the emperor's coronation a mass and a Te Deum. Louis

XVIII., who had retained Lesueur in his court, appointed him (1818)

professor of composition at the Conservatoire; and at this institution

he had, among many other pupils, Hector Berlioz, Ambroise Thomas, Louis

Désiré, Besozzi and Charles Gounod. He died on the 6th of October 1837.

Lesueur composed eight operas and several masses, and other sacred

music. All his works are written in a style of rigorous simplicity.

See Raoul Rochette, _Les Ouvrages de M. Lesueur_ (Paris, 1839).

LE TELLIER, MICHEL (1603-1685), French statesman, was born in Paris on

the 19th of April 1603. Having entered the public service he became

maître des requêtes and in 1640 intendant of Piedmont; in 1643, owing to

his friendship with Mazarin, he became secretary of state for military

affairs, being an efficient administrator. In 1677 he was made

chancellor of France and he was one of those who influenced Louis XIV.

to revoke the Edict of Nantes. He died on the 30th of October 1685, a

few days after the revocation had been signed. Le Tellier, who amassed

great wealth, left two sons, one the famous statesman Louvois and

another who became archbishop of Reims. His correspondence is in the

Bibliothèque nationale in Paris.

See L. Caron, _Michel Le Tellier, intendant d'armée au Piémont_

(Paris, 1881).

Another MICHEL LE TELLIER (1643-1719) Was confessor of the French king

Louis XIV. Born at Vire on the 16th of December 1643 he entered the

Society of Jesus and later became prominent in consequence of his

violent attacks on the Jansenists. He was appointed provincial of his

order in France, but it was not until 1709 that he became the king's

confessor. In this capacity all his influence was directed towards

urging Louis to further persecutions of the Protestants. He was exiled

by the regent Orleans, but he had returned to France when he died at La

Flèche on the 2nd of September 1719.

LETHAL (Lat. _lethalis_, for _letalis_, deadly, from _letum_, death; the

spelling is due to a confusion with Gr. [Greek: lêthê], forgetfulness),

an adjective meaning "deadly," "fatal," especially as applied to

weapons, drugs, &c. A "lethal chamber" is a room or receptacle in which

animals may be put to death painlessly, by the admission of poisonous

gases.

LETHARGY (Gr. [Greek: lêthargia], from [Greek: lêthê], forgetfulness),

drowsiness, torpor. In pathology the term is used of a morbid condition

of deep and lasting sleep from which the sufferer can be with difficulty

and only temporarily aroused. The term Negro or African lethargy was

formerly applied to the disease now generally known as "sleeping

sickness" (q.v.).

LETHE ("Oblivion"), in Greek mythology, the daughter of Eris (Hesiod,

_Theog._ 227) and the personification of forgetfulness. It is also the

name of a river in the infernal regions. Those initiated in the

mysteries were taught to distinguish two streams in the lower world, one

of memory and one of oblivion. Directions for this purpose, written on a

gold plate, have been found in a tomb at Petilia, and near Lebadeia, at

the oracle of Trophonius, which was counted an entrance to the lower

world, the two springs Mnemosyne and Lethe were shown (Pausanias ix. 39.

8). This thought begins to appear in literature in the end of the 5th

century B.C., when Aristophanes (_Frogs_, 186) speaks of the plain of

Lethe. Plato (_Rep._ x.) embodies the idea in one of his finest myths.

LE TRÉPORT, a maritime town of northern France in the department of

Seine-Inférieure, on the English Channel, at the mouth of the Bresle,

114 m. N.N.W. of Paris on the Northern railway. Pop. (1906) 4619. Owing

to its nearness to the capital, Le Tréport is a favourite watering-place

of the Parisians. A good view is obtained from Mont Huon, which rises to

the south-west of the town. The mouth of the Bresle forms a small port,

comprising an outer tidal harbour and an inner dock accessible to

vessels drawing from 13 to 16 ft. The fisheries and oyster parks with

their dependent industries, shipbuilding and glass manufacture, furnish

the chief occupations of the inhabitants. Coal, timber, ice and jute are

imported; _articles de Paris_, sugar, &c., are exported. The chief

buildings are the church of St Jacques (16th century), which has finely

carved vaulting and good modern stained glass, and the casino erected

1896-1897. About 1 m. north-east of Le Tréport is the small bathing

resort of Mers. The Eu-Tréport canal, uniting the two towns, has a

length of about 3 m., and is navigable by vessels drawing 14 ft. Le

Tréport (the ancient _Ulterior Portus_) was a port of some note in the

middle ages and suffered from the English invasions. Louis Philippe

twice received Queen Victoria here.

LETRONNE, JEAN ANTOINE (1787-1848), French archaeologist, was born at

Paris on the 25th of January 1787. His father, a poor engraver, sent him

to study art under the painter David, but his own tastes were literary,

and he became a student in the Collège de France, where it is said he

used to exercise his already strongly developed critical faculty by

correcting for his own amusement old and bad texts of Greek authors,

afterwards comparing the results with the latest and most approved

editions. From 1810 to 1812 he travelled in France, Switzerland and

Italy, and on his return to Paris published an _Essai critique sur la

topographie de Syracuse_ (1812), designed to elucidate Thucydides. Two

years later appeared his _Recherches géographiques et critiques on the

De Mensura Orbis Terrae_ of Dicuil. In 1815 he was commissioned by

government to complete the translation of Strabo which had been begun by

Laporte-Dutheil, and in March 1816 he was one of those who were admitted

to the Academy of Inscriptions by royal ordinance, having previously

contributed a _Mémoire_, "On the Metrical System of the Egyptians,"

which had been crowned. Further promotion came rapidly; in 1817 he was

appointed director of the École des Chartes, in 1819 inspector-general

of the university, and in 1831 professor of history in the Collège de

France. This chair he exchanged in 1838 for that of archaeology, and in

1840 he succeeded Pierre C. François Daunou (1761-1840) as keeper of the

national archives. Meanwhile he had published, among other works,

_Considérations générales sur l'évaluation des monnaies grecques et

romaines et sur la valeur de l'or et de l'argent avant la découverte de

l'Amérique_ (1817), _Recherches pour servir à l'histoire d'Égypte

pendant la domination des Grecs et des Romains_ (1823), and _Sur

l'origine grecque des zodiaques prétendus égyptiens_ (1837). By the

last-named he finally exploded a fallacy which had up to that time

vitiated the chronology of contemporary Egyptologists. His _Diplômes et

Chartres de l'époque Mérovingienne sur papyrus et sur vélin_ were

published in 1844. The most important work of Letronne is the _Recueil

des inscriptions grecques et latines de l'Égypte_, of which the first

volume appeared in 1842, and the second in 1848. He died at Paris on the

14th of December 1848.