VOLUME XVI SLICE I L to Lamellibranchia (continued 8)

Lagos was made a separate government in 1863; in 1866 it was placed in political dependence upon Sierra Leone; in 1874 it became (politically) an integral part of the Gold Coast Colony, whilst in 1886 it was again made a separate government, administered as a crown colony. In Sir William Macgregor, M.D., formerly administrator of British New Guinea, governor 1899-1904, the colony found an enlightened ruler. He inaugurated the railway system, and drew much closer the friendly ties between the British and the tribes of the protectorate. Meantime, since 1884, the whole of the Niger delta, lying immediately east of Lagos, as well as the Hausa states and Bornu, had been acquired by Great Britain. Unification of the British possessions in Nigeria being desirable, the delta regions and Lagos were formed in 1906 into one government (see Nigeria).

See C. P. Lucas, Historical Geography of the British Colonies, vol. iii. West Africa (Oxford, 1896); the annual Reports issued by the Colonial Office, London; A. B. Ellis, The Yoruba-speaking Peoples (London, 1894); Lady Glover, The Life of Sir John Hawley Glover (London, 1897). Consult also the works cited under Nigeria and Dahomey.

LAGOS, a seaport of West Africa, capital of the British colony and protectorate of Southern Nigeria, in 6° 26′ N., 3° 23′ E. on an island in a lagoon named Lagos also. Between Lagos and the mainland is Iddo Island. An iron bridge for road and railway traffic 2600 ft. long connects Lagos and Iddo Islands, and another iron bridge, 917 ft. long, joins Iddo Island to the mainland. The town lies but a foot or two above sea-level. The principal buildings are a large government house, the law courts, the memorial hall erected to commemorate the services of Sir John Glover, used for public meetings and entertainments, an elaborate club-house provided from public funds, and the police quarters. There are many substantial villas that serve as quarters for the officers of the civil service, as well as numerous solidly-built handsome private buildings. The streets are well kept; the town is supplied with electric light, and there is a good water service. The chief stores and depôts for goods are all on the banks of the lagoon. The swamps of which originally Lagos Island entirely consisted have been reclaimed. In connexion with this work a canal, 25 ft. wide, has been cut right through the island and a sea-wall built round its western half. There is a commodious public hospital, of the cottage type, on a good site. There is a racecourse, which also serves as a general public recreation ground. Shifting banks of sand form a bar at the sea entrance of the lagoon. Extensive works were undertaken in 1908 with a view to making Lagos an open port. A mole has been built at the eastern entrance to the harbour and dredgers are at work on the bar, which can be crossed by vessels drawing 13 ft. Large ocean-going steamers anchor not less than 2 m. from land, and goods and passengers are there transhipped into smaller steamers for Lagos. Heavy cargo is carried by the large steamers to Forcados, 200 m. farther down the coast, transhipped there into branch boats, and taken via the lagoons to Lagos. The port is 4279 m. from Liverpool, 1203 from Freetown, Sierra Leone (the nearest safe port westward), and 315 from Cape Coast.

The inhabitants, about 50,000, include, besides the native tribes, Sierra Leonis, Fanti, Krumen and the descendants of some 6000 Brazilian emancipados who were settled here in the early days of British rule. The Europeans number about 400. Rather more than half the populace are Moslems.

LAGOS, a seaport of southern Portugal, in the district of Faro (formerly the province of Algarve); on the Atlantic Ocean, and on the estuary of the small river Lagos, here spanned by a fine stone bridge. Pop. (1900) 8291. The city is defended by fortifications erected in the 17th century. It is supplied with water by an aqueduct 800 yds. long. The harbour is deep, capacious, and completely sheltered on the north and west; it is frequently visited by the British Channel fleet. Vines and figs are extensively cultivated in the neighbourhood, and Lagos is the centre of important sardine and tunny fisheries. Its trade is chiefly carried on by small coasting vessels, as there is no railway. Lagos is on or near the site of the Roman Lacobriga. Since the 15th century it has held the formal rank and title of city. Cape St Vincent, the ancient Promontorium Sacrum, and the south-western extremity of the kingdom, is 22 m. W. It is famous for its connexion with Prince Henry (q.v.), the Navigator, who here founded the town of Sagres in 1421; and for several British naval victories, the most celebrated of which was won in 1797 by Admiral Jervis (afterwards Earl St Vincent) over a larger Spanish squadron. In 1759 Admiral Boscawen defeated a French fleet off Lagos. The great earthquake of 1755 destroyed a large part of the city.

LA GRÂCE, or Les Grâces, a game invented in France during the first quarter of the 19th century and called there le jeu des Grâces. It is played with two light sticks about 16 in. long and a wicker ring, which is projected into the air by placing it over the sticks crossed and then separating them rapidly. The ring is caught upon the stick of another player and thrown back, the object being to prevent it from falling to the ground.

LA GRAND’ COMBE, a town of southern France, in the department of Gard on the Gardon, 39 m. N.N.W. of Nîmes by rail. Pop. (1906) town, 6406; commune, 11,292. There are extensive coal mines in the vicinity.

LAGRANGE, JOSEPH LOUIS (1736-1813), French mathematician, was born at Turin, on the 25th of January 1736. He was of French extraction, his great grandfather, a cavalry captain, having passed from the service of France to that of Sardinia, and settled in Turin under Emmanuel II. His father, Joseph Louis Lagrange, married Maria Theresa Gros, only daughter of a rich physician at Cambiano, and had by her eleven children, of whom only the eldest (the subject of this notice) and the youngest survived infancy. His emoluments as treasurer at war, together with his wife’s fortune, provided him with ample means, which he lost by rash speculations, a circumstance regarded by his son as the prelude to his own good fortune; for had he been rich, he used to say, he might never have known mathematics.

The genius of Lagrange did not at once take its true bent. His earliest tastes were literary rather than scientific, and he learned the rudiments of geometry during his first year at the college of Turin, without difficulty, but without distinction. The perusal of a tract by Halley (Phil. Trans. xviii. 960) roused his enthusiasm for the analytical method, of which he was destined to develop the utmost capabilities. He now entered, unaided save by his own unerring tact and vivid apprehension, upon a course of study which, in two years, placed him on a level with the greatest of his contemporaries. At the age of nineteen he communicated to Leonhard Euler his idea of a general method of dealing with “isoperimetrical” problems, known later as the Calculus of Variations. It was eagerly welcomed by the Berlin mathematician, who had the generosity to withhold from publication his own further researches on the subject, until his youthful correspondent should have had time to complete and opportunity to claim the invention. This prosperous opening gave the key-note to Lagrange’s career. Appointed, in 1754, professor of geometry in the royal school of artillery, he formed with some of his pupils—for the most part his seniors—friendships based on community of scientific ardour. With the aid of the marquis de Saluces and the anatomist G. F. Cigna, he founded in 1758 a society which became the Turin Academy of Sciences. The first volume of its memoirs, published in the following year, contained a paper by Lagrange entitled Recherches sur la nature et la propagation du son, in which the power of his analysis and his address in its application were equally conspicuous. He made his first appearance in public as the critic of Newton, and the arbiter between d’Alembert and Euler. By considering only the particles of air found in a right line, he reduced the problem of the propagation of sound to the solution of the same partial differential equations that include the motions of vibrating strings, and demonstrated the insufficiency of the methods employed by both his great contemporaries in dealing with the latter subject. He further treated in a masterly manner of echoes and the mixture of sounds, and explained the phenomenon of grave harmonics as due to the occurrence of beats so rapid as to generate a musical note. This was followed, in the second volume of the Miscellanea Taurinensia (1762) by his “Essai d’une nouvelle méthode pour déterminer les maxima et les minima des formules intégrales indéfinies,” together with the application of this important development of analysis to the solution of several dynamical problems, as well as to the demonstration of the mechanical principle of “least action.” The essential point in his advance on Euler’s mode of investigating curves of maximum or minimum consisted in his purely analytical conception of the subject. He not only freed it from all trammels of geometrical construction, but by the introduction of the symbol δ gave it the efficacy of a new calculus. He is thus justly regarded as the inventor of the “method of variations”—a name supplied by Euler in 1766.

By these performances Lagrange found himself, at the age of twenty-six, on the summit of European fame. Such a height had not been reached without cost. Intense application during early youth had weakened a constitution never robust, and led to accesses of feverish exaltation culminating, in the spring of 1761, in an attack of bilious hypochondria, which permanently lowered the tone of his nervous system. Rest and exercise, however, temporarily restored his health, and he gave proof of the undiminished vigour of his powers by carrying off, in 1764, the prize offered by the Paris Academy of Sciences for the best essay on the libration of the moon. His treatise was remarkable, not only as offering a satisfactory explanation of the coincidence between the lunar periods of rotation and revolution, but as containing the first employment of his radical formula of mechanics, obtained by combining with the principle of d’Alembert that of virtual velocities. His success encouraged the Academy to propose, in 1766, as a theme for competition, the hitherto unattempted theory of the Jovian system. The prize was again awarded to Lagrange; and he earned the same distinction with essays on the problem of three bodies in 1772, on the secular equation of the moon in 1774, and in 1778 on the theory of cometary perturbations.

He had in the meantime gratified a long felt desire by a visit to Paris, where he enjoyed the stimulating delight of conversing with such mathematicians as A. C. Clairault, d’Alembert, Condorcet and the Abbé Marie. Illness prevented him from visiting London. The post of director of the mathematical department of the Berlin Academy (of which he had been a member since 1759) becoming vacant by the removal of Euler to St Petersburg, the latter and d’Alembert united to recommend Lagrange as his successor. Euler’s eulogium was enhanced by his desire to quit Berlin, d’Alembert’s by his dread of a royal command to repair thither; and the result was that an invitation, conveying the wish of the “greatest king in Europe” to have the “greatest mathematician” at his court, was sent to Turin. On the 6th of November 1766, Lagrange was installed in his new position, with a salary of 6000 francs, ample leisure for scientific research, and royal favour sufficient to secure him respect without exciting envy. The national jealousy of foreigners, was at first a source of annoyance to him; but such prejudices were gradually disarmed by the inoffensiveness of his demeanour. We are told that the universal example of his colleagues, rather than any desire for female society, impelled him to matrimony; his choice being a lady of the Conti family, who, by his request, joined him at Berlin. Soon after marriage his wife was attacked by a lingering illness, to which she succumbed, Lagrange devoting all his time, and a considerable store of medical knowledge, to her care.

The long series of memoirs—some of them complete treatises of great moment in the history of science—communicated by Lagrange to the Berlin Academy between the years 1767 and 1787 were not the only fruits of his exile. His Mécanique analytique, in which his genius most fully displayed itself, was produced during the same period. This great work was the perfect realization of a design conceived by the author almost in boyhood, and clearly sketched in his first published essay.1 Its scope may be briefly described as the reduction of the theory of mechanics to certain general formulae, from the simple development of which should be derived the equations necessary for the solution of each separate problem.2 From the fundamental principle of virtual velocities, which thus acquired a new significance, Lagrange deduced, with the aid of the calculus of variations, the whole system of mechanical truths, by processes so elegant, lucid and harmonious as to constitute, in Sir William Hamilton’s words, “a kind of scientific poem.” This unification of method was one of matter also. By his mode of regarding a liquid as a material system characterized by the unshackled mobility of its minutest parts, the separation between the mechanics of matter in different forms of aggregation finally disappeared, and the fundamental equation of forces was for the first time extended to hydrostatics and hydrodynamics.3 Thus a universal science of matter and motion was derived, by an unbroken sequence of deduction, from one radical principle; and analytical mechanics assumed the clear and complete form of logical perfection which it now wears.

A publisher having with some difficulty been found, the book appeared at Paris in 1788 under the supervision of A. M. Legendre. But before that time Lagrange himself was on the spot. After the death of Frederick the Great, his presence was competed for by the courts of France, Spain and Naples, and a residence in Berlin having ceased to possess any attraction for him, he removed to Paris in 1787. Marie Antoinette warmly patronized him. He was lodged in the Louvre, received the grant of an income equal to that he had hitherto enjoyed, and, with the title of “veteran pensioner” in lieu of that of “foreign associate” (conferred in 1772), the right of voting at the deliberations of the Academy. In the midst of these distinctions, a profound melancholy seized upon him. His mathematical enthusiasm was for the time completely quenched, and during two years the printed volume of his Mécanique, which he had seen only in manuscript, lay unopened beside him. He relieved his dejection with miscellaneous studies, especially with that of chemistry, which, in the new form given to it by Lavoisier, he found “aisée comme l’algèbre.” The Revolution roused him once more to activity and cheerfulness. Curiosity impelled him to remain and watch the progress of such a novel phenomenon; but curiosity was changed into dismay as the terrific character of the phenomenon unfolded itself. He now bitterly regretted his temerity in braving the danger. “Tu l’as voulu” he would repeat self-reproachfully. Even from revolutionary tribunals, however, the name of Lagrange uniformly commanded respect. His pension was continued by the National Assembly, and he was partially indemnified for the depreciation of the currency by remunerative appointments. Nominated president of the Academical commission for the reform of weights and measures, his services were retained when its “purification” by the Jacobins removed his most distinguished colleagues. He again sat on the commission of 1799 for the construction of the metric system, and by his zealous advocacy of the decimal principle largely contributed to its adoption.

Meanwhile, on the 31st of May 1792 he married Mademoiselle Lemonnier, daughter of the astronomer of that name, a young and beautiful girl, whose devotion ignored disparity of years, and formed the one tie with life which Lagrange found it hard to break. He had no children by either marriage. Although specially exempted from the operation of the decree of October 1793, imposing banishment on foreign residents, he took alarm at the fate of J. S. Bailly and A. L. Lavoisier, and prepared to resume his former situation in Berlin. His design was frustrated by the establishment of and his official connexion with the École Normale, and the École Polytechnique. The former institution had an ephemeral existence; but amongst the benefits derived from the foundation of the École Polytechnique one of the greatest, it has been observed,4 was the restoration of Lagrange to mathematics. The remembrance of his teachings was long treasured by such of his auditors—amongst whom were J. B. J. Delambre and S. F. Lacroix—as were capable of appreciating them. In expounding the principles of the differential calculus, he started, as it were, from the level of his pupils, and ascended with them by almost insensible gradations from elementary to abstruse conceptions. He seemed, not a professor amongst students, but a learner amongst learners; pauses for thought alternated with luminous exposition; invention accompanied demonstration; and thus originated his Théorie des fonctions analytiques (Paris, 1797). The leading idea of this work was contained in a paper published in the Berlin Memoirs for 1772.5 Its object was the elimination of the, to some minds, unsatisfactory conception of the infinite from the metaphysics of the higher mathematics, and the substitution for the differential and integral calculus of an analogous method depending wholly on the serial development of algebraical functions. By means of this “calculus of derived functions” Lagrange hoped to give to the solution of all analytical problems the utmost “rigour of the demonstrations of the ancients”;6 but it cannot be said that the attempt was successful. The validity of his fundamental position was impaired by the absence of a well-constituted theory of series; the notation employed was inconvenient, and was abandoned by its inventor in the second edition of his Mécanique; while his scruples as to the admission into analytical investigations of the idea of limits or vanishing ratios have long since been laid aside as idle. Nowhere, however, were the keenness and clearness of his intellect more conspicuous than in this brilliant effort, which, if it failed in its immediate object, was highly effective in secondary results. His purely abstract mode of regarding functions, apart from any mechanical or geometrical considerations, led the way to a new and sharply characterized development of the higher analysis in the hands of A. Cauchy, C. G. Jacobi, and others.7 The Théorie des fonctions is divided into three parts, of which the first explains the general doctrine of functions, the second deals with its application to geometry, and the third with its bearings on mechanics.

On the establishment of the Institute, Lagrange was placed at the head of the section of geometry; he was one of the first members of the Bureau des Longitudes; and his name appeared in 1791 on the list of foreign members of the Royal Society. On the annexation of Piedmont to France in 1796, a touching compliment was paid to him in the person of his aged father. By direction of Talleyrand, then minister for foreign affairs, the French commissary repaired in state to the old man’s residence in Turin, to congratulate him on the merits of his son, whom they declared “to have done honour to mankind by his genius, and whom Piedmont was proud to have produced, and France to possess.” Bonaparte, who styled him “la haute pyramide des sciences mathématiques,” loaded him with personal favours and official distinctions. He became a senator, a count of the empire, a grand officer of the legion of honour, and just before his death received the grand cross of the order of réunion.

The preparation of a new edition of his Mécanique exhausted his already falling powers. Frequent fainting fits gave presage of a speedy end, and on the 8th of April 1813 he had a final interview with his friends B. Lacépède, G. Monge and J. A. Chaptal. He spoke with the utmost calm of his approaching death; “c’est une dernière fonction,” he said, “qui n’est ni pénible ni désagréable.” He nevertheless looked forward to a future meeting, when he promised to complete the autobiographical details which weakness obliged him to interrupt. They remained untold, for he died two days later on the 10th of April, and was buried in the Pantheon, the funeral oration being pronounced by Laplace and Lacépède.

Amongst the brilliant group of mathematicians whose magnanimous rivalry contributed to accomplish the task of generalization and deduction reserved for the 18th century, Lagrange occupies an eminent place. It is indeed by no means easy to distinguish and apportion the respective merits of the competitors. This is especially the case between Lagrange and Euler on the one side, and between Lagrange and Laplace on the other. The calculus of variations lay undeveloped in Euler’s mode of treating isoperimetrical problems. The fruitful method, again, of the variation of elements was introduced by Euler, but adopted and perfected by Lagrange, who first recognized its supreme importance to the analytical investigation of the planetary movements. Finally, of the grand series of researches by which the stability of the solar system was ascertained, the glory must be almost equally divided between Lagrange and Laplace. In analytical invention, and mastery over the calculus, the Turin mathematician was admittedly unrivalled. Laplace owned that he had despaired of effecting the integration of the differential equations relative to secular inequalities until Lagrange showed him the way. But Laplace unquestionably surpassed his rival in practical sagacity and the intuition of physical truth. Lagrange saw in the problems of nature so many occasions for analytical triumphs; Laplace regarded analytical triumphs as the means of solving the problems of nature. One mind seemed the complement of the other; and both, united in honourable rivalry, formed an instrument of unexampled perfection for the investigation of the celestial machinery. What may be called Lagrange’s first period of research into planetary perturbations extended from 1774 to 1784 (see Astronomy: History). The notable group of treatises communicated, 1781-1784, to the Berlin Academy was designed, but did not prove to be his final contribution to the theory of the planets. After an interval of twenty-four years the subject, re-opened by S. D. Poisson in a paper read on the 20th of June 1808, was once more attacked by Lagrange with all his pristine vigour and fertility of invention. Resuming the inquiry into the invariability of mean motions, Poisson carried the approximation, with Lagrange’s formulae, as far as the squares of the disturbing forces, hitherto neglected, with the same result as to the stability of the system. He had not attempted to include in his calculations the orbital variations of the disturbing bodies; but Lagrange, by the happy artifice of transferring the origin of coordinates from the centre of the sun to the centre of gravity of the sun and planets, obtained a simplification of the formulae, by which the same analysis was rendered equally applicable to each of the planets severally. It deserves to be recorded as one of the numerous coincidences of discovery that Laplace, on being made acquainted by Lagrange with his new method, produced analogous expressions, to which his independent researches had led him. The final achievement of Lagrange in this direction was the extension of the method of the variation of arbitrary constants, successfully used by him in the investigation of periodical as well as of secular inequalities, to any system whatever of mutually interacting bodies.8 “Not without astonishment,” even to himself, regard being had to the great generality of the differential equations, he reached a result so wide as to include, as a particular case, the solution of the planetary problem recently obtained by him. He proposed to apply the same principles to the calculation of the disturbances produced in the rotation of the planets by external action on their equatorial protuberances, but was anticipated by Poisson, who gave formulae for the variation of the elements of rotation strictly corresponding with those found by Lagrange for the variation of the elements of revolution. The revision of the Mécanique analytique was undertaken mainly for the purpose of embodying in it these new methods and final results, but was interrupted, when two-thirds completed, by the death of its author.

In the advancement of almost every branch of pure mathematics Lagrange took a conspicuous part. The calculus of variations is indissolubly associated with his name. In the theory of numbers he furnished solutions of many of P. Fermat’s theorems, and added some of his own. In algebra he discovered the method of approximating to the real roots of an equation by means of continued fractions, and imagined a general process of solving algebraical equations of every degree. The method indeed fails for equations of an order above the fourth, because it then involves the solution of an equation of higher dimensions than they proposed. Yet it possesses the great and characteristic merit of generalizing the solutions of his predecessors, exhibiting them all as modifications of one principle. To Lagrange, perhaps more than to any other, the theory of differential equations is indebted for its position as a science, rather than a collection of ingenious artifices for the solution of particular problems. To the calculus of finite differences he contributed the beautiful formula of interpolation which bears his name; although substantially the same result seems to have been previously obtained by Euler. But it was in the application to mechanical questions of the instrument which he thus helped to form that his singular merit lay. It was his just boast to have transformed mechanics (defined by him as a “geometry of four dimensions”) into a branch of analysis, and to have exhibited the so-called mechanical “principles” as simple results of the calculus. The method of “generalized coordinates,” as it is now called, by which he attained this result, is the most brilliant achievement of the analytical method. Instead of following the motion of each individual part of a material system, he showed that, if we determine its configuration by a sufficient number of variables, whose number is that of the degrees of freedom to move (there being as many equations as the system has degrees of freedom), the kinetic and potential energies of the system can be expressed in terms of these, and the differential equations of motion thence deduced by simple differentiation. Besides this most important contribution to the general fabric of dynamical science, we owe to Lagrange several minor theorems of great elegance,—among which may be mentioned his theorem that the kinetic energy imparted by given impulses to a material system under given constraints is a maximum. To this entire branch of knowledge, in short, he successfully imparted that character of generality and completeness towards which his labours invariably tended.

His share in the gigantic task of verifying the Newtonian theory would alone suffice to immortalize his name. His co-operation was indeed more indispensable than at first sight appears. Much as was done by him, what was done through him was still more important. Some of his brilliant rival’s most conspicuous discoveries were implicitly contained in his writings, and wanted but one step for completion. But that one step, from the abstract to the concrete, was precisely that which the character of Lagrange’s mind indisposed him to make. As notable instances may be mentioned Laplace’s discoveries relating to the velocity of sound and the secular acceleration of the moon, both of which were led close up to by Lagrange’s analytical demonstrations. In the Berlin Memoirs for 1778 and 1783 Lagrange gave the first direct and theoretically perfect method of determining cometary orbits. It has not indeed proved practically available; but his system of calculating cometary perturbations by means of “mechanical quadratures” has formed the starting-point of all subsequent researches on the subject. His determination9 of maximum and minimum values for the slowly varying planetary eccentricities was the earliest attempt to deal with the problem. Without a more accurate knowledge of the masses of the planets than was then possessed a satisfactory solution was impossible; but the upper limits assigned by him agreed closely with those obtained later by U. J. J. Leverrier.10 As a mathematical writer Lagrange has perhaps never been surpassed. His treatises are not only storehouses of ingenious methods, but models of symmetrical form. The clearness, elegance and originality of his mode of presentation give lucidity to what is obscure, novelty to what is familiar, and simplicity to what is abstruse. His genius was one of generalization and abstraction; and the aspirations of the time towards unity and perfection received, by his serene labours, an embodiment denied to them in the troubled world of politics.

Bibliography.—Lagrange’s numerous scattered memoirs have been collected and published in seven 4to volumes, under the title Œuvres de Lagrange, publiées sous les soins de M. J. A. Serret (Paris, 1867-1877). The first, second and third sections of this publication comprise respectively the papers communicated by him to the Academies of Sciences of Turin, Berlin and Paris; the fourth includes his miscellaneous contributions to other scientific collections, together with his additions to Euler’s Algebra, and his Leçons élémentaires at the École Normale in 1795. Delambre’s notice of his life, extracted from the Mém. de l’Institut, 1812, is prefixed to the first volume. Besides the separate works already named are Résolution des équations numériques (1798, 2nd ed., 1808, 3rd ed., 1826), and Leçons sur le calcul des fonctions (1805, 2nd ed., 1806), designed as a commentary and supplement to the first part of the Théorie des fonctions. The first volume of the enlarged edition of the Mécanique appeared in 1811, the second, of which the revision was completed by MM Prony and Binet, in 1815. A third edition, in 2 vols., 4to, was issued in 1853-1855, and a second of the Théorie des fonctions in 1813.

See also J. J. Virey and Potel, Précis historique (1813); Th. Thomson’s Annals of Philosophy (1813-1820), vols. ii. and iv.; H. Suter, Geschichte der math. Wiss. (1873); E. Dühring, Kritische Gesch. der allgemeinen Principien der Mechanik (1877, 2nd ed.); A. Gautier, Essai historique sur le problème des trois corps (1817); R. Grant, History of Physical Astronomy, &c.; Pietro Cossali, Éloge (Padua, 1813); L. Martini, Cenni biográfici (1840); Moniteur du 26 Février (1814); W. Whewell, Hist. of the Inductive Sciences, ii. passim; J. Clerk Maxwell, Electricity and Magnetism, ii. 184; A. Berry, Short Hist. of Astr., p. 313; J. S. Bailly, Hist. de l’astr. moderne, iii. 156, 185, 232; J. C. Poggendorff, Biog. Lit. Handwörterbuch.

(A. M. C.)

1 Œuvres, i. 15.

2 Méc. An., Advertisement to 1st ed.

3 E. Dühring, Kritische Gesch. der Mechanik, 220, 367; Lagrange, Méc. An. i. 166-172, 3rd ed.

4 Notice by J. Delambre, Œuvres de Lagrange, i. p. xlii.

5 Œuvres, iii. 441.

6 Théorie des fonctions, p. 6.

7 H. Suter, Geschichte der math. Wiss. ii. 222-223.

8 Œuvres, vi. 771.

9 Œuvres, v. 211 seq.

10 Grant, History of Physical Astronomy, p. 117.

LAGRANGE-CHANCEL [Chancel], FRANÇOIS JOSEPH (1677-1758), French dramatist and satirist, was born at Périgueux on the 1st of January 1677. He was an extremely precocious boy, and at Bordeaux, where he was educated, he produced a play when he was nine years old. Five years later his mother took him to Paris, where he found a patron in the princesse de Conti, to whom he dedicated his tragedy of Jugurtha or, as it was called later, Adherbal (1694). Racine had given him advice and was present at the first performance, although he had long lived in complete retirement. Other plays followed: Oreste et Pylade (1697), Méléagre (1699), Amasis (1701), and Ino et Mélicerte (1715). Lagrange hardly realized the high hopes raised by his precocity, although his only serious rival on the tragic stage was Campistron, but he obtained high favour at court, becoming maître d’hôtel to the duchess of Orleans. This prosperity ended with the publication in 1720 of his Philippiques, odes accusing the regent, Philip, duke of Orleans, of the most odious crimes. He might have escaped the consequences of this libel but for the bitter enmity of a former patron, the duc de La Force. Lagrange found sanctuary at Avignon, but was enticed beyond the boundary of the papal jurisdiction, when he was arrested and sent as a prisoner to the isles of Sainte Marguerite. He contrived, however, to escape to Sardinia and thence to Spain and Holland, where he produced his fourth and fifth Philippiques. On the death of the Regent he was able to return to France. He was part author of a Histoire de Périgord left unfinished, and made a further contribution to history, or perhaps, more exactly, to romance, in a letter to Élie Fréron on the identity of the Man with the Iron Mask. Lagrange’s family life was embittered by a long lawsuit against his son. He died at Périgueux at the end of December 1758.

He had collected his own works (5 vols., 1758) some months before his death. His most famous work, the Philippiques, was edited by M. de Lescure in 1858, and a sixth philippic by M. Diancourt in 1886.

LA GRANJA, or San Ildefonso, a summer palace of the kings of Spain; on the south-eastern border of the province of Segovia, and on the western slopes of the Sierra de Guadarrama, 7 m. by road S.E. of the city of Segovia. The royal estate is 3905 ft. above sea-level. The scenery of this region, especially in the gorge of the river Lozoya, with its granite rocks, its dense forest of pines, firs and birches, and its red-tiled farms, more nearly resembles the highlands of northern Europe than any other part of Spain. La Granja has an almost alpine climate, with a clear, cool atmosphere and abundant sunshine. Above the palace rise the wooded summits of the Guadarrama, culminating in the peak of Peñalara (7891 ft.); in front of it the wide plains of Segovia extend northwards. The village of San Ildefonso, the oldest part of the estate, was founded in 1450 by Henry IV., who built a hunting lodge and chapel here. In 1477 the chapel was presented by Ferdinand and Isabella to the monks of the Parral, a neighbouring Hieronymite monastery. The original granja (i.e. grange or farm), established by the monks, was purchased in 1719 by Philip V., after the destruction of his summer palace at Valsain, the ancient Vallis Sapinorum, 2 m. S. Philip determined to convert the estate into a second Versailles. The palace was built between 1721 and 1723. Its façade is fronted by a colonnade in which the pillars reach to the roof. The state apartments contain some valuable 18th-century furniture, but the famous collection of sculptures was removed to Madrid in 1836, and is preserved there in the Museo del Prado. At La Granja it is represented by facsimiles in plaster. The collegiate church adjoining the palace dates from 1724, and contains the tombs of Philip V. and his consort Isabella Farnese. An artificial lake called El Mar, 4095 ft. above sea-level, irrigates the gardens, which are imitated from those of Versailles, and supplies water for the fountains. These, despite the antiquated and sometimes tasteless style of their ornamentation, are probably the finest in the world; it is noteworthy that, owing to the high level of the lake, no pumps or other mechanism are needed to supply pressure. There are twenty-six fountains besides lakes and waterfalls. Among the most remarkable are the group of “Perseus, Andromeda and the Sea-Monster,” which sends up a jet of water 110 ft. high, the “Fame,” which reaches 125 ft., and the very elaborate “Baths of Diana.” It is of the last that Philip V. is said to have remarked, “It has cost me three millions and amused me three minutes.” Most of the fountains were made by order of Queen Isabella in 1727, during the king’s absence. The glass factory of San Ildefonso was founded by Charles III.

It was in La Granja that Philip V. resigned the crown to his son in January 1724, to resume it after his son’s death seven months later; that the treaties of 1777, 1778, 1796 and 1800 were signed (see Spain: History); that Ferdinand VII. summoned Don Carlos to the throne in 1832, but was induced to alter the succession in favour of his own infant daughter Isabella, thus involving Spain in civil war; and that in 1836 a military revolt compelled the Queen-regent Christina to restore the constitution of 1812.

LAGRENÉE, LOUIS JEAN FRANÇOIS (1724-1805), French painter, was a pupil of Carle Vanloo. Born at Paris on the 30th of December 1724, in 1755 he became a member of the Royal Academy, presenting as his diploma picture the “Rape of Deianira” (Louvre). He visited St Petersburg at the call of the empress Elizabeth, and on his return was named in 1781 director of the French Academy at Rome; he there painted the “Indian Widow,” one of his best-known works. In 1804 Napoleon conferred on him the cross of the legion of honour, and on the 19th of June 1805 he died in the Louvre, of which he was honorary keeper.

LA GUAIRA, or La Guayra (sometimes Laguaira, &c.), a town and port of Venezuela, in the Federal district, 23 m. by rail and 6½ m. in a direct line N. of Caracas. Pop. (1904, estimate) 14,000. It is situated between a precipitous mountain side and a broad, semicircular indentation of the coast line which forms the roadstead of the port. The anchorage was long considered one of the most dangerous on the Caribbean coast, and landing was attended with much danger. The harbour has been improved by the construction of a concrete breakwater running out from the eastern shore line 2044 ft., built up from an extreme depth of 46 ft. or from an average depth of 29½ ft., and rising 19½ ft. above sea-level. This encloses an area of 76½ acres, having an average depth of nearly 28 ft. The harbour is further improved by 1870 ft. of concrete quays and 1397 ft. of retaining sea-wall, with several piers (three covered) projecting into deep water. These works were executed by a British company, known as the La Guaira Harbour Corporation, Ltd., and were completed in 1891 at a cost of about one million sterling. The concession is for 99 years and the additional charges which the company is authorized to impose are necessarily heavy. These improvements and the restrictions placed upon the direct trade between West Indian ports and the Orinoco have greatly increased the foreign trade of La Guaira, which in 1903 was 52% of that of the four puertos habilitados of the republic. The shipping entries of that year numbered 217, of which 203 entered with general cargo and 14 with coal exclusively. The exports included 152,625 bags coffee, 114,947 bags cacao and 152,891 hides. For 1905-1906 the imports at La Guaira were valued officially at £767,365 and the exports at £663,708. The city stands on sloping ground stretching along the circular coast line with a varying width of 130 to 330 ft. and having the appearance of an amphitheatre. The port improvements added 18 acres of reclaimed land to La Guaira’s area, and the removal of old shore batteries likewise increased its available breadth. In this narrow space is built the town, composed in great part of small, roughly-made cabins, and narrow, badly-paved streets, but with good business houses on its principal street. From the mountain side, reddish-brown in colour and bare of vegetation, the solar heat is reflected with tremendous force, the mean annual temperature being 84° F. The seaside towns of Maiquetia, 2 m. W. and Macuto, 3 m. E., which have better climatic and sanitary conditions and are connected by a narrow-gauge railway, are the residences of many of the wealthier merchants of La Guaira.

La Guaira was founded in 1588, was sacked by filibusters under Amias Preston in 1595, and by the French under Grammont in 1680, was destroyed by the great earthquake of the 26th of March 1812, and suffered severely in the war for independence. In 1903, pending the settlement of claims of Great Britain, Germany and Italy against Venezuela, La Guaira was blockaded by a British-German-Italian fleet.

LA GUÉRONNIÈRE, LOUIS ÉTIENNE ARTHUR DUBREUIL HÉLION, Vicomte de (1816-1875), French politician, was the scion of a noble Poitevin family. Although by birth and education attached to Legitimist principles, he became closely associated with Lamartine, to whose organ, Le Bien Public, he was a principal contributor. After the stoppage of this paper he wrote for La Presse, and in 1850 edited Le Pays. A character sketch of Louis Napoleon in this journal caused differences with Lamartine, and La Guéronnière became more and more closely identified with the policy of the prince president. Under the Empire he was a member of the council of state (1853), senator (1861), ambassador at Brussels (1868), and at Constantinople (1870), and grand officer of the legion of honour (1866). He died in Paris on the 23rd of December 1875. Besides his Études et portraits politiques contemporains (1856) his most important works are those on the foreign policy of the Empire: La France, Rome et Italie (1851), L’Abandon de Rome (1862), De la politique intérieure et extérieure de la France (1862).

His elder brother, Alfred Dubreuil Hélion, Comte de La Guéronnière (1810-1884), who remained faithful to the Legitimist party, was also a well-known writer and journalist. He was consistent in his opposition to the July Monarchy and the Empire, but in a series of books on the crisis of 1870-1871 showed a more favourable attitude to the Republic.

LAGUERRE, JEAN HENRI GEORGES (1858- ), French lawyer and politician, was born in Paris on the 24th of June 1858. Called to the bar in 1879, he distinguished himself by brilliant pleadings in favour of socialist and anarchist leaders, defending Prince Kropotkine at Lyons in 1883, Louise Michel in the same year; and in 1886, with A. Millerand as colleague he defended Ernest Roche and Duc Quercy, the instigators of the Decazeville strike. His strictures on the procureur de la République on this occasion being declared libellous he was suspended for six months and in 1890 he again incurred suspension for an attack on the attorney-general, Quesnay de Beaurepaire. He also pleaded in the greatest criminal cases of his time, though from 1893 onwards exclusively in the provinces, his exclusion from the Parisian bar having been secured on the pretext of his connexion with La Presse. He entered the Chamber of Deputies for Apt in 1883 as a representative of the extreme revisionist programme, and was one of the leaders of the Boulangist agitation. He had formerly written for Georges Clemenceau’s organ La Justice, but when Clemenceau refused to impose any shibboleth on the radical party he became director of La Presse. He rallied to the republican party in May 1801, some months before General Boulanger’s suicide. He was not re-elected to the Chamber in 1893. Laguerre was an excellent lecturer on the revolutionary period of French history, concerning which he had collected many valuable and rare documents. He interested himself in the fate of the “Little Dauphin” (Louis XVII.), whose supposed remains, buried at Ste Marguerite, he proved to be those of a boy of fourteen.

LAGUNA, or La Laguna, an episcopal city and formerly the capital of the island of Teneriffe, in the Spanish archipelago of the Canary Islands. Pop. (1900) 13,074. Laguna is 4 m. N. by W. of Santa Cruz, in a plain 1800 ft. above sea-level, surrounded by mountains. Snow is unknown here, and the mean annual temperature exceeds 63° F.; but the rainfall is very heavy, and in winter the plain is sometimes flooded. The humidity of the atmosphere, combined with the warm climate and rich volcanic soil, renders the district exceptionally fertile; wheat, wine and tobacco, oranges and other fruits, are produced in abundance. Laguna is the favourite summer residence of the wealthier inhabitants of Santa Cruz. Besides the cathedral, the city contains several picturesque convents, now secularized, a fine modern town hall, hospitals, a large public library and some ancient palaces of the Spanish nobility. Even the modern buildings have often an appearance of antiquity, owing to the decay caused by damp, and the luxuriant growth of climbing plants.

LA HARPE, JEAN FRANÇOIS DE (1739-1803), French critic, was born in Paris of poor parents on the 20th of November 1739. His father, who signed himself Delharpe, was a descendant of a noble family originally of Vaud. Left an orphan at the age of nine, La Harpe was taken care of for six months by the sisters of charity, and his education was provided for by a scholarship at the Collège d’Harcourt. When nineteen he was imprisoned for some months on the charge of having written a satire against his protectors at the college. La Harpe always denied his guilt, but this culminating misfortune of an early life spent entirely in the position of a dependent had possibly something to do with the bitterness he evinced in later life. In 1763 his tragedy of Warwick was played before the court. This, his first play, was perhaps the best he ever wrote. The many authors whom he afterwards offended were always able to observe that the critic’s own plays did not reach the standard of excellence he set up. Timoléon (1764), Pharamond (1765) and Gustave Wasa (1766) were failures. Mélanie was a better play, but was never represented. The success of Warwick led to a correspondence with Voltaire, who conceived a high opinion of La Harpe, even allowing him to correct his verses. In 1764 La Harpe married the daughter of a coffee house keeper. This marriage, which proved very unhappy and was dissolved, did not improve his position. They were very poor, and for some time were guests of Voltaire at Ferney. When, after Voltaire’s death, La Harpe in his praise of the philosopher ventured on some reasonable, but rather ill-timed, criticism of individual works, he was accused of treachery to one who had been his constant friend. In 1768 he returned from Ferney to Paris, where he began to write for the Mercure. He was a born fighter and had small mercy on the authors whose work he handled. But he was himself violently attacked, and suffered under many epigrams, especially those of Lebrun-Pindare. No more striking proof of the general hostility can be given than his reception (1776) at the Academy, which Sainte-Beuve calls his “execution.” Marmontel, who received him, used the occasion to eulogize La Harpe’s predecessor, Charles Pierre Colardeau, especially for his pacific, modest and indulgent disposition. The speech was punctuated by the applause of the audience, who chose to regard it as a series of sarcasms on the new member. Eventually La Harpe was compelled to resign from the Mercure, which he had edited from 1770. On the stage he produced Les Barmécides (1778), Philoctète, Jeanne de Naples (1781), Les Brames (1783), Coriolan (1784), Virginie (1786). In 1786 he began a course of literature at the newly-established Lycée. In these lectures, published as the Cours de littérature ancienne et moderne, La Harpe is at his best, for he found a standpoint more or less independent of contemporary polemics. He is said to be inexact in dealing with the ancients, and he had only a superficial knowledge of the middle ages, but he is excellent in his analysis of 17th-century writers. Sainte-Beuve found in him the best critic of the French school of tragedy, which reached its perfection in Racine. La Harpe was a disciple of the “philosophes”; he supported the extreme party through the excesses of 1792 and 1793. In 1793 he edited the Mercure de France which adhered blindly to the revolutionary leaders. But in April 1794 he was nevertheless seized as a “suspect.” In prison he underwent a spiritual crisis which he described in convincing language, and he emerged an ardent Catholic and a reactionist in politics. When he resumed his chair at the Lycée, he attacked his former friends in politics and literature. He was imprudent enough to begin the publication (1801-1807) of his Correspondance littéraire (1774-1791) with the grand-duke, afterwards the emperor Paul of Russia. In these letters he surpassed the brutalities of the Mercure. He contracted a second marriage, which was dissolved after a few weeks by his wife. He died on the 11th of February 1803 in Paris, leaving in his will an incongruous exhortation to his fellow countrymen to maintain peace and concord. Among his posthumous works was a Prophétie de Cazotte which Sainte-Beuve pronounces his best work. It is a sombre description of a dinner-party of notables long before the Revolution, when Jacques Cazotte is made to prophesy the frightful fates awaiting the various individuals of the company.

Among his works not already mentioned are:—Commentaire sur Racine (1795-1796), published in 1807; Commentaire sur le théâtre de Voltaire of earlier date (published posthumously in 1814), and an epic poem La Religion (1814). His Cours de littérature has been often reprinted. To the edition of 1825-1826 is prefixed a notice by Pierre Daunou. See also Sainte-Beuve, Causeries du lundi, vol. v.; G. Peignot, Recherches historiques, bibliographiques et littéraires ... sur La Harpe (1820).

LAHIRE, LAURENT DE (1606-1656), French painter, was born at Paris on the 27th of February 1606. He became a pupil of Lallemand, studied the works of Primaticcio at Fontainebleau, but never visited Italy, and belongs wholly to that transition period which preceded the school of Simon Vouet. His picture of Nicolas V. opening the crypt in which he discovers the corpse of St Francis of Assisi standing (Louvre) was executed in 1630 for the Capuchins of the Marais; it shows a gravity and sobriety of character which marked Lahire’s best work, and seems not to have been without influence on Le Sueur. The Louvre contains eight other works, and paintings by Lahire are in the museums of Strasburg, Rouen and Le Mans. His drawings, of which the British Museum possesses a fine example, “Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple,” are treated as seriously as his paintings, and sometimes show simplicity and dignity of effect. The example of the Capuchins, for whom he executed several other works in Paris, Rouen and Fécamp, was followed by the goldsmiths’ company, for whom he produced in 1635 “St Peter healing the Sick” (Louvre) and the “Conversion of St Paul” in 1637. In 1646, with eleven other artists, he founded the French Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture. Richelieu called Lahire to the Palais Royal; Chancellor Séguier, Tallemant de Réaux and many others entrusted him with important works of decoration; for the Gobelins he designed a series of large compositions. Lahire painted also a great number of portraits, and in 1654 united in one work for the town-hall of Paris those of the principal dignitaries of the municipality. He died on the 28th of December 1656.

LAHN, a river of Germany, a right-bank tributary of the Rhine. Its source is on the Jagdberg, a summit of the Rothaar Mountains, in the cellar of a house (Lahnhof), at an elevation of 1975 ft. It flows at first eastward and then southward to Giessen, then turns south-westward and with a winding course reaches the Rhine between the towns of Oberlahnstein and Niederlahnstein. Its valley, the lower part of which divides the Taunus hills from the Westerwald, is often very narrow and picturesque; among the towns and sites of interest on its banks are Marburg and Giessen with their universities, Wetzlar with its cathedral, Runkel with its castle, Limburg with its cathedral, the castles of Schaumburg, Balduinstein, Laurenburg, Langenau, Burgstein and Nassau, and the well-known health resort of Ems. The Lahn is about 135 m. long; it is navigable from its mouth to Giessen, and is partly canalized. A railway follows the valley practically throughout. In 1796 there were here several encounters between the French under General Jourdan and the troops of the archduke Johan, which resulted in the retreat of the French across the Rhine.

LAHNDA (properly Lahndā or Lahindā, western, or Lahndē-dī bōlī, the language of the West), an Indo-Aryan language spoken in the western Punjab. In 1901 the number of speakers was 3,337,917. Its eastern boundary is very indefinite as the language gradually merges into the Panjabi immediately to the east, but it is conventionally taken as the river Chenab from the Kashmir frontier to the town of Ramnagar, and thence as a straight line to the south-west corner of the district of Montgomery. Lahnda is also spoken in the north of the state of Bahawalpur and of the province of Sind, in which latter locality it is known as Siraiki. Its western boundary is, roughly speaking, the river Indus, across which the language of the Afghan population is Pashto (Pushtu), while the Hindu settlers still speak Lahnda. In the Derajat, however, Lahnda is the principal language of all classes in the plains west of the river.

Lahnda is also known as Western Panjabi and as Jatki, or the language of the Jats, who form the bulk of the population whose mother-tongue it is. In the Derajat it is called Hindko or the language of Hindus. In 1819 the Serampur missionaries published a Lahnda version of the New Testament. They called the language Uchchī, from the important town of Uch near the confluence of the Jhelam and the Chenab. This name is commonly met with in old writings. It has numerous dialects, which fall into two main groups, a northern and a southern, the speakers of which are separated by the Salt Range. The principal varieties of the northern group are Hindki (the same in meaning as Hindko) and Pōthwārī. In the southern group the most important are Khētrānī, Multānī, and the dialect of Shahpur. The language possesses no literature.

Lahnda belongs to the north-western group of the outer band of Indo-Aryan languages (q.v.), the other members being Kashmiri (q.v.) and Sindhi, with both of which it is closely connected. See Sindhi; also Hindostani.

(G. A. Gr.)

LA HOGUE, BATTLE OF, the name now given to a series of encounters which took place from the 19th to the 23rd (O.S.) of May 1692, between an allied British and Dutch fleet and a French force, on the northern and eastern sides of the Cotentin in Normandy. A body of French troops, and a number of Jacobite exiles, had been collected in the Cotentin. The government of Louis XIV. prepared a naval armament to cover their passage across the Channel. This force was to have been composed of the French ships at Brest commanded by the count of Tourville, and of a squadron which was to have joined him from Toulon. But the Toulon ships were scattered by a gale, and the combination was not effected. The count of Tourville, who had put to sea to meet them, had with him only 45 or 47 ships of the line. Yet when the reinforcement failed to join him, he steered up Channel to meet the allies, who were known to be in strength. On the 15th of May the British fleet of 63 sail of the line, under command of Edward Russell, afterwards earl of Orford, was joined at St Helens by the Dutch squadron of 36 sail under Admiral van Allemonde. The apparent rashness of the French admiral in seeking an encounter with very superior numbers is explained by the existence of a general belief that many British captains were discontented, and would pass over from the service of the government established by the Revolution of 1688 to their exiled king, James II. It is said that Tourville had orders from Louis XIV. to attack in any case, but the story is of doubtful authority. The British government, aware of the Jacobite intrigues in its fleet, and of the prevalence of discontent, took the bold course of appealing to the loyalty and patriotism of its officers. At a meeting of the flag-officers on board the “Britannia,” Russell’s flag-ship, on the 15th of May, they protested their loyalty, and the whole allied fleet put to sea on the 18th. On the 19th of May, when Cape Barfleur, the north-eastern point of the Cotentin, was 21 m. S.W. of them, they sighted Tourville, who was then 20 m. to the north of Cape La Hague, the north-western extremity of the peninsula, which must not be confounded with La Houque, or La Hogue, the place at which the fighting ended. The allies were formed in a line from S.S.W. to N.N.E. heading towards the English coast, the Dutch forming the White or van division, while the Red or centre division under Russell, and the Blue or rear under Sir John Ashby, were wholly composed of British ships. The wind was from the S.W. and the weather hazy. Tourville bore down and attacked about mid-day, directing his main assault on the centre of the allies, but telling off some ships to watch the van and rear of his enemy. As this first encounter took place off Cape Barfleur, the battle was formerly often called by the name. On the centre, where Tourville was directly opposed to Russell, the fighting was severe. The British flag-ship the “Britannia” (100), and the French, the “Soleil Royal” (100), were both completely crippled. After several hours of conflict, the French admiral, seeing himself outnumbered, and that the allies could outflank him and pass through the necessarily wide intervals in his extended line, drew off without the loss of a ship. The wind now fell and the haze became a fog. Till the 23rd, the two fleets remained off the north coast of the Cotentin, drifting west with the ebb tide or east with the flood, save when they anchored. During the night of the 19th/20th some British ships became entangled, in the fog, with the French, and drifted through them on the tide, with loss. On the 23rd both fleets were near La Hague. About half the French, under D’Amfreville, rounded the cape, and fled to St Malo through the dangerous passage known as the Race of Alderney (le Ras Blanchard). The others were unable to get round the cape before the flood tide set in, and were carried to the eastward. Tourville now transferred his own flag, and left his captains free to save themselves as they best could. He left the “Soleil Royal,” and sent her with two others to Cherbourg, where they were destroyed by Sir Ralph Delaval. The others now ran round Cape Barfleur, and sought refuge on the east side of the Cotentin at the anchorage of La Houque, called by the English La Hogue, where the troops destined for the invasion were encamped. Here 13 of them were burnt by Sir George Rooke, in the presence of the French generals and of the exiled king James II. From the name of the place where the last blow was struck, the battle has come to be known by the name of La Hogue.

Sufficient accounts of the battle may be found in Lediard’s Naval History (London, 1735), and for the French side in Tronde’s Batailles navales de la France (Paris, 1867). The escape of D’Amfreville’s squadron is the subject of Browning’s poem “Hervé Riel.”

(D. H.)

LAHORE, an ancient city of British India, the capital of the Punjab, which gives its name to a district and division. It lies in 31° 35′ N. and 74° 20′ E. near the left bank of the River Ravi, 1706 ft. above the sea, and 1252 m. by rail from Calcutta. It is thus in about the same latitude as Cairo, but owing to its inland position is considerably hotter than that city, being one of the hottest places in India in the summer time. In the cold season the climate is pleasantly cool and bright. The native city is walled, about 1¼ m. in length W. to E. and about ¾ m. in breadth N. to S. Its site has been occupied from early times, and much of it stands high above the level of the surrounding country, raised on the remains of a succession of former habitations. Some old buildings, which have been preserved, stand now below the present surface of the ground. This is well seen in the mosque now called Masjid Niwin (or sunken) built in 1560, the mosque of Mullah Rahmat, 7 ft. below, and the Shivali, a very old Hindu temple, about 12 ft. below the surrounding ground. Hindu tradition traces the origin of Lahore to Loh or Lava, son of Rama, the hero of the Ramayana. The absence of mention of Lahore by Alexander’s historians, and the fact that coins of the Graeco-Bactrian kings are not found among the ruins, lead to the belief that it was not a place of any importance during the earliest period of Indian history. On the other hand, Hsüan Tsang, the Chinese Buddhist, notices the city in his Itinerary (A.D. 630); and it seems probable, therefore, that Lahore first rose into prominence between the 1st and 7th centuries A.D. Governed originally by a family of Chauhan Rajputs, a branch of the house of Ajmere, Lahore fell successively under the dominion of the Ghazni and Ghori sultans, who made it the capital of their Indian conquests, and adorned it with numerous buildings, almost all now in ruins. But it was under the Mogul empire that Lahore reached its greatest size and magnificence. The reigns of Humayun, Akbar, Jahangir, Shah Jahan and Aurangzeb form the golden period in the annals and architecture of the city. Akbar enlarged and repaired the fort, and surrounded the town with a wall, portions of which remain, built into the modern work of Ranjit Singh. Lahore formed the capital of the Sikh empire of that monarch. At the end of the second Sikh War, with the rest of the Punjab, it came under the British dominion.

The architecture of Lahore cannot compare with that of Delhi. Jahangir in 1622-1627 erected the Khwabgah or “sleeping-place,” a fine palace much defaced by the Sikhs but to some extent restored in modern times; the Moti Masjid or “pearl mosque” in the fort, used by Ranjit Singh and afterwards by the British as a treasure-house; and also the tomb of Anarkali, used formerly as the station church and now as a library. Shah Jahan erected a palace and other buildings near the Khwabgah, including the beautiful pavilion called the Naulakha from its cost of nine lakhs, which was inlaid with precious stones. The mosque of Wazir Khan (1634) provides the finest example of kashi or encaustic tile work. Aurangzeb’s Jama Masjid, or “great mosque,” is a huge bare building, stiff in design, and lacking the detailed ornament typical of buildings at Delhi. The buildings of Ranjit Singh, especially his mausoleum, are common and meretricious in style. He was, moreover, responsible for much of the despoiling of the earlier buildings. The streets of the native city are narrow and tortuous, and are best seen from the back of an elephant. Two of the chief features of Lahore lie outside its walls at Shahdara and Shalamar Gardens respectively. Shahdara, which contains the tomb of the emperor Jahangir, lies across the Ravi some 6 m. N. of the city. It consists of a splendid marble cenotaph surrounded by a grove of trees and gardens. The Shalamar Gardens, which were laid out in A.D. 1637 by Shah Jahan, lie 6 m. E. of the city. They are somewhat neglected except on festive occasions, when the fountains are playing and the trees are lit up by lamps at night.

The modern city of Lahore, which contained a population of 202,964 in 1901, may be divided into four parts: the native city, already described; the civil station or European quarter, known as Donald Town; the Anarkali bazaar, a suburb S. of the city wall; and the cantonment, formerly called Mian Mir. The main street of the civil station is a portion of the grand trunk road from Calcutta to Peshawar, locally known as the Mall. The chief modern buildings along this road, west to east, are the Lahore museum, containing a fine collection of Graeco-Buddhist sculptures, found by General Cunningham in the Yusufzai country, and arranged by Mr Lockwood Kipling, a former curator of the museum; the cathedral, begun by Bishop French, in Early English style, and consecrated in 1887; the Lawrence Gardens and Montgomery Halls, surrounded by a garden that forms the chief meeting-place of Europeans in the afternoon; and opposite this government house, the official residence of the lieutenant-governor of the Punjab; next to this is the Punjab club for military men and civilians. Three miles beyond is the Lahore cantonment, where the garrison is stationed, except a company of British infantry, which occupies the fort. It is the headquarters of the 3rd division of the northern army. Lahore is an important junction on the North-Western railway system, but has little local trade or manufacture. The chief industries are silk goods, gold and silver lace, metal work and carpets which are made in the Lahore gaol. There are also cotton mills, flour mills, an ice-factory, and several factories for mineral waters, oils, soap, leather goods, &c. Lahore is an important educational centre. Here are the Punjab University with five colleges, medical and law colleges, a central training college, the Aitchison Chiefs’ College for the sons of native noblemen, and a number of other high schools and technical and special schools.

The District of Lahore has an area of 3704 sq. m., and its population in 1901 was 1,162,109, consisting chiefly of Punjabi Mahommedans with a large admixture of Hindus and Sikhs. In the north-west the district includes a large part of the barren Rechna Doab, while south of the Ravi is a desolate alluvial tract, liable to floods. The Manjha plateau, however, between the Ravi and the Beas, has been rendered fertile by the Bari Doab canal. The principal crops are wheat, pulse, millets, maize, oil-seeds and cotton. There are numerous factories for ginning and pressing cotton. Irrigation is provided by the main line of the Bari Doab canal and its branches, and by inundation-cuts from the Sutlej. The district is crossed in several directions by lines of the North-Western railway. Lahore, Kasur, Chunian and Raiwind are the chief trade centres.

The Division of Lahore extends along the right bank of the Sutlej from the Himalayas to Multan. It comprises the six districts of Sialkot, Gujranwala, Montgomery, Lahore, Amritsar and Gurdaspur. Total area, 17,154 sq. m.; pop. (1901) 5,598,463. The commissioner for the division also exercises political control over the hill slate of Chamba. The common language of the rural population and of artisans is Punjabi; while Urdu or Hindustani is spoken by the educated classes. So far from the seaboard, the range between extremes of winter and summer temperature in the sub-tropics is great. The mean temperature in the shade in June is about 92° F., in January about 50°. In midsummer the thermometer sometimes rises to 115° in the shade, and remains on some occasions as high as 105° throughout the night. In winter the morning temperature is sometimes as low as 20°. The rainfall is uncertain, ranging from 8 in. to 25, with an average of 15 in. The country as a whole is parched and arid, and greatly dependent on irrigation.

LA HOZ Y MOTA, JUAN CLAUDIO DE (1630?-1710?), Spanish dramatist, was born in Madrid. He became a knight of Santiago in 1653, and soon afterwards succeeded his father as regidor of Burgos. In 1665 he was nominated to an important post at the Treasury, and in his later years acted as official censor of the Madrid theatres. On the 13th of August 1709 he signed his play entitled Josef, salvador de Egipto, and is presumed to have died in the following year. Hoz is not remarkable for originality of conception, but his recasts of plays by earlier writers are distinguished by an adroitness which accounts for the esteem in which he was held by his contemporaries. El Montañés Juan Pascal and El castigo de la miseria, reprinted in the Biblioteca de Autores Españoles, give a just idea of his adaptable talent.

LAHR, a town in the grand-duchy of Baden, on the Schutter, about 9 m. S. of Offenburg, and on the railway Dinglingen-Lahr. Pop. (1900) 13,577. One of the busiest towns in Baden, it carries on manufactures of tobacco and cigars, woollen goods, chicory, leather, pasteboard, hats and numerous other articles, has considerable trade in wine, while among its other industries are printing and lithography. Lahr first appears as a town in 1278, and after several vicissitudes it passed wholly to Baden in 1803.

See Stein, Geschichte und Beschreibung der Stadt Lahr (Lahr, 1827); and Sütterlin, Lahr und seine Umgebung (Lahr, 1904).

LAIBACH (Slovenian, Ljubljana), capital of the Austrian duchy of Carniola, 237 m. S.S.W. of Vienna by rail. Pop. (1900) 36,547, mostly Slovene. It is situated on the Laibach, near its influx into the Save, and consists of the town proper and eight suburbs. Laibach is an episcopal see, and possesses a cathedral in the Italian style, several beautiful churches, a town hall in Renaissance style and a castle, built in the 15th century, on the Schlossberg, an eminence which commands the town. Laibach is the principal centre of the national Slovenian movement, and it contains a Slovene theatre and several societies for the promotion of science and literature in the native tongue. The Slovenian language is in general official use, and the municipal administration is purely Slovenian. The industries include manufactures of pottery, bricks, oil, linen and woollen cloth, fire-hose and paper.

Laibach is supposed to occupy the site of the ancient Emona or Aemona, founded by the emperor Augustus in 34 B.C. It was besieged by Alaric in 400, and in 451 it was desolated by the Huns. In 900 Laibach suffered much from the Magyars, who were, however, defeated there in 914. In the 12th century the town passed into the hands of the dukes of Carinthia; in 1270 it was taken by Ottocar of Bohemia; and in 1277 it came under the Habsburgs. In the early part of the 15th century the town was several times besieged by the Turks. The bishopric was founded in 1461. On the 17th of March 1797 and again on the 3rd of June 1809 Laibach was taken by the French, and from 1809 to 1813 it became the seat of their general government of the Illyrian provinces. From 1816 to 1849 Laibach was the capital of the kingdom of Illyria. The town is also historically known from the congress of Laibach, which assembled here in 1821 (see below). Laibach suffered severely on the 14th of April 1895 from an earthquake.

Congress or Conference of Laibach.—Before the break-up of the conference of Troppau (q.v.), it had been decided to adjourn it till the following January, and to invite the attendance of the king of Naples, Laibach being chosen as the place of meeting. Castlereagh, in the name of Great Britain, had cordially approved this invitation, as “implying negotiation” and therefore as a retreat from the position taken up in the Troppau Protocol. Before leaving Troppau, however, the three autocratic powers, Russia, Austria and Prussia, had issued, on the 8th of December 1820, a circular letter, in which they reiterated the principles of the Protocol, i.e. the right and duty of the powers responsible for the peace of Europe to intervene to suppress any revolutionary movement by which they might conceive that peace to be endangered (Hertslet, No. 105). Against this view Castlereagh once more protested in a circular despatch of the 19th of January 1821, in which he clearly differentiated between the objectionable general principles advanced by the three powers, and the particular case of the unrest in Italy, the immediate concern not of Europe at large, but of Austria and of any other Italian powers which might consider themselves endangered (Hertslet, No. 107).

The conference opened on the 26th of January 1821, and its constitution emphasized the divergences revealed in the above circulars. The emperors of Russia and Austria were present in person, and with them were Counts Nesselrode and Capo d’Istria, Metternich and Baron Vincent; Prussia and France were represented by plenipotentiaries. But Great Britain, on the ground that she had no immediate interest in the Italian question, was represented only by Lord Stewart, the ambassador at Vienna, who was not armed with full powers, his mission being to watch the proceedings and to see that nothing was done beyond or in violation of the treaties. Of the Italian princes, Ferdinand of Naples and the duke of Modena came in person; the rest were represented by plenipotentiaries.

It was soon clear that a more or less open breach between Great Britain and the other powers was inevitable, Metternich was anxious to secure an apparent unanimity of the powers to back the Austrian intervention in Naples, and every device was used to entrap the English representative into subscribing a formula which would have seemed to commit Great Britain to the principles of the other allies. When these devices failed, attempts were made unsuccessfully to exclude Lord Stewart from the conferences on the ground of defective powers. Finally he was forced to an open protest, which he caused to be inscribed on the journals, but the action of Capo d’Istria in reading to the assembled Italian ministers, who were by no means reconciled to the large claims implied in the Austrian intervention, a declaration in which as the result of the “intimate union established by solemn acts between all the European powers” the Russian emperor offered to the allies “the aid of his arms, should new revolutions threaten new dangers,” an attempt to revive that idea of a “universal union” based on the Holy Alliance (q.v.) against which Great Britain had consistently protested.

The objections of Great Britain were, however, not so much to an Austrian intervention in Naples as to the far-reaching principles by which it was sought to justify it. King Ferdinand had been invited to Laibach, according to the circular of the 8th of December, in order that he might be free to act as “mediator between his erring peoples and the states whose tranquillity they threatened.” The cynical use he made of his “freedom” to repudiate obligations solemnly contracted is described elsewhere (see Naples, History). The result of this action was the Neapolitan declaration of war and the occupation of Naples by Austria, with the sanction of the congress. This was preceded, on the 10th of March, by the revolt of the garrison of Alessandria and the military revolution in Piedmont, which in its turn was suppressed, as a result of negotiations at Laibach, by Austrian troops. It was at Laibach, too, that, on the 19th of March, the emperor Alexander received the news of Ypsilanti’s invasion of the Danubian principalities, which heralded the outbreak of the War of Greek Independence, and from Laibach Capo d’Istria addressed to the Greek leader the tsar’s repudiation of his action.

The conference closed on the 12th of May, on which date Russia, Austria and Prussia issued a declaration (Hertslet, No. 108) “to proclaim to the world the principles which guided them” in coming “to the assistance of subdued peoples,” a declaration which once more affirmed the principles of the Troppau Protocol. In this lay the European significance of the Laibach conference, of which the activities had been mainly confined to Italy. The issue of the declaration without the signatures of the representatives of Great Britain and France proclaimed the disunion of the alliance, within which—to use Lord Stewart’s words—there existed “a triple understanding which bound the parties to carry forward their own views in spite of any difference of opinion between them and the two great constitutional governments.”

No separate history of the congress exists, but innumerable references are to be found in general histories and in memoirs, correspondence, &c., of the time. See Sir E. Hertslet, Map of Europe (London, 1875); Castlereagh, Correspondence; Metternich, Memoirs; N. Bianchi, Storia documentata della diplomazia Europea in Italia (8 vols., Turin, 1865-1872); Gentz’s correspondence (see Gentz, F. von). Valuable unpublished correspondence is preserved at the Record Office in the volumes marked F. O., Austria, Lord Stewart, January to February 1821, and March to September 1821.

(W. A. P.)

LAIDLAW, WILLIAM (1780-1845), friend and amanuensis of Sir Walter Scott, was born at Blackhouse, Selkirkshire, on the 19th of November 1780, the son of a sheep farmer. After an elementary education in Peebles he returned to work upon his father’s farm. James Hogg, the shepherd poet, who was employed at Blackhouse for some years, became Laidlaw’s friend and appreciative critic. Together they assisted Scott by supplying material for his Border Minstrelsy, and Laidlaw, after two failures as a farmer in Midlothian and Peebleshire, became Scott’s steward at Abbotsford. He also acted as Scott’s amanuensis at different times, taking down a large part of The Bride of Lammermoor, The Legend of Montrose and Ivanhoe from the author’s dictation. He died at Contin near Dingwall, Ross-shire, on the 18th of May 1845. Of his poetry, little is known except Lucy’s Flittin’ in Hogg’s Forest Minstrel.

LAING, ALEXANDER GORDON (1793-1826), Scottish explorer, the first European to reach Timbuktu, was born at Edinburgh on the 27th of December 1793. He was educated by his father, William Laing, a private teacher of classics, and at Edinburgh University. In 1811 he went to Barbados as clerk to his maternal uncle Colonel (afterwards General) Gabriel Gordon. Through General Sir George Beckwith, governor of Barbados, he obtained an ensigncy in the York Light Infantry. He was employed in the West Indies, and in 1822 was promoted to a company in the Royal African Corps. In that year, while with his regiment at Sierra Leone, he was sent by the governor, Sir Charles MacCarthy, to the Mandingo country, with the double object of opening up commerce and endeavouring to abolish the slave trade in that region. Later in the same year Laing visited Falaba, the capital of the Sulima country, and ascertained the source of the Rokell. He endeavoured to reach the source of the Niger, but was stopped by the natives. He was, however, enabled to fix it with approximate accuracy. He took an active part in the Ashanti War of 1823-24, and was sent home with the despatches containing the news of the death in action of Sir Charles MacCarthy. Henry, 3rd Earl Bathurst, then secretary for the colonies, instructed Captain Laing to undertake a journey, via Tripoli and Timbuktu, to further elucidate the hydrography of the Niger basin. Laing left England in February 1825, and at Tripoli on the 14th of July following he married Emma Warrington, daughter of the British consul. Two days later, leaving his bride behind, he started to cross the Sahara, being accompanied by a sheikh who was subsequently accused of planning his murder. Ghadames was reached, by an indirect route, in October 1825, and in December Laing was in the Tuat territory, where he was well received by the Tuareg. On the 10th of January 1826 he left Tuat, and made for Timbuktu across the desert of Tanezroft. Letters from him written in May and July following told of sufferings from fever and the plundering of his caravan by Tuareg, Laing being wounded in twenty-four places in the fighting. Another letter dated from Timbuktu on the 21st of September announced his arrival in that city on the preceding 18th of August, and the insecurity of his position owing to the hostility of the Fula chieftain Bello, then ruling the city. He added that he intended leaving Timbuktu in three days’ time. No further news was received from the traveller. From native information it was ascertained that he left Timbuktu on the day he had planned and was murdered on the night of the 26th of September 1826. His papers were never recovered, though it is believed that they were secretly brought to Tripoli in 1828. In 1903 the French government placed a tablet bearing the name of the explorer and the date of his visit on the house occupied by him during his thirty-eight days’ stay in Timbuktu.

While in England in 1824 Laing prepared a narrative of his earlier journeys, which was published in 1825 and entitled Travels in the Timannee, Kooranko and Soolima Countries, in Western Africa.

LAING, DAVID (1793-1878), Scottish antiquary, the son of William Laing, a bookseller in Edinburgh, was born in that city on the 20th of April 1793. Educated at the Canongate Grammar School, when fourteen he was apprenticed to his father. Shortly after the death of the latter in 1837, Laing was elected to the librarianship of the Signet Library, which post he retained till his death. Apart from an extraordinary general bibliographical knowledge, Laing was best known as a lifelong student of the literary and artistic history of Scotland. He published no original volumes, but contented himself with editing the works of others. Of these, the chief are—Dunbar’s Works (2 vols., 1834), with a supplement added in 1865; Robert Baillie’s Letters and Journals (3 vols., 1841-1842); John Knox’s Works (6 vols., 1846-1864); Poems and Fables of Robert Henryson (1865); Andrew of Wyntoun’s Orygynale Cronykil of Scotland (3 vols., 1872-1879); Sir David Lyndsay’s Poetical Works (3 vols., 1879). Laing was for more than fifty years a member of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, and he contributed upwards of a hundred separate papers to their Proceedings. He was also for more than forty years secretary to the Bannatyne Club, many of the publications of which were edited by him. He was struck with paralysis in 1878 while in the Signet Library, and it is related that, on recovering consciousness, he looked about and asked if a proof of Wyntoun had been sent from the printers. He died a few days afterwards, on the 18th of October, in his eighty-sixth year. His library was sold by auction, and realized £16,137. To the university of Edinburgh he bequeathed his collection of MSS.

See the Biographical Memoir prefixed to Select Remains of Ancient, Popular and Romance Poetry of Scotland, edited by John Small (Edinburgh, 1885); also T. G. Stevenson, Notices of David Laing with List of his Publications, &c. (privately printed 1878).

LAING, MALCOLM (1762-1818), Scottish historian, son of Robert Laing, and elder brother of Samuel Laing the elder, was born on his paternal estate on the Mainland of Orkney. Having studied at the grammar school of Kirkwall and at Edinburgh University, he was called to the Scotch bar in 1785, but devoted his time mainly to historical studies. In 1793 he completed the sixth and last volume of Robert Henry’s History of Great Britain, the portion which he wrote being in its strongly liberal tone at variance with the preceding part of the work; and in 1802 he published his History of Scotland from the Union of the Crowns to the Union of the Kingdoms, a work showing considerable research. Attached to the History was a dissertation on the Gowrie conspiracy, and another on the supposed authenticity of Ossian’s poems. In another dissertation, prefixed to a second and corrected edition of the History published in 1804, Laing endeavoured to prove that Mary, queen of Scots, wrote the Casket Letters, and was partly responsible for the murder of Lord Darnley. In the same year he edited the Life and Historie of King James VI., and in 1805 brought out in two volumes an edition of Ossian’s poems. Laing, who was a friend of Charles James Fox, was member of parliament for Orkney and Shetland from 1807 to 1812. He died on the 6th of November 1818.

LAING, SAMUEL (1810-1897), British author and railway administrator, was born at Edinburgh on the 12th of December 1810. He was the nephew of Malcolm Laing, the historian of Scotland; and his father, Samuel Laing (1780-1868), was also a well-known author, whose books on Norway and Sweden attracted much attention. Samuel Laing the younger entered St John’s College, Cambridge, in 1827, and after graduating as second wrangler and Smith’s prizeman, was elected a fellow, and remained at Cambridge temporarily as a coach. He was called to the bar in 1837, and became private secretary to Mr Labouchere (afterwards Lord Taunton), the president of the Board of Trade. In 1842 he was made secretary to the railway department, and retained this post till 1847. He had by then become an authority on railway working, and had been a member of the Dalhousie Railway Commission; it was at his suggestion that the “parliamentary” rate of a penny a mile was instituted. In 1848 he was appointed chairman and managing director of the London, Brighton & South Coast Railway, and his business faculty showed itself in the largely increased prosperity of the line. He also became chairman (1852) of the Crystal Palace Company, but retired from both posts in 1855. In 1852 he entered parliament as a Liberal for Wick, and after losing his seat in 1857, was re-elected in 1859, in which year he was appointed financial secretary to the Treasury; in 1860 he was made finance minister in India. On returning from India, he was re-elected to parliament for Wick in 1865. He was defeated in 1868, but in 1873 he was returned for Orkney and Shetland, and retained his seat till 1885. Meanwhile he had been reappointed chairman of the Brighton line in 1867, and continued in that post till 1894, being generally recognized as an admirable administrator. He was also chairman of the Railway Debenture Trust and the Railway Share Trust. In later life he became well known as an author, his Modern Science and Modern Thought (1885), Problems of the Future (1889) and Human Origins (1892) being widely read, not only by reason of the writer’s influential position, experience of affairs and clear style, but also through their popular and at the same time well-informed treatment of the scientific problems of the day. Laing died at Sydenham on the 6th of August 1897.

LAING’S [or Lang’s] NEK, a pass through the Drakensberg, South Africa, immediately north of Majuba (q.v.), at an elevation of 5400 to 6000 ft. It is the lowest part of a ridge which slopes from Majuba to the Buffalo river, and before the opening of the railway in 1891 the road over the nek was the main artery of communication between Durban and Pretoria. The railway pierces the nek by a tunnel 2213 ft. long. When the Boers rose in revolt in December 1880 they occupied Laing’s Nek to oppose the entry of British reinforcements into the Transvaal. On the 28th of January 1881 a small British force endeavoured to drive the Boers from the pass, but was forced to retire.

LAIRD, MACGREGOR (1808-1861), Scottish merchant, pioneer of British trade on the Niger, was born at Greenock in 1808, the younger son of William Laird, founder of the Birkenhead firm of shipbuilders of that name. In 1831 Laird and certain Liverpool merchants formed a company for the commercial development of the Niger regions, the lower course of the Niger having been made known that year by Richard and John Lander. In 1832 the company despatched two small ships to the Niger, one, the “Alburkah,” a paddle-wheel steamer of 55 tons designed by Laird, being the first iron vessel to make an ocean voyage. Macgregor Laird went with the expedition, which was led by Richard Lander and numbered forty-eight Europeans, of whom all but nine died from fever or, in the case of Lander, from wounds. Laird went up the Niger to the confluence of the Benue (then called the Shary or Tchadda), which he was the first white man to ascend. He did not go far up the river but formed an accurate idea as to its source and course. The expedition returned to Liverpool in 1834, Laird and Surgeon R. A. K. Oldfield being the only surviving officers besides Captain (then Lieut.) William Allen, R.N., who accompanied the expedition by order of the Admiralty to survey the river. Laird and Oldfield published in 1837 in two volumes the Narrative of an Expedition into the Interior of Africa by the River Niger ... in 1832, 1833, 1834. Commercially the expedition had been unsuccessful, but Laird had gained experience invaluable to his successors. He never returned to Africa but henceforth devoted himself largely to the development of trade with West Africa and especially to the opening up of the countries now forming the British protectorates of Nigeria. One of his principal reasons for so doing was his belief that this method was the best means of stopping the slave trade and raising the social condition of the Africans. In 1854 he sent out at his own charges, but with the support of the British government, a small steamer, the “Pleiad,” which under W. B. Baikie made so successful a voyage that Laird induced the government to sign contracts for annual trading trips by steamers specially built for navigation of the Niger and Benue. Various stations were founded on the Niger, and though government support was withdrawn after the death of Laird and Baikie, British traders continued to frequent the river, which Laird had opened up with little or no personal advantage. Laird’s interests were not, however, wholly African. In 1837 he was one of the promoters of a company formed to run steamships between England and New York, and in 1838 the “Sirius,” sent out by this company, was the first ship to cross the Atlantic from Europe entirely under steam. Laird died in London on the 9th of January 1861.

His elder brother, John Laird (1805-1874), was one of the first to use iron in the construction of ships; in 1829 he made an iron lighter of 60 tons which was used on canals and lakes in Ireland; in 1834 he built the paddle steamer “John Randolph” for Savannah, U.S.A., stated to be the first iron ship seen in America. For the East India Company he built in 1839 the first iron vessel carrying guns and he was also the designer of the famous “Birkenhead.” A Conservative in politics, he represented Birkenhead in the House of Commons from 1861 to his death.

LAÏS, the name of two Greek courtesans, generally distinguished as follows. (1) The elder, a native of Corinth, born c. 480 B.C., was famous for her greed and hardheartedness, which gained her the nickname of Axinē (the axe). Among her lovers were the philosophers Aristippus and Diogenes, and Eubatas (or Aristoteles) of Cyrene, a famous runner. In her old age she became a drunkard. Her grave was shown in the Craneion near Corinth, surmounted by a lioness tearing a ram. (2) The younger, daughter of Timandra the mistress of Alcibiades, born at Hyccara in Sicily c. 420 B.C., taken to Corinth during the Sicilian expedition. The painter Apelles, who saw her drawing water from the fountain of Peirene, was struck by her beauty, and took her as a model. Having followed a handsome Thessalian to his native land, she was slain in the temple of Aphrodite by women who were jealous of her beauty. Many anecdotes are told of a Laïs by Athenaeus, Aelian, Pausanias, and she forms the subject of many epigrams in the Greek Anthology; but, owing to the similarity of names, there is considerable uncertainty to whom they refer. The name itself, like Phryne, was used as a general term for a courtesan.

See F. Jacobs, Vermischte Schriften, iv. (1830).

LAISANT, CHARLES ANNE (1841- ), French politician, was born at Nantes on the 1st of November 1841, and was educated at the École Polytechnique as a military engineer. He defended the fort of Issy at the siege of Paris, and served in Corsica and in Algeria in 1873. In 1876 he resigned his commission to enter the Chamber as deputy for Nantes in the republican interest, and in 1879 he became director of the Petit Parisien. For alleged libel on General Courtot de Cissey in this paper he was heavily fined. In the Chamber he spoke chiefly on army questions; and was chairman of a commission appointed to consider army legislation, resigning in 1887 on the refusal of the Chamber to sanction the abolition of exemptions of any kind. He then became an adherent of the revisionist policy of General Boulanger and a member of the League of Patriots. He was elected Boulangist deputy for the 18th Parisian arrondissement in 1889. He did not seek re-election in 1893, but devoted himself thenceforward to mathematics, helping to make known in France the theories of Giusto Bellavitis. He was attached to the staff of the École Polytechnique, and in 1903-1904 was president of the French Association for the Advancement of Science.

In addition to his political pamphlets Pourquoi et comment je suis Boulangiste (1887) and L’Anarchie bourgeoise (1887), he published mathematical works, among them Introduction à l’étude des quarternions (1881) and Théorie et applications des équipollences (1887).

LAI-YANG, a city in the Chinese province of Shan-tung, in 37° N., 120° 55′ E., about the middle of the eastern peninsula, on the highway running south from Chi-fu to Kin-Kia or Ting-tsu harbour. It is surrounded by well-kept walls of great antiquity, and its main streets are spanned by large pailous or monumental arches, some dating from the time of the emperor Tai-ting-ti of the Yuan dynasty (1324). There are extensive suburbs both to the north and south, and the total population is estimated at 50,000. The so-called Ailanthus silk produced by Saturnia cynthia is woven at Lai-yang into a strong fabric; and the manufacture of the peculiar kind of wax obtained from the la-shu or wax-tree insect is largely carried on in the vicinity.

LAKANAL, JOSEPH (1762-1845), French politician, was born at Serres (Ariège) on the 14th of July 1762. His name, originally Lacanal, was altered to distinguish him from his Royalist brothers. He joined one of the teaching congregations, and for fourteen years taught in their schools. When elected by his native department to the Convention in 1792 he was acting as vicar to his uncle Bernard Font (1723-1800), the constitutional bishop of Pamiers. In the Convention he held apart from the various party sections, although he voted for the death of Louis XVI. He rendered great service to the Revolution by his practical knowledge of education. He became a member of the Committee of Public Instruction early in 1793, and after carrying many useful decrees on the preservation of national monuments, on the military schools, on the reorganization of the Museum of Natural History and other matters, he brought forward on the 26th of June his Projet d’éducation nationale (printed at the Imprimerie Nationale), which proposed to lay the burden or primary education on the public funds, but to leave secondary education to private enterprise. Provision was also made for public festivals, and a central commission was to be entrusted with educational questions. The scheme, in the main the work of Sieyès, was refused by the Convention, who submitted the whole question to a special commission of six, which under the influence of Robespierre adopted a report by Michel le Peletier de Saint Fargeau shortly before his tragic death. Lakanal, who was a member of the commission, now began to work for the organization of higher education, and abandoning the principle of his Projet advocated the establishment of state-aided schools for primary, secondary and university education. In October 1793 he was sent by the Convention to the south-western departments and did not return to Paris until after the revolution of Thermidor. He now became president of the Education Committee and promptly abolished the system which had had Robespierre’s support. He drew up schemes for departmental normal schools, for primary schools (reviving in substance the Projet) and central schools. He presently acquiesced in the supersession of his own system, but continued his educational reports after his election to the Council of the Five Hundred. In 1799 he was sent by the Directory to organize the defence of the four departments on the left bank of the Rhine threatened by invasion. Under the Consulate he resumed his professional work, and after Waterloo retired to America, where he became president of the university of Louisiana. He returned to France in 1834, and shortly afterwards, in spite of his advanced age, married a second time. He died in Paris on the 14th of February 1845; his widow survived till 1881. Lakanal was an original member of the Institute of France. He published in 1838 an Exposé sommaire des travaux de Joseph Lakanal.